Dorchester Historical Society

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1703

The following is from “Dot Woman Wrote for National Magazines, Published Many Books”  By Anthony Sammarco, published: Dorchester Community News, 12 October 1990

Josephine Preston Peabody was one of the most talented poets to have lived in Dorchester.  She was born in 1874 in New York, the daughter of Susan J. Morrill and Charles Kilham Peabody.

When she was a child, her father died.  The family then moved to the home of her maternal grandparents, Charles and Susan Jackson Morrill on King Street, Dorchester.

Peabody entered the Harris School on Mill Street (now Victory Road), the school attended earlier by Alice Stone Blackwell (b. 1857), daughter of the famous women’s rights advocate Lucy Stone.  In 1887, while a student at the Harris School, Peabody began to write lyrical poetry, a form she continued with through her admission to Girls Latin School in Boston.

Getting Published

Her poetry was so well-received that it was published in both Atlantic Monthly and Scribners.  She became a voracious writer, penning a novel, a comedy, and 22 poems that appeared in magazines.  Her appetite for writing was insatiable, and recognition was forthcoming.

In 1892, she left Girls Latin School due to ill health, writing numerous short stories and poems, many of which were published.  However, it was in 1894, when she entered Radcliffe College as a special student, that her writing took on new meaning and acquired a luster of prose.  Her writings seemed to flow forth in a steady and even-paced rhythm.

After two years at Radcliffe, she left in 1896.  She continued to write and published poems such as “Old Greek Folk Stories,” “The Wayfarers,” “Fortune and Men’s Eyes,” and “Marlowe” by 1901, in addition to dramas, novels, and short stories.

Making Changes

In 1899 she left the Morrill home in Dorchester to live on Linnean Street in Cambridge.  Undoubtedly this area, known as Avon Hill and laid out as a “Street Car Suburb” for the newly-affluent, gave new impetus for her writings.  In fact, she had written, “when my father died, we left New York and came to Dorchester … in Darkest Suburbs”.  Undoubtedly, Cambridge, with its proximity to both Harvard and Radcliffe, offered a more supportive and understanding environment than Dorchester, a newly-annexed town to the city of Boston.

Her travels to Europe began after her move, and she spent many months traveling through England, Scotland, Holland, Holland, and Belgium.  In 1901 she began a lecture position at Wellesley College, which lasted two years.  It was in 1906, however, that her life changed when she married Lionel Marks, professor of mechanical engineering at Harvard University.

The support of a husband allowed Josephine Peabody the luxury of the written word.  She entered and won, over 300 other participants, the Stratford Competition in England.  Her play The Piper was thought so talented and enjoyable that she received much attention at its premier in England.  It was after her marriage that her writings, primarily published by Houghton-Mifflin, continued on: “The Singing Man” in 1911, “The Wolf of Gubbio” in 1913, “Harvest Moon” in 1916, and “Portrait of Mrs. W” in 1922.

The couple also had two children.

Peabody’s writings, so extensive for one so young, came to an end all too quickly when she died in 1922.  Her reading public, probably unaware of her youth, was enthralled by her work; Peabody was able to crate the impression of realism, using the printed word.  She once wrote: “I am wildly happy while I am doing it, though it doesn’t for a moment dull the longing after color, and shan’t neither!”

No, the writing shan’t dull, nor even lose its color, for as long as “The Book of the Little Past” exists, we can retreat into the world illuminated by Josephine Preston Peabdoy.

Anthony Sammarco is a local writer and lecturer on the history of Dorchester whose articles appear regularly in the Community News. 

