Transportation has always been a central factor in the shaping of Jamaica Plain.  One only has to look at how early the main lines of transportation were laid down to see that this is so.  Dedham Road – now Centre Street – was built in 1663.  Going through Dedham, it connected Boston to Providence.  The express stagecoach could make the trip, with no heavy baggage and with four changes of horses, in about four hours.  The Norfolk and Bristol Turnpike – now Washington Street – was built in 1803.  It connected Boston with Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and was the only non-toll road into Boston.  The railroad came in 1834; the Boston & Providence tracks ran along Lamartine Street, where they still are today.  Thus the present day outlines of Jamaica Plain came into being almost at the town’s beginning.

Though the transportation routes have been fairly stable, the modes of transportation have changed dramatically, and with these changes Jamaica Plain has changed.  How fast, how cheaply, and how often one could travel between Jamaica Plain and Boston often determined what kind of people lived in Jamaica Plain.  As transportation changed, the people changed, and as the people changed so did the houses, the institutions, the stores, and the places of recreation.

In the eighteenth century, Jamaica Plain comprised the southern part of the Town of Roxbury, which was described in the following way by a contemporary writer:  “It has several high hills which afford an agreeable prospect of the town and harbor of Boston, and one large pond covering about 120 acres, near which is a plain of a mile in length known by the name of Jamaica Plain, remarkable for the pleasantness of its situation and the number of gentlemen’s houses upon it”. ⁽¹⁾

Its wooded hills, surrounding the deep and beautiful Pond, made Jamaica Plain a perfect site for the country estates of the well-to-do.  The town was connected to Boston only by slow moving and infrequent stagecoaches – the first public coaches began operation in 1733 – so many of these families maintained houses in town as well.  This population included such luminaries as the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Sir Francis Bernard, who from 1760 to 1769 had a summer residence on Pond Street, a sixty acre estate of “beautiful grounds filled with choice fruit trees, plants and shrubs;” ⁽²⁾ and Governor John Hancock, whose country seat was located on Centre Street near the village church.  The population was described by one observer as a “small but choice circle of elegant, graceful and cultivated people used to wealth and accomplished in the arts of life …”

The chief employment of the town was farming; Jamaica Plain helped provide Boston with fresh fruits and vegetables.  However, the presence of a water supply fostered some small-scale industry.  In 1795 the Jamaica Plain Aqueduct Company received a contract to supply Boston with water from Jamaica Pond, which it did until 1848.  Stony Brook, which then flowed above ground from Roxbury Crossing to Forest Hills, was another source of power, and the coming of the railroad along more or less the same route encouraged this development further.  Even before 1850, the Stony Brook Valley was dotted with textile mills, printing shops, foundries, lumber and stone yards, and breweries.  Such industry was, however, clearly subordinate to the area’s great estates.

The institutions and shops of early Jamaica Plain clearly suited a rural village.  As for city government in the mid 1800s,  “The Police Department consisted of one man.  He was chief, sergeant, patrolman, traffic officer, truant officer and everything … The Police Station, Engine House, Lockup and Town Court House were all in one building . . and naturally it was the center for all the town’s activities.  Everything of importance was brought here to be straightened out.” ⁽³⁾  And for many years Seaver’s Store, established in 1796 and located where Blanchard’s Liquor Store now stands, was the only general store in town.  “It was a community store and sold everything.  After supper the gang would collect there, sit around the old stove and discuss everything from politics to women and believe me, they could gossip.” ⁽⁴⁾  
 
Seaver’s Store was also the starting point for the horse-drawn omnibuses that started service to Boston in 1826.  A personal memoir captures the nature of such a journey.  “A child growing up in the 1840s remembers long tedious trips from Jamaica Plain to Boston in a conveyance which is now called a bus but then its name was  ‘Hourly’, because it started every hour …  It may well be imagined that a little girl would only be taken to town in those days for something very important like visits to a doctor or dentist; no movie shows then.  How we rumbled over Hoggs Bridge and the long interminable Tremont Street to our destination, two rows of people facing each other, their feet in deep straw, and how glad we were to be back in the peaceful village again.” ⁽⁵⁾  

The railroad trains allowed for a certain amount of commuter traffic, as train travel was relatively fast, but it was also fairly expensive and made few stops.  The establishment of the horse-car trolley in 1856 widened this traffic a bit further.  “With the introduction of horse cars, sometime in the fifties, and the greater frequency of steam trains, it became much easier to make trips to and from Boston for business and shopping and occasional theatre or opera … on some wonderful Saturday afternoon, to be taken to the Boston Museum to see Aladdin’s Lamp, or some other fairy spectacle, and, incidentally, to see the grand wax works, that was indeed a treat to a child of that period, to be remembered for many a long day.” ⁽⁶⁾  

The main event, however, in the reshaping of Jamaica Plain was the creation of electric streetcar service in 1889.  The streetcars were twice as fast as the horse cars, carried more passengers, and were relatively cheap; and for the first time opened the suburbs as a regular place of residence to large numbers of people who worked in Boston.  The rural atmosphere of the area attracted many members of the middle class, who could now quit a dense, dirty and over-populated Boston, and for the first time separate their places of residence from their places of work.  The large estates were sold and subdivided, and houses quickly put up – large elegant single-family homes for the substantial members of the upper middle class; two-family and three-decker apartment houses for the lower middle class who still rented their lodgings, all with at least a small yard.  Jamaica Plain changed from the site of large country estates to a new residential suburb, which strove to recreate the charms of the country for its new inhabitants.  In 1851 Jamaica Plain had seceded from Roxbury and joined the town of West Roxbury to escape Boston’s continued expansion, but in 1873 West Roxbury was itself annexed to Boston – a reflection of the area’s changing status from independent village to integral suburb of the city.

Jamaica Plain grew quickly, and the institutions to minister to this population soon sprang up.  They reflected the values and priorities of the Victorian middle class – education, science and moral uplift.  The Jamaica Plain Branch Library opened in 1876 as a room in Curtis Hall, but moved to its present location on Sedgwick Street in 1908; the Sedgwick building represented the first independent branch library built exclusively for library purposes.  The Jamaica Plain High School on Elm Street was built in 1867, but by the 1890s it was no longer large enough – an addition was begun in 1898 which was four times the size of the original building.  The Children’s Museum had its origins in a Science Teacher’s Association and opened at Pinebank near the Pond, as a means for transmitting the principles of natural science to children.  The Jamaica Plain Neighborhood House began as the Helen Wald House in 1897, as a club for young women working at a local factory, and moved to its present location on Amory Street in 1918.  Its aim, as an early director stated, was “recreation and character building, not relief.”  The Adams-Nervine Asylum, an institution for the “nervous who are not insane,” opened its doors in 1880.  Its program was based on the “moral treatment” system of a contemporary psychiatrist, which incorporated some remarkably modern ideas, including an emphasis on small hospitals with a home-like, community atmosphere.

