The house at 478 Columbia Road was built in the mid-nineteenth century. Today’s vintage photo is from about 1880.Note the differences in the modern image.
William B. Bradlee, Jr., a lard oil manufacturer turned druggist, was one of the early owners. He and his wife, Helen, had four children over a period of 19 years. Bradlee sold the property to Ralph Butler in 1874 for $15,000, and Butler also assumed an outstanding mortgage with a balance of $7,000.
Ralph Butler was from Portland, Maine.
“Ralph Butler … acquired a public-school education in Phillips, Maine. He obtained his first business experience in a country store in Augusta, Maine, which he carried on successfully until the gold-fever excitement of 1849 attracted him to the Pacific coast. With two other fortune-seekers, he built a bark [a sailing ship] in which, with thirty companions, he made the voyage to the Golden Gate by way of Cape Horn. Although arriving safely, most of the party were ill, which deprived the venture of its anticipated success. Mr. Butler, however, retrieved his losses by building and running the second steamboat on the Sacramento River. In this boat, called the ‘Orient,’ he owned a controlling interest for four years. Going to Sacramento when there were but three huts in the place, he erected a business block from which he derived substantial returns; and after remaining in California several years, he returned to Augusta. He shortly established himself in the wholesale flour business in Portland, Me., but later went to Chelsea, Mass., and eventually settled in Boston, where he was engaged in the same line of trade for twenty years, or until his retirement from business in 1885.” (Source: Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.. Boston, 1891)
Butler became a Dorchester land developer. He died in 1915 and is buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery. His family continued to occupy the house into the 1920s. The house is now owned and occupied by the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministry.