Dorchester Illustration no. 2483 Veterans Day 2020
In honor of Veterans Day, we are pleased to share our online, searchable database of World War I service members who lived in Dorchester.
This research and accompanying biographies were made possible in part by a Veterans’ Heritage Grant from The Massachusetts State Historical Records Advisory Board. There are still many more biographies that we hope to write, but the current database includes biographies for over 200 service members.
Peter Strickland. New London Shipmaster; Boston Merchant; First Consul to Senegal. By Stephen H. Grant. (Washington, D.C., 2007)
Two repositories in the eastern U.S. house important collections of Peter Strickland’s papers: Mystic Seaport Library, Mystic, Connecticut and University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware. Papers contain ship logs, business ledgers, 2,000 business and personal letters from 1876 to 1921. Of paramount interest is a personal journal started in 1857 on a journal to Europe at the age of 19. The last entry was in 1921 at the age of 83, where the pen fell from his hand in mid-sentence. The journal is 2,500 pages. In addition, the National Archives and Records Administration in College, Park, Maryland holds the consul’s 272 consular dispatches sent from the French colony of Senegal to the State Department from 1883 to 1905. These handwritten reports are available on 35mm microfilm reels. NARA also possesses 16 bound volumes from Strickland’s period in West Africa, in all 1,850 pages of consular records, many in Strickland’s hand. Strickland authored a book, A Voice from the Deep, published in Boston in 1873. In it, he recounts details of the sailor’s five malefactors: shipping agents, ship owners, boarding masters, ship officers, and . . . consuls.
Strickland claimed he knew more about West African trade than any other American at that time. He made over 40 voyages during the Age of Sail from New England to West Africa, carrying in the holds of his schooners, brigs, and brigantines cargo of leaf tobacco from Kentucky and Tennessee, blocks of ice wrapped up in sawdust from the Kennebec River for refrigeration. The return voyage brought rubber, peanuts, animal hides to be made into shoes and boots, palm oil for cooking, and gum Arabic from the acacia tree for pharmaceuticals, inks, and adhesives.
Because Peter Strickland knew West Africa so well, the administration of President Chester Arthur appointed him consul for French West Africa with domicile on Gorée Island in Senegal, and covering Cape Verde Is., Liberia, The Gambia, Guinea, Bissau, and Sierra Leone. Today we are familiar with consular duties such as screening visa applicants, issuing visas and passports, recording births, marriages, and deaths of Americans, and looking after their whereabouts and welfare. In the 19th century, prime responsibilities were to further American shipping, record shipwrecks and accidents, offer protection to American travelers, report deaths of mariners including loss overboard.
Strickland also reported on rowdy, insolent, and intoxicated sailors. On Feb. 7, 1888, Peter Strickland’s only surviving son George drowned off the coast of Senegal at night. He was in command of the schooner M. E. Higgins on official mission sailing to the coastal town of Saint Louis. He reportedly fell from the rails where he was sitting. The body was never found and the circumstances of his death mysterious. He was 24 years old, a sea captain, and his father’s vice-consul.
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Dorchester Illustration no. 2481 Anna Harris Smith
Founder of the Animal Rescue League
Nearly everyone in Dorchester has heard of or used the services of The Animal Rescue League. But few of us realize that it was founded by a Dorchester woman.
Anna Harris Smith (1843-1929) was born at 65 Pleasant Street, at the foot of Jones Hill, the house she lived in until 1908. A large section of Jones Hill had been owned by the Clapp family almost since the founding of Dorchester in 1630. Anna Harris was the grand-daughter of Samuel Clapp, who had a modest cooperage business. Her mother Anna Larkin Clapp married William Harris, a Boston printer. Anna, the subject of this piece, married Huntington Smith, a publisher. Anna’s occupation was journalist in the 1900 US Census. A founder of the League in 1899, she served as president of the Animal Rescue League from 1901 until her death in 1929, and the League flourished under her leadership.
The following is from an article by Anthony Sammarco that appeared in the Dorchester Community News, ca. 1990.
The young Anna Harris, imbued with family connections and born to a world of comfort, was christened at the First Parish Church by her paternal grandfather. As a child, she was intelligent and developed both a flair for music and a deep abiding feeling for animals and nature. It was said that her father was a strict and religious man and that these values, instilled in his daughter, gave a deep spiritual devotion to her great cause of later years.
Anna Harris completed her education in Boston, after attending Miss Pope’s School on Meeting house Hill. She became an accomplished musician, and taught music, giving informal recitals with her brother Samuel who was a talented violinist. She also composed music for several songs. The Harris family, comfortable and well-established, were among the leaders of local society.
