History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 189

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 189

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895

HYDE PARK.

CHAPTER LXX.

HYDE PARK.

BY EDMUND DAVIS.

HYDE PARK lies in the eastern part of the county, . Woods. These extend far beyond the town limits

and is about seven miles from the State-House in Boston. It is bounded on the north by the part of Boston which formerly constituted the town of West Roxbury, on the east by the part of Boston which was formerly Dorchester, on the southeast and south by Milton, and on the west by Dedham. Two lines of railroad-the Boston and Providence, and the New York and New England-run through it, being about one and one-third miles apart where they enter the town on the northeast, and gradually approaching and crossing each other on the southwest, near the Dedham line. There are seven stations within the

limits of the town, four on the Boston and Provi- | it, the greater part of the manufactories are located. dence Railroad, and three on the New York and New England Railroad. The Neponset River flows through the town in a course approximately parallel with the railroads, part of the way forming the bound- ary between it and Milton. Mother Brook, a water- course partly a stream and partly a canal, leading from the Charles River, enters the town on the west and empties into the Neponset near the centre of the town. Further natural drainage is afforded by a small brook running toward the northeast and emp- tying into Stony Brook, which has given our neighbors of Boston so much trouble and expense.

The area of the town is two thousand eight hun- dred acres, of which about two hundred acres are devoted to streets or ways. This fact argues a pretty close settlement, which is, indeed, the case, there being twelve hundred and sixty-five houses, containing up- wards of eight thousand inhabitants. The surface of the land is somewhat diversified by hill and plain ; | enough so to please the eye, without causing much inconvenience to road-makers or builders. None of the hills are so high that they cannot be easily sur- Hyde Park is a town of to-day, and its history is the history of to-day. Incorporated in 1868, any- thing which is to be said about it prior to that time belongs to the history of those adjoining towns from whose territory it was made up. The writer is thus deprived of the greater part of that material which age in the subject affords. As mists and vapors in the atmosphere lend to the outlines of objects at a distance more graceful and pleasing, and at the same time larger and more imposing, proportions, so the mounted ; none of the valleys so low that good drain- age cannot be obtained. Between the railroads the surface is for the most part quite level, the beautiful little eminence of Mount Neponset being the most noticeable exception. East of the Neponset River the land rises somewhat abruptly, forming Fairmount Heights, the place where the pioneers of this new town first founded their homes, and which to-day is closely covered with pleasant and in some instances elegant residences bordered by wide and well-shaded | mists of time constitute media through which the

streets and avenues. West of the Boston and Prov- idence Railroad the surface again swells into slight knolls and elevations, upon which stand many fine residences. This portion is known as Sunnyside. And still farther beyond this is a considerable tract of hilly and rocky territory forming a part of the rugged, woody wilderness, known as Muddy Pond

and into Dedham and Boston. They are a favorite resort of pleasure-seekers, traversed as they are in all directions by numerous wood-roads, and it has been well said that, " immersed in this maze of sylvan de- lights, one hardly realizes that he is within a few 1 miles of the metropolis of New England, and requires but little imagination to persuade himself that he is among the primeval forests of Maine."

Readville is the name of the southeast portion of the town, and is for the most part a level plain, not so closely built over as the other parts of the town. | In this section, however, and the territory adjoining A branch railroad to Dedham Centre leaves the Bos- ton and Providence Railroad here. Towards the northeast part of the town, on the same railroad, are the pleasant and thriving districts of Hazlewood and Clarendon Hill. Opposite the former, at about a quarter of a mile's distance, on a gently rising hill, stands the residence of Mr. Henry Grew, the house and its grounds on the sloping hillside, backed by the forest, forming a charming landscape. Still another small village is clustered around the paper-mills of Messrs. Tileston & Hollingsworth, at the eastern ex- tremity of River Street, and near the River Street Station, on the New York and New England Rail- road. These several districts, though thus distin- guished by distinctive names, are by no means isolated and separate villages ; one touches upon another, the rows of houses continue unbroken, and there is nothing in the way of unoccupied territory to mark the end of one section or the beginning of another The town is compact, and its divisions thoroughly welded together.

