Charles F. Hammond, Jr.

Posted on September 26, 2021 by earltaylor

Charles F. Hammond, Jr.

World War I Veteran

Charles was born in Roxbury on June 15, 1893, the oldest child of Charles F. and Elizabeth F. Hammond.  Charles, the father, was employed as a bank cashier.  By 1900 the family was living on Millet Street in Dorchester.  Charles, Jr., had a sister, Hazel M., and a brother, Clarence O. Hammond.

Charles, Jr., graduated from the Oliver Wendell Holmes School, which was within walking distance of his home. He played baseball with the Standish Club and Intercity League and was well known in the western part of Dorchester.

He went on to work for the Shoe and Leather Exchange for five years, then went to work for the Fore River Shipbuilding Company in Quincy. He enlisted on August 17, 1917, in the Massachusetts National Guard, which was in Federal Service by that time.  He was assigned to the Artillery and went to Europe with the American Expeditionary Force on September 9, 1917.  He died at Coetquidan of disease on October 9, 1917, and his family was notified within days afterward.  His mother hS received a letter from him on September 24th in which he said he was enjoying good health, and the telegram announcing his death was the first the family knew of the affliction.

The local American Legion post #78 was named for him, and in 1919 St. Leo’s Church presented a banner with a portrait of Charles F. Hammond, Jr., to the post.  The Boston Globe reported on September 24, 1919, that the banner ” which will be on exhibition in the window of the A. Shuman Co. store today and tomorrow was designed and painted by C. F. Shea.  It is of silk, heavily fringed, embodying the National red, white and blue, with a portrait of the hero for whom the post is named, surrounded by the Post’s name and number.”

In 1921 a City of Boston square was named for him at Bradshaw and Esmond Streets.

Sources:

1900 and 1910 Federal Census on Ancestry.com

Birth Record on Ancestry.com

Boston Globe October 16, 1917; September 24, 1919; July 22, 1919.

https://www.cityofboston.gov/veterans/herosquares/

Death Record on Ancestry.com with data from Soldiers of the Great War compiled by W. M. Haulsee. (Washington, 1920)

The Gold Star Record of Massachusetts. Edited by Eben Putnam.  (Boston, 1929)

Records of the Military Division of the Adjutant General’s Office, Massachusetts National Guard

World War I draft card on Ancestry.com

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Dorchester Illustration 2531 St. William’s Church

Posted on September 19, 2021 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2531 St. William’s Church

Reminder: a house history from the Dorchester Historical Society would make a great gift to a homeowner in Dorchester or Mattapan.  Take a look at some of the completed histories on the Dorchester Historical Society website www.dorchesterhistoricalsociety.org

St. William’s Church

St. William’s became a Parish set off from St. Peter’s in 1909, consisting of territory south of St. Margaret’s Parish nearly to Glover’s Corner, and including the Savin Hill district. The Reverend James J. Baxter was the first pastor and was succeeded by James McCarthy.  Baxter bought part of the Worthington estate at the corner of Dorchester Avenue and Belfort Street, and the old mansion was adapted as a rectory.  The  Worthington property extended along Dorchester Avenue from Belfort Street to Elton Street.

The building built for St. William’s was designed by Edward Sheehan, a Dorchester resident, in the Spanish Mission style, an unusual design in Dorchester.  The building was located at 1048 Dorchester Avenue between Belfort Street and the newly-created St. William Street.

The building was destroyed by fire in September 1980 and was later replaced with a church of modern design, the Waymark Seventh-day Adventist Church.

From the 1990s through 2004 the Archdiocese of Boston endured the consequences of allegations and lawsuits involving misconduct by priests with the result that the Archdiocese paid out large monetary settlements. The Archdiocese studied its parishes and determined that low attendance and large expenses warranted the closing of some. St. William and St. Margaret were the only two parishes, out of 11 Catholic parishes in Dorchester, that felt a direct impact of the Archdiocese’ reconfiguration process of early 2004.  On August 31, 2004, St. William’s joined St.Margaret’s to become the Blessed Mother Teresa parish, occupying the St. Margaret’s building at 800 Columbia Road.  Mother Teresa of Calcutta was canonized on Sunday, September 4, 2016, and Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta parish in Dorchester changed its name to St. Teresa of Calcutta Church. 

