Dorchester Illustration no. 2503 Keystone Conversion to War Production
The Keystone apartment building can be seen from the Southeast Expressway. The building was originally built to house the Hallet & Davis Piano Company, and that is how Hallet Street received its name. The building later passed into the ownership of another piano company.
The Keystone Manufacturing Company took over the former Hallet & Davis Piano Company building on Hallet Street in the early 1940s. Keystone manufactured toys and moving-picture cameras & projectors. In 1942, the company contributed to the war effort by converting their machinery from toy production to the production of radio filter boxes for jeeps and tanks. The photograph shows a toy truck that the company had been producing along with the new boxes for radio filters. Photographer: Howard Hollem for the US Office of War Information.
The building was constructed in 1910 by the Hallet & Davis Piano Co. An article published in The Boston Globe at the time reported: The building will be on a branch of the New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad, and the Hallet & Davis piano company has a spur track of more than 1000 feet in length on its own property there. It will also have fine dock facilities, where coal and other supplies may be brought by vessel and unloaded upon its own land.
Dorchester Illustration no. 2502 Building Roof Cave-In, 1978
In 1978, the Ashmont Creamery was a popular spot on Dorchester Avenue between Monsignor Lydon Way and Edwin Street. The building is now occupied by the Phu Thinh Market and Ann’s Coin Laundry.
In August of 1978, the building next door, at 1832 Dorchester Avenue, was being torn down, and the work on that building caused the roof of the Creamery building to cave in.
Today’s illustration was the photograph to accompany the following article.
Photo caption
Police investigate mishap that occurred with a building was being demolished on Dorchester Ave.
Heroic fireman leads five to safety in Hub
Boston Herald, August 18, 1978
An off-duty Boston firefighter assisted five persons to safety yesterday when the roof of a Dorchester variety store collapsed in a freak accident.
Firefighter James Soletti of Engine Company I was stopped at a traffic signal outside the Ashmont Creamery, 1826, Dorchester Avenue, when the store roof caved in.
Soletti had seen three small boys enter the store just before he heard the crashing of brick and timbers. He got out of his car and rushed into the store where he led the boys and the owners, Albert and Estelle Winn, of Cherry street, Malden, to safety.
Mrs. Winn, 47 was treated for shock at Carney Hospital. The others were uninjured.
According to police, the three-story building next door at 1832 Dorchester Avenue was being torn down by a construction company. Police said the wrecking ball swung by a crane inadvertently knocked bricks and timer onto the roof of the variety store, causing the collapse.
Dorchester Illustration no. 2501 Fire Station on River Street
When Dorchester was a separate town from Boston, the fire station at Lower Mills had the name Fountain Engine no. 1. In the early 1880s the City replaced a wooden fire house at the corner of Temple Street and River Street with the brick building shown in the illustrations.
We have right and left views of the fire house as seen from River Street. Temple Street is to the right of the fire house, between it and the Village Congregational Church. The top image is of an earlier vintage than the bottom. There is no bell tower shown in the top image, but in the bottom image, it is possible to see a portion of a bell tower over the roof.
The following is from the Dorchester Reporter, January 16, 2020:
Engine 16 originally operated out of a firehouse that was built in 1869 at the corner of Temple and River Street in Lower Mills. The building was unique in that assigned fire apparatus operated from two sides of the firehouse and from two floor levels. The main address of 2 Temple St., a side street off River Street, was the quarters of the engine company, while below, on the River Street side, 51 River St. was the address of the ladder company.
The firehouse was known as Dorchester’s S. H. Hebard Engine No. 1 until annexation day in 1870, when it became Boston’s S. H. Hebard Engine Company 16, and Dorchester’s General Grant Ladder No. 1 became Boston’s General Grant Ladder Company 6.
On June 1, 1938, Ladder 6 moved to the firehouse of Engine Company 19 in the Mattapan section of Dorchester. In 1958, Engine 16 moved into a new firehouse at 9 Gallivan Blvd., from which it continues to operate today. The company covers Dorchester, Mattapan, and parts of Roslindale, and responds to roughly 2,100 incidents per year.