In addition to poems and other material published in periodicals, Peabody’s separately published titles include:

Old Greek Folk-Stories Told Anew, 1897

The Wayfarers, 1898

Fortune and Men’s Eyes, 1900

Marlowe, 1901

Singing Leaves, 1903

The Book of the Little Past, 1908

Piper: a Play in Four Acts, 1909

The Singing Man, 1911

The Wolf of Gubbio, 1913

Harvest Moon, 1916

Chameleon: a Comedy in Three Acts, 1917

Wings, a Drama in One Act, 1917

Portrait of Mrs. W, 1922

Diary and Letters, 1925

Collected Plays, 1927

Collected Poems, 1927

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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. 1702

Article from newspaper (Boston Globe?) December 25, 1925

Dorchester Man Plays Santa

500 Children Will Receive Toys and Feast from Joseph A. Flynn

Out of his love for the children in his neighborhood Joseph A. Flynn, the well-known druggist at 940 Dorchester Avenue, Dorchester, will play Santa Claus to about 500 little ones on Christmas Eve.

The large Christmas tree is already in its place of honor in the middle of the large store with tinsel and bright Christmas ornaments covering the boughs.  Over it, under it, and all around it are magnificent toys.

There are big baby dolls and dressed-up dolls and sets of toy dishes for the girls, while the boys are going to find delight in the fire engines and mechanical toys waiting for them.

There will be candy and ice cream on Christmas Eve, when all the children in the neighborhood will come to the big party held in the store.  Christmas carols, coming over the radio, will lend the real Christmas atmosphere to the occasion, while Santa Claus, impersonated by Joseph L. Corcoran, the well-known raconteur, will make his appearance at just the right time.

Others who are assisting Mr. Flynn in his enterprise are Tony Di Angelo, Edward M. Sullivan of the school committee and Daniel Chisholm.  Little Paul Flynn, the three-year-old son of Mr. Flynn will be the young head of the affair.

The whole drug store has already taken on the festive holiday colors of red and green and white, and the children of the neighborhood are flocking there, eagerly awaiting the Christmas Eve party.

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Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1701

 Henry A. Clapp

[Material excerpted directly from introduction to Letters to the Home Circle: The North Carolina Service of Pvt. Henry A. Clapp, Company F, Forty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, 1862-1863. Edited by John R. Barden. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1998.  Barden gives his sources in footnotes in that publication.  Letters to the Home Circle includes the text of 44 letters written by Henry Austin Clapp to members of his family back in Dorchester.]

Henry Austin Clapp was born July 17, 1841, the eldest child of John Pierce Clapp, of Dorchester, Massachusetts, and Mary Ann Bragg Clapp.  

Henry passed his entrance examination to Harvard College in the summer of 1856, following in the footsteps of his great-grandfather Noah, who was graduated in the class of 1735.  

Clapp appears to have been one of the college’s quiet students, progressing in his studies along a predictable and creditable path.  He produced an exhibition part (or essay) titled “A Latin Dialogue from the Comedy ‘All’s Not Gold That Glitters'” (with fellow student Edmund Wetmore) in 1858, another (“Caricature in Literature”) in 1859, and a commencement presentation (“Grotius as a Man”) in 1860.  Following his graduation, he was elected usher in the Boston Latin School and taught there until January of the following year.  In May 1861 he began to read law in the office of David H. Mason of Boston and entered Harvard’s Dane Law School in the fall.  He won the Bowdoin Prize in 1862 for a treatise titled “The Services of Modern Missionaries to Science and Knowledge.”  During his second term in the law school, Clapp also served as a proctor in the college, living in the college buildings and attempting to maintain some order among the undergraduates.

On August 12, 1862, halfway through his law studies, Henry Clapp sent a letter to the officers of the Harvard Corporation, informing them that he resigned his place as proctor, having enlisted with the nine-months men in the New England Guards Regiment.

By the beginning of October, rumors of departure spread through the ranks of the Forty-fourth, although whether the intended destination was the Potomac or New Orleans or North Carolina was anybody’s guess.  Northern morale had been boosted the previous month by the bruising defeat inflicted on Lee’s army at Antietam in Maryland.  Was the Forty-Fourth to join McClellan’s army to wipe out the rebels in Virginia once and for all? On October 17 a soldier got a glimpse of a staff officer’s box marked “New Berne,” and orders on October 20 confirmed the fact. The Forty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Militia was bound for North Carolina.