For more information, consult:

Emery, S.L. A Catholic Stronghold and Its Making. A History of St. Peter’s Parish, Dorchester, Massachusetts, and of Its First Rector the Rev. Peter Ronan, P.R. (Boston, 1910)

Lord, Robert H., John E. Sexton and Edward T. Harrington. History of the Archdiocese of Boston. (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1944) 3 vols.

Shand Tucci, Douglass. The Gothic Churches of Dorchester. (Issued by the Dorchester Savings Bank. Boston: Tribune Publishing Company, 1972)

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William Russell Powers

Posted on September 19, 2021 by earltaylor

William Russell Powers

World War I Veteran

By Camille Arbogast

William Russell Powers was born at home at 30 Church Street in Dorchester on April 17, 1896. His parents were Patrick Robert and Catherine Elizabeth (Chalmers) Powers, both of whom went by their middle names. Robert and Catherine married in October 1893 in Boston. They had three other children: Robert, Jr., born in 1894, Catherine Isabelle (known as Isabelle) in 1897, and Madeline in 1903.

Robert worked for the postal service for 45 years. For much of William’s childhood, Robert was a letter carrier working out of the Dorchester post office. Around 1916, he became the superintendent of the State House Post Office. Elizabeth worked as a bookkeeper prior to her marriage.

By 1899, the Powers were living at 29 Ditson Street. The next year they moved to 18 Westcott

Street. They continued to move around the neighborhood during William’s childhood, relocating to 43 Standish Street by 1903, then to 120A Harvard Street in 1910, and finally to 525 Park Street by 1916. In June 1917, William was living with his family on West Park Street and working for John C. Paige and Co., an insurance company located at 25 Kilby Street in Boston.

William was inducted into the Army on September 23, 1917. He was initially assigned to Company H of the 301st Infantry. On October 1, 1917, he was made a corporal and on November 12, was promoted to sergeant. On May 13, he entered the Central Officers Training School at Camp Lee, near Petersburg, Virginia, a training program for infantry officers. On August 26, 1918, he was commissioned a second lieutenant. He was in the Infantry Central Officers Training School until his discharge on November 25, 1918.

After the war, William returned to 525 Park Street and worked as a salesman for a talking machine company. On September 3, 1922, he married Bostonian Laura E. Meisse of 53 Bernard Street in Dorchester. At the time, William was working as a music dealer and Laura was a telephone operator in the traffic department of the Metropolitan Division of the New England Telegraph and Telephone Company. William and Laura were married at St. Leo’s Church on Esmond Street by William’s uncle, Reverend Richard F. Powers. They had two daughters: Virginia born in 1924 and Patricia born in 1927.

In 1924, William and his family resided at 27 Armandine Street. The next year they were living at 804 Washington Street. By 1930, they had moved to Quincy, where they lived at 6 Flynt Street, which they rented for $50 a month. William remained in Quincy for the rest of his life, moving to 98 Billings Road by 1935, and then, in 1940, to 81 Belmont Street.

After his marriage, William went to work for the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company. He began as a telephone installer and eventually rose to be a supervisor. In 1940, he earned $3,000 a year. He reported on his World War II Draft Registration in 1942, that he worked at the switching station at 8 Harrison Avenue in Boston.

William died in North Quincy on September 19, 1963. A solemn mass of requiem was held for him at Sacred Heart Church in Quincy and he was buried in Mount Wollaston Cemetery. He had been a member of the Telephone Pioneers Club.

Sources

Massachusetts Vital Records, 1911–1915. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, MA; Ancestry.com

Family Tree; Ancestry.com

 “Patrick R. Powers,” Newton Chronicle, 16 February, 1950: 7; Archive.org

1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940 U.S. Federal Census; Ancestry.com

Boston directories, various years; Ancestry.com

World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration; Ancestry.com

Military, Compiled Service Records. World War I. Carded Records. Records of the Military Division of the Adjutant General’s Office, Massachusetts National Guard.