Perhaps all of these trends came together in the construction of Franklin Park, begun in 1885, according to the plans of the great landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted.  For Olmsted, the plan represented a combination of moral and scientific intentions.  It was meant to conform to the principles of natural science, reflecting the ecology and natural contours of the site; but its purpose was to provide a rural retreat from the rigors of urban life, to permit necessary leisure and moral rejuvenation.  Only through such scientific large scale planning, Olmsted believed, could rapidly growing cities provide the necessary spiritual sustenance and relief for its population.  For Olmsted, the creation of the parks system in Boston and throughout the country was a response to a national transformation which Jamaica Plain at the turn of the century reflected perfectly – the separation of work place and residence, i.e. the creation of suburbs, and the search for a suburban way of life.   “…  When not engaged in business, (the worker) has no occasion to be near his working place, but demands arrangements of a wholly different character.  Families require to settle in certain localities in sufficient numbers to support those establishments which minister to their social and other wants, and yet are not willing to accept the conditions of town-life which were formerly deemed imperative, and which, in the business quarters, are yet, perhaps, in some degree, imperative, but demand as much of the luxuries of free air, space and abundant vegetation as without loss of town-privileges, they can be enabled to secure.” ⁽⁷⁾

For the new residents of Jamaica Plain in the 1880s and 90s, Franklin Park provided just the kind of romantic natural setting, within traveling distance from their work, that they had left the inner city to find. The rapid growth of the area produced a welter of commercial activities even though most of the people living in Jamaica Plain at this time worked in Boston.  A present resident remembers the “hives of small stores” around the Boylston Street, Green Street and Forest Hills Railroad stations in the first decades of this century, along with four movie houses, and “dance halls galore,” with dances every night except during Lent.  The layer of small industry continued to develop.  Perhaps the best-known examples are the Haffenreffer Brewery, which opened in 1870 on Brookside Avenue, and the Thomas Plant Shoe Company on Centre Street near Jackson Square, with around 1,000 workers, which a current resident has described as a “city in itself.”  Given the much more decentralized modes of production, compared with today, the number and variety of factories and shops located within Jamaica Plain was great.  A partial list from the memory of a resident who has lived in Jamaica Plain since the 1920s includes factories producing twine, surveyor’s instruments, strings for musical instruments, eyeglass cases, and automobiles, a milk bottling plant, four print shops, and the Continental Dye House on Brookside Avenue which left the boys who swam in the brook nearby a different color upon emerging each day.

The factories meant that working class people also lived in Jamaica Plain, which required the construction of housing to meet their needs and within their means.  Especially after the construction of the elevated structure, which “darkened Washington Street in more ways than one,” business was generally diverted toward Centre Street, and the area between Washington Street and the railroad tracks became the location of much of the cheaper housing and also a victim of deterioration and blight.  The Neighborhood House moved from Carolina Avenue to its location on Amory Street in 1918 to provide social services to the population of this area, known as the “The Jungle.”  A letter from a worker at the Settlement House describes conditions in this part of Jamaica Plain, figuratively and literally on the wrong side of the tracks.  “I feel sure that if the people of Jamaica Plain knew first hand the Amory Street section where our Neighborhood House is located; knew the swarms of children who live in unfit and over crowded homes, the working mothers who are our best friends and helpers, to say nothing of the liveliest toughest boy proposition I have ever known, money would flow into our treasury.” ⁽⁸⁾

It is remarkable how much of Victorian Jamaica Plain has remained into the present.  Many of the institutions established the late 19th century have only recently outgrown their Victorian homes, forced to abandon them for more spacious and modern accommodations.  A brand new Jamaica Plain High School opened its doors just a year ago (September, 1979); the Children’s Museum moved to a new more central location downtown also in 1979; and the Adams-Nervine Asylum merged with the Faulkner Hospital in 1975, now providing its services in Faulkner facilities.  Of all the early institutions it is perhaps Neighborhood House, still located on Amory Street and currently being renovated, which has shown the most persistence.

These changes merely reflect forces which have transformed Jamaica Plain in the last two decades, and in this transformation the way people travel has again played a major part.  In the period after World War II government-subsidized mortgages, but perhaps more importantly the automobile as a generally available commodity, made the farther-out suburbs accessible to many members of the middle class.  Whereas Jamaica Plain had itself once been an outlying suburb offering a rural retreat from the urban center, the automobile turned it into an inner-city neighborhood which commuters passed through to reach the newer suburban towns.

Cars, of course, require highways.  As early as 1948 the City of Boston published a plan for an inner highway belt to run through lower Roxbury, where it would connect up with an Interstate highway (I-95) which, running through the predominantly white working and middle-class communities of Hyde Park, Roslindale, and Jamaica Plain, would exit Boston going South.  In 1966 the Department of Public Works released a design for this road – it was to be an eight lane highway, in Jamaica Plain running along the railroad embankment from Jackson Square to Forest Hills.  The next year land clearance for the project began.  More than 300 businesses and 700 households in Jamaica Plain and other neighborhoods abutting the tracks were relocated.  The result for the area along the proposed highway route, called the Southwest Corridor, was disastrous.  Houses now stood abandoned or demolished, while homeowners in adjacent areas felt great uncertainty about the impact of the highway on their community.  Many in Jamaica Plain saw the highway as a monumental barrier which would divide their community in two, and as a use of neighborhood resources and land without consideration of the needs and interests of the community itself.

The relocation of families along the Corridor was only an exacerbation of the larger exodus of middle-class families from the inner city, a movement which produced great changes in Jamaica Plain.  The housing stock of the area attracted new groups – among them blacks moving to northern cities from the South after the War, and in the 1960s and 1970s many new Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other Latin American immigrants, while many of the white working class residents of Jamaica Plain remained, from necessity and from choice.  As these new groups had little money or political power, Jamaica Plain lost much of its claim to adequate funding and services – its houses, still beautiful, often tended toward decay.

