Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1768

Today’s illustration shows the Lydia Clapp House at 6 Percival Street.  The house was featured in the very first episode of the PBS show “This Old House” in 1979.

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. 

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The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com

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gh the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1767

Last year we saw the Elbridge Smith School from a distance, but today we have a newly acquired close-up.  This school building was in place at the corner of Dorchester Avenue and Centre Street by 1874.  The Henderson School (formerly O’Hearn School) is located at this site now.  The building was built as the second high school and served that role until the yellow brick Dorchester High building was erected in Codman Square in 1900.

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The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com

If you value receiving the DIOTD, please express your appreciation by making a donation to the Dorchester Historical Society, either by regular mail at 195 Boston Street, Dorchester, MA 02125, or through the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org

gh the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1766

Excerpts from Fire From the Sky By Evan McLeod Wylie

From the July 1988 issue of Yankee.

new.yankeemagazine.com/article/fire-sky

June 26, 1987

Near Lonsdale Street a security guard saw a plane with its engines sputtering drop out of the mists. The young people on the corner saw it skim low over Semont Road, strike the roof of the Byrnes house on Lonsdale Street, slam into the Tully house next door, and hit the sidewalk in front of the Tully and Knauber houses. A tremendous fireball spewed a fountain of burning fuel over the houses and the cars parked in the street.

Instantly, Lonsdale Street was transformed into an inferno. “It didn’t even look like a fire scene,” recalls a witness. “It looked like a battlefield. Saigon! Cars in the street were burning. Flames 60 feet high were engulfing the homes. My first thought was: Nobody can escape this! Everything is going!”

Off-duty police officer Mark Hayes, living on nearby Wells Avenue was awakened by what sounded like thunder. He grabbed his clothes and police radio. Reaching the street, he saw the mushrooming fireball and called in, “Fire on Lonsdale Street!”

Police officers Wayne Williams and Dennis Rorie wheeled onto Lonsdale and beheld a scene that reminded Rorie of “something right out of the movie Apocalypse Now.” Leaping from their cruiser, they raced into homes, found people stumbling about in their night clothing, and led them outside. Hayes, off-duty policeman William Walsh, and teenagers from the comer joined them, banging on doors and shouting, “Get up! Get out!”

George and Bridey Knauber were awakened by the blast and ran from their bedroom to the porch door of their second-floor apartment. Opening it, they were met by a sheet of flames. George slammed the door and took his wife downstairs. They ran down a narrow alley to the street. As they dodged around a flaming car, it blew up behind them.

…

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The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1765

Chemistry class at Dorchester High School in 1901.

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The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com

If you value receiving the DIOTD, please express your appreciation by making a donation to the Dorchester Historical Society, either by regular mail at 195 Boston Street, Dorchester, MA 02125, or through the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1764

We received news this week of far-flung descendants of Timothy J. McCarthy, a Dorchester resident who perished on the Titanic.  Karen Killoren in Austin, TX, appeared in the video noted below, and her McCarthy cousins in Buffalo Grove, IL, called and emailed to get in touch with us.  Timothy J. McCarthy and his family moved into 52 Nelson Street between 1908 and 1910, and the 1933 atlas shows that his family still owned the property at that time.  The 1913 Blue Book still showed the residents at 52 Nelson Street as Mr. & Mrs. Timothy J. McCarthy.

There was an article in this week’s Dorchester Reporter about Timothy J. McCarthy who perished in the Titanic.  Also there was a news video about Mr. McCarthy’s last letter before he embarked on myfoxAustin  (see way below)

Dorchester lost a man when the Titanic went down

By 

Patrick O’Connor, Special to the Reporter
Apr. 12, 2012

Timothy J. McCarthy: Perished in Titanic disaster. By the spring of 1912, Timothy J. McCarthy of Nelson Street in Dorchester was no stranger to trans-Atlantic voyages. The 54-year-old father of five had already made 22 journeys as part of his job as a buyer of stationery for the Jordan Marsh Co.  – to see the rest go to this link:

http://www.dotnews.com/2012/dorchester-lost-man-when-titanic-went-down

Video from  Austin, TX, tv – take a look at the video to see more pictures and documents

Titanic Victim’s Last Letter Sent 100 Years Ago

Updated: Thursday, 12 Apr 2012, 9:30 PM CDT
Published : Thursday, 12 Apr 2012, 9:29 PM CDT

It’s been almost a century since the Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean, killing nearly 1,500 people. One victim was Timothy McCarthy. His great granddaughter Karen Killoren has a letter he mailed to his five children just before he boarded the ship.