In 1884, Anna Harris married Huntington Smith of Boston; he was the editor of the Boston Beacon, later to become its owner and publisher. The Smiths lived in Anna’s family home, which had been built on the stone foundations of the Thomas Jones House, reputedly built in 1636.
The Clapps had purchased the original house from Jones’ heirs and rebuilt it after a disastrous fire in 1804. The five-bay Federal house, while not pretentious, was surrounded by lands that were not just extensive, but valuable. The Smiths subdivided their estate over the years into house lots.
Undoubtedly, Anna Smith was a compassionate person, and tried to do the right thing concerning animals. But according to her biography, she was deeply shocked when a neighbor told her that, when her cat became too old to catch mice, she would have it taken to the woods and left there. This apparently fueled Smith’s desire to form some sort of protective circle for animals.
As a member of the First Parish Church’s Benevolent Society, then headed by Emily Fifield, Smith visited the sick and the poor. Apart from the human misery that she saw, she was overwhelmed by the conditions of animals in back alleys and beasts of burden on the main streets of Boston. This concern became a driving force for Smith, and culminated with the incorporation of the Animal Rescue League of Boston on March 13, 1899.
Smith coined the phrase “Kindness Uplifts the World,” which is still the league’s motto. Throughout her long life, she had a great concern for all animals that she was able to combine with practical means to reduce suffering. True, her wealth and position enabled her to devote her activities to better the conditions of animals, but it was her never-ending sense of duty that sustained her when it became her life work.
Today, the rescue league takes in stray animals, most of which it spays and neuters, and tries to find them homes. In addition, the statewide group runs educational programs which teach children how to properly care for animals and has work crews which will pick up dead animals or rescue those who are caught in trees, for example.
The following is from Yankee Magazine.
The photo above was taken in 1919, and featured a horse-drawn carriage, decked out in holiday garland with banners titled “Animal Rescue League” and “Christmas for the Horses.” The caption underneath explained that it was the sixth annual Christmas dinner for horses, when members of the League would travel throughout the city, delivering “meals of oats, carrots, and apples to the working horses of Boston.”
Anna Harris Smith loved all animals, but had a special soft spot for horses. It’s easy to forget how important urban work horses were in the days before the automobile, but in the late 19th century and early 20th century, horses were critical in the day-to-day workings of all US cities. These “draft horses” not only transported all manner of goods within the city and to and from railroad stations, but also facilitated both public and private transportation and emergency services, such as ambulances and fire trucks…before they were trucks.
Anna and the ARL of Boston believed that these horses deserved treats at Christmas just like the rest of us, so the “Christmas Dinner for Horses” campaign was born, and continued into the 21st century. As recently as 2009, the League still delivered holiday goodies to the rapidly shrinking number of working horses within the city, made even smaller that year by the loss of the Boston Police Department’s 12-member mounted police patrol due to lack of funding.
Sampler by Louisa Maria Blake, Dorchester Historical Society
Apologies for the quality of the full image due to the glass over the sampler. The smaller detail avoided some of the glare.
Illustration: sampler made by ten-year old Louis Maria Blake in 1812.
It is not the lustre of gold, the sparkling of diamonds
and emeralds, nor the splendour of the purple tincture
that adorns or embellishes a woman but gravity, discre-
tion, humility and modesty. Action and contemplation are
no way inconsistant but rather reliefs to each other. When
you are engaged in study, throw business out of your thoughts,
when in business, think of your business only. November 10.
Louisa Maria Blake AE10 1812
The first settlers in New England in the seventeenth-century included young women who brought samplers with them to the New World. There are occasional references to the textile arts in early documents, but only very few examples remain. Bed rugs and hearth rugs are some of the extant examples of this early work. The growing sophistication of the colonists over two hundred years in New England resulted in greater demand for decorative arts in the home.
One of the popular types of needlework created by young women was the sampler. Samplers began as a way of recording examples of stitches; therefore, a sampler was an exemplar of the various stitches that a young woman had mastered and wanted to remember. In the twentieth century, we have come to call any needlework signed and dated by the maker by the name of sampler. Perhaps the secret charm of samplers was that they were distinctly the expression of the mind of the girl or her mother or her teacher, and so they are pretty nearly as varied as the mind of man.+ In the second half of the eighteenth century, samplers became more original pieces of work incorporating images of leaves and flowers, houses, dogs and birds, and other scenes from nature.
