USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 74
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The Winchester Home for Aged Women was founded by Mrs. Nancy (Phipps) Winchester,3 who died here June 24, 1864, bequeathing an estate worth about $10,000 to establish "a home for aged and indigent females." The corporation was organized Oct. 3, 1865. The managers 4 are chosen by the different Protestant religious societies in Charlestown.
The annexation of Charlestown to Boston was brought before this town, on petition of Oliver Holden 5 and others, as early as Nov. 14, 1836, when Owen Holden the matter was "indefinitely postponed." 6 At a town-meeting held Jan. 28, 1845, a preamble and resolutions opposing the scheme, which had been revived, were presented by Mr. Richard Frothing- ham, Jr., and adopted. April 29, 1854, an act to unite the two cities was passed by the Legislature and accepted by the people ; but it was set aside on account of a flaw in its provisions.7 The measure was again agitated in 1860 and in 1870. On the fourteenth of May, 1873,8 another act was passed. It was accepted by both cities on the first Tuesday in October ; and on the first Monday in January, 1874, Charlestown cast in her lot with that of her first-born.
Henry It. Edes /
1 Cf. Records of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, x. 36, 37.
2 Cf. Report on supplying the city of Charles- town with pure water, Dec. 26, 1859, by G. R. Baldwin and C. L. Stevenson, Boston, 1860; and Report of the commissioners and chief engi- neer of the Charlestown Water Works, Feb. 28, 1865. Boston : 1865.
8 Cf. Wyman, Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, p. 754.
4 At the present time (1881) the Hon. Liverus Hull is President of the corporation, the Hon. Timothy Thompson Sawyer and the Hon. Fran- cis Childs, are Vice-Presidents, Mr. John Turner is Treasurer, and Mr. Abram Edmands Cutter, Secretary.
5 Mr. Holden was the composer of the tune "Coronation," in 1793. Cf. Wyman, Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, P. 509.
6 An earlier movement in the same direction
occurred in 1829. Two informal meetings of the citizens were held in the Town Hall, March 20 and April 3 of that year. At the last meeting a report favoring the measure was presented. Only two speeches were made, - one by Mr. Joseph Tufts (H. C. 1807), the other by Mr. Arthur W. Austin (H. C. 1825), then a young attorney-at- law, who vigorously attacked the scheme, and succeeded in defeating it by a majority of ten to one. Cf. Bunker Hill Aurora (newspaper) for March 21 and April 4, 1829.
7 The decision of the Supreme Judicial Court is reported in 2 Gray, 84.
8 In 1873 the valuation was $35,289,682; and the public property was reckoned worth $3,035,100, including the water works which are set down at $2,000,000. The annual appropria- tions for the year 1873-74 amounted to $497,27 5. Jan. 12, 1874, the funded debt amounted to $2,623,287.50.
CHAPTER XVI.
ROXBURY IN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
BY FRANCIS S. DRAKE.
A T the close of the Revolutionary war, and for nearly half a century afterward, Roxbury was still a suburban village, with a single nar- row street, and dotted with farms, many of which were yet held by the descendants of original proprietors. Not a few of the old homesteads were still in existence, and the manners, habits, and pursuits of the prim- itive inhabitants had not wholly given place to newer fashions and more varied occupations. The business of the town was concentrated in Rox- bury Street, the sole thoroughfare to Boston, through which, as through a tunnel, crowded all the surplus produce of the country. Hides and skins, the chief articles of its trade aside from its farm products, also supplied the staple for its manufactures of leather, shoes, and gloves. Traces of the siege were evident in the remains of forts and earthworks lining its eastern border, in the shot-riddled houses in their vicinity, and also in the absence of the shade and forest trees that had formerly adorned it. From the old Burying-ground to the site of the British lines 1 not a house was left standing.
The town at this period contained two hundred and thirteen dwelling- houses, eighteen tanneries and slaughter-houses, one chocolate mill, two grist mills (Pierpont's and Ralph Smith's), three meeting-houses, one grammar school, and four other schools. Its population was probably under two thousand. The castern, central, and western portions, respec- tively known as the First Parish, Jamaica Plain, and Spring Street, consti- tuted prior to 1820, when parochial divisions had all disappeared, the First, Second, and Third parishes. Punch-Bowl village was at Muddy River, now Brookline; Roxbury Precinct included the westerly side of Parker Hill and vicinity ; and Pierpont's Village clustered around the mill whose site is now the Roxbury Station of the Boston and Providence Railroad.
