The following is from the entry on the trail for Geraldine Pindell Trotter, who lived at 97 Sawyer Ave.
“Geraldine Trotter was a Boston-born civil rights activist in the early 20th century who moved to Dorchester after her marriage in 1899. She served as the associate editor of The Boston Guardian, an African American newspaper, co-founded by her husband William Monroe Trotter, which was considered radical at the time because it challenged white progressives who largely saw race relations as a southern problem. Her editing and bookkeeping skills were instrumental in keeping the paper afloat. Her death from pneumonia at age 46 during the 1918 influenza epidemic is seen as one reason for its loss of influence. … “She is celebrated in composer Francine Trester’s “A Walk in Her Shoes,” a musical composition premiered by the Boston Landmarks Orchestra in 2021.”
Historic Boston Incorporated announced on January 17, 2024, that it has sold the Fowler Clark Epstein Farm at 487 Norfolk Street to the Urban Farming Institute.
Today’s illustration includes a mural (top) of the farm that was discovered on one of the walls in the house. It depicts the farm in a much earlier period when the land in the area was devoted to agriculture. The farm was once part of a 330- acre estate. The bottom illustration is an image from Google streetview showing the house and barn in its current urban setting.
The property was designated a Boston Landmark in 2006. HBI purchased the property from the Epstein family and, in collaboration with The Trust for Public Land, the North Bennet Street School, restored the original farmhouse and barn. They created planting beds on the open land in front of the buildings.
On Nov. 1, 1927, the Appleton Methodist Episcopal Church (organized March 1848), combined with Trinity Congregational Church (organized May 11, 1859), to form the Community Church of Neponset at 51 Walnut Street. It was sometimes called the Church of the Unity, and now it is the Community Church of Neponset.
The top photo of today’s illustration shows a picture of the church published in a flyer about services resuming in the first decade of the 20th century. It is odd that the church was still called the Appleton Methodist Church at that time. The bottom photo shows the church as it looks today. From a study of atlases, the building seems to be same one, remodeled at some point in the 20th century, but no building permit was found for the alterations. We are not sure when the name of the church was changed to Community Church of Neponset.
In the late 19th century, the Old Colony Railroad train station was located at the end of Crescent Avenue, about two blocks south of the current JFK station on the MBTA’s Red Line. The Old Colony Railroad was constructed along Dorchester’s eastern boundary in the 1840s. The stations in Dorchester were at Crescent Avenue, Savin Hill, Pope’s Hill, and the Shawmut Branch Railway had stations at Fields Corner, Shawmut and Ashmont and Neponset.
This house at 22 Morrill St. was built in the 1890s. It was bought by William H. Brown and Catherine Brown in 1926. The Browns owned the house until 1938, when they failed to make the mortgage payments.
Today’s illustration is a picture of the house from November 1941, at the time the Mt. Washington Co-operative Bank was selling the house at a price of $4,200. The house was owned by the bank until Herbert L and Helen M. Dill purchased it in 1942.
A few street lights of the type seen in the foreclosure photo can still be found in Dorchester along Wellesley Park.
Today’s image is an engraving from 1873 of the Edward Everett birthplace at the Five Corners, now known as Edward Everett Square. The house was taken down in 1898 for the widening of Columbia Road. The site is now occupied by an oddly-shaped three-decker and a Dunkin Donuts store as you can see here
Edward Everett went on to become governor of Massachusetts and U.S. Secretary of State among other accomplishments. The origin and early history of the house are described in Appleton’s Journal, May 31, 1873.
“It is supposed that Colonel Robert Oliver built this house about 1740, and that his son, Thomas Oliver, the last Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts under the crown, was either born here or on the estate, which reckoned in his time some forty acres of pasture and marsh. Dorchester might, appropriately, be called the home of governors, she having furnished Stoughton, Tailer, Belcher, Hutchinson, Oliver, Everett, and Gardner to colony or State.
“The son, afterward lieutenant-governor, had a fortune much exceeding that of his father, left him by a grandfather and great-uncle, so that Oliver, pere, did not feel called upon to make any provision for him in his will, beyond the usual mourning-suit and ring. The younger Oliver removed to Cambridge before the Revolution, where he lived in the elegant seat now known as Elmwood—the residence of James Russell Lowell [the Longfellow House]. … One fine morning in September, 1774, the men of Middlesex appeared in the lieutenant-governor’s grounds, at Cambridge, and wrung from him a resignation, after which he consulted his safety by a flight into Boston. …
“In 1775 [the Dorchester house] was the residence of Colonel William Burch, one of the royal commissioners of customs. This position was no sinecure, considering that the revenue must be collected at the hazard of the officer’s life. Burch, too, fled, and the house was taken possession of by a detachment of the regiment stationed in Dorchester in 1775. Marks of the occupation are still visible here, as they are, also, in the old Clapp homestead nearby, where the three-cornered orifices made by the soldiers’ bayonets are yet seen in the ceiling.”
Oliver Everett, Edward’s father, purchased the estate after the new government confiscated the property as having been owned by a Loyalist who abandoned his possessions by emigrating to England.
Stoughton Street Baptist Church was organized in 1845. The church society soon built a building at the corner of Stoughton and Sumner Street, now 50 Stoughton St. The building was nearly destroyed by fire in 1878. It was enlarged and reconstructed by 1888. The earlier church building is shown at the top of today’s illustration, and a postcard view, circa 1910, of the remodeled building is shown at the bottom.
Today, the building is owned by the Southern New England Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and the congregation is called the Boston Spanish Seventh-day Adventist Church.
James Jessup had a carriage shop on Bowdoin Street near Geneva Avenue. This photograph of his crew is from around 1870. Jessup was born in 1828 in England and died in Dorchester in 1901.
Jessup is identified in the Boston Directory as a carriage and sign painter. The Boston Directory was first published in 1789; it included a list of merchants, traders, doctors and public officials.
This illustration is an advertisement for Baker’s Cocoa from Christmas1925, depicting people ice skating and drinking hot chocolate.
Walter Baker & Co. is internationally known for its cocoa and baking squares. Founded in Dorchester by James Baker in 1780, the company is named for his grandson. The Baker Company remained in Dorchester until the 1960s.
Enjoy your time with family and friends and your winter activities.
The Keystone building on Hallet Street that overlooks the Southeast Expressway was originally
built for the Hallet Davis Piano Company.
The Keystone Manufacturing Co. had been founded in 1919 to build machines and other
products. In 1942, the company moved to former piano company building at 151 Hallet Street.
The company specialized in the manufacture of toys. In 1931, the company introduced the “Ride
‘Em” line of steel toys. The company also branched out with a company called Keystone Wood
Toys. In the 1950s, Keystone Wood Toys was located at 143 Hallet St., while Keystone Manufacturing was at 151 Hallet St.
Keystone branched out in 1954 with the Keystone Camera Co., but the company closed six years later. The Keystone Camera Co. was acquired by Berkey Photo, who moved the camera operations to Clifton, New Jersey.
In 1977, Corcoran, Mullins, Jennison Management Co. bought the building and converted it into 223 one- and two- bedrooms apartments for the elderly and handicapped.