Dorchester Illustration no. 2500 Waiting for the Hour
Carlton was a portrait and genre painter who was active in the Boston area from 1836 till after the Civil War. He moved to Dorchester in the 1850s and lived a little west of Four Corners. Perhaps his most famous painting is the one called Watch Meeting –Waiting for the Hour, now in the collection of the White House. He depicted a group of slaves waiting for the Emancipation to take effect on January 1, 1863.
The following is from:
Memorial Biographies of the New England Historic Genealogical Society Volume VIII 1880-1889. (Boston: The Society, 1907), p. 349-350
William Tolman Carlton, of Boston, Massachusetts, a Resident Member from 1871, was born in Boston, January 30, 1816, and died in Dorchester, Massachusetts, June 28, 1888.
He was the son of William Leeds and Mary Jane (Millet) Carlton. The name of Carlton was spelled Kelton by the earlier generations, and the change to Carlton was made by William L. Carlton, father of the subject of this sketch.
The greater part of his childhood was passed in his father’s residence at the corner of Williams Court and the present Court Square, where his father carried on a West India goods store in the lower front of the building. Later the family removed to Dorchester, where he was educated in the common school and the Dorchester Academy.
Conditions of health frustrated an intention on his part to prepare for college, and he directed his attention to an artist’s career. He spent several years in Europe, mostly in Italy, and journeyed in Germany and France for the examination of art galleries, and followed his career of an artist for part of a year, in Paris. He returned to this country in 1840, and practiced portrait painting, and gave instruction in drawing to private classes.
Between the years 1847 and 1850 he was in Albany, New York, where his work was the painting of portraits, mostly. He resumed his professional work in Boston, in 1850, and during the following year, was selected by Mr. George Hollingsworth, an artist of repute, as his assistant in carrying on the school for free instruction in art, which had then lately been opened by the Lowell institute. The school was closed after twenty-seven years because the method of instruction introduced in 1850 was generally adopted by teachers in schools of free instruction and in private schools.
He married, June 1, 1864, Mary Elizabeth Blanchard, of Portland, Maine. This was her name by adoption, Raynes having been her ancestral name.
Active as a lithographer and photographer on Dexter Street, Washington Village, William Sharp lived and worked at the same address starting in the late 1850s. Sharp would have been a Dorchester resident except that the Washington Village area (Andrew Square) was taken from Dorchester and added to South Boston in 1855. Father-in-law of James Wallace Black, he apparently learned the photographic process from Black, and added photography to his repertoire in 1858.
An English emigrant to American, William Sharp arrived in the United States in 1839 and worked on perfecting the recently developed chromolithographic process during the following decades. The culmination of his efforts was the publication of the illustrations for John Fisk Allen’s Victoria Regia, or The Great Water Lily of America in 1854. For the publication, six illustrations in all were executed on elephant folio sheets. The most beautiful of all these images are these four, showing the stages from the beginning of the Bloom to the Complete Bloom.
To achieve the proper coloration, four separately inked stones were utilized. The resultant images are among the finest botanical chromolithographs ever published. Chromolithographs were first executed around 1835 in England and France. Sharp had been one of the first to explore this process while in England, and he continued his experimentation after he immigrated to America in the late 1830’s. As opposed to hand-colored lithographs, which consisted of printing the image in black and white and then adding color by hand, chromolithography called for the printing of the image in successive stages of color. Initial attempts in chromolithography used two stones in the creation of any image. The first stone was normally inked in black. After the image was thus defined, a second stone inked in one color was applied to the black and white image. As the process was refined, more colored stones were utilized in creating the final colored image. Sharp’s illustrations for Allen’s Victoria Regia are among the most sumptuous images to use the medium ever done, and major landmarks in the history of printmaking.