Jamaica Plain, originally called the " Pond Plain," had, as early as 1667, received its present name, probably in compliment to Cromwell, and in commemoration of his recent valuable conquest from Spain of the island
1 Canton Street.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
of Jamaica. This charming and healthful region has always been a favorite summer resort for Bostonians. Here were the country seats of Governors Bernard, Hancock, and Bowdoin, of Sir William Pepperrell the younger, Commodore Loring, Captain Hallowell, and many other distinguished citizens of colonial days, as well as those of a later period.
The localities embraced in the western portion of the town were Spring Street, so named for its springy character ; Muddy Pond, with its aboriginal woods, bordering upon Dedham; Muddy-Pond Hill, lately re-christened " Mount Bellevue; " Canterbury, that quiet and obscure portion of the town adjoining Dorchester, whose name is a puzzle to the antiquary, and in which are now included the beautiful cemeteries of Forest Hills and Mount Hope; Brook Farm, the scene of the most famous of American Socialist experiments, lying in the southwest corner of the town; and the Bussey Farm, originally the Weld Farm, upon which stands the Bussey Institution, the Agricultural School of Harvard University. Roslindale and Clarendon Hills, centrally situated, are communities of recent origin and rapid growth.
Slight alterations were made in the Boston boundary-line by the legis- lative acts of 1836, 1838, and 1859. In 1857 a decision of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, regarded by the people of Roxbury as a flagrant piece of injustice, deprived her of seventy-one acres of Back-bay land which had belonged to her from time immemorial, and declared it to be the property of the State. Much of this territory, formerly covered with water, has been reclaimed, and now constitutes the finest portion of the city. The Back-bay Park, with the exception of a small portion belonging to Brookline, is included in the Roxbury tract. In 1838 eighteen hundred acres of Newton, bounding upon Charles River, were set off to Roxbury. That part of the town lying between Muddy River and the Brook, its original boundary, was annexed to Brookline in 1844. In 1852 a portion of Dedham was annexed to the town of West Roxbury. The filling of Roxbury Canal, the extension of Swett Street and of East-Chester Park have slightly enlarged the area of the town on its eastern side.
Shays's Insurrection broke out in the fall of 1786. Roxbury, true to her military traditions, performed her part in its suppression, sending to the scene of operations Captain Spooner's artillery company, and an infantry company under Captain Moses Draper. The former, before marching, were addressed at the Old Meeting-house by Mr. Samuel Quincy. November 30, Roxbury sent a party of mounted volunteers on a secret expedition for the capture of some of the leading insurgents; but they returned without effecting their object. For the protection of the Court to be held at Cambridge a company of veterans belonging to the First Parish was organized under the command of Major-General Heath, with Captain Joseph Williams and Hon. John Read as lieutenants.
At the public celebration in Boston, Feb. 8, 1788, of the ratification of the Constitution of the United States, at which all the industrial arts were
573
ROXBURY IN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
represented, the farmers of Roxbury, with a plough and other implements of husbandry, led the procession.
President Washington, dressed in his old Continental uniform, and at- tended by his secretaries Colonel Lear and Major Jackson, made his last entry into Boston from the Roxbury line, Oct. 24, 1789, to revisit the scene of his first memorable achievement. He was saluted with a discharge of cannon from the Roxbury Artillery, under Captain Jonathan Warner, Colonel Tyler's troop of horse escorting him to the entrance of the town. His detention here of two hours, exposed to a raw northeast wind, gave him a severe cold. From the same cause a general distemper became prevalent, called the " Washington Influenza." 1
A canal fifty feet in width, extending from the wharf at Lamb's-Dam Creek nearly to Eustis Street, just cast of the Burying-ground, was built in 1795, the line between Boston and Roxbury passing through its centre. Its enterprising projectors-among whom were Ralph Smith, Dr. Thomas Williams, and Aaron and Charles Davis- proposed by this means to save two and a half miles of land carriage from the centre of Boston. General Heath's manuscript journal, under date of March 9, 1796, notes the fact that a large topsail schooner that day came up into the basin of the new canal, in " Lamb's Meadow." This canal, never a paying investment, long ago ceased to be of commercial importance, and has been recently filled up by the city.