But Jamaica Plain also became one of the most varied and integrated of Boston’s neighborhoods, which gave this area its own vitality and appeal.  Different groups in the area often came into conflict, but they also struggled to get along and to provide the services they needed for themselves.  Brookside Park Family Center, which began operation at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in 1970, to provide medical and social services conveniently and affordably to the changing population of Jamaica Plain, was only one of the many social institutions which came into being through the efforts and hard work of neighborhood residents themselves.  

The last ten years in Jamaica Plain have seen new, surprising and sometimes ironic changes.  After a long and heated struggle, and through the efforts of a coalition of groups from several neighborhoods, including Jamaica Plain, affected by the proposed I-95, Governor Sargent announced in October of 1972 that no Interstate facility of any size would be built in the Southwest Corridor.  However, since the land had already been bought and cleared under eminent domain, it provided a vast opportunity for planning of the area on a scale which was bound to dramatically change the shape of Jamaica Plain.  The community is working hard to insure that its voice will be heard in this planning.

At the same time, larger forces were again having their effect on Jamaica Plain.  Changing lifestyles, and the existence of lovely, if run-down Victorian houses in Jamaica Plain, which could be bought inexpensively and elegantly renovated, drew many young families out of the suburbs and back into Jamaica Plain.  More recently, the high cost of gasoline has made long daily commutes by car an unforeseen burden.  The inner city has again become both a fashionable and economic place to live.  A reflection of this has been the conversion, or planned conversion, of many of the buildings which housed the public social institutions of Victorian Jamaica Plain into private condominiums designed for the middle and upper-middle class.  These include the buildings of the old Children’s Museum on Burroughs Street and the Adams-Nervine Asylum, and the old Jamaica Plain High School on Elm Street and the Police Station on Seaverns Avenue.  Whereas at the end of the 19th century Jamaica Plain combined the best of city and country by being accessible to downtown Boston while being as far from it as possible, it is again attracting people by combining the best of both worlds, while being as close as possible to downtown.  The sign advertising the Adams-Arboretum condominiums at the old Adams-Nervine site, which has the Arboretum as its backyard, expresses this well: “A Country Estate for Urban Living.”

If such private development has been one form of neighborhood redevelopment, other buildings are being rescued and adapted, with community pressure, for more public uses, many along the Corridor route – especially the old, often defunct, factory buildings which originally bordered the railroad tracks and Stony Brook.  Brookside Park Family Life Center reconverted the Paris Paper Box Company on Washington Street to use as a new, expanded site for their Health Center, and opened their doors in 1975.  An old plastics factory on Amory Street became housing for the elderly; the Boston Gas Company became the new Jamaica Plain High School.  A grant has only recently been approved for a neighborhood development corporation to convert the old Haffenreffer Brewery building into a commercial and light industrial site.  

This transformation will of necessity include the transformation of the transportation system as well.  As the expense of running cars has increased, attention has again returned to public transportation.  As part of the Corridor redevelopment plan, the elevated tracks which have long blighted Washington Street will come down, and depressed transit and railroad tracks with new stations will be built along the Corridor route.  Again, the basic lines and routes of transportation have not changed, but the forms have been dramatically altered.

Given the tremendous and rapid rate of change in Jamaica Plain, it is inevitable that different groups, in and out of the community, have and will see the opportunities for development with different and often conflicting perspectives, with different feelings of excitement and regret.  It is only to be hoped that in the process of change, the beauty of 19th century Jamaica Plain will be preserved, while the variety of races, ethnic and economic groups which recent decades have produced, will not be lost.

References
1.  Francis S. Drake, The Town of Roxbury, 1878, p.46
2.  Ellen Ernst, Our Boston, “Jamaica Plain Before Annexation,” p.18
3.  Address by Fred Seaver before the Jamaica Plain Board of Trade on April 1, 1931
4.  Address by Fred Seaver
5.  Paper presented by Miss Ellen Morse, age 80 to the Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club 1921
6.  Paper presented by Miss Ellen Morse
7.  Albert Fein, Frederick Law Olmsted and the American Environmental Tradition, p. 22
8.  Letter from Elizabeth Paine, retiring headworker, Jamaica Plain Neighborhood House, 1921

Prepared by the Jamaica Plain Historical Task Force Place Over Time Exhibit, Jubilee 350

Members:           
William Dunfey
Katherine Gondek
Joan Hamilton
Henry Keveaney
Justine Liff
Richard Norton
Yolanda Rivas
Alice Woodall

Research Advisor:    
Carol Pryor

Volunteer transcription services graciously provided by Peter O’Brien.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

The Name
Jamaica Plain, originally part of the Town of Roxbury, was first called “the Pond Plain” - referring both to Jamaica Pond and the type of land that surrounded it. As early as 1667 it was mentioned in the official record of the conveyance of the property of Hugh Thomas for the benefit of a school “to the people at the Jamaica end of the Town of Roxbury”. Legend suggests that the name derives from the fondness of the residents for Jamaica rum from that West Indian island and that they preferred it “plain”. The fact that the island of Jamaica had not long before been taken from the Spaniards by England’s Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, and that its rum, sugar, and other products had already found their way to the port of Boston, forms the background for the legend.

A tale told of an Indian woman and her children, who lived on the shore of the pond, probably comes nearer to the truth. The woman, named Jamaica, was much given to hospitality, and the section at that time was spoken of as “The Plain”. It was a favorite drive for people in Roxbury, and they visited Jamaica, their expression being “Let’s take a ride to the Plain and visit Jamaica.” Yet Jamaica seems to be a corruption of the Indian word kutchemakin (“big feather”), given to an Indian sachem who presided over his subjects in the area south of Boston at the present Dorchester Lower Hills in winter and the Pond in summer. Kutchemakin resisted John Eliot’s first attempt to convert Native Americans but swore allegiance to King James I. His name is preserved and joined to the geological configuration of the area to give it its name.

A General Sketch of the History
The Town of Roxbury originally extended to Dorchester on the east, Brookline to the west, Dedham on the south, and peninsular Boston on the north. It was the sixth town to be incorporated in Massachusetts (1630). Its board of selectmen, along with the clerk, treasurer, constable, and tithing man, transacted all the business. On March 12, 1846, Roxbury became a city, and nine citizens served as mayor until annexation to Boston on January 6, 1868.