Dorchester Illustration no. 2498 William Munroe Trotter program
The Dorchester Historical Society welcomes Historian Kerri Greenidge, author of “Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter
About this Event
William Monroe Trotter (1872-1934, in Dorchester 1899-1909) published the Guardian, a weekly Boston newspaper, for more than 30 years, bringing his vision of Black liberation to readers across the nation. Learn about this little-known but seminal figure in American history, whose life offers a link between the post-Reconstruction work of Frederick Douglass and Black activism in the modern era.
If you have not already registered or notified Earl Taylor, please register on the Dorchester Historical Society website from the home page. This link will take you to the registration page directly.
Dorchester Illustration no. 2497 Mason Regulator Company interior
Note: Dorchester Historical Society program to be presented through Zoom has been scheduled
for Sunday, February 21, at 2 pm. Historian Kerri Greenidge will speak about her book Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter.
If you want to attend, email Earl Taylor at earltaylordorchhistsoc@gmail.com, and he will send a link for the Zoom meeting.
The Mason Regulator Company was located in Lower Mills, in the building where Standish Village is now.
caption to photo: Part of our assembly room showing testing apparatus and material for Navy Department ready for final inspection and test. Mason Regulator Company, Dorchester Center, Boston, Massachusetts. Photograph by Curtiss Photographers, Boston, Mass., from the years of the first World War.
illustration comes from Naval History and Heritage Command
The Mason Regulator Company produced machine parts, i.e., speed and pressure regulators, balanced valves, and steam traps. The company moved from Jamaica Plain to Lower Mills in 1898 establishing itself as a new industry in the Lower Mills area. The company’s products were used in steamships, railroad engines, automobiles and manufacturing facilities.
The products were portions of a steam pressure regulator system. The purpose of the system is to keep a constant amount of pressure in a steam pipe supplying steam to an engine, compensating for variations due to the intermittent shoveling of coal into the boiler or heavy usage of steam by another machine sharing the same supply etc.
The Mason Regulator Company was known for constructing the first engines to be used in the legendary Stanley Steamers.
Harold Grant Mitten was born at home, at 37 Folsom Street in Dorchester, on August 2, 1895, to George A. and Nellie Frances (Weeks) Mitten. George was born in Quebec, Canada, the son of William Andrew and Catharine (Grant) Mitten. He immigrated with his family to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in the mid-1860’s. George later moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, and lived with Mitten relatives before moving to Boston with his brother where they started their business, in 1883. Nellie was born in Lowell to Serlo Bartlett and Mary E. (McLaughlin) Weeks. George and Nellie were married in Lowell in 1891. They had seven other children, all born in Boston: William in 1891, Olive in 1893, twins Ethel and Irene in 1896, Dorothy in 1902, and twins Madeline and Evelyn in 1909. Olive died in 1894. William, like Harold, served in World War I.
George was a provisions dealer, co-owning with his brother, John, the Mitten Brothers store at 1351 Washington Street in the South End. They advertised “Provisions, Poultry, Game in season, Fruits, Vegetables and Canned Goods of all descriptions … The most fastidious buyer will find meats, or other articles suited to his needs at this establishment.”
By 1898, the Mittens were living at 30 Folsom Street, which they owned. According to the 1900 census, the family employed a live-in maid, Mary Mahoney, a twenty-five-year-old recent Irish immigrant. By 1910, the Mittens had moved a short distance to 12 Chamblett Street. That June, Harold graduated from the Phillips Brooks School on Perth Street.
On June 5, 1917, Harold registered for the draft. He was 21-years-old, medium build, “tall” height (5’9”) with brown eyes and brown hair. He reported that he was employed as a machinist, working for the William Hall Company of Wollaston, Massachusetts. The William Hall Company were makers of “cutters, dies, jigs, etc.” According to their advertisement in Machinery magazine in March 1917, they had “one of the busiest cutter departments in the East … Hall makes, and hardens correctly, high-grade cutters of every description, including cutters made to your own designs.”
