Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Illustration 2585 Early Manufacturing in Dorchester: Tanning

Posted on September 25, 2022 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2585 Early Manufacturing in Dorchester: Tanning

contributed by Carole Mooney

In the Southeast corner of the Clap compound, at 195 Boston Street, rests a reminder of when a young country encouraged manufacturing to bolster its economy to become less dependent on foreign nations for essential supplies. The giant stone biscuit with fluted edge and a hole carved through its center was once tipped on its side and rolled over bark, crushing it for use in tanning hides. A flier located nearby describes the leather-making process with illustrations. Recently a collection of notes by Daniel Dunn, donated by the family of the late Joe Langis, past president of the Dorchester Historical Society, provides information on the political importance of leather manufacturing.

In 1767 Dorchester voted to “encourage manufacturers of the country and less the use of foreign superfluities.”

On March 31, 1788, an act passed by the Massachusetts House and Senate prevented the exportation of green or unmanufactured calf skins out of this Commonwealth by land or water. The legislators wrote, “Whereas the exporting of greener unmanufactured calf skins, will occasion a scarcity thereof, and be attended with disagreeable consequences…”

Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of Treasury, in a 1791 report, said tanners were active in numerous parts of the country and the government had been asked to prohibit the import of leather and export of bark. “Not only the wealth; but the independence and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply,” he said.

Leather was manufactured for a variety of items, according to Daniel Dunn’s notes. Shoes were made with cow hide with calfskins for uppers. Sheepskin was considered cheap leather, lambskin was used for gloves, horsehide for harnesses and pigskin for the seat of saddles. Donkey and mule hides, a rough or shagreen leather, was used to create a good grip for scabbards. Oil and lampblack were rubbed in to color the leather.

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Dorchester Illustration 2584 Gulliver’s Creek

Posted on September 18, 2022 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2584 Gulliver’s Creek

Gulliver’s Creek

The Neponset River estuary served as an important water highway to Lower Mills until 1837, when the bridge on Granite Avenue was constructed. The bridge hindered the passage of larger vessels, and the Neponset section of Dorchester benefited from an increase in commercial activity.

From ancient times, Native Americans used the estuary for fishing, hunting and trading. The English settlers in 1630 soon allowed the construction of a grist mill at Lower Mills to grind the grain they needed for flour. Commercial activity increased, and many kinds of mills flourished due to the easy accessibility for vessels that were used to bring raw materials to Lower Mills for manufacturing and to take the finished goods to wider markets.

Carole Mooney provided the photograph of Gulliver’s Creek for today’s illustration. Although the creek was in Milton (Milton broke off from Dorchester in the seventeenth century), the creek is notable in the history of the estuary. The red marker in the map shows the location of Gulliver’s Creek on inland side of the Granite Avenue Bridge.

The first incorporated commercial railway in the United States used horse-drawn wagons to haul blocks of granite along rails from the Quincy quarries onto barges in Gulliver’s Creek in the early 1800’s. The barges floated from the creek to the Neponset River and along the Atlantic coast to Charlestown to build what was then the nation’s tallest obelisk, the Bunker Hill Monument. The Granite Railway Corporation operated from 1826 to 1870 when it was acquired by the Old Colony Railroad. The barges carrying the granite were able to pass the bridge more easily than larger vessels.

Impressively, large sections of granite, many with drill marks along the edges, line Gulliver’s Creek which opens to the southerly bank of the Neponset River.. The creek is navigable by kayak during high tides and can be located by paddling along the Neponset’s south bank from the Granite Avenue Bridge.

Before 1633, Richard Collicott built a small wharf on Gulliver’s Creek to carry furs to Thompson’s Island and Boston. Shipbuilding began in 1640 at Gulliver’s Creek Wharf where small ships called shallops were built.. In 1899, 43 parcels of land totaling 232 acres were acquired by the Metropolitan District Commission for the Neponset River Marsh Reservation to preserve the Neponset marshes between Lower Mills and Granite Avenue.

sources:

James E. Lee. “America’s Very First Railroad: It Created a Monument,” Trains Magazine, Vol. 25, Issue #6, April, 1975, pages 28-32

Neponset River Greenway Council

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Dorchester Illustration 2583 Nathaniel Tucker and Mary Fenno Tucker

Posted on September 11, 2022 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2583 Nathaniel Tucker and Mary Fenno Tucker

The following text is from the Dorchester Historical Society’s house history project.