“Massachusetts Marriages, 1841-1915,” database, citing Boston, Suffolk, MA, State Archives, Boston; FamilySearch.org

“Traffic Department Brides,” Telephone Topics, October 1922: 269;

http://cowboyfrank.net/telephones/publications/TelephoneTopics/index.htm

Selective Service Registration Cards, World War II: Fourth Registration. Records of the Selective Service System, Record Group Number 147. National Archives and Records Administration; Ancestry.com

Deaths, Boston Globe, 21 Sept 1963: 2; Newspapers.com

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Dorchester Illustration 2530 450 Talbot Avenue

Posted on September 12, 2021 by earltaylor

The building at the northeast corner of Talbot Avenue and Welles Avenue is now used by the Codman Square Post Office as an annex.

The building was originally built as a garage in 1921.  The Duby Hudson Company seems to have been the last automobile-related company to occupy the building.  Duby Hudson, which was owned by Jack Duby, had a used-car facility on Gallivan Boulevard, and they used the Talbot Avenue building as a new car showroom.  In 1952, which may have been the last year of their occupancy, the company featured the new Hornet.  Other models in the line were Pacemaker, Super, Wasp and Commodore.

Following the Duby Hudson tenancy, the building was put to various uses including the manufacturing of leather trimmings for shoes, assembling storm windows and manufacturing greeting cards.

The date the Post Office began using the building has not been documented.

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Dorchester Illustration 2529 Arrest for Anti-Discrimination Protest

Posted on September 5, 2021 by earltaylor

Today’s illustration is a photo of Betty Wise at the time of her arrest for participating in an anti-discrimination protest.  The photo is a press photo, dated September 16, 1963, possibly from the Boston Herald.

The police arrested three demonstrators for staging a “sit-in” in the office of a Dorchester real estate company, the G. V. Wattendorf Real Estate Co., at 544 Washington Street.  The three included Betty Wise of Brookline, who appears in the photo.  The others were Peter Filene, 23 of Cambridge and Robert Phillips, 24.

If the Herald published an article, it has not been found, but The Boston Globe described the protest as “The demonstration was the first over racial discrimination in Dorchester, and the first demonstration on private property.”

The protesters alleged that a woman of color, Alma Williams, inquired about apartments and was told they had nothing.  Betty Wise went into the office a few minutes later and was told there were several apartments available.

The staff of the real estate office disputed the statement.

The protestors remained in the office past the closing time, and an attorney for the real estate company telephoned the police.  The protestors were asked to leave, and when they did not, the police arrested them for trespassing.

Earlier in the month, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination had ruled in another case that Wattendorf had practiced discriminate, and the firm was warned to cease operations.  When the case involving Alma Williams came before the Commission, Wattendorf said that she had not filled out an application, and that no one is shown an apartment without filling out an application.  Judge Sgarzi of Suffolk Superior Court ruled in June 1964 that Wattendorf had discriminated in not accepting an application from Mrs. Williams, but that the evidence did not support a finding that discrimination was practiced generally by the firm.

In later court actions on other cases, Wattendorf seems to have won on technicalities, such as claiming he did not know what his agents were doing.

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Dorchester Illustration 2528 Dorchester Alms House

Posted on August 29, 2021 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2528 Dorchester Alms House

The Dorchester Alms House was located on the north side of Hancock Street opposite Kane Square, where there is a city yard today.

In the year before the annexation of Dorchester to Boston, the report for 1868-1869 of the Dorchester Alms House stated twenty persons had been admitted during the year.  Ten were discharged, and six had died.  There were seventeen at the end of the year who were being provided relief.  The town also spent $3,150.64 for those who were not living in the Alms House.  The town also supported seven people who were at insane hospitals across the state: four at Taunton, two at Worcester and 1 at Northampton.  There was a state alms house at Bridgewater, but in the report for 1865-1866, the committee for the alms house in Dorchester visited the Bridgewater facility in response to the unwillingness of the poor of foreign birth to be sent there.  After their visit, the Committee stated, “We are free to confess we are less inclined to send paupers there than before our visit.”  The superintendent of the Dorchester alms house was Capt. Charles Spears along with his wife.  Capt. Spear had experience as superintendent of women on the highways.  This last statement needs further research.  Were the poor forced to labor on road work in exchange for their place at the alms house?