As early as 1776 the residents of “the Plain” had sent a petition to the Massachusetts Legislature asking to be incorporated as a separate town under the name of Washington. But the inhabitants of “the lower end” of Roxbury objected so strongly that the petition was not granted. The effort was made again in 1811 without success. Finally in 1851 Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury were set off from Roxbury under the name of the Town of West Roxbury, centering around the present Monument. This was an occasion of great rejoicing with cannon firing, bell ringing, fireworks, and speeches. Yet the need for a common water supply, streets, and sewers eventually made it necessary to join Boston, to which it was so closely united commercially and geographically. Thus Jamaica Plain was formally separated from the Town of West Roxbury and annexed to the city of Boston in 1874.

The early inhabitants were well-to-do farmers supplying vegetables and fruits to Boston. It was also the site of elegant country-seats occupied by government officials, professional and literary men, and city merchants. For more than a century it was an attractive summer resort for Bostonians. For more than 150 years, Jamaica Plain’s Centre Street (note the antique spelling) formed a direct route (indeed the only land route) for travelers proceeding out of Boston to Dedham, and thence to Providence, by horseback, private carriage, or stagecoach.

In the Revolutionary War during the Battle of Dorchester Heights and the accompanying Siege of Boston, the Dedham Road was the lifeline of the army, connecting active forces with their arms and supplies stored in Dedham. Weld’s Hill (now Bussey Hill in the Arboretum) was selected by Washington as a rallying point for the patriots to fall back upon in case of disaster, since it protected the road to Dedham and the south. In the summer of 1775 Rhode Island troops under General Greene were stationed at “the Plain” and were quartered with the inhabitants. The mansion today known as the Loring-Greenough House was briefly the headquarters of General Greene and was also a hospital for the Roxbury Camp during the Siege of Boston.

During the 19th century the population increased rapidly. The fine estates, extensive gardens, and large farms were broken up to give way to more modest homes. The advent of trains and streetcars by mid-century allowed easier access to downtown Boston so many residents of the city could move out to the less crowded suburbs. Many of the newcomers who swelled the population were immigrants from Germany and Ireland. Today there are still a number of descendants of the original colonists who made fortunes in the early days. There are also many who have attained wealth and prominence in modern times. Civic leaders (governors and mayors) have long favored Jamaica Plain. Governors Foss and Curley, and Mayors Peters, Tobin, and Collins lived here.

Although this area of the city has been developed to the point where all available land is in use, it has escaped the fate of other sections that have deteriorated, causing more affluent residents to sell their property and move to more desirable places. This is undoubtedly due to the presence of Jamaica Pond, the world-famous Arnold Arboretum, and Franklin Park on the opposite side of the town. The Pond, sheltered by beautiful trees, enhances the district on all sides and provides a lovely recreation area. The Arboretum, containing 265 acres and thousands of specimen trees and shrubs, is a beautiful park that attracts visitors from all over the world. Franklin Park is a large, natural park that has served to protect and enhance adjoining properties. In addition to these natural beauties, which early got the area termed “the Eden of America” Jamaica Plain is the home of several outstanding institutions. These unique organizations, described in later pages, impart a distinct flavor and have enriched the cultural life of the community for many generations.

Jamaica Pond
Without doubt Jamaica Pond has always been a great attraction to the area. The Pond is the only sizeable body of water within the confines of the City of Boston. Size and depth prevented its being filled in, the fate of so many other surface water areas seen on old maps. Public access to the Pond had always existed via the Boathouse, but it was a natural for the parks movement in the late 19th century. It now forms the centerpiece of the public park planned by Frederick Law Olmsted in the 1890’s as part of the Emerald Necklace.

This beautiful sheet of water covers some 70 acres, is 1.3 miles in circumference, and has a depth at some points of 70 feet. Like its smaller companion Ward’s Pond across Perkins Street, it was created by glacial action. The island on its northern side was created by the City of Boston early in the 20th century by building up a bar that appeared at periods of low water. At the same time, the city filled in a cove in the northeast corner, variously known as Swans’ Cove or Perkin’s Cove. It took its name from the Perkins family, who owned the house called Pinebank above the Cove.

Until the introduction of Cochituate water into Boston in 1848, the spring-fed Pond supplied water to parts of Boston and Roxbury by means of an underground aqueduct with its excellent water. In addition, the Jamaica Plain Ice Company profited in winter with its icehouses along Prince and Pond Streets. The Jamaica Plain Aqueduct Company was incorporated in 1795 and laid about 45 miles of pipes, made of logs that still turn up in chance excavations. The trenches were only 3 to 3 ½ feet in depth, which did not always prevent freezing in severe weather. According to annual quality tests, the Pond’s water continues to retain its excellence and purity.

The Chief Streets

Centre Street
First laid out in 1623 before the Town of Roxbury was incorporated, its antiquity is attested to by the English variant spelling. It was first called “the Dedham Road” and was part of the overland route out of Boston. It begins at Roxbury Common (now known as Eliot Square, because John Eliot was first minister of the church that now encloses the Common) and was the chief road to the southwest, running through West Roxbury to points south. Not surprisingly it became a natural route for progressive stages of public transportation -stagecoach, horsecars, and streetcars. In 1720 Judge Paul Dudley of Roxbury set out his famed engraved stones for miles along it in one of the milestone chains that he constructed from Boston’s Townhouse (now called the Old State House). A splendid surviving example of one such stone may be seen near the base of the monument at Centre and South Streets.

Hog Bridge
In the Jackson Square area, Centre Street crosses the railroad tracks that cover the now-culverted Stony Brook. The long-gone bridge over the brook, which was notorious for its floods into the mid-19th century, derives its name from the following incident. Col. Joseph Williams, an early settler, had a daughter Patty of great physical strength. One day when young Patty was about to cross the bridge, she found it blocked by a herd of pigs. After her request to the man in charge of the pigs to make a way for her she received an insulting reply. She seized one of the hogs and threw it into Stony Brook and then threw the man in after it. She then proceeded quietly on her way.

Hyde Square
The triangle formed by Centre, Day, and Perkins Streets is named for the Boston merchant, Leonard Hyde, who owned land in the Perkins-Day block in the early 19th century, which later housed a home for the Perkins Institute of the Blind and the House of the Guardian Angel, and now the Animal Hospital. The once-larger island in the square had benches and the Old Pump, a landmark where wearied, dusty travelers and stagecoach horses stopped, rested, and partook of the refreshing cool water. The pump was removed about the time of the Boston Tercentenary in 1930.