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

men and events of long ago, though indistinct and shadowy, seem all the more grand and impressive. To the writer of to-day the attributes of his con- temporaries are unmistakably human and personal ; current events, though interesting, uninvested with special significance. It requires the halo of time, the attribute of remoteness, to take from any act its selfish and personal bearing, and leave alone conspicu- ous in it its effect upon subsequent events, and its influence upon the weal or woe of individuals or com- munities. The mind loves to contemplate the acts of those long since passed away as springing from motives grander and more prophetic than what we are willing to concede to the actors of our time, and to trace with laborious ingenuity, among the events succeed- ing those acts, indications here and there of results attributable to the far-sighted energy or self-denying sacrifices of the men of yore. We imagine a condi- tion of things, material and intellectual, greatly differ- ent from that of the present, and in the toils, priva- tions, and struggles of our ancestors discern a poetry and charm which they, probably, never dreamt of. We spiritualize the old, we rigidly keep the new down to hard practicality.

Yet in this brief review of Hyde Park as it is to- day, after its short existence of less than a score of years, it will be necessary to go a little beyond its corporate life and examine these influences to which it owes its being and the circumstances and surround- ings which attended its inception.

One standing to-day upon the top of any of the small eminences which diversify the surface of the town, may, if the atmosphere is clear, sweep with his eye the lower harbor of Boston on the east, the Blue Hills which skirt the horizon in the southeast, the valley of the Neponset to the south glimmering through the green meadows, and to the west and north the elevated lands of the neighboring towns, while at his feet lie in thick profusion the hundreds of houses and miles of streets and avenues which go to make up the town of Hyde Park. The spires of churches, belfries, and tall chimneys of manufactories, the smoke of locomotives, and long lines of railways arrest the eyes, the hum of travel and traffic rises to the ear. Everything betokening the presence of eight thousand souls is manifest to the senses.

But far different was the view which awaited the anxious vision of the examining committee of pioneers in 1856; then, indeed, the hills, the rivers, and the high lands were to be seen in the distances, but nearer at hand little to mark the presence of man. There was then no considerable village on the line of the Boston and Providence Railroad from Jamaica Plain

to the Canton viaduct. The territory between was spread over with farms, woodland, and the meadows which fill the basin of the upper Neponset. All of human habitations in sight were a few farm-houses along the road leading from Dedham to Dorchester, and the small hamlet around the old cotton-factory at Readville. This tract was mostly in a state of nature, a great portion of it covered with the pine, the cedar, and the birch, with here and there a solitary farm- house, surrounded by a small clearing, its occupants quietly pursuing their pastoral lives almost within sight of the steeples of Boston, and little. dreaming of the change which was so soon to come over the scenes with which they had been so long familiar.

The highway leading from Dedham to Dorchester, a narrow lane rather than road leading out from this highway westerly into West Roxbury-a road from Milton to Dedham, and one from this last to a point on the Dorchester highway at the old cotton-mill in Readville -- were the only avenues of travel. The line of railway then called the Midland (now the New York and New England Railroad) had suc- cumbed to the weight of financial difficulties and was not in operation ; the Boston and Providence Rail- road had a depot only at Readville, and not more than half a dozen trains per day stopped there. The cotton-mill at Readville, and the old Sumner Mills, which had passed into the hands of Tileston & Hollingsworth, were the only manufacturing activities. The following extract from an address delivered at the first annual banquet of the town officers of Hyde Park, March 9, 1872, by the venerable Henry Grew, one of the town's oldest as well as most esteemed citizens, presents such a graphic and truthful portrait- ure of the condition of things at and shortly before the time under consideration as to fully justify its insertion here :

" Having purchased a few acres of land in the summer of 1846, I commenced building a house, and moved to this place, then a part of Dorchester, on the first day of May, 1847. At that time most of this territory was occupied by farmers. There were on River Street (the old highway between Dorches- ter and Dedham), within a range of a mile or a mile and a half, about ten houses, most of them small and occupied by farmers, with two exceptions, one a blacksmith and one a wheelwright, with a population not exceeding fifty persons." Also Sumner's mills and a few small tenements occupied by their operatives, and a small school-house near the same. " These were the only settlements in Dorchester. On the easterly side of the Nepon- set River, which was the boundary line between Dorchester and Milton (now Fairmount), all was woodland and pasture, the first settlement in that part of our town having commenced in 1855 or 1856. West of my house was an unbroken range of forest-trees ; on the northerly side, in West Roxbury, were three farms. My nearest visiting neighbor was 23 or 3 miles distant. I was almost literally surrounded by woods, and my friends in

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HYDE PARK.