Born in Canton (later Stoughton) in 1805, Nathaniel Tucker was the eldest of James and Betsey (Withington) Tucker’s eight children. Little is known of his early life, as few records exist to document the years prior to his appearance in Dorchester records in 1850. The one record we do have is of his marriage to Mary Fenno in 1829. Nathaniel and Mary Tucker had two daughters: Mary Eliza, who married Timothy Munroe Rhodes and Frances Louisa, who married Allen Darrow Smith.

Nathaniel was a leather merchant, with offices on Pearl Street in Boston. He dealt in boots and shoes on a wholesale basis, and the company was known as Nathaniel Tucker & Co. By the 1870s, Nathaniel had retired. The company had been taken over Munroe Rhodes, and advertised under the name of Rhodes, Paige & Co., Successors to Nathaniel Tucker & Co.

Tucker’s business appears to have been very profitable. He traveled to Europe on business in 1868 and in December of 1872, he applied for a passport, planning to travel to Europe with his wife and daughter. According to his passport application, he intended to be away for a period of two years. In preparation for this trip, T. Munroe Rhodes, then deeply involved in real estate, advertised the house at 19 Sumner Street to let, providing rare detail about the house and other buildings on the estate. The house is listed as having “all the modern improvements.” At that time, “modern improvements” might include central heating with a coal-fired furnace and hot air through natural convection and gas lights. Through this advertisement, we know that the property contained a stable, with a bowling alley and billiard room connected. The large garden, “with fruit and vegetables in abundance” is a reminder that Dorchester still embodied its agrarian origins. Many wealthy Dorchester residents cultivated new varieties of fruits and vegetables as an avocation, some of which can be still be found today.

The photo of Mary Tucker must have been taken in the 1860s, when her husband’s career would have been at its peak. Mary would have been in her late fifties. Her dress, with the hoop skirt popular in that era, appears to be silk. The sleeves are banded with velvet, and there is lace at the collar and wrists. A lace handkerchief is tucked in at her waist and her hair, with its stylish mid-part, is covered with a lace cap, as would be fitting for a married woman of her age. She is photographed against a formal backdrop, likely staged by the photographer. This portrait, together with the fact that there are multiple portraits of Mary, indicates the important financial and social position of the Tucker family.

When the family returned from Europe, they moved from 19 Sumner Street to Train Street, near Neponset Avenue, likely to live with their daughter, Mary Eliza, and her husband, T. Munroe Rhodes. Tragically, on November 6, 1875, while she was riding in her carriage with her grandchild, for some reason her horse became unmanageable. Perhaps it was frightened; whatever the reason, Mary was thrown from the carriage and killed instantly. The Boston Post reported on the accidenton November 8^th. Nathaniel Tucker continued to live on Train Street until his death in 1886. Notice of his death appeared in The Boston Globe on June 25, 1886.

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Dorchester Illustration 2582 Marshall Pinckney Wilder

Posted on September 4, 2022 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2582 Marshall Pinckney Wilder

From Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Boston: Graves & Steinbarger, 1891)

Marshall Pinckney Wilder was born On September 22, 1798, in Rindge, New Hampshire. His father was a merchant, and when Marshall was sixteen, his father put him to work in the store. At twenty-one, he was a partner in the business, and in 1825, at the age of twenty-seven, Marshall co-established a business in Boston as a wholesale dealer in West India goods.

He was Representative from Dorchester in the State Legislature in 1839, a member of the Governor’s Council in 1849, and president of the State Senate, 1850. A warm admirer of Daniel Webster whom he styled “New England’s greatest son,” he voted the Bell and Everett ticket in 1860, and firmly supported the Union during the Civil War. He attended the Second Congregational Church in Dorchester, where he bought a country-seat and took up his residence in 1832. Dartmouth College conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1877, and Roanoke that of Doctor of Laws in 1884.

For eight years (1840-47) he was president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, for twenty years president of the Norfolk Agricultural Society, six years president of the United States Agricultural Society, and, from its organization in 1848, president of the American Pomological Society. He was largely influential in the embellishment of Mount Auburn, also in the founding of the Institute of Technology and the Natural History Rooms in Boston. Of the New England Historic Genealogical Society he was president from the date of his first election in 1868 to the close of his earthly life in 1887. He was the senior member of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture.