Washington Street
Washington St. is he longest street in the Commonwealth, extending from downtown Boston 38 miles south through cities, towns, and suburbs to the Rhode Island border at Pawtucket. Laid out as the great road south of Boston in 1662, it was first called the Dedham Turnpike in our area. It is often termed the spine of downtown Boston and was the sole mainland route out of the peninsular city over Boston Neck (at East Berkeley Street). Part of its downtown section had several names in colonial times. It began at the Old State House. William Dawes rode over it as far as Dudley Square on the night of April 18, 1775, along with Roxbury’s Paul Revere and Ebenezer Dorr, who continued down the turnpike to Dedham. George Washington (for whom it was named after the Revolution) proceeded along it in his trips to Boston during his presidency. The long-familiar elevated train structure ran above it from 1909, when the Boston Elevated Railway Company built it, until the late 1980’s, when the rail route was finally moved next to the railroad tracks. The street also acts as Jamaica Plain’s spine, since the current eastern border is generally considered to be at Franklin Park just east of Washington Street. Franklin Park was originally called West Roxbury Park, and was part of the former town of West Roxbury.

Other Historic Streets

Perkins Street
In the great laying-out of streets in Roxbury in 1662, this street was run west off Hyde Square to Brookline (a separate town since 1705) as Connecticut Lane along the northern side of the Pond. In 1825 it was renamed after the primary Boston China trade merchant James Perkins, who had built his country estate of Pinebank on the Pond’s northern shore in 1809. The third Pinebank survived the taking of land for the Park in the 1890’s, though the Perkins heirs moved out, and its shell yet remains in deplorable condition. Some accounts credit the name to an earlier settler, who was one of Roxbury’s first settlers.

Pond Street
Pond Street was constructed in 1825 and led from Centre Street to the Boathouse at Jamaica Pond and then acted as the perimeter road up to the base of the Pond’s hilly western shore, where it swung over Moss Hill to the Brookline border and points west. With its most appropriate name, the Jamaicaway now interrupts Pond Street from the boathouse to Eliot Street. It starts up again by the stone wall between Eliot and Orchard Streets, and is again interrupted by the Jamaicaway as it widens into the Arborway at Kelley Circle. Pond Street resumes its identity at the base of Moss Hill and happily exits to Brookline.

Jamaicaway & Arborway
These are our area’s superhighways, constructed during Olmsted’s Park Project in the 1890’s. The former forms part of a fast road system leading southwest out of the Fenway area of Boston, while the latter serves after Murray Circle as a gateway southeast out of the city.

South Street
Another road laid out in 1662, South Street heads in the direction it is named after, to Forest Hills and Roslindale, as a connection between Centre Street and Washington Street.

Public Structures

The Monument
The heart of Jamaica Plain has always been the area around Eliot Square at the Monument, as it is familiarly known. The triangle formed by Centre and South Streets was the center of the former Town of West Roxbury (1853-71), and this piece of ground can be considered the most historic in the area. It was the first donation of land for public purposes. In October 1676, the early settler John Ruggles, who also owned land in the area of Roxbury now named for him gave this triangle of land to the residents of Jamaica Plain for use as a school for their children. The Eliot School was built there but moved to its present location in 1831, and the Monument was built in the square in 1871.

At the northern end of the Monument’s triangle is a boulder of Roxbury puddingstone, with a plaque, erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1909 in memory of the men of Jamaica Plain who served in the Revolution. The Monument itself honors the 23 residents of the Town of West Roxbury who died in the service of the Union during the Civil War (1861-1865), in all the theatres of that war. It is built of Quincy granite in a Gothic style unique among such monuments in the Commonwealth, and is surmounted by the usual figure of a soldier at rest, seven feet high, sculpted by W. W. Lummus at a cost of $3,500. Dedicated on September 14, 1871, with great ceremony (programs of which survive), the Monument was erected at the total cost of $22,000. Before the monument was built, it was the site of our area’s first schoolhouse, endowed by the will of the Rev. John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians of Massachusetts.

The Eliot School
Just a stone’s throw down Eliot Street from the Monument is the Eliot School. John Ruggles made the first donation for the school on October 16, 1676. Rev. John Eliot gave another large gift on July 10, 1689: some 75 acres of land by the Pond. In 1831 the Eliot Trustees erected the present schoolhouse on Eliot Street, which served as a primary school for Jamaica Plain’s children into the late 19th century. After that it became an exemplary school with a crafts curriculum, and so it continues today.

Eliot Hall
On the opposite side of Eliot Street nearer the Monument is a large wooden building, still the home of the nation’s oldest amateur theatrical group, the Footlight Club, as noted on the Boston 2000 plaque attached to it. This historic building served as the first Town Hall for the Town of West Roxbury and as a parish building for the First Church of Jamaica Plain across the street.

Curtis Hall
The ancient Curtis family of Jamaica Plain, which settled here in the 1650’s, purchased land from the neighboring Greenough estate in 1868. They filled in a small pond on the site and built the structure as a Town Hall for the Town of West Roxbury in honor of Nelson Curtis, a prominent Boston businessman. After the Hall suffered a fire in 1908, the public library moved next door and the Hall was slightly altered, but it has always been a municipal building with gym and meeting facilities. It has often been rightly termed “a Little City Hall”.

The Post Office
The Jamaica Plain Post Office was first established in 1829. Mr. Joshua Seaver was appointed the first postmaster as he ran the famed general store in our area. In 1833 his son, Robert Seaver, who continued until 1849, succeeded him. President Andrew Jackson is said to have visited the store when he toured Boston in 1833. In 1870 the Jamaica Plain Post Office was changed from a Fourth Class to a Third Class facility with more services. Free delivery began in 1875. From Mr. Seaver’s Store at 741 Centre Street, the Post Office migrated to be nearer the growing railroad and commercial center at Woolsey Square by the Green Street Station, and was located at Alfred and Green Streets. Since then it has been in two successive buildings at Centre and Myrtle Streets.

Significant Surviving Residences

The Loring-Greenough House
Jamaica Plain’s only house museum, the Loring-Greenough House is the sole surviving colonial residence in original form. It belongs to the Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club, a women’s organization formed in 1868 for the improvement of female minds in the neighborhood, which bought the house from the Greenough family in 1924. This action forestalled any commercial development on the site or demolition of the house, a fate that had befallen all the other old homes along Centre Street in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when storefronts were built. The house has been preserved and furnished as a clubhouse.

