Dorchester Illustration 2708 Frank Thayer Merrill
Frank Thayer Merrill (1848-1936), was an artist and book illustrator. He lived at 16 Tremlett St. Today’s illustration is an original pastel, owned by the Dorchester Historical Society, that was used as an illustration for a publication of “The Count of Monte Cristo,” by Alexandre Dumas.
Jessie S. Aldrich, Merrill’s wife, bought the land on Tremlett Street on May 13, 1886 for “One dollar and other valuable considerations.” The quitclaim deed specifies that “no dwelling house shall be erected on said land to cost less than Five Thousand Dollars, and shall be set back in the line of the house recently built and occupied by said Mansfield” (number 18, destroyed by fire in the early 1970s). The third floor of the house contains a large studio lit by a Palladian windowed dormer. The house backed up to the Colonial Club on Washington Street (the former Walter Baker mansion now the site of a charter school on Regina Road).
Merrill drew the illustrations for many books of fiction, including “Little Women” and “The Prince and the Pauper.”