Blaney Memorial Baptist Church
Dorchester Illustration 2683
Miss Mercy Blaney died in 1884, leaving $20,000 for the building of a church, which was erected in 1887 at the southeast corner of Richmond Street and Dorchester Avenue. Blaney lived on Temple Street in Lower Mills.
Today’s illustration is an ink drawing from 1893, torn from the sketch book of an artist with the initials F. G. H. We are trying to find out more about this artist. The bottom image in today’s illustration is a postcard from the 19-teens.
The Blaney Memorial Baptist Church had been organized Nov. 13, 1882, with a membership of twenty-five. Before the construction of the church, meetings had been held in Hutchinson’s Hall (the old Methodist Church building) for six months in 1879, and beginning again in January 1881. In April 1882, the services moved to the Associates Building, where the congregants met for six years.
Abner Chute, of Milton, built the Blaney Memorial Baptist Church in the Carpenter Gothic style. The church building stood where the Rockland Trust Bank (formerly Meeting House Cooperative) is now located. The church building was taken down in the 1980s when the property was sold to the bank.