In 1750 it was built by Joshua Loring, a retired commodore in the British Navy, on a tract that extended from South Street to the present railroad tracks. As the colonial political situation deteriorated, the Lorings abandoned the house and were back in England by 1774. General Nathaniel Greene of Rhode Island used it for his headquarters during the Siege of Boston (1775-1776), and during this time the house was also used as a hospital. Soldiers who died in the house were buried in a back lot along what is now Everett Street and in 1853 were removed to the Walter Street Burial Ground at the foot of Peter’s Hill in what is now the Arboretum. A boulder of Roxbury puddingstone there contains a plaque erected in 1903 by the Sons of the American Revolution in their honor.

Confiscated by the Commonwealth in 1779, the house was finally purchased by the Greenough family, who held it until 1924. One member of the family was the noted American sculptor, Horatio Greenough, known for his classic “nude” George Washington in the Smithsonian Institution. He later lived and worked further down Centre Street in his house called “Lakeville”, which has given its name to the street later laid out there.

Loring-era restorations have been made under expert guidance. The exterior of the Georgian home, practically unchanged, is notable for the massive chimney, captain’s walk, and a beautiful stairway of hand-carved mahogany. In the early days of restoration a cache of Commodore Loring’s rum was found and suitably enjoyed. Surrounded by fine trees, lawns, and gardens, this local gem of colonial architecture represents a fine link between Jamaica Plain’s past and present.

The May and Charles Curtis Farmstead
The May farmstead (originally built in 1732 between May Street and the Arborway) and the Charles Curtis farmstead (originally built in 1721 at 509 Centre Street by the Mary E. Curley School) were enclosed by later family members in grander homes. They can only be detected by interior inspection and are not available for public viewing. This method of home improvement was frequently applied in years past. Unfortunately traces of the older structures are often lost from public view, perceptible only to the eye of professionals working on these homes by chance. In the case of the May farmstead, the home of one of the commanders of three Roxbury militia units that marched to Arlington to fight against the British retreating from Concord in the afternoon of April 19, 1775, the house was redone with a massive stone outlay which renders it unmistakable as one drives out of the city on the Arborway. The Curtis House, one of several in the area of this ancient Jamaica Plain family, is hidden by the large mid-Victorian structure that Charles Curtis added at the front of the old farmstead in 1882.

Linden Hall
The story of Linden Hall, Jamaica Plain’s most English-style estate follows a similar vein. Sitting back from the bow of Grosvenor Road and named after the magnificent trees that lined the walk to its entrance, one now sees merely the old barn, unaligned with Centre and Pond Streets. John Gould built the main house, formerly at 18 Pond Street, in 1755 for his son-in-law (the Rev. John Troutbeck, assistant rector of the first Anglican Church in Boston and owner of a distillery as well) on grounds that ended at the Pond. Avid Tories, the family left Boston with the British on March 17, 1776.

After confiscation it came into the possession of Charles W. Greene, descendant of General Greene, who had used the Loring-Greenough House for his Revolutionary headquarters. For some time Mr. Greene used the Hall for a prepatory boarding school for boys (the barn for the schoolhouse and the home for a dormitory). Among its graduates were John Lothrop Motley, Dorchester’s historian of the Dutch; George William Curtis of the ancient Jamaica Plain family, whose novel Trumps took its characters and scenes from our area; and the two brothers of Margaret Fuller, Forest Hills feminist. Today the exterior preserves little of its former dignity and beauty.

Pinebank
At the end of the extension of Moraine Street that ran from the Curley House across the Jamaicaway into the Park are the remains of the Ruskinian Gothic mansion of the Perkins family, early Boston merchant princes in the China trade. This is the only house left from the private residences that surrounded the Pond before it was taken over for a public park in the 1890’s.

The first Perkins house on the site was built in 1802 and was a Federal-style summer villa of wood. In 1848 it was replaced by a year-round mansard-style house, which burned in 1870. The present house was built on the same foundations in Gothic style with brick and terra cotta.

It became the property of the Park Department in 1892, when it was to be used as a refectory. At this time the City Architect added the wide terrace facing the Pond. After housing the ever-growing Children’s Museum from 1913 to 1936 the building became a white elephant and often suffered fires - the last one of which, in 1978, which left only some of the walls standing.

Leading down to the Pond’s shore are located, with suitable inscription, the original red sandstone steps which came from the mansion of John Hancock, first governor of the Commonwealth, which was torn down in 1864 to make way for a wing to the State House on Beacon Hill. They were bought in the auction and installed by the Perkins family. Hancock had oddly enough returned to Jamaica Plain, where he had a summerhouse on Centre Street above the Monument and to whose church he’d given a bell.

The Curley House
In 1915, Joseph P. McGinnis built the large Georgian revival house; perhaps the most famous 20th century home in Jamaica Plain, at 350 Jamaicaway. Its shamrock shutters proclaimed its owner to be of Irish descent. McGinnis built the house for the legendary and flamboyant James Michael Curley, who served for half a century in the rough-and-tumble of Boston politics as a U. S. Representative, City Councilman, Mayor on and off for four terms, and Governor. He even landed in jail for mail fraud until granted a pardon by President Truman.

Questions were always asked about how a young politician could build such a lavish 21-room house, but much of its fancy woodwork and notable staircase came from the home of an oil magnate in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, that was being demolished. The hall chandelier with the Hapsburg double eagles came from the auction of the Austro-Hungarian Embassy when it was confiscated during World War I. Financial problems caused Curley to sell the house in 1956 to the Oblate Fathers, while he and the second Mrs. Curley moved to Pond Circle, where he died in 1958. The Robin Hood mayor of Boston or the mayor of the poor, as he enjoyed being called, was no more, and gone from public view was the house that had seen so many renowned parties.

The Oblates did not change the house too much, and the huge Curley dining room furniture remained. The famous library, where His Honor had received so many rich and poor, held his books at the time when the House with the Shamrock Shutters went up for sale in 1988. Ultimately it was bought by the White Fund of the City of Boston and is currently being used for the Mayor’s Youth Leadership Corps.

Other Residences
Besides Curley, other mayors of Boston who lived in Jamaica Plain were Andrew Peters (1917-20) at Asticou and South Street, Malcolm Nichols (1926-9) at Hathaway and Centre Street above the Monument, and John Collins (1960-66) at the bend of Myrtle Street near the Post Office. Mayor and Governor Maurice Tobin (1937-46) lived at 30 Hopkins Road on Moss Hill. Governor Foss (1911-14) lived at 7 Revere Street on Sumner Hill.