Wilder’s estate was located on the north side of Columbia Road reaching from Washington Street westward almost to Columbia Road. His greenhouses and the plantings on the grounds of his estate were legendary, and he is said to have furnished the plants for the Boston Public Garden. The following description is from Good Old Dorchester. “On these experimental grounds there were produced, during the last fifty years of Mr. Wilder’s Life, under his personal supervision, more than twelve hundred varieties of fruits; and from thence there were exhibited, on one occasion, four hundred and four distinct varieties of the pear. Here the Camellias Wilderi, and the Mrs. Abby Wilder were originated by the art of hybridization, the latter of which received a special prize of fifty dollars. The Mrs. Julia Wilder, the Jennie Wilder, and other camellias were also raised in great perfection; while from Mr. Wilder’s estate went to the Boston Public Garden, on its foundation in 1839, the entire collection of green-house and garden plants.”

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Dorchester Illustration 2581 Henry Philips Oakman

Posted on August 28, 2022 by earltaylor

Henry Philips Oakman, 1831-1917

Henry Philips Oakman (right) was one of many enterprising developers working to meet the growing demand for housing in the decades after Dorchester was annexed to Boston in 1870. Newspaper articles indicate that Henry’s name was attached to many building permits in Dorchester at the end of the nineteenth century.

Henry was born in Marshfield, Massachusetts, in 1831. His family had deep roots in Marshfield and descended from John Rogers who moved to Marshfield around 1647. In 1852, he married Arethusa Hatch in Marshfield, and they started their family there. When the Civil War began, Henry volunteered to fight for the Union and joined company K of the 38th Massachusetts Regiment. He was involved in the siege at Port Hudson in Louisiana, where he was injured and subsequently discharged in 1863.

After Henry’s military service, the Oakmans moved, first to Milton for a short time, then to the Neponset section of Dorchester, where they lived for the rest of their lives on the street bearing their name, Oakman Street. In addition to being a builder and carpenter, Henry held other jobs, including assessor, Marshfield selectman, postman, and justice of the pe3ace. At the time of his retirement, he was working as the president and director of the Guardian Co-operative Bank.

At least two of Henry’s sons, Arthur and Elmer, became carpenters and worked with their father in the family business, H.P. Oakman Sons.

Henry and Arethusa celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in March 1903 at 1 Oakman Street. Henry died on April 5, 1917.

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Dorchester Illustration 2580 Beals Coleman Wright

Posted on August 21, 2022 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2580 Beals Coleman Wright

Beals Coleman Wright (December 19, 1879 – August 23, 1961) was an American tennis player who was active at the end of the 1890s and early 1900s. He won the singles title at the 1905 U.S. National Championships. Wright was a two-time Olympic gold medalist, and the older brother of American tennis player Irving Wright.

Beals was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 19, 1879 to George Wright, the shortstop for the Cincinnati Red Stockings and founder of the sporting goods store Wright & Ditson. Beals was the brother of Irving Wright, the 1917 and 1918 U.S. Championship men’s doubles champion. Together they won the men’s doubles title at the Canadian Tennis Championship four times (1902, 1903, 1904, 1905). Beals was the nephew of baseball pioneer Harry Wright.

In 1899 Beals Wright traveled with his father to California where he played at the Del Monte Tennis Championship in Monterey. George Wright managed the team the same year he coached at Harvard. Two Harvard University players participated in the Del Monte Tournament-the first time east coast players took on California tennis champions.

Wright played at the 1904 St. Louis Olympics and won gold medals in both the singles and doubles competition. He also won three consecutive singles titles (1904–1906) at the tournament now known as the Cincinnati Masters, and reached the doubles final (with Edgar Leonard) in 1904.

Wright won the Canadian Tennis Championship, played in Niagara-on-the-Lake, in 1902, 1903 and 1904. In 1902 he won the Niagara International Tennis tournament, also played in Niagara-on-the-Lake, by defeating Harold Hackett in the final in five sets and the default of Raymond Little in the challenge round.

Wright’s most important victory came in 1905 when he won the men’s singles title at the U.S. National Championships by defeating reigning champion Holcombe Ward in the Challenge Round in straight sets 6–2, 6–1, 11–9.

In 1915 he was hit by an errant baseball during a baseball game. In 1921 he was arrested following a car accident.