Most of the known surviving needlework pieces were created by schoolgirls. By the mid-eighteenth century there were many schools serving to round out the education of young women. Some were finishing schools designed to teach the arts of conversation and comportment. Others called themselves academies and offered instruction in languages, reading, geography, and mathematics. Both finishing schools and academies offered needlework instruction as vehicles for religious instruction and for furthering education in mathematics and the basics of the English language.
Much of the emphasis in the curriculum was placed on needlework as evidence of a young woman’s domestic accomplishments. As Americans grew more sophisticated, so too did their style of needlework. Working the alphabet into needlework design began in the seventeenth century. Pictorial embroideries on silk were an eighteenth-century art requiring special technique demanding infinite patience.
Hunt had a real estate office on Neponset Avenue not far from Neponset Circle.
The following is from American Series of Popular Biographies. Massachusetts Edition. Boston: Graves & Steinbarger, 1891.
Henry W. Hunt was educated in the Dorchester schools, graduating about the year 1859.
Subsequently, desiring to enter the navy, he studied at the Nautical School in Boston, and graduated in 1862 at the head of his class. When the Civil War broke out, he was too young for a commission, although successfully passing examination; and accordingly he volunteered, and served on land and sea. He participated in a number of spirited naval and land operations, and on one occasion received honorary mention from General Foster for daring work in helping to pick up torpedoes. He also received a complimentary letter from Admiral Flusser.
Meanwhile his father had established stores in various parts of the interior of the South; and after the close of the war he went there to manage a number of these enterprises, penetrating into some of the roughest sections of the Southern country, then in an unsettled and turbulent condition. After remaining South about two years, he returned to Massachusetts, and became interested in large business enterprises in company with prominent men of affairs, among them General Benjamin F. Butler, in which he was engaged for the next twenty years.
In 1875-76, when plans were forming for the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, he was selected by the Massachusetts State Commissioners to arrange an exhibit representing the great marine interests of the State, a task for which he was exceptionally qualified, having an intimate acquaintance with their various features. As a result of his efforts a most notable and unique collection was brought together, including models of the ocean and river craft used for purposes of commerce, the fisheries, war and pleasure, from the settlement of the colonies to modern times–models of a single-scull skiff to a ship of the line, of merchant vessels of a century ago and the swift clipper ships of the forties an fifties, of historic warships, the old-style frigates, the ‘Constitution,’ the ‘Ohio,’ with an Ericsson monitor and the ‘Kearsage,’ of whaling-ships and ancient and modern fishing-vessels, of the first American steamer that ever weathered the passage of Cape Horn, of apparatus for life-saving, of a great variety of beautiful yachts–the whole constituting the most complete and extensive marine exhibit ever made at an international exhibition.
Captain Hunt had charge of the exhibit at Philadelphia, and he also took a leading part in the arrangement for the international regatta, introducing, among other striking features, a whale-boat race between crews composed of New Bedford whalers. While in Philadelphia he became especially acquainted with the Russian and Brazilian commissioners; and at the close of the exhibition, during which he made himself useful to them in various ways, he accompanied the Russians on a tour through the principal cities of the country. Subsequently the Emperor Dom Pedro offered him a position in the Brazilian navy, ans shortly after he received a similar offer from the Russian government. Accepting the latter, he went to Russia towards the close of 1876, and, in recognition of the civilities he had shown the Russian commissioners in America, and services rendered by him, was decorated there by the czar with a gold medal representing the Order of Saint Stanislaus. He remained in Russia several months, traveling extensively in the country, and then returned to the United States in May, 1878, as one of two special agents of the Russian government accredited with powers to assist in examining and selecting fast-sailing steam-craft to be fitted as cruisers for the Russian service in anticipation of war with England, at that time believed to be imminent. Their advent and proceedings made a great commotion in American newspaper offices, and were the occasion of many sensational reports.”
During the Russian-Turkish War, Captain Hunt was chief-of-staff of the Russian admiral L.P. Semetschine.
