Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1791
Today we have another Dorchester photo published in 1895 in Picturesque Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Dorchester and Vicinity. The main features of the photo are the Soldiers Monument, First Church and Lyceum Hall. Notice the girl leaning against the pole.
From the text accompanying the photo:
Meeting House Hill—Dorchester
The first meeting house of Dorchester did not stand on Meeting House Hill, for as the settlement of the town began at Allen’s Plain and Savin Hill, the site of the first church was a point in that vicinity, close to the corner of Pleasant and East Cottage Streets. It was a log cabin [not!], surrounded by a high stockade, and it combined the functions of a house of worship, a block house, a town house, and a “safe deposit vault.”
A “town meeting” was held every Monday.
Cannon were mounted on the roof, and a sentinel was kept constantly on guard, for this was a veritable “fort,” and was utilized as a power house and an arsenal.
Every evening it became a “safe deposit vault,” as the townsmen then conveyed their valuables there for safe keeping. [never heard of this]
This meeting house was replaced in 1645 by a much larger and better on which, in 1670, was removed to Meeting House Hill, and in 1743 was succeeded by a new house so much larger and more elaborate that its cost was 3,500 pounds, while the one it replaced cost but 250 pounds.
This meeting house was enlarged just a hundred years ago—in 1794—and might be standing to-day were it not so injured by a great storm in 1815 as to necessitate the construction of a new building.
This was dedicated in December, 1816, and is the church which crowns Meeting House Hill to-day. [too bad it burned in 1896]
Its bell was presented to the society by the Dorchester proprietors, in 1751, and has been in use ever since, with the exception of an interval when it was being recast on account of a crack which appeared in it after service of more than a century.
The Soldier’s monument, which stands on the Square near by, is not only a memorial of bravery and devotion to country but marks the site of the meeting house which the present one replaced, while an elm some thirty feet north of the monument, stands on the spot where the pulpit was placed.
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