Famous Sights That Have Vanished

The Curtis Homesteads
On June 22, 1632, William Curtis and his wife and children set sail on the ship, Lion with his sister Sarah, who had already become engaged to the Rev. John Eliot, also a passenger on the Lion. On September 6th these Nazing Pilgrims landed at Roxbury, and four weeks later the betrothed pair were married in the First Church, where Eliot would serve a long and distinguished pastorate. In 1633 William Curtis built his homestead by the distant westerly margin of Stony Brook. In 1878 it was still occupied by his lineal descendants, the widow and children of the fifth Isaac Curtis and seventh in descent from William.

The neighborhood was originally a forest abounding in wild animals, and a pair of antlers could always be seen in the old homestead. It was taken from a deer buck, shot from within the house, while it was drinking from the brook. In 1659 the Town of Roxbury paid 20 shillings to Philip Curtis for killing a wolf there. The house stood off Lamartine Street just east of what is now Stony Brook Station (near the site of the old Boylston Street Railroad Station). When the station was taken down in 1887, Paul Gore Street was laid out between the house and the huge elm tree, planted by William Curtis, which stood nearby.

Near the house, shaded by the old elm, was an additional spring that determined the location of the dwelling. Tradition has it that the elm was transplanted 200 years ago from a meadow in the Rocky Swamp, a tract lying between Washington Street and Forest Hills Station, which was then owned by the family. The timbers of the Curtis Homestead were unseasoned white oak, cut from their farmland. The nails were all hand-made. Originally the windows were diamond-shaped and set in leaden sashes. About 1690 these gave way to small panes of glass, and the lead was converted to spoons.

In 1712 Samuel Curtis bought of Joshua Bowen 20 acres bordering on Jamaica Pond and in 1722 built the house, in which his son and grandson lived and in which Miss Catherine P. Curtis, his granddaughter, resided in the 1920’s. During later renovations, cannonballs fired by the British during the Siege of Boston (1775-1776) were found. Samuel Curtis afterwards added the 14 acres of the Perkins Farm to the estate. The Connolly Branch of the Boston Public Library now occupies that site.

Joseph, son of Samuel Curtis, married Catherine Parker, who kept a shop of British goods in the house at 4 Boylston Street, in 1771. His son Joseph died in 1858 after a career of great public usefulness, having served the town long and faithfully as school committeeman, selectman, and representative. This descendent of William Curtis bought a horse and black slave and set up market gardening and was the first man to carry his vegetables into Boston in a cart instead of in panniers.

Lakeville
A stately brick mansion called Lakeville was erected in 1797, on grounds extending to the Pond, at the site of the current Beaufort Apartments on Centre Street between Lakeville and Beaufort Streets. The street that now pierces its former grounds commemorates its name. Later it was the home of the noted American sculptor, Horatio Greenough, who grew up in the house by the Monument, the ancestral home of the Greenoughs. Here it is said he carved his celebrated group The Chanting Cherubs.

Sunnyside
The former summer home of the noted American historian of the French in America, Francis Parkman (1823-1893), the only Jamaica Plain resident as yet on an American postage stamp, was at the corner of Prince and Perkins Streets on the west side of the Pond. It faced the latter on the grounds of the former estate of James Chickering, who made his renowned pianos at the factory on Columbus Avenue (now a condominium). The fine granite exedra and shaft by D. C. French, erected by his friends in 1906, marks the site of the house, which was also the site of Parkman’s famous gardens, which he developed over the years as he fought conditions of health that brought him paralysis and blinding headaches. Here he developed his famous roses and lilies. The site was taken for parkland by his death and was completely regraded.

A Weld House
Of the many Weld residences in Jamaica Plain - that ancient family - here was the home of Stephen Minot Weld, who by 1827 established a boy’s boarding school near the corner of South and Centre Streets. Running for some 30 years, it prepared pupils from many states, Cuba and Mexico for Weld’s alma mater, Harvard College. His merchant prince brother, William F. Weld, gave Harvard Yard Weld Hall in memory of S.M. Weld.

A Colonial Governor’s Mansion
On the southeast side of Jamaica Pond, probably within the present Kelley Circle, was situated the mansion of Sir Francis Bernard, next-to-last royal governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay (1760-69), in a period of surpassing historical interest. Seated in a tract of 60 acres, the mansion was fashioned from a 1688 farmhouse and had four rooms on each floor and boasted an elegant hall 24 by 50 feet. Outbuildings included a greenhouse with orange, lemon, fig, cork and cinnamon trees, stables, and a coach house. Gardens extended down to the shore of the Pond. Like the Loring-Greenough House, it served as a hospital during the Siege of Boston and soldiers who died there were buried out back. Later discovered when the place was farmed; those remains are now in the Walter Street Cemetery. The mansion was demolished in 1809.

The Bussey Mansion in the Arboretum
The estate at the bend of South Street just past the State Lab was bought from the Welds by silversmith Benjamin Bussey in 1806. In 1815 he erected a fine mansion, which he occupied until his death in 1843. It then became the residence of Thomas Motley, brother of the noted Dorchester historian of the Dutch, and was demolished in the 1940’s. Bussey bequeathed most of his valuable property, then containing some 300 acres, to Harvard College for the establishment of “a seminary for instruction in practical agriculture”. The Bussey Institute was duly built in 1871, where the State Lab now stands.

Even during Bussey’s lifetime the public enjoyed the freedom of his land. On the occasion of President Andrew Jackson’s visit to Boston in June 1833 accompanied by Vice President Van Buren, Mr. Bussey joined the grand procession in his yellow coach, drawn by six horses and richly attended by servants in livery. The mansion was at the foot of Weld (now called Bussey) Hill, selected by Washington as a rallying point for the American army in case of disaster during the Siege of Boston, as it protected the road to Dedham and the army depot there.

The Boylston/Hallowell House
Formerly at the corner of Boylston and Centre Streets was a house that proclaimed its age with a chimney painted 1738, when Captain Benjamin Hallowell of the British Army, who had married a Boylston, built it. An avid Tory, his views made him so obnoxious to the colonials that early in 1775 he found it wise to vacate the house hastily and seek refuge in British Boston. During the Siege of Boston it too was used as a hospital, and some of the soldiers who died there were buried in the lot behind the house. Upon Hallowell’s death in England his American wife claimed the estate. Her son, who came back to Jamaica Plain and spent the rest of his life here using his mother’s maiden name, pressed the claim; hence the name of the street as well.

A Forest Hills Home
Feminist Margaret Fuller and her sister, Mrs. Walter Channing, lived at 81 Morton Street in a mansion there. In this same house the American man of letters and Sage of Concord, Ralph Waldo Emerson, boarded for a time when he taught school on Schoolmaster’s Hill in what is now Franklin Park. He boarded with Mrs. Tilden, who later maintained a girls’ boarding school at the Cold Spring House at Washington and Green Streets.