Boston were much surprised at my going to such a wild and lonely place. There was, however, the Boston & Providence Railroad, on which cars passed within half a mile of my resi- dence, running three times a day each way, to and from Boston. There was no station between Forest Hill and Readville; occa- sionally the cars stopped at the crossing at West Street to take or leave passengers. After a while some of the trains stopped at Kenney's Bridge (now Hyde Park Station), but passengers were few, perhaps ten or twelve in the course of a week. No house of shelter or station-master. The signal for stopping the cars by daylight was made by the turning of a signal board by the passenger, and after dark by the swinging of a lantern."

The region more particularly described in the fore- going address was known in .“ ye olden time" as Dor- chester Commons, and was used as a common pasture for cattle by the inhabitants of that venerable town, and was then a wild and wholly uncultivated tract, covered with trees, shrubs, and undergrowth. A por- tion of it was embraced in the land granted to Lieu- tenant-Governor Stoughton, of Dorchester, in colonial times, and referred to by him in his will as "my farm which is beyond the Mother Brook." How far this farm extended is now an unsettled question, but un- doubtedly it reached beyond the present limits of the town southwardly along the Neponset River, and through the easterly part of Readville, and probably embraced a goodly portion of the Fowl Meadows, that sort of land in the early days of the colonies being apparently far more prized than upland. The Gover- nor had a farm-house somewhere on this farm, but where has not been determined. It is believed by many to have been on or near the site of the old Sprague Manor-house, itself a building dating back to near the time of the Revolution. "Dorchester Commons" was gradually sold or parceled out into farms. In 1846 three of these farms, containing about two hundred acres, and including what is now the most thickly settled and valuable part of Hyde Park, were purchased by three men, who proposed to build upon and occupy them. Two houses were erected, one the stone edifice, corner of Gordon Avenue and Austin Street, formerly known as the ! Lyman House, lately the residence of Charles A. White, and now owned and occupied by Col. Jobn B. Bachelder, the Gettysburg historian ; the other was the old homestead of Gordon H. Nott, whose enter- prise and liberality were largely contributory to the early growth of this town. These three individuals then sold the remainder of their purchase to the Hyde Park Land Company. This company made some improvements and disposed of some of its land, but little was accomplished by it before 1856. The earliest recorded sale of some one hundred acres of the Commons was for five pounds colonial. The above

sale to the Hyde Park Land Company was for the expressed price of twelve thousand dollars, or about sixty dollars per acre. Within the last fifteen years considerable parcels of the same land, without build- ings, has changed owners for a consideration of seventy-five cents per foot, and in two instances for one dollar per square foot.

The portion of the town taken from Dedham was formerly known as " the Lower Plains," a title suf- ficiently descriptive of its topographical character- istics. Away back a large part of it was owned by one Damon, in memory of whom the school-house now in that locality received its name. About 1850 it was named by its inhabitants Readville, in honor of Mr. Read, who was the principal owner of the cotton-mill there. About this mill were some score of houses and tenements ; and farther away, but still within the district, were perhaps half a dozen other residences, among them the homestead of D. L. Davis and that of the late William Bullard, both on the Milton road, still occupied by the then owners or their descendants, and the handsome and, for those days, elegant French cottage of William S. Damrell, then member of Congress. This stood, with ample and pleasant grounds around it, on a low hill rising back from the pond caused by the mill-dam. It is now owned and occupied by E. A. Fiske. Mr. Dam- rell, as the only Congressman ever resident upon soil now included in our town, claims more than a passing notice. He was an intense anti-slavery man, bold and fearless in the expression of his convictions, a warm friend and supporter of Sumner, Banks, Hale, and the other foremost champions of human liberty. He was of indomitable will, and resolutely attended to his public duties during the years immediately preceding the Rebellion, although so disabled by paralysis of the lower extremities, occasioned by lead-poisoning, as to require the assistance of a person upon either side to move from place to place. Three of his sons served in the army of the Union during the civil war. One died in the service, another died after the close of the war from disease contracted in the service ; the third and only surviving member of the family is Maj. A. N. Damrell, Engineer Corps, U.S.A.