In 1795 the Jamaica-Pond Aqueduct Company was incorporated. About forty-five miles of pipes, made of logs, were laid. the average daily supply of water being about four hundred thousand gallons ; and, until the introduction of Cochituate water, it supplied some portions of the old city. The right to draw water from the pond, granted to certain citizens conditionally in 1698. was a frequent cause of litigation till 1851, when the Boston Water Board bought the right for $45,000. In 1856 the city sold it for $32,000 to the present corporation, on condition that they should not bring water into the city proper.
Colonel Joseph Dudley, in 1810, gave a portion of his patrimonial estate as a site for a town house. A two-story brick building was erected, and was so far completed in February, 1811, that a town-meeting was then held there. The use of the upper story was granted, in 1818, to the Norfolk Guards for an armory. A grammar-school was subsequently kept there. After 1846 it was known as the City Hall. Latterly used as a court-house, with cells for prisoners in its basement, it was demolished in 1873, to make room for the new Dudley-School building, when the heirs of Dudley were recompensed for the departure from the original conditions of the gift.
Prominent among the town officers of Roxbury for fidelity and length of service were Deacon Samuel Gridley, Dr. N. S. Prentiss, Joseph W. Tucker, Colonel Joseph Williams, Noah Perrin, Ebenezer Seaver, and Joseph W. Dudley.
1 [See Mr. Lodge's chapter in the present volume. - En.]
574
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
In September, 1814, while the second war with England was in progress, the town voted unanimously to do, by manual labor, pecuniary contribu- tion, and military service, whatever the Executive of the Commonwealth should require to put the State in a proper posture of defence "in the
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1
present alarming condition of the country ; " and placed upon its war com- mittee the veteran General Henry Dearborn. Political sentiment in New England was violently hostile to the war, and John Lowell, Jr.'s pamphlet on " Madison's War," a powerful attack on the party in power, so cxas-
I [This portrait of Gen. Dearborn, painted p. 170. The Dearborn house, in Roxbury, is by Stuart in 1812, is now owned by Mr. H. G. R. shown in Lossing's Field-book of the War of 1812, Dearborn, his grandson. See Mason's Stuart, p. 250, and in Drake's Roxbury, p. 327 .- ED.]
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ROXBURY IN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
perated some of its supporters, that they threatened to burn Mr. Lowell's house in Roxbury. No attempt was made, however, to put the threat into execution.
The Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation was chartered June 4, 1814, and in 1818 work was begun on the Mill-dam, or Western Avenue, the first of the artificial roads connecting the peninsula of Boston with the main land. For the construction of this road, one and a half miles in length, Irish laborers were for the first time expressly imported into this country. The stone used was from the Parker-Hill quarry. It was opened July 2, [821, with a public parade, the addition of another avenue to Boston being considered a great event. So far as obtaining water-power was concerned the project was a failure; but the conversion of the submerged territory into dry land by the Boston Water-Power Company has resulted in the rapid growth of the city in that direction.
In August, 1824, on the occasion of the visit of General Lafayette to the United States as the guest of the nation, he was entertained by Governor Eustis, his old compatriot in the army, at his residence in Roxbury, - the Governor Shirley mansion.1 The General was received by a cavalcade of citizens, the bells were rung, while salvos of artillery and a discharge of rockets evinced the general enthusiasm and the heartiness of his welcome. A grand entertainment was given him by the Governor, at which were pres- ent ex-Governor Brooks and General Dearborn, both of whom had served with distinction in the Revolutionary army. After making a tour through the States, Lafayette returned to Roxbury, where he passed the night of June 16, 1825, and the next morning was escorted to Bunker Hill, where he assisted in laying the corner-stone of the monument.
The two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Roxbury was cele- brated Oct. 8, 1830, with great parade. Upon the square near the Norfolk House a procession was formed, which, under escort of the Norfolk Guards, marched through the principal streets. An historical address was delivered by General H. A. S. Dearborn, and a centennial poem by Dr. Thomas Gray. In the evening the town was illuminated by bonfires and by fireworks from
1 [This is shown in the frontispiece of Vol. II. This mansion passed in 1764 into the hands of Judge Eliakim Hutchinson, Shirley's son-in-law ; and as the judge was a loyalist, it was occupied hy troops during the siege, and became in 1782 the property of the Hon. John Read, who sold it in 1791 to a French Refugee, Mme. de Fitzpatrick. Later, it was owned by Giles Alexander, and at one time was occupied by M. Dubuque, from Martinique, who had a cook named Julien, who afterward became fa- mous in Boston as a calerer. Captain James Magee, a shipmaster in Colonel Thomas H. Per- kins's employ, next owned it, and his widow sold it to Governor Eustis in August, 1819; and after the death of the governor's widow, who had kept the house unchanged, it was sold in Au-
gust, 1867 ; and when Shirley Street was laid out the house was moved a little to the southeast. (Drake, Town of Roxbury.) In November, 1865, an auction sale of many relics preserved in the
WEustis.