Beals Wright was inducted in the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1956. He died in Alton, Illinois, on August 23, 1961.

The Wright family lived on Grampian Way.

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Dorchester Illustration 2579 William Henry Sayward

Posted on August 14, 2022 by earltaylor

William Henry Sayward, 1845-1934

Image of William H. Sayward from The Boston Globe, February 17, 1921

Image of 69 Monadnock Street from Google Street View 2011

William Henry Sayward and his wife, Caroline Augusta (nee Barnard), both descended from old New England families. William’s father, also named William H. Sayward, lived at the corner of Columbia Road and Bird Street, in the Greek Revival house where the Floyd A. Williams Funeral Home is now located. Caroline’s father was Dr. Charles Francis Barnard, a surgeon and graduate of Harvard College.

For more than 50 years, William Sayward was the secretary and treasurer of the Master Builders Association, which was founded in 1885. He organized the Society of Masters and Craftsmen in 1912, and remained an active member. In 1883, he served in the Massachusetts State Legislature, representing the 20th Suffolk District. According to the Sayward Family History on Ancestry.com, while he was serving as a legislator, “he took an active part in the debates on Women’s Suffrage and actively opposed the measure.” He was considered an expert on the relationship between management and labor, and was active at the national level in advocating for policies that allowed for arbitration in order to avoid strikes.

Sayward’s building projects include the house at 245 Commonwealth in the Back Bay for shipping merchant Nathaniel Henry Emmons, Jr., designed by William Whitney Lewis, which was built in the years 1877-1878. He had already built the building at 29 Fairfield Street in 1876-1877, also designed by Lewis.

The 1900 census lists William, 55; Caroline, 53; their three children: William, Jr„ 28, a physician; Perceval, 19; and Margaret, 14, both students. Also living with the family was Caroline’s mother, Margaret C. Barnard, 73, and three live-in servants — Kate C. Murphy, 37; Margaret E. McGlincy, 29; and Margaret Bowen, 26.

Their home was located at what is now numbered 69 Monadnock Street.

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Dorchester Illustration 2578 Gardner Asaph Churchill

Posted on August 7, 2022 by earltaylor

Gardner Asaph Churchill taken from The Churchill Family in America. (1904)

Gardner Asaph Churchill was born May 26, 1839. On April 16, 1862, he married Helen Brastow Barrett, and he died on August 20, 1896.

Mr. Churchill was educated in the public schools of Dorchester. In his youth he went on several voyages as a sailor, part of the time in a ship engaged in the East Indian trade. He gained experience and studied navigation, so that he was fitted to fill a position of trust. During the Civil War, he enlisted in the Navy and was appointed acting ensign on December 15, 1862. After a period of training in gunnery on board the ship “Macedonian,” he was assigned to duty on board the United States ship “Release,” and served as sailing-master of that vessel. Afterwards, he served in the same capacity, on the United States steamers “Memphis” and “Shawmut,” and (with an interval of a few months’ furlough on account of sickness) he served until the surrender of General Lee, when he resigned.

He was a gallant officer, and on one invasion, by his coolness and prompt action, saved the “Memphis” from destruction by a rebel torpedo ram, in the North Edisto River, March 6, 1864.

After the war, Mr. Churchill engaged in the business of printing with the firm of Rockwell & Rollins, and on the death of Mr. Rollins, in 1869, be became the junior partner of the firm of Rockwell & Churchill, in which progressive and prosperous house be remained till his death. He had excellent taste in all matters pertaining to the business, was of quick perception and good judgment in all matters in which he took an interest.

He served as representative to the Legislature from Dorchester for two years, 1875-1876, and was a trustee of the Insane Asylum at Danvers three years. He was a member of the Masonic fraternity, of the Grand Army of the Republic, and of several patriotic societies, including the Society of Colonial Wars and the Sons of rhe American Revolution. He was interested in history and genealogy and was an active member of the New England Historical and Genealogical Society. He had for many years been interested in gathering material for a genealogy of the Churchill family, and in company with Mr. N. W. Churchill had, at the time of his death, nearly completed an account of the Plymouth branch of the family, to which his own line belonged, to the seventh generation. His family decided to publish the volume which has grown to include the three great branches, and eight or nine, instead of six, generations of one branch. After his marriage and return from the War, Mr. Churchill lived at Wrentham for some years, and then removed to Milton Lower Mills, in Dorchester, where he lived till 1884, when he removed to Alban Street, Ashmont.