Henry Clapp’s letters are not just a personal record.  They give a striking depiction of life in an occupied Southern town.  Since he was writing to members of his family, no doubt Clapp left out a great deal of the ugliness, filth, meanness, and vulgarity that accompanied day-to-day life in any army.  Nevertheless, what is left is still true and tells a great deal (and often tells it very well) about an important era in the histories of both North Carolina and Massachusetts.

Unlike a number of his comrades, Clapp did not reenlist or take a commission after his muster out at Readville on June 18, 1863.  He returned to law school at Cambridge and resumed his proctorship for a year.  After working for a while in a Boston law firm, he was admitted to the bar on July 1, 1865.  He practiced law until 1875, when he was appointed assistant clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County, Massachusetts; his appointment was renewed regularly until 1887, when he became clerk, a post he held for the remainder of his life. 

Soon after his return from North Carolina, Clapp began to contribute articles, chiefly book reviews, to the Boston Daily Advertiser.  By 1868 the paper employed him as dramatic and musical critic, and he wrote articles for a number of other magazines and newspapers as well.  His astute observations on Boston’s theatrical performances gained him a reputation as one of the three or four most influential American dramatic critics of the late nineteenth century.  In 1885, building on the enthusiasm instilled by William Rolfe at Dorchester High School thirty years earlier, Clapp began a series of lectures on Shakespeare’s plays.  He was invited to repeat his talks many times in the years that followed.  A collection of his writings was published as Reminiscences of a Dramatic Critic in 1902, the same year that he became chief dramatic critic for the Boston Herald.

Henry A. Clapp died of pneumonia on February 19, 1904, at the age of sixty- two and was buried in the old North Dorchester Cemetery.  Oddly enough, this son of Dorchester survived his native town by more than three decades.  By the 1860s the city of Boston, which had annexed the town of Roxbury, needed all or part of Dorchester in order to complete a drainage plan for the city.  The voters of Dorchester gave their approval to annexation on June 22, 1869.  The town, which had been the first in New England to establish the town meeting, held its last such conclave on December 28, 1869.  The annexation took effect on January 4. 1870.

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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. 1700

Today I am hoping that someone has more information about the subject of the illustration.  Please let me know if you know anything about this.

Siphon bottle.  Nozzle has words: Suffolk Bott. Co.  Bottle has stenciled wording: Boston Club Bottling Co., 860 Morton Street, Dorchester, Mass.

If you are heading west along Morton Street toward Blue Hill Avenue, you will see the old police station in disrepair on the right, then the railroad tracks, then a small group of buildings where 860 is located.

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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. 1699

Organized in 1888, the Central Congregational Church at the corner of Waldeck and Tonawanda Streets was designed by Albert West, a Dorchester resident, in a local Gothic style derivative of All Saints’.  In March, 2003, the sign on the church was New Testament Pentecostal Church of God in Christ.

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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. 1698

The day before yesterday, we saw the Colonial Filling station on Washington Street.  In that picture, there was a bit of a house barely visible behind the filling station.  That house was the Torrey mansion, which stood on the corner of Washington Street and Melville Avenue.  The filling station was built on the lot occupied by the mansion, and the mansion was demolished not long after.  Designed by Cabot and Chandler, the Torrey House was one of the most elaborate 19th-century homes in Dorchester.

ELBRIDGE TORREY was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, September 17,1837. He died at his home in Dorchester, Massachusetts, January 2, 1914. Mr. Torrey belonged to the old school of Boston merchants, noted for their enterprise and sterling integrity. His philanthropies were many and of great variety, though always free from ostentation. It is within bounds to say that no man stood higher than he in the esteem and confidence of the people where he made his home for more than the past half century.