In 1856, the time when the first of those enter- prises which caused the growth and development of Hyde Park was begun, Readville contained the bulk of the population within its limits.

Fairmount was the spot selected for the experi- ment, and the credit of the first suggestion of, and of the greatest activity in pushing forward, the particu- lar plan which led to the settlement there must be awarded to Alpheus P. Blake.

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

He was then a young man, employed in Boston, poor in everything but a vigorous brain and iron de- termination. His occupation brought him into con- tact with others who, like himself, had business in the city, and whose means did not permit them to procure satisfactory homes for their families there. He conceived the project of forming an association of these men, and, uniting their slender means into a common fund, acquiring therewith on more favorable terms sufficient land in some one of the outlying towns to afford each member ample space for a coun- try home at reasonable cost, and within easy access to his place of business. Previous to this attempts to build up villages on some of the many unoccupied fields and hillsides in the region around Boston had been frequently made, and generally with entire want of success. But in most, if not all, these enterprises the lands had been acquired and put upon the market by men who looked only to the money profit to them- selves, and had no intention of personally being resi- dents of the settlements which they tried to incubate. Mr. Blake believed and argued that a body of men seeking homes for themselves in the spot which they might select would deserve and meet with entire suc- cess. He personally visited and inspected many lo- calities in the suburbs, and was most attracted by the possibilities of this vicinity. He desired to secure the tract between the Boston and Providence Rail- road and the Neponset River, but found this already in the possession of men who had so exalted an opin- ion of its prospective value as to put their estimate of its present worth entirely beyond his means. His at- tention was thus, perforce, directed to the hill-slopes on the opposite banks of the river. He succeeded in getting a reasonable price fixed upon what he wanted, and then talked the matter up so well among his friends as to effect a formal organization of a number of them at a meeting held Sept. 1, 1855, at the resi- dence of one of the members on Revere Street, Bos- ton. Mr. Blake was made president of the company thus formed, and a committee was appointed to ex- amine the locality suggested by him. Although the Midland Railroad then occupied the location now of the New York and New England, it was bankrupt and not in operation ; so the investigating committee were obliged to go to Mattapan, on a branch of the Old Colony Railroad, and thence walk some two miles to their destination on Fairmount Hill.

profit. The remainder of the associates, however, to the number of twenty, "stuck," formed a trust com- pany under the title of " The Fairmount Land Com- pany and Twenty Associates," purchased one hundred acres off the back part of the farms of the dwellers upon the Brush Hill road in Milton, and on the 15th day of May, 1856, the first blow toward the erection of the first house in Fairmount was struck. This building is the one now standing on the corner of Beacon Street and Fairmount Avenue, at present oc- cupied by G. H. Peare. Henry A. Rich, David Higgins, and William H. Nightingale were the first mechanics. The latter died some years since ; the two former are still among the prominent residents of our town, Mr. Rich having been its collector the greater part of the time since its incorporation. It was the plan of the twenty associates that each should build and occupy a residence in the new territory. Most, if not all, of them did so, and three of them, Messrs. Fisk, Higgins, and Payson, still live in the houses then built by them. A wood-cut, printed in an illustrated paper of the date May 23, 1857, shows twenty-six buildings standing on the slope of Fair- mount ; another, in 1859, represents forty-two. This not rapid growth was effected only by untiring per- severance under many difficulties and discouragements. The association was made up of poor men, and great economy was necessary. The land was not fully paid for, the balance of the purchase price being secured by a ground mortgage. At one time the project was on the point of being abandoned by reason of the many obstacles encountered, but the firmness of the late D. B. Rich prevented this. The pioneers had a hard time of it. The nearest point at which railroad accommodations could be obtained was on the Boston and Providence, at Kenny's Bridge, and there but two trains each way per day stopped ; there was no depot, and to reach Fairmount from there it was necessary to cross the river in small boats, or on the stringers of the Midland Railroad bridge.

