Marlton Downing, Dorchester Illustration 2667
Marlton Downing was born Henry Marlton Downing in 1852. He changed his name for his work as a journalist and author. Downing married Sarah Thayer, and the couple moved in with her parents on Wesley Avenue, later named Dillingham Street, on Savin Hill. The street was later demolished for the construction of the Southeast Expressway. The couple had at least seven children.
As a young man, Downing was a mariner, serving on voyages to India and South America. He became a marine editor for the Boston Daily Post. In the 1890s, he was a journalist for The Boston Globe, and the newspaper sometimes published short stories by him of about a thousand words each. He was a co-author of The Young Cascarillero, and Colonel Thorndike’s Adventures; a Story of Bark Hunters in the Ecuador Forests and the Experiences of a Globe Trotter (Boston, 1895). Downing wrote plays that were produced by local groups.
By 1895, the family had moved to Chaplin, Conn., where Downing became a farmer. He died in 1927.