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Dorchester Illustration 2577 James H. Means, 1823-1894

Posted on July 31, 2022 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2577 James H. Means, 1823-1894

John Codman served the Second Church from 1808 until his death in 1847. He was succeeded by James H. Means.

Rev. James Howard Means, D.D., became the second minister of Second Church, a wish of Dr. Codman’s that his student assistant take his place when he died. Dr. Means had a 30 year ministry during which time the Civil War in this country took place.

James H. Means of Dorchester married Charlotte A. Johnson of Boston in Dorchester on May 20, 1849. In 1880, they lived on Washington Street, near Centre Street. The household included James, 56, Charlotte, 54, and their children: Miriam, 29; James, 26, a shoe manufacturer; Charles; 21, a clerk in woolens; and Frederick, 14.

The following is from The Clapp Memorial. Record of the Clapp Family in America … Ebenezer Clapp, compiler. (Boston: David Clapp & Son, 1876) in the entry for Joseph ,1774-1852.

Rev. James H. Means, D.D., was born in Boston, Dec. 13, 1823. He was the son of James and Joanna Means. He graduated at Harvard College in 1843 and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1847. Receiving a call to settle in the ministry at Dorchester, he was ordained July 13, 1848. Before the death, in 1847, of Rev. Dr. Codman, who had long been the minister of the Second Church there, Mr. Means was the candidate of his choice as successor to him in the pastoral office. How well he has fulfilled the expectations and made good the place of his predecessor, is attested by his long, harmonious and successful continuance in the office to which he was then unanimously chosen. In 1873, the church celebrated the 25^th anniversary of his settlement, which was an occasion of great interest and the interchange of mutual love and esteem. Dr. Means has twice visited Europe since his ordination. For several years he was one of the school committee of the town. A sermon by him, delivered before his own people, Dec. 26, 1869, was published, and contains much interesting historical matter, more particularly in regard to the churches in Dorchester.

Among other works, Means published two historical discourses providing an overview of the history of the congregation and of Dorchester.

An Historical Discourse on Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Gathering of the Second Church, Dorchester, Delivered January 3, 1858. (Boston, 1858) https://archive.org/details/historicaldiscou00mean

Dorchester, Past and Present: A Sermon Preached in the Second Church, Dorchester, December 16, 1869. (Boston, 1870) https://archive.org/details/dorchesterpastpr00mean

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Dorchester Illustration 2576 Tapestry at First Baptist Church

Posted on July 24, 2022 by earltaylor

The Neponset Village Meeting House Tapestry from the 1830s is owned by the First Baptist Church in Dorchester.

The current First Baptist Church in Dorchester on the corner of Ashmont and Adams Streets, was originally known as the Neponset Village Meeting House. It was the sixth church established in Dorchester since the town’s founding in 1630 and the first Dorchester church of the Baptist denomination. In early 1835, Miss Nancy Moore, a school teacher at Dorchester’s Second Parish Church in Codman Square, organized a Sunday school at Neponset Village near the ferry crossing the river to Quincy. In July, they held their first distinctively Baptist service at the Neponset Inn/Holbrook Tavern, which stood until 2013 behind the current health center. By June of 1837, the First Baptist Society in Dorchester was recognized by the Baptist Council. A year later, they erected their first meeting house on Chickatawbut Street near Narraganset Street.

Almost from the beginning, they established a Ladies Guild to promote fellowship, religious education, and support their meeting house. The dues were 25 cents for women and 50 cents for men. They took turns meeting in each other’s homes to sing hymns, talk about events of the day, and to work on the tapestry that would decorate their meeting house when finished.

The tapestry is an example of embroidery created by pulling hundreds of fine wool yarn threads through a burlap like linen rug warp to create an image of Jesus teaching the women in a garden. For its time, it was rather progressive as higher education, or the teaching of intellectual subject to women, was controversial.

The Neponset Tapestry is about 40” by 36.” It is woven on a stretcher frame similar to that used on oil paintings. It is a classic example of rural folk art and a tribute to the women of Dorchester as most of the women of the church had a hand in making it. On completion, it hung in the Chickatawbut Street meeting house until the church moved to 401 Ashmont Street, where is has been ever since in a place of honor.

Source: First Baptist Church in Dorchester

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