Dorchester Illustration 2740 Samuel Downer
Samuel Downer was born in Dorchester in 1807. He was a partner with his father in a West India goods commercial house. Later, Samuel was a manufacturer of sperm whale oil and candles. Many men tried to find an alternative to sperm whale oil for lighting, because the refining process was very expensive. Downer was the most successful in the manufacture of kerosene from asphalt brought to the U.S. from the great asphalt lake on the island of Trinidad.
Downer was another of the Dorchester gentlemen who experimented in agriculture. His estate was located facing Pleasant Street at the corner of Hancock Street (formerly Commercial Street).
“Samuel Downer had at Dorchester on the of the best stocked and best kept horticultural estates in the vicinity of Boston, at the date now referred to, and it held that rank for years afterwards. Its situation was the south-east declivity of ‘Jones Hill.’ Its terraces were numerous and extensive. Fruits, rare in the extreme, were upon the hillside; flowering plants were scattered in settings here and there, and tribes of honey bees, whose hives occupied the level below the terraces, were busy and melodious at their work. On this estate originated the famous Downer cherry.”
Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, (Boston, MA: Privately printed, 1901), 176-177.