old mansion took place, -such as a secretary given by General Warren to Governor Eustis ; the furniture of the chamber occupied by Lafay- ette ; a portrait on ivory of the Duchess of Or- leans, given by herself to the governor; and the old family coach, which was built by Knowles and Thayer, of Amherst, in 1822 (sold for $30), and which has since been conspicuous in more than one procession in Boston. - ED.]
576
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
the Old Fort.1 Another celebration, under the auspices of the Roxbury City Guard, took place November 22 of the centennial year 1876, at which General Horace B. Sargent was the orator.
The decade from 1820 to 1830 marks distinctly the epoch of transition from the old to the new town. Prior to this the only publie improvement of magnitude besides the Roxbury Canal had been the construction, in 1805, of the Dedham Turnpike. The Mill-dam, as already noted, and two new churches, had been built in 1821. In 1824 Roxbury Street was paved and brick sidewalks laid. Before this the street was paved in the middle only, the sidewalk of cobble-stones having a narrow brick-walk in its centre. In 1825 all the existing roads, to the number of forty, received names from the town authorities. Albany Street, originally the "way to the town landing," or wharf, was widened, and named Davis Street. The Norfolk House was opened, and a newspaper started. The streets were first lighted in May, 1826, lamps being provided by the inhabitants. In this year hourly coaches began to run from the Town House to the Old South Church, in Boston ; more frequent and rapid conveyance is now furnished by two steam and two horse railroads. The first of these, the Boston & Providence, was built in 1834. In 1829 a Board of Health was created.
In this and the following decade the march of improvement was further manifested by the speculative purchase of a number of the old estates near the business part of the town. Among the more important of these were the estates of Dr. Thomas Williams, between Albany and Magazine streets; the White Farm, in the locality since known as Mount Pleasant; the Weld and John Read estates, adjoining White's; the Dudley estate, lying between Bartlett and Roxbury streets; the Maccarty Farm, between Hawthorne Street and Walnut Avenue, and extending from Cedar Street on the north to Marcella Street on the south; the Ruggles and Joseph Williams estates, embracing the territory through which Highland and Cedar streets run; and the Lowell and Heath estates, on the north side of Centre Street, between it and Parker Hill. Through these large tracts streets were laid out and graded, new buildings very soon sprang up on every side, and the population and business of the town rapidly increased.
Tremont Street was opened to Roxbury from its Boston terminus, near Chickering's piano-forte factory, Sept. 10, 1832, - a great relief to Wash- ington Street, which up to that period had been over-crowded with country teams. So much opposition was manifested to this enterprise by those doing business on the "Neck," then the only free thoroughfare connecting Boston with the country,-toll being taken on the Mill-dam, - that it could only be completed through private subscriptions. These were procured through the energetic efforts of Watson Gore and Guy Carleton, aided by John Parker and a few other wealthy men.
After more than two centuries of town government, which it had at length fairly outgrown, the town of Roxbury became a city, by legislative
1 Where now the Cochituate stand-pipe is.
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ROXBURY IN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
enactment, March 12, 1846. The act was accepted by the inhabitants on the twenty-fifth of the same month, eight hundred and thirty-six voting yea, while only one hundred and ninety-two voted in the negative. The old board of selectmen was replaced by a mayor, eight aldermen, and twenty- four councilmen. The territory of the town was divided into eight wards. When West Roxbury was set off, in 1851, it took parts of wards four and five, and all of wards six, seven, and eight, with the exception of Brook Farm, recently bought by the city for a poor-farm, and Forest Hills Ceme-
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in
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MEETING-HOUSE HILL IN 1790.1
tery, both within the territorial limits of the new town. One important re- sult of the change was the immediate adoption of numerous much-needed public improvements, such as the general laying of sidewalks and drains, the construction of sewers, and the providing of public parks. One of the most memorable of the achievements of the new city government was the estab- lishment of Forest Hills Cemetery. Gas was first introduced in 1850, and a horse-railroad was put in operation in 1856, running at first from Guild Row only to Boylston Street. Among the many street improvements was the widening of Washington Street, in 1855. In the twenty-two years of the city government the population grew from thirteen thousand to thirty thousand, its largest increase being in the decade from 1840 to
? [This follows a painting by Penniman, old First Church. The Mears house, the Lam- owned by Mr. Horace Hunt. It is taken from bert house, and the old parsonage are yet stand- Deacon Moses Davis's house, and shows the ing. Drake, Town of Roxbury, p. 287. - En.] VOL. 111. - 73.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
1850; its business steadily expanded, and it became in all save the name a part of the adjoining metropolis. The following citizens successively occupied the mayor's chair: John Jones Clarke (1846), H. A. S. Dearborn (1847-51), Samuel Walker (1851-53), Linus Bacon Comins (1854), James Ritchie (1855), John Sherburne Sleeper (1856-58), Theodore Otis (1859- 60), William Gaston (1861-62), George Lewis (1863-67).
The idea of dividing the town, which grew out naturally from its great extent, and from the fact that all its business, religious and secular, had to be transacted at its eastern extremity, first found expression in 1706, when petitioners to the General Court from that quarter of the town prayed that the western part might form a separate precinct. It accordingly became the second parish in 1711. An unsuccessful attempt was made in 1777 to incorporate the second and third parishes into a district to be called Wash- ington. The western part of the town, being wholly agricultural, strongly objected to the expenditure of sums raised by general taxation upon im- provements made almost wholly in the eastern or business part of the town. Efforts for separation were consequently renewed in 1817, again in 1838, 1843, and 1844, and finally in 1850, when they were successful, notwithstand- ing the opposition of the Roxbury city government, -the act setting off and incorporating West Roxbury taking effect May 24, 1851. This event, so interesting to its people, was celebrated with great rejoicings on the even- ing of June 3, 1851. The dividing line was Seaver Street, from Blue-Hill Avenue to Washington Street, thence, running in the same direction, to Brookline, crossing Centre Street at its junction with Day and Perkins streets. By this division Roxbury lost four-fifths of her territory, which was reduced to two thousand one hundred acres. Her population remained at fifteen thousand, the same as when she became a city. In 1868 West Roxbury built an elegant town house (Curtis Hall) on a portion of the Greenough estate.
Roxbury performed her whole duty in the war of the Rebellion, placing her entire quota promptly in the field. Spirited public meetings were held, stirring and patriotic addresses made, and there was no lack of effort to raise the men and material required of her for the preservation of the Union. At a meeting in West Roxbury in 1862, upon a proposition to lay out a new road, it was resolved that " the only road desirable to be laid out at the present time is the road to Richmond;" and the town gave $86,000 for war purpo- ses, to which private subscriptions added $22,000. It is believed that Rox- bury contributed more liberally to the support of the families of her soldiers than any other town in the State. The women were especially active in promoting the success of the Union cause. In December, 1861, they formed a society auxiliary to the United States Sanitary Commission; Mrs. Henry Bartlett was its president, and weekly meetings were held for nearly four years ; they raised $7,860, and forwarded twelve thousand one hundred and eighty-three garments, besides linen, fruits, and hospital stores.
The city furnished three thousand two hundred and seventy-one men for
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ROXBURY IN THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS.
the service, one hundred and thirty-six of whom were commissioned officers, -a surplus of four hundred and forty. In consequence of her policy of raising her men in anticipation of the calls of the general government, she was subjected to but a single draft, and that a very slight one, in 1863. Valuable aid was rendered in procuring enlistments by the " Reserve Guard," Captain Edward Wyman. There was disbursed for war expenses $545,367.34, besides the sum of $21,818 in private subscriptions to aid in recruiting. The camp of the Second regiment, Colonel Gordon, was estab- lished at Brook Farm, May 11, 1861, and named Camp Andrew.
The Roxbury City Guard furnished three companies to the service, -- Company D, First regiment, Captain Ebenezer W. Stone, Jr., for three years ; and Company D, Forty-second regiment, Captain George Sherive, for nine months. This company made a part of Colonel Burrill's regiment, a por- tion of which was captured at Galveston, Texas, Jan. 1, 1863. Returning at the expiration of its term of service, it re-enlisted for one hundred days. Its officers remained prisoners until exchanged, July 22, 1864. Other Rox- bury organizations for three years were-
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