Dorchester Illustration 2534 Bronze Clapp’s Favorite Pear

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

Today’s illustration is from WGBH public television.  They shared a piece from GBH News’ The Curiosity Desk that digs into the curious story behind Boston’s strangest historic statue, a 12-foot bronze pear in the Dorchester neighborhood. WGBH requested us to  share this video with our followers.

The link for the video is

https://www.wgbh.org/news/curiosity-desk/the-giant-pear-of-dorchester

”If there are two things you can’t spit without hitting in Boston, it’s a Dunkin’ Donuts and a historic statue. But how did this delicious fruit end up becoming immortalized on the city’s streets? The idea for the 12- foot pear statue was conceived back in 2007 by artist Laura Baring-Gould as a response to the city’s desire to make a historic sculpture the centerpiece of a renovated Edward Everett Square in Dorchester. 

Pears were actually once grown in abundance in Dorchester. Not to mention, a distinct variety of pear, ‘the Clapp’s Favorite’, was invented at the Clapp Family’s 18th century farmhouse, now home to the Dorchester Historical Society. The Clapps were among the founding families of Dorchester, sailing here from England in 1630. 

While pears may no longer be a Dorchester staple, Baring-Gould hopes that the statue will serve as a metaphor for Boston’s most diverse neighborhood. A neighborhood of people who according to her, “are tough. They’re resilient. Their skins are thick,” just like the Clapp’s Favorite. 

This video is part of a new weekly digital series from GBH News that provides answers to perplexing questions proposed by the audience. The Curiosity Desk video series is hosted by reporter Edgar B. Herwick III who has answered hundreds of questions since the launch of The Curiosity Desk as a radio feature in 2014.”

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Dorchester Illustration 2533 John Tucker’s Harness Shoop

Dorchester Illustration 2533 John Tucker’s harness shop

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

The house in the illustration, which still exists, is located behind the stores at 1156 to 1160 Washington Street.  It was built in 1798.  The atlases indicate that the stores in front of the house were first built after 1889 and before 1894, probably following Tucker’s death in 1892.

John Atherton Tucker operated a harness shop at 1158 Washington Street and lived there much of his life.  Later in life, sometime between 1857 and 1861, he moved to 1079 Adams Street. 

The house on Washington Street, shown in the illustration, was built by John’s father, Atherton Tucker in 1798.  In 1830, Atherton divided the property, apparently keeping a third interest for himself, giving a third to his son, William, and giving John a third interest.  John’s portion was described as:

the south part of the chaise maker’s shop, bounded by the partition as it now stands measuring about 14 feet more or less, the whole of the south chamber over said shop and the whole of the chamber over the same on the third story and the whole of the bedroom in the entry of the third story in the building ceded by and belonging to me, [and] a certain parcel of land hereinafter described, also one third of the cellar on the south side of said building containing two arches and the privilege of passing to and from said rooms and places in a convenient manner. Also one undivided third part of the barn on said land except the paint shop in the south part of the same, measuring fifteen feet in front with the platform adjoining the same, also one undivided third part of the wood house thereon …

John A. Tucker was born in 1803.  At the time of his retirement in 1891, an article in The Dorchester Beacon newspaper stated that John started in business in 1829.  The non-population U.S. Census schedules for 1850 and 1860 give the value of his annual production of harnesses as $1,000.

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Dorchester Illustration 2532 the first This Old House

Dorchester Illustration 2532 the first This Old House

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

Today’s illustration shows the Eliza Clapp House, the first This Old House at 6 Percival Street, Dorchester.  In 1979, Boston PBS station WGBH produced the first season of This Old House.  The first series was about the renovation of the Eliza Clapp House.  The show inspired many other home restoration television shows.

Eliza Clapp (1811-1888) was the adopted daughter of Isaac and Eliza (Cook) Clapp.  Isaac and Eliza owned the western end of Jones Hill, and their house was located where the Strand Theatre is today.  Eliza inherited the Clapp house, which stood on 363,129 square feet of land.  Eliza sold the property to Julia K. Dyer, wife of Micah Dyer, Jr., in 1863.  The Clapp genealogy notes that the Clapp House on Columbia Road (formerly Hancock Street) was remodeled, probably by the Dyers before they moved in.   Eliza moved to 6 Percival Street, the house that, in the late 20th century, became the first This Old House. 

Percival Street, which runs between St. Peter’s Church and this house, was named for Captain John Percival (“Mad Jack”), a naval hero of the War of 1812 and later the champion of the restoration of the USS Constitution. His house stood opposite this one on the location of St. Peter’s Church. 

The following is from The Magazine of Poetry, a Quarterly Review, v. 1   (Buffalo, 1889)

Clapp.  One of the most notable of the poems published in the now famous Dial, was one with the title “The Future is Better than the Past,” which has been generally been ascribed to Emerson.  It is now known to have been written not by Emerson, but by Miss Eliza Thayer Clapp.  As generally printed it appears only in part.  Rev. George W. Cooke, of Dedham, Mass., who has written the history of the Dial, gives the poem in full.  Mr. Cooke says of it in his history of the Dial: “The poem in the first number of the second volume, entitled, ‘The Future is Better than the Past,’ has often been credited to Emerson.  It first appeared over his name n ‘Hymns for the Church,’ compiled by Rev. F. H. Hedge and Rev F. D. Huntington, in 1853.  Then it was so printed in the ‘Hymns of the Spirit,’ by Rev. Samuel Longfellow and Rev. Samuel Johnson, and in Dr. James Martineau’s ‘Hymns of Praise and Prayer.’  It was contributed to the Dial, at Emerson’s request, by one of his most ardent disciples, Eliza Thayer Clapp. 

Miss Clapp was born in Dorchester, mass, and has always lived a quiet home-life in that suburb of Boston.  The transcendental movement brought new life to her Unitarian Faith, and she entered into its spirit with zeal.  As a Sunday School teacher, having charge of a class of girls from ten to fifteen years of age, she prepared her own lessons for their instruction. These were published as ‘Words in a Sunday-school.’  A little later, in 1845, another book, prepared n the same manner, was published as ‘Studies in Religion.’  These little books were received with much favor     Christian Register, but she has published only a few pieces.  The five poems of hers printed in the Dial of July, 1841, all appeared there because Emerson solicited their publication.  The one which has been so often credited to him is worthy of his genius, and it embodies, as no other poem of the period does, the very heart and spirit of the transcendental movement.”

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Become a member of the Dorchester Historical Society

http://www.dorchesterhistoricalsociety.org

Check out the Dorchester Historical Society’s online catalog at                                      

http://dorchester.pastperfectonline.com/

The archive of these historical posts can be viewed on the blog at

www.dorchesterhistoricalsociety.org

For other resources sharing Dorchester history, see  www.dorchesteratheneum2.org  

The Dorchester Historical Society’s historic houses are closed at this time due to the COVID-19 corona virus.  We will announce when the houses will be once again open to the public.  For now our programs have been suspended.

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Charles F. Hammond, Jr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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