Captain Hunt’s interest in marine matters has been constant, and this has been notably displayed in behalf of the National Museum at Washington, toward the upbuilding of which he has been a valued contributor. He has in his possession letters expressing appreciation of his services in that direction, and requesting their continuance, from Professor Spencer Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. In 1885, when again abroad, he bore a letter from William E. Chandler, then Secretary of the Navy, under date of February 9, as follows:–
Captain Henry W. Hunt:
Sir,–During your proposed visit to Europe this department would be glad to receive from you any information which you may obtain concerning ships and all articles connected with their construction and use, also to receive your observations thereon. At the time of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, in 1876, your nautical exhibit in the Massachusetts section was highly commended; and further researches and efforts of yours in the same direction cannot fail to be of value. Wishing you all possible success in your mission, I am
Very respectfully,
William E. Chandler,
Secretary of the Navy
In later years Captain Hunt has been engaged in large real estate operations. During the period between 1890 and 1895 his conveyances included nearly a hundred valuable pieces of property in Norfolk County alone. These were mainly to large investors and holders of trust funds. In 1895, having acquired the interests of various owners of a tract of land in Squantum, with a deep-water front of two and a half miles and an area of over seven hundred and seventy acres, he carried through a deal with the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad Company, by which this tract became a freight terminal for the system. The same year he began the development of Harbor Bluffs, Hyannis, one of the largest and most beautiful tracts of shore property on the south shore of Cape Cod. Captain Hunt is an experienced yachtsman, having been familiar with yachts from boyhood, and has long been prominently connected with local yacht clubs. He now owns the fast schooner yacht “Breeze.” He is a member of the Massachusetts Yacht Club, vice-president of the Hyannis Yacht Club, member of the Forty-fourth Regiment Association, of the Quincy Historical Society, of the Barnstable County Agricultural Society, and of the Society of Colonial Wars. He also expects soon to become a member of the Sons of the Revolution. In politics he is a Democrat. He is unmarried.–Men of Progress, 1896.
Dorchester Illustration no. 2478 All Saints Parish
All Saints’ Episcopal Church began in 1867 as a mission of St. Mary’s Church, and in 1874 it became a separate parish in Dorchester Lower Mills.. In 1882 Colonel Oliver Peabody and his wife, Mary Lothrop Peabody, paid to have the chapel moved along Dorchester Avenue from Lower Mills to Ashmont. The building was placed on a lot that is now home to the Ashmont T station. At that time the railroad station was on the north side of Peabody Square, at the angle created by Dorchester Avenue and Argyle Street (now Talbot).
The building appears at the left of the photograph in its location near Peabody Square. The detail from the 1884 atlas shows the location of the Parish of All Saints as well as Ashmont Station.
Colonel Oliver Peabody and his wife, Mary Lothrop Peabody, endowed All Saints’ with vast sums of money. They contributed eighty thousand toward the one hundred fifteen thousand dollars needed to build the new stone church in Peabody Square at 209 Ashmont Street from 1892 to 1894.
Dorchester Illustration no. 2477 Hotel at Lower Mills
Hotel at Lower Mills
Minot Thayer owned a hotel that later became known as Young’s Hotel and also known at some time as the Hotel Milton located on the west side of Adams Street at Lower Mills, approximately where the Baker Chocolate Administration Building was built in 1919. The detail from the 1874 atlas shows Thayer’s property as gray-shaded buildings across from the bend in the Neponset River. Either the building was remodeled or replaced, or the street was widened with the result that the building depicted in the postcard is closer to Adams Street than in the 1874 atlas. (This section of Adams Street has, at times, been called Washington Street).
The History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Dorchester, Massachusetts by John R. Chaffee (Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1917) mentions the old tavern conducted by Minot Thayer, Sr. The 1858 and 1874 maps show the hotel property owned by Minot Thayer. After 1874 the property was acquired by Seth Mann and later conveyed to the Baker Company in the early 1900s.
Message from Milton Historical Society:
As you may know Minot Thayer purchased the Blue Hill Hotel (later called Clark’s Tavern) in Milton in 1832 from Abigail Tucker. He kept it as a hotel for several years then rented it to several individuals: Cephas Belcher (brother-in-law), Mr. Linfield, Vinton Clark of Randolph, Mr. Huckins (son-in-law) and last it was kept by Wm. H. Clark (son-in-law) who either purchased or inherited the hotel after after the death of Minot Thayer. You might enjoy the following incident I found about Minot Thayer and his Lower Mills tavern. It’s from old notebook donated to the Milton Historical Society by Eleanor Martin who had recorded such incidents from talks with her father and grandfather over the years.