Harold was drafted and inducted into the army in Boston on September 8, 1917. He was initially assigned to Company D, 301st Infantry, 76th Division. Ten days later he was attached to Headquarters Company, 102nd Field Artillery, 26th Division, or Yankee Division. Almost immediately he left for France, sailing from Hoboken, New Jersey, on the USCT Finland on September 22, and arriving in Saint Nazaire on October 5.He was made a private first class on November 2 and promoted to corporal on December 6. According to family sources, he was a radio operator. His engagements included the Aisne-Marne offensive, July 18 through August 4; the Saint Mihiel offensive September 12 through 16; and the Meuse-Argonne offensive October 18 through November 11. Harold returned home in the spring of 1919, sailing on March 31 from Brest, France, on the USS Mongolia, and arriving in Boston on April 10. He was discharged at Camp Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts, on April 28, 1919.
After the war, Harold lived with his family on Chamblett Street. On October 12, 1922, he married Agnes Louise Wellbrock of 223 Boston Street, daughter of August Conrad and Elizabeth Theresa (Ahlert) Wellbrock. They were married at Holy Trinity Church in Boston by Reverend Henry J. Nelles. Harold and Agnes had four children, George A. (1925-1991), Mary Elizabeth (1925-2005), David Vincent (1930-2002), and Harold Wellbrock (1932-1944).
Various Wellbrock family members had lived at 221 and 223 Boston Street since about 1890. Harold and Agnes purchased 223 Boston Street from her family and lived there for the rest of their lives. In 1930, Agnes’s brothers Edward and Leo, and her uncle, Clemens, lived with the Mittens. Harold broadcast his 20-watt amateur radio station, W1AHH, from the home in the late 1920s.
Harold worked for the Boston Police Department for over 40 years. He was appointed to the force on December 6, 1919, shortly after the Boston Police Strike of September 1919. Early in his career he was assigned to night duty at the Fields Corner Station; in 1926 he was transferred to day duty. Two years later, he was promoted from patrolman to sergeant, and transferred from Dorchester to Charlestown. In Charlestown, Harold was the commander of a newly formed “liquor squad.” He was promoted to lieutenant and transferred to Division 4 in the South End in 1932. Harold’s police experiences sometimes made for good newspaper copy; in 1941, a story about Harold being asked to mediate a dispute over an arranged marriage was covered by the Associated Press and ran in newspapers all over the country. In April 1948, Harold was transferred to the Harbor Division. That November, he rescued a boy on Thompson Island suffering from appendicitis, rushing him to the mainland for treatment, Harold’s police boat, the William H. McShane, making “the 3 mile run in record time.” In 1953, Harold, again in command of the police boat, assisted during a three-alarm fire at 88 Commercial Wharf. Two years later, he was transferred once again, this time to the city prison. He was appointed Keeper of the Lockup on April 1, 1960. Harold retired from the Boston Police Department on November 15, 1961.
According to his family, Harold loved fixing up old bikes for the children in the Boston Street neighborhood. He owned an old black Raleigh bike that he rode around everywhere in Dorchester. And, his grandchildren would always know he was visiting when they came home from school if his bike was tied up to one of the trees in their backyard. He also had a lifelong passion for playing the violin.
Agnes died in 1972. Harold died in Boston on February 20, 1989, age 93, after a short illness. Mass was said for him at Saint Margaret’s Church, Dorchester, and he was buried at Calvary Cemetery on American Legion Highway. He had been a member of the Boston Police Relief Association.