The following positions have been held by Mr. Torrey: President of Torrey, Bright & Capen Co. (carpet importers), since its incorporation, until he retired from business in 1907; corporate member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, from 1876, also a member of its Prudential Committee, serving until he resigned in 1893; Trustee of Mount Holyoke College from 1899 until his death; was elected a member of the Board of Trustees at Hartford Theological Seminary, and served 17 years, the last 3 of which he held the office of President. He then declined a re-election; President of Central Turkey College, and at the time of his death, of the Cullis Consumptives’ Home. He was one of the original members of the Boston Congregational Club. He was at one time unanimously elected its President but declined to serve. He was also a member of the Board of Council of the Home for Aged Couples and for fifty years was identified with the Second Church of Dorchester, was Deacon forty-five years, and Chairman forty-two years of the Board of Assessors of the Parish. He was Vice-president of the Congregational Church Building Society and a Director in the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He was for several years on the Board of Directors of the Elm Hill Home for Aged Couples. He was also for seventeen years on the Board of Trustees of Bradford Academy.

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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. 1697

Today’s illustration is a photo of an American Red Cross medal with the name Alice Taylor Jacobs on the back and Dorchester Branch ARC on the front.

Alice Taylor Jacobs and her husband Horace Homer Jacobs lived at 22 Algonquin Street from about 1900 to 1920.  Alice was president of the Dorchester Woman’s Club for a number of years as well as the Thursday Morning Fortnightly Club and the Shakespeare Breakfast Club.  She was described by a relative as a club woman.

Although small of stature she addressed meetings in support of war bonds in World War I, a time when women did not often speak to mixed gatherings.  She was a suffragette and was the first of her generation in her family to drive a car.  She was apparently a party girl, because someone at the Greenwood Methodist Church where she was a member told her she was too gay to be holy [when gay meant light-hearted].  Alice did not go to the church again.

Alice (June 23, 1864 – May 19, 1943) is buried in Springfield Cemetery in the Jacobs family plot along with her husband Horace H. Jacobs (1860-1937)

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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. 1696

Today’s illustration from the July, 1926, issue of The Architectural Forum shows a small filling station (construction completed in 1924) located at the corner of Washington Street and Melville Avenue.  The Colonial Filling stations were operated as a division of Beacon Oil.

You may need to zoom in with your picture viewer.

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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 Historical Society, 195 Boston Street, Dorchester, MA 

 January 29, 2012  at 2 pm.

 Stephen Puleo will talk about The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. 

 On Jan. 15, 1919, a 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses collapsed on Boston’s waterfront.  The flood demolished wooden homes, even the brick fire station.  The number of dead wasn’t known for days.

 Copies of Mr. Puleo’s book, Dark Tide, may be purchased at the talk ($16.00). Mr. Puleo will be happy to sign your copy.

Dorchester Illustration of the Day no. 1695

10 Alpha Road

Postcard of 10 Alpha Road with handwritten note that the house was the home of Martha Dana Shepard, who died July 18, 1914.  Postally unused.  Martha Dana Shepard was a noted pianist who had earlier lived in Clam Point.

The following is from the Codman Square House Tour Booklet 1999 

Year Built: circa 1895

Style: Queen Anne / Colonial Revival

Architect: Unknown

A former Boston Sunday Globe “Home of the Week,” this house was adaptively restored by its previous owners.  As a result it combines historic features with a modern outlook that is respectful of the original architecture but not enslaved by it.  Entering the front hall, one is greeted by an oak staircase whose offset newel is carved with Classical acanthus leaves.  To the left is a pleasant living room, beyond which is the oak-trimmed dining room, whose fireplace features a beveled-mirror overmantel and tile facing which depicts a shepherd boy playing the pipe to his sheep.  Visitors to last year’s tour may recall an identical set of tiles at 31 [i.e., 11] Tremlett Street.  A pass-through to the kitchen, at the left of the mantel retains its original hardware.  At the rear is a modern kitchen whose ceiling has been opened to the rafters, creating a space that is both dramatic and flooded with light from the clerestory windows above the cabinets.  Note the plant ledge in the breakfast area.  Returning to the front hall the stair rises past a pair of stained-glass windows whose laurel-wreath motif repeats the Classical theme of the newel.  Like the kitchen, the master bedroom ceiling has been opened to the roofline.  No significant historic fabric was disturbed in the process, and the decorative dormers that ornament the exterior of the house have been reclaimed as an interior focal point.

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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