Bill Miller, the brother of Annette Miller [who owned “Miss Miller’s Female Academy” aka Milton Hill House], followed the sea. He was “full of rum and full of fight” most of the time. On one occasion he was called as a witness against tavern keeper Minot Thayer. “Mr. Miller,” said the judge, are you acquainted with Mr. Thayer?” “Yes, sir.” “Keeps a tavern at the Lower Mills, doesn’t he?” “Yes, sir.” “Did you ever drink anything at Mr. Thayer’s?” Yes, sir.” “What was it you drank there?” No reply. “Ever drink any rum there?” “Don’t think I ever did, sir.” “Ever drank any brandy there?” “Don’t think I ever did, sir.” “Ever drink any gin there?” “Don’t think I ever did, sir.” “Ever drank any wine there?” “Don’t think I ever did, sir.” “I suppose you know what rum, brandy, gin and wine are, Mr. Miller.” Bill straightened up: “Sir, I have drunk rum in Jamaica, gin in Holland, brandy and wine in France,” “but I never drank anything of that sort at Mr. Thayer’s.” “But you say you have drank at Mr. Thayer’s. What was it you drank? What do you call it?” “I call it – a damn – villainous – compound!”
Dorchester Illustration no. 2476 Territory given up for the creation of Hyde Park
On April 22, 1868, the new Town of Hyde Park was incorporated out of land coming from Dorchester, Milton and Dedham. The town was annexed to the City of Boston in 1912.
The red box in the illustration shows the territory given to Hyde Park. The map is from 1850. You can see Mattapan Square at the right.
By 1800, Dorchester thought its territory was settled. Towns to the south had split off over 170 years to create Milton, Stoughton, part of Walpole, part of Wrentham, Stoughtonham, Foxborough, Sharon, Canton, Avon and part of Bridgewater. Then in 1804 a bitter battle resulted in the loss of South Boston to the City of Boston. In 1854 Dorchester lost the Washington Village (Andrew Square) area to Boston as well. In 1868 the relatively undeveloped western end of Dorchester was given up for the creation of Hyde Park. The remainder is what we know today, including many villages from Mattapan Square to Neponset to Upham’s Corner to Columbia Point.
Dorchester Illustration no. 2475 Walter Baker Old Stone Mill
The stone building at the left of the photo was known as the Old Stone Mill on the west side of Adams Street next to the Neponset River. Built in 1849, it replaced an earlier stone mill building on the same site. The top of Walter Baker’s Pierce Mill building appears in the distance on the east side of Adams Street. The Pierce Mill was constructed in 1872, so the photographs is no earlier than that year.
The early wooden mill building on this site was replaced in 1813 by Edmund Baker with a building constructed of granite blocks. The building was used for the manufacture of woolen cloth and satinette, a cotton product with a satin-like finish, as well as for the manufacture of chocolate. The building was destroyed by fire in 1848, and Walter Baker built a new stone building (the one in the photograph), to be used as a cacao roasting mill. In 1891 the building was replaced by the Baker Mill building, a brick building designed by Winslow and Wetherell in the Romanesque Revival style.
The Baker Mill building, built in 1891, now houses residential condominiums, where an individual unit may sell for many times the cost of construction of the whole six-story building: $135,000.
Dorchester Illustration no. 2474 Which came first: the trolley or the cemetery?
The photo, showing the trolley line between the parts of the Cedar Gove Cemetery, was taken by Herbert Stier in 1949.
Which came first, the trolley or the cemetery? The short answer is the cemetery.
The first railroad line through Dorchester, which was in operation by 1845, was the Old Colony along the eastern edge of the town, a right of way now used by the T to Quincy and beyond. The following year the Dorchester and Milton Branch Railroad was incorporated to run from the Neponset station of the Old Colony to Mattapan Square.
The concept of a cemetery near the Neponset was approved in 1868. The name of Cedar Grove Cemetery was officially adopted in January, 1869, and the first cemetery lot was sold in May, 1870.
In 1872 the Old Colony and Newport Railway Corporation built the Shawmut Branch Railroad, a steam railroad, as a connection between the Dorchester and Milton Branch Railroad near the Neponset River. This line is the branch that leads to Fields Corner, Shawmut and Ashmont, then on to join the Dorchester and Milton Branch railroad at the southern edge of the Cedar Grove Cemetery and leads on to Mattapan Square. The Act to Incorporate the Shawmut Railroad Company was passed by the Massachusetts legislature June 22, 1870. The act gave Edmund P. Tileston (who had paper factories at Mattapan), Henry L. Pierce (who owned the Baker Chocolate Co.) and Franklin King (a major property owner in Dorchester) the right to locate, construct, maintain and operate a railroad with one or more tracks, commencing at some convenient point on the Neponset River … crossing in its course the Milton Branch Railroad and the Cedar Grove Cemetery …
After the electrification of the T in 1926, the part of the Dorchester and Milton Branch Railroad that traveled eastward to Neponset experienced less traffic and later fell into disuse. Its route was approximately that of the current bike-path.
check out www.dorcheteratheneum.org and www.dorchesteratheneum2.org