Sources:
Family Sources; Jennifer Mitten
Massachusetts Vital Records, 1911–1915. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, MA: Ancestry.com
Family Tree; Ancestry.com
Leading Business Men of Back Bay, South End, Boston Highlands, Jamaica Plain and Dorchester. Boston, MA Mercantile Publishing Company, 1888: 61; Books.Google.com
Census Records, Federal, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, Ancestry.com
“7911 Diplomas in Boston Schools,” Boston Globe, 23 June 1910: 5; Newspapers.com
Advertisement, Machinery. March 1917, New York: Industrial Press: 165; Books.Google.Com
World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration; Ancestry.com
Veterans Administration Master Index, 1917-1940. Records of the Department of Veterans Affairs, National Archives at St. Louis, St. Louis, MO; FamilySearch.org
Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) Death File. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Ancestry.com
Lists of Outgoing & Incoming Passengers, 1917-1938, Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774-1985, The National Archives at College Park, MD; Ancestry.com
LaBranche, Ernest E. An American Battery in France. Worcester, MA: Belisle Printing & Publishing Company, 1923: Archive.org
Battle Participation of the Organizations of the American Expeditionary Forces in France, Belgium, and Italy 1917-1918. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920; Archive.org
“Massachusetts Marriages, 1841-1915,” database citing Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States, State Archives, Boston; FamilySearch.org
Amateur Radio Stations of the United States. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1928: 3; Archive.org
Record of the Police Commissioner January 1, 1921, to December 31, 1921, City of Boston, Volume 58: 1480; Archive.org
“Dorchester District,” Boston Globe, 28 July 1926: 9; Newspapers.com
“Shakeup Orders Give Police Jolt,” Boston Globe, 4 July 1928: 4; Newspapers.com
“Bunker Hill District,” Boston Globe, 3 September 1929: 10; Newspapers.com
“Bunker Hill District,” Boston Globe, 23 November 1932: 7; Newspapers.com
“New Police Division 4 Officially Opened,” Boston Globe, 27 February 1933: 5; Newspapers.com
Associated Press, “Officer Tells Gypsies Settle Fight at Home,” Fitchburg Sentinel, 26 March 1941: 2; Newspapers.com
“60 Boston Police Officers Are Transferred,” Boston Globe, 15 April 1948: 1; Newspapers.com
“Appendicitis Victim Taken From Island,” Boston Globe, 18 November 1948: 3 Newspapers.com
“Fires Menace Beach, Wharf; $150,000 Loss,” Boston Globe, 4 August 1953: 1 Newspapers.com
“Sullivan Promotes 4 Boston Officers,” Boston Globe, 15 September 1955: 3; Newspapers.com
Report of Proceedings of the City Council of Boston for the Year Commencing January 4, 1960, and Ending December 27, 1960. Boston: Administrative Services Department Printing Section, 1961: 69; Archive.org
City Record, Volume 53, Number 46, November 18, 1961, Boston, MA; 883; Archive.org
“Deaths,” Boston Globe, 10 September 1972: 73; Newspapers.com
Deaths, Boston Globe, 21 February 1989: 18; Newspapers.com
Charles Francis Maurice Malley was born on December 1, 1871, in Milton, MA. His father, Patrick, was a coachman for the Angell family on Adams Street. Patrick was an Irish immigrant, as was his wife Margaret (Hanigan). Patrick immigrated to the United States in the 1850s. He and Margaret were married in 1865 in Charlestown. They had two daughters: Nora born in 1867 and Mary born in 1873.
When Charles was young, the family moved to Dorchester. By 1890, they lived at 2209 Dorchester Avenue in Lower Mills. Charles attended Boston Latin School, class of 1890, and won a Franklin Medal, a prize for outstanding students created by a codicil in Benjamin Franklin’s will. At Harvard, he did four years of coursework in three years, graduating magna cum laude in the class of 1894. His classmate later remembered of him, “He seems never to have refused a challenge of any kind whatsoever. … he never claimed to own but one book, and even that claim was disputed. In class, he used to look over his neighbor’s elbow and several professors noting this, sought to catch him napping. But he always whipped off his translations with such speed and accuracy that they ceased to be suspicious. He did his work scurrying through the libraries. It was one of his bewildering powers to have everything needful, for any occasion what so ever, at his fingers’ ends, but no one ever knew when or how in the world he got it all.” He earned an LL.B. at Harvard Law School, completing the three-year program in two years.
He went to work for the law firm of Churchill and Churchill in Boston in December 1895 and was admitted to the Suffolk Bar in 1897. He then entered the office of Charles Francis Jenney, who was later an associate justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Later he had his own practice, during business hours he could be found in an office in downtown Boston, and in the evenings in the Bispham Building at 1177 Washington Street in Lower Mills. Two of his most notable clients were the U.S. Representatives Joseph A. Conry, and Michael F. Phelan. A member of the Democratic Committee of Boston, Charles ran for state office at least four times, but was not elected. He also submitted petitions to the state, including a consumer protection measure seeking to require bottles to display their size. Charles was a regular speaker in the Boston area, addressing Catholic social groups on topics such as his observations from his travels in Ireland, and on the troubles in France between the church and the state. During this time, he lived with his family at 1052 Washington Street in Dorchester, where they moved in 1899.
On June 7, 1905, Charles married Clara Madeline Hart. They were married in Wilmington, Delaware, her hometown. The couple were married by Charles’s cousin, Reverend Edward Malley. They took a honeymoon to Montreal and Quebec City before settling in Dorchester. A couple of months after their wedding, in September, Charles’s mother, Margaret, died of capillary bronchitis. By 1908, they lived at 124 Melville Avenue. In July 1909, Charles and Clara had a daughter, Mary Constance Malley. Born prematurely, she died of inanition, or exhaustion, at two months old at the Boothby Hospital in Boston.
By 1910, it appears Charles and Clara were no longer living together. That year, the census reported Charles living with his father and sisters at 91 Ashmont Street. They had moved to 1158 Adams Street by 1915. That year, Charles sued the Walton Lunch Company for $5,000 in damages, alleging he was humiliated when “employees seized him at the door, assaulted him and accused him of not having paid his check” when he was leaving their lunchroom on School Street.
When the United States entered the First World War in 1917, Charles wanted to fight. Too old for the draft, he also seems to have been unable to enlist in the United States military. In August, he joined the 236th Battalion of the Canadian Army, which was recruiting in New England. Also known as the New Brunswick Kilties, or the MacLean Kilties of America, it was a Scottish Highlanders battalion complete with bagpipes and a uniform featuring kilts in the MacLean of Duart dress tartan. The Kilties actively sought New Englanders to join their ranks, even recruiting at a Red Sox game.
Charles travelled to Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he officially enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces as a private on September 14, 1917. In order to join the Canadian Army, he claimed to have been born in Saint John, New Brunswick. He also took two years off his age, said he was unmarried, and gave his name as Charles O’Malley. He enlisted for the duration of the war. Charles was assigned to Company B, Platoon 5. The Kilties trained at Camp Valcartier in Saint-Gabriel-de-Valcartier, near Quebec City, and then at Camp McGill in Montreal. Charles seems to have been enthusiastic about the Kilties, writing a song for the battalion.
On October 30, 1917, he sailed on His Majesty’s Troopship Canada, arriving in Liverpool on November 19. The Battalion was renamed the MacLean Highlanders and sent to Seaford Camp in Sussex. While in England, Charles did some sightseeing, visiting the London Law Court and the House of Parliament, where he heard Prime Minister Lloyd George speak. He also attended the funeral of the Irish politician John E. Redmond, whom Charles had entertained when Redmond visited Boston.
In March 1918, the 236th Battalion was broken up and the men used as reinforcements for other units. Charles was assigned to the 42nd Royal Canadian Highlanders, part of the 20th Reserve Battalion, and stationed at Camp Bramshott in Hampshire, England. On May 8, 1918, he was sent to France, where he was billeted in a farmhouse. That month, Charles’s father died in Dorchester.
In September 1918, Charles was transferred for the final time to Company C, 78th Canadian Infantry. Most of the men in the unit were from Winnipeg, Manitoba. For Charles, the “great joy is that they do not wear the kilts, of which I had become sick and tired and also, whisper, winter was coming on and I’m no Spartan Boy.” They went to the front in that month. In October, he saw action in the Battle of Cambrai. To a friend he wrote, “Well, Bill, your old pal can truly say now that he is a tried solider o-the-wars and has been through his baptism of blood and fire. … we were five days under hell-fire of artillery shell and machine gun fire, aeroplane bombs and bullets of snipers, i.e. sharpshooters. … We slept in shell-holes and trenches midst rain and mud, and little to eat, but we stuck on.”