To see the rest, go to this link:
http://www.onenewspage.co.uk/video/20120413/884823/Titanic-Victim-8217-Last-Letter.htm

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The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com

If you value receiving the DIOTD, please express your appreciation by making a donation to the Dorchester Historical Society, either by regular mail at 195 Boston Street, Dorchester, MA 02125, or through the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1763

Today’s illustration shows the Dorchester High School girls’ gym class about 1901.

Photo from City of Boston Archives:

http://cityofbostonarchives.tumblr.com/

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The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com

If you value receiving the DIOTD, please express your appreciation by making a donation to the Dorchester Historical Society, either by regular mail at 195 Boston Street, Dorchester, MA 02125, or through the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1762

The Dorchester Reporter last week carried a story about Douglas MacKinnon.  Dorchester Reporter, April 5, 2012: Memoir with a Message: Dot native MacKinnon tells of rough-and-tumble journey. By Bill Forry.

The article begins: “Douglas McKinnon, a son of Dorchester, begins his memoir as a riveting, rat-a-tat account of a childhood punctuated by near-daily narrow escapes from the undertow drag of his reckless parents, whose taste for drink and excess in 1960s Boston was surpassed only by their ambivalence about their own kids’ survival.”

For the rest, take a look at:

http://www.dotnews.com/2012/memoir-message-dot-native-mackinnon-tells-rough-and-tumble-journey

Douglas MacKinnon is former White House and Pentagon official who spent three years working in a Joint Command. Douglas MacKinnon was also press secretary to former Senator Bob Dole. Douglas MacKinnon has published hundreds of columns in every major paper in the country, and Douglas MacKinnon is heard and seen regularly on radio and television as a political commentator. Douglas MacKinnon is also an author and novelist.

He is the author of The Apocalypse Directive, Vengeance Is Mine, and Rolling Pennies in the Dark.

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The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com

If you value receiving the DIOTD, please express your appreciation by making a donation to the Dorchester Historical Society, either by regular mail at 195 Boston Street, Dorchester, MA 02125, or through the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1761

Yesterday we saw the Lucy Stone School, one of two school buildings that the Roxbury Prep Charter School will begin to use.  Today we have the other one: the Quincy E. Dickerman School.

The Quincy E. Dickerman School was closed by the city’s school department in 2009.  It was built in 1915 to a design by architect J. A. Schweinfurth.

Quincy Dickerman was a teacher in the Bosotn Public Schools for 50 years. He served as Master of the Brimmer School.

Source: What’s In a Name? Names of Boston’s Schools: Their Origin. Boston: School Volunteers for Boston and the Boston Public Schools, 1980.

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The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com

If you value receiving the DIOTD, please express your appreciation by making a donation to the Dorchester Historical Society, either by regular mail at 195 Boston Street, Dorchester, MA 02125, or through the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1760

The building in the lower part of today’s illustration was built in 1937, and this week the Dorchester Reporter announced that the Roxbury Prep Charter School will expand to the Lucy Stone School building and the Quincy E. Dickerman School building (not pictured).

The building in the upper part of the illustration was constructed between 1918 and 1933, and I am not sure when it was taken down.

http://www.dotnews.com/2012/charter-school-will-expand-two-shuttered-schoolhouses

“After winning approval from the city, Roxbury Prep will be expanding out of its original campus in Mission Hill to two additional sites: the Lucy Stone building on Regina Road and the also-vacant Quincy E. Dickerman School building on Magnolia Street near Uphams Corner.

Roxbury Prep was awarded 1,800 seats by the Commonwealth a year ago February through a state process called charter authorization.

While the school was searching for space last year to accommodate those students both in private real estate and by working with the Boston Public Schools, District, the city was offering three vacant school buildings for lease. Roxbury Prep won its bid to secure leases on the two it will move into soon.

The first of the two additional middle school campuses actually opened last September, but its 75 fifth-graders have been meeting at a temporary location at 214 Harvard Ave. On March 7, Roxbury Prep staff found out they would be moving into the Lucy Stone building.

Today, the Mission Hill campus has 240 students in the sixth through eighth grades. Beginning in September, there will be 300 students there in Grades 5 through 8, 150 students in Grades 5 and 6 at the Lucy Stone campus, and 75 fifth-graders in the Dickerman building. …”

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The Dorchester Illustration of the Day (DIOTD) is sent weekdays. If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please reply to be taken off the e-mail list. If you know others who would like to receive the daily e-mail, please encourage them to join the group by going to http://groups.google.com/group/dorchester-historical-society. You may contact Earl Taylor at ERMMWWT@aol.com

If you value receiving the DIOTD, please express your appreciation by making a donation to the Dorchester Historical Society, either by regular mail at 195 Boston Street, Dorchester, MA 02125, or through the website at www.DorchesterHistoricalSociety.org