An article that appeared in The Dorchester Beacon newspaper in 1939 stated that the first instance of supporting the poor was in 1659, when the selectmen ordered that the Constables should give out of the Town Rate unto Benjamin Tuchel five pounds for his present necessity for clothing himself and his children.

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Dorchester Illustration 2527 Alice Stone Blackwell

Posted on August 22, 2021 by earltaylor

August 26, 2020, is the 100th anniversary of the federal government’s ratification of the 19th amendment pertaining to voting rights for women. The federal amendment mandates “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

Dorchester’s most famous woman’s rights advocate was Lucy Stone.  She moved to Dorchester in the early 1870s to become the editor of The Woman’s Journal newspaper. Lucy did not live to see the ratification.  Her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, did witness the successful conclusion of the work her mother and so many other women worked for.

Alice took over the editorship of The Woman’s Journal after Lucy’s death in 1893. After graduating from Boston University, Alice had begun working for the paper started by her parents. By 1884, her name was alongside her parents on the newspaper’s masthead. After her mother’s death in 1893, Alice assumed almost sole editing responsibility of the paper.

In 1890, Alice helped unify the American Woman Suffrage Association and the National Woman Suffrage Associated into the National American Woman Suffrage Association and served as the new group’s recording secretary from 1890 to 1908. 

She took up other causes, including temperance and befriending Armenians in the 180s  She sold the oriental rugs from the house she inherited on Pope’s Hill to raise money for food for the Armenian people.  She translated the work of many Armenian poets into English.

The following is from Notable American Women

After her graduation from Boston University where she excelled and was president of her class, she went to work in the offices of the Woman’s Journal, the paper edited by her mother. Over the next thirty-five years, Miss Blackwell bore the main burdens of editing the country’s leading woman’s rights newspaper–gathering copy, reading proof, preparing book reviews, and writing long columns of crisp, hard-headed arguments for female equality. Beginning in 1887 she also edited the Woman’s Column, a collection of suffrage items sent out free to newspapers round the country. She effected a truce between the American Woman Suffrage Association and Susan B. Anthony’s rival National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1890 the two organizations merged, and Miss Blackwell became recording secretary of the new National American Woman Suffrage Association.

Lucy Stone’s death in 1893 freed her daughter to find other evils to expose and underdogs to champion. For years she operated an informal employment service for needy Armenians, and she joined William Dudley Foulke and George Kennan in activating the Friends of Russian Freedom. She translated the poetry of oppressed peoples into English to widen American awareness. Her affiliations widened to include the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Vivisection Society, the Women’s Trade Union League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the American Peace Society. Postwar reaction turned her into a socialist radical. One Boston newspaper refused to print her militant letters because of the controversy they provoked. In 1930 she published Lucy Stone, a biography of her mother.


Some of her books include:


Growing Up in Boston’s Gilded Age: The Journal of Alice Stone Blackwell, 1872–1874. This was her teenage diary.

Armenian Poems. (1896), translations

Songs of Russia. (1906)

Songs of Grief and Joy, translated from the Yiddish of Ezekiel Leavitt. (1908)

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Dorchester Illustration 2526 Daloz Drycleaning

Posted on August 15, 2021 by earltaylor

Daloz Cleansers started in Boston in the late 19th century.  It had retail shops in Boston although the actual work facility was located elsewhere, first in Roxbury, then South Boston,  then in 1900 in Dorchester at 11 Humphreys Street.  The Dorchester building later became the Humphreys Street Studios.

Today’s illustration comes from The Dorchester Beacon newspaper, May 5, 1900.  In that issue, the paper did a couple of dozen puff pieces about various businesses in Dorchester.  The text of the article follows:

L. H. Daloz

Cleansing and Dyeing, 11 Humphrey Street, 510 Tremont Street and 24 Bromfield Street