The lumber and other material needed in the con- struction of their buildings was brought from Neponset by teams through Milton, and with much labor and difficulty transported up and over the crest of the hill. The mere preparation of roads over which the material could be brought was a work of no little amount on that rough hillside, then far more steep and uneven than now. The nearest store was at Mattapan ; the nearest post-offices at Milton and East Dedham. To accommodate the mechanics en- gaged upon the first houses, D. B. Rich opened a " boarding-house" in an old building, where the seats

This experience, with the wild appearance of the country it was proposed to acquire and subjugate, so discouraged several of the committee that they in disgust abandoned both the place and the enterprise, and thus forfeited their chances of future glory and | were boxes and kegs, and the other accommodations

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of like ostentatious magnificence. But the settlers were resolute and full of resources. They endured what they could not remedy, and made use of every means attainable to better their condition. Before long, by joint contributions and efforts, they con- structed a foot-bridge across the river. Finding the Midland Railroad there at hand, they resolved to utilize it, and did so, again combining their means and buying a car with an engine in one end, in which they journeyed in and out of Boston with great re- joicing, though they had for some time to dispense with a depot. In one respect they were greatly fa- vored at this time,-no lawyer, doctor, or clergyman had invaded this Arcadia, and thus the denizens were left free to concentrate their efforts to the common good without unnecessary mental or bodily affliction.

It is true that in 1859 one disciple of Esculapius came like a serpent into this Eden; but the place was too much for him, too healthy, and after trying for some time to eke out a precarious existence by teaching in Boston during the day and searching for a chance to practice his profession at night, he was obliged to abandon the unequal contest and avoid starvation by retreat. Although the town has long since passed from a condition in which it could boast even an average immunity from the professions above specified, its sanitary reputation at least is still of a high order, and to this day it has no burial-place within its borders,-not, however, for the Western reason that no one dies here unless shot for the ex- press purpose of starting a graveyard, but chiefly be- cause the excellent cemeteries in the adjacent city and towns have rendered the necessity for one here less imperative.

Among the names of prominent and enterprising citizens of this earlier time, in addition to those al- ready mentioned, appear those of C. F. Gerry, Wil- liam Rogers, S. A. Bradbury, W. T. Thacher, D. W. Phipps, G. B. Parrott, J. N. Brown, and S. S. Mooney.

Many of these lots were sold by the company for an average price of two cents per foot, and the pur- chaser allowed several years in which to complete payment for them. It also advanced to buyers funds to assist them in building,-such loans, of course, being secured by mortgage. The fact that its stock never paid any large dividend to the holders seems to prove that the company was not conducted in any grasping or avaricious spirit. Under its efforts and the enter- prise of many individuals the growth of the place was fairly progressing, when the civil war came, upsetting the plans of so many, and, by the doubt and uncer- tainty it engendered, paralyzed to a great extent all enterprises. The most strenuous efforts were made by the Real Estate and Building Company and others interested to overcome this incubus. Then, as now, printer's ink was deemed by the dwellers here a most potent instrumentality, and placards and circulars, urging investments in building lots, full of confident assertions calculated to inspire the most timid, were freely issued. Some of these are exhilarating. For instance, " The war appears to have very little effect upon the rapid progress of the great enterprise at Hyde Park and Fairmount ;" and again, "Nothing short of the complete overthrow of the government can stay the rapid growth of the beautiful villages of Hyde Park and Fairmount." There seems to be in these extracts a calm candor, an air of casually men- tioning an admitted fact, which ought to have con- vinced the most skeptical mind. With such in- spiring words, and many other well-devised efforts, did our predecessors strive to allay the panic of those dark days. That these efforts were only moderately successful is apparent in the admission made by the building company, in its prospectus of 1864, that during the mighty struggle of the nation for its ex- istence special expenses for the purpose of carrying on its enterprises had been mainly suspended by the company. Yet the growth of the town was not wholly arrested during this time, for we learn -from a contemporary paper that in 1862 there were one hundred and fifty dwellings in the district between the Brush Hill road and the Boston and Providence Railroad station at Hyde Park, which number had increased to two hundred in 1865.

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 189

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534