Marching through a town where the villagers, recently liberated from German control, shouted “Vive les braves Canadiens,” he felt “a funny feeling of pain and pleasure never experienced before … We saw the meaning and necessity for our presence in arms … Bill, O Bill, after that I know that I have not lived in vain— that I have done my sum— been of some little use in the world and I am glad and content and at peace with myself.”
Charles was taken out of the lines on November 9, suffering from influenza. On November 17, 1918, he died at the British 26th General Hospital in Etaples, France. He was buried in the British Etaples Military Cemetery with Catholic ceremony and military honors. In Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline he is listed on the family tombstone, along with his mother and infant daughter. A memorial mass was celebrated for him on Thanksgiving day 1918 at Saint Gregory’s Church in Dorchester. He is commemorated in Harvard’s Memorial Hall, where his name is engraved alongside the other members of the Harvard community who died while in military service. According to an obituary which ran in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin he was “believed to be the oldest Harvard graduate who died at the front.” In Dorchester, a square is named for him at the junction of River and Washington Streets.
Sources
Family Tree; Ancestry.com
Boston Directory, various years; Ancestry.com
Latin School Register, Vol XXXVII, no 6, March 1919: 10-12; Archive.org
Harvard College Class of 1894, 25th Anniversary Report, 1894-1919, Norwood, MA: Plimpton Press, 1919; Archive.org
Harvard College Class of 1894. Secretary’s Report No II. Cambridge, 1897; Archive.org
Advertisement, Blue Book of Dorchester 1902. Cambridge, MA: Edward A. Jones, 1902; Books.Google.com
“Wants Bottles Labelled,” Boston Post, 15 March 1902; 5; Newspapers.com
“All Saints’ Court M.C.O.F.,” Boston Globe, 13 April 1908; 16; Newspapers.com
“Malley-Hart,” Boston Globe, 14 June 1905; 14; Newspapers.com
Marriage Record, Delaware Vital Records. Microfilm. Delaware Public Archives, Dover; Ancestry.com
Deaths, Boston Globe, 28 Sept 1905; 11; Newspapers.com
Daughter’s Death Record, Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts; Ancestry.com
1870, 1910 U.S. Federal Census; Ancestry.com
“Forsyth Sued for $38,600,” Boston Globe, 9 July 1915; 7; Newspapers.com
“War News of Harvard Men,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin, 5 December 1918: 200; Archive.org
Attestation Record, Personal Records of the First World War, Canadian Expeditionary Force; Library and Archives Canada; www.bac-lac.gc.ca
Service Record, Personal Records of the First World War, Canadian Expeditionary Force; Library and Archives Canada; www.bac-lac.gc.ca
Putnam, Eben, ed. Report of the Commission on Massachusetts’ Part in the World War: The Gold Star Record of Massachusetts, Vol II. Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1929; Archive.org
MacLean, Ian. “The MacLean Kilties,” Clan MacLean Atlantic Canada. <http://www.clanmacleanatlantic.org/his-kilties.html>
Deaths, Boston Post, 2 June 1918; 18; Newspapers.com
“Hub Lawyer Dies Abroad,” Boston Post, 26 November 1918; 3; Newspapers.com
“Canadian Casualties,” Boston Globe, 26 November 1918; 8; Newspapers.com
“The Class of 1894,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin,12 June 1919: 747-748 ; Archive.org
Commonwealth War Graves Registers, First World War, modified 27 July 2016, Library and Archives Canada; www.bac-lac.gc.ca
“Charles Francis Maurice Malley;” FindaGrave.com
“World War I,” Harvard: The Memorial Church. < https//memorialchurch.harvard.edu/world-war-i>
Reports of Proceedings, Boston City Council, Boston: Municipal Printing Office, 1921; Books.Google.com
Anthony Macaluso was born on October 18, 1892, in Vicari, Palermo, Sicily, Italy, to Salvatore and Francesca (Costa) Macaluso. On his notecard for Anthony Macaluso, Dr. Perkins noted that Anthony attended high school in Palermo. Anthony immigrated to the United States in March 1910, sailing from Naples on the White Star Line’s RMS Celtic. After arriving in New York City, he immediately continued on to Boston. He paid his own passage and arrived with $20.