One of the latest establishments to come to Dorchester for a permanent location is the large dyeing establishment of Mr. L. H. Daloz.  This gentleman has followed the business in Boston for almost a quarter of a century and has become one of the leading and most prominent men in his line of business in the city.  For over thirty years he has been engaged in the cleansing and dyeing trade and most of the time on a large scale.  He began business in 1869 in New York City, and in 1877 he moved to Boston, opening a down town office and establishing his works in Roxbury.  In four years his business had grown so as to require larger and better quarters, and in 1883 he moved his works to South Boston, locating on Dorchester Avenue and Rawson Street.  Here he remained for seventeen years, until recent changes and improvements there forced him to move.  He then turned to Dorchester and soon began the erection of a large plant at 11 Humphrey Street.  This he has but recently completed and is just getting fully established n his new quarters. He has a large frame and brick building 130 feet long and 40 feet wide, with three floors, giving him a total floor space over 15,000 square feet.  This larger building is completely equipped with all the machinery, apparatus and conveniences necessary for a thoroughly modern cleansing and dyeing plant, and Mr. Daloz is better prepared than ever to handle his large business.  He does cleansing an dying of all kinds and his methods are the most modern and improve, making it possible to treat the most delicate goods and colors successfully.  A specialty is made of fine garments, such as evening dresses, silk waists, fancy skirts, draperies, laces, etc.  The work is confined exclusively to cleansing and dyeing, and no laundry in connection with the establishment and no agents are employed.  The business is one directly with Mr. Daloz.  His many years’ experience makes it possible for him to give ladies the most valuable advice about the cleansing or dyeing of their wearing apparel or household goods, while his service in every branch of the business is the most expert and satisfactory.  At his Humphrey Street works, which are now in full operation, he employs thirty people.  He maintains two stores in the city, one at 510 Tremont Street another at 24 Bromfield Street.  Mr. Daloz has been a resident of Dorchester for the last fifteen years and has many friends in the district who esteem highly as a business man and citizen.

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Dorchester Illustration 2525 Lifeguard and Friends

Posted on August 8, 2021 by earltaylor

Real photo post card: Lifeguard and friends at the beach.  The photograph is by A. W. Cutter of Dorchester, but we don’t have any information about him.

At the height of summer, it seems appropriate to show a vintage photo of people at the beach.  The style of the bathing suits indicate the photograph is from the early 20th century.

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Dorchester Illustration 2524 S. S. Pierce homestead

Posted on August 1, 2021 by earltaylor

Samuel S. Pierce, the son of Daniel and Lydia Davenport Pierce, was born in the farmhouse owned by his family in what is now the Cedar Grove section of Dorchester.  The house appears to have been built in the 18th century, although there is no documentation to provide an exact date.  Samuel’s father was a cabinetmaker.   At an early age, Samuel worked for a firm of importers in Boston, then went into the grocery business for himself.  In 1831, he started his own grocery store, specializing in products for the well-to-do in Boston.  The firm of S. S. Pierce became widely known for catering to the cosmopolitan tastes of Boston residents and for introducing new foods to the market.

Pierce maintained a home on Union Park and the family homestead in Dorchester, both homes appearing in the Boston Directory.

Samuel married Ellen Maria Theresa Wallis in 1836, and they had eight children.  The family  lived in Boston during the winters and summered at the family house he owned in Dorchester. According to Anthony Sammarco, the house was enlarged after the Civil War to accommodate his family.  It stood on a knoll overlooking both Adams Village and and the Neponset River. The estate comprised a house and stable, with ten acres and marshland.  Samuel Stillman Pierce died in 1880, and his son Wallis Lincoln Pierce continued the trademark name and standards established by his father. The family included Samuel S. Pierce, Jr., who died as a young man in California, Dr. M. Vassar Pierce, a noted physician in Milton, and Holden White Pierce, who took over management of the Back Bay store of the S.S. Pierce Company.  They maintained their connection to Dorchester through their sister, Henrietta Pierce, who still summered in the family home.  By the time of World War I, the Pierce homestead was a rambling series of additions made over the years.

Henrietta M. Pierce died in 1920, and her heirs sold a portion of the property to the Archdiocese of Boston, and shortly thereafter St. Brendan’s Church was built facing the new Gallivan Boulevard. The remaining portion of the Pierce Estate was laid out as Lennoxdale, Myrtlebank, Rockne and Crockett Streets and St. Brendan’s Road in the late 1930s, allowing for the building of the many new houses.

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