In Boston, Anthony joined his older brother Emmanuele, who had come to the United States in 1904 and became a citizen in 1909. Emmanuele had a drug store at 270 Hanover Street in the North End, where Anthony worked alongside Emmanuele and his wife, Marianna (Sapienza), known as Anna. In 1911, Anthony lived at 26 Salem Street in the North End. By 1913, Emmanuele and Anthony had purchased 93 Norfolk Street in Dorchester.
On April 22, 1911, Anthony married Carmela Maria Sapienza, Anna’s sister. Born in Monreale, Palermo, Carmela immigrated to the United States in September 1904. Anthony and Carmela were wed by Justice of the Peace Charles A. Feyhl of 449 Shawmut Avenue. They would have three children: Americo, known as Arthur, born in 1911, Lilianna born in 1912, and Janet born in 1927.
While working at the drugstore, Anthony attended the Boston University School of Medicine, entering in the autumn of 1912, and graduating with the class of 1918. While in college, he began the citizenship process, filing a petition of intention in 1913. Anthony became an American citizen in December 1916.
After his graduation from medical school, on July 21, 1918, Anthony was commissioned a lieutenant (junior grade) in the Navy Medical Corps, and on November 25, 1918, he was sent to the Naval Medical School in Washington, D.C. In February 1919, he was stationed on a receiving ship in New York City. By March 1919, he was serving on the troop ship USS Plattsburg, a schooner-rigged steamship that had seen service during the Spanish American War. On June 17, 1919, he was relieved while stationed on a receiving ship in the New York City Navy Yard and was given an honorable discharge on July 23, 1922.
After the war, Anthony continued to serve in the Naval Reserve at the Squantum Air Station in Quincy. According to his Newton Graphic obituary, while at Squantum, Anthony “pioneered in flight surgery and the change to one of the first naval air bases.” In 1939, a Boston Globe article reported that the squadron Anthony was attached to, VS-2R, “was awarded the Noel Davis trophy for being the most efficient unit in the country.”
Anthony opened a medical practice in the North End at 11 Parmenter Street. In 1935, he was appointed an assistant professor in ophthalmology at the Boston University School of Medicine. The Macalusos continued to live in their home at 93 Norfolk Street until 1934, when they moved to 28 Chesterfield Road in West Newton. Emmanuele and Anna lived with Anthony and his family until their deaths; it appears Emmanuele died around 1940 and Anna in 1951.
According to the Newton Graphic, “At the beginning of World War II, Dr. Macaluso underwent Sea-Bee training at the age of 50 and was commissioned a full commander, seeing four years of action in the South Pacific.” Navy directories from 1941 and 1942, list Anthony still stationed at the Squantum Naval Aviation Station. In a photograph taken at Squantum in 1941, Anthony examines Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., who was about to begin flight training. According to a Veterans Benefits Administration database, Anthony entered service on December 12, 1940 and was released on November 3, 1945.
After the Second World War, Anthony had a general practice in Kenmore Square, first at 636 Beacon Street, then at 510 Commonwealth Avenue. He was also on the staff at Carney, Kenmore, and Boston University Hospitals. Anthony was active with the Newton’s Daley Post, VFW, in the 1950s, serving as post surgeon, vice commander, and post commander. In 1957, the Macalusos moved to 18 Grey Birch Terrace in the Newtonville section of Newton. Anthony retired in 1972.
Anthony died of influenza at his home on January 14, 1978. A funeral mass was celebrated for him at Our Lady Help of Christians on Washington Street in Newton and he was buried in Newton Cemetery. When Carmela died at 100 in 1987, she was buried beside him.
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