John Hancock’s country-seat
Between Orchard Street and Dunster Road above the Monument off Centre Street was the country-seat of John Hancock, perhaps the wealthiest man in Boston as the Revolution approached. He fortunately became attached to the American side and went on to become the President of the Second Continental Congress (hence his famous signature on the Declaration of Independence) and the first governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Yet he was vain and touchy and, though he had been generous to the Church at the Monument, he left Jamaica Plain after its first minister, an outspoken Scot who came to America to share in the colonial cause for freedom, demanded information about certain things that Hancock had done with Harvard’s money while acting as its treasurer. Hancock’s nephew Thomas stayed in Jamaica Plain, demolished his uncle’s small house, and built another on the same site that remained into this century.

The May/Faneuil/Warren House
Eleazer originally owned the entire side of Centre Street opposite Pond Street from Spring Park to Green May. He sold the land in 1740 to Benjamin Faneuil, nephew of Peter Faneuil, the Boston merchant who gave the Town of Boston its first public market and meetinghouse, which still survive. In 1760 the area became the property of Faneuil’s brother-in-law, Benjamin Pemberton, who in 1802 sold it to Dr. John Warren, nephew of General Joseph Warren, hero of Bunker Hill, for a summer residence at 636 Centre Street. Dr. Warren beautified the grounds mightily with rare plants and shrubs imported from Europe and presided over many acres, which later divided into the Harris, Burrage, and Parley Vale estates.

In 1828, the beloved writer of 19th century children’s literature, Samuel G. Goodrich, who wrote under the name of Peter Parley, lived on the 45-acre Parley Vale estate. Goodrich built his own house far back on what is now Montebello Road. It no longer stands, but the entrance gate to his estate is still marked by the stone wall and pillars opposite Goodrich Road. It is told of Mr. Goodrich that at a July 4th celebration he gave a toast: “To the ladies of Jamaica Plain, not so very plain either!” He also built the quaint and unique house later owned by the Harris family on the corner of Parley Vale.

The Lowell Estate
At the beginning of the 19th century, Centre Street from Stony Brook (now the train tracks) to the site of the old Lowell School (razed in the 1950’s and made into a playground) at the corner of Mozart Street was the beautiful Lowell estate. The original home, erected in the latter half of the 18th century, was modeled after an old castle in Europe. It became the property of Judge John Lowell, one of the first Federal judges appointed by President George Washington, in 1785, and there he lived until his death in 1802. His son inherited the estate and founded the Lowell Institute for free lectures that are still given yearly at Harvard. He was the progenitor of the family that has given America a city in Massachusetts (set up as an ideal textile community), several poets, and a president of Harvard University.

Allandale Spring
Now marked only by a pair of stone pillars, the estate of Marguerite Souther (heiress to the fortune from the steam shovel that filled in the Back Bay, and the benefactor who ensured the rescue of the Loring-Greenough House), stood at 12 Allandale Street until the 1960’s, opposite the driveway to the Faulkner Hospital. Her fine house, hastily demolished when the hospital bought the land at Miss Souther’s death, was first built by Dr. Allan, who eventually gave this rural street its name from his estate, Allan’s Dale. Within its vales are several small bodies of water. One of these was soon tapped and a springhouse built over it. During the last century it was bottled and sold. Plans are for this land to be developed by the Mt. Pleasant Home as a retirement community, and the now-rundown springhouse will be restored as its centerpiece.

Two Commercial Establishments

Peacock Tavern
Peacock Tavern at 1155 Centre Street at the corner of Allandale Street, now on the grounds of the Faulkner Hospital, was a tavern of the Revolutionary era like the Orange Tree in Brookline Village (also gone) or Buckman’s Tavern (still proudly standing by Lexington Green). Capt. Lemuel Child, who led one of the three Roxbury militia units to Arlington to fight the retreating British on the first Patriot’s Day, kept it. Before the Revolution, British soldiers frequented it after their skating parties on Jamaica Pond. American father of the Revolution and second governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Samuel Adams, also known for his share in a Boston brewery bequeathed to him, owned the property after the Revolution and used it as a summer place. The date of the demise of the actual tavern is unknown, but the Wallis family, who erected a fine Greek revival style home on the site, later owned the property. It was demolished in the mid-20th century, when the hospital bought the property to round off its holdings. Interestingly, the 6th Dudley Milestone is set in the Arboretum’s wall across the street directly facing Allandale Street.

Seaver’s Store
The store at 741 Centre Street, the oldest in Boston and probably in the Commonwealth, was founded in 1796 by Joshua or Ebenezer Seaver and was for many years the only general store between Boston and Providence. After retiring from teaching the first Seaver bought a store that colonial troops had patronized and built the building at 741 Centre. It became the area’s first post office, police headquarters, and fire station, besides being the stopping place for stagecoaches between Boston and Providence.

For three generations the store was owned and managed by a Seaver. After the first Seaver’s death Robert Seaver ran it from 1833 to 1885, and he also dabbled in local politics. The store then passed into the hands of his sons, Robert and Fred, who carried on the business for over half a century until 1931. The bins and drawers were not changed in 136 years, and the store was replete with historic antiques.

It was last owned and managed by Joseph Daly, who worked under Fred Seaver for 30 years, and was finally demolished in the 1950’s in progress’ name. In the basement of the still extant building next door (Fowler’s Real Estate) are cells where prisoners were locked up while the store served as the area’s police station. Famous Jamaica Plain names were on their books: Peters, Parkman, Greene, and Curtis.

Churches of the Area

First Church
Jamaica Plain’s oldest church at the Monument was, like all the earliest churches in Boston and New England, of the Congregationalist faith of the Puritans. In the split in that denomination in the early 19th century First Church became Unitarian. Jamaica Plain remained part of the Parish of Roxbury (founded in 1632) until it finally split off as the Third Parish in 1770. More distant West Roxbury had split off as the Second Parish in 1712, building a church at Bussey and Walter Streets (hence the ancient burial ground there) and now residing at the Theodore Parker Church on Centre Street in West Roxbury.

The present granite English-Gothic building of the First Church is the second building on the site, erected in 1853 to replace the more usual New England style meetinghouse. First Church has had a distinguished succession of ministers, among them William Gordon and, at the turn of this century, Charles Dole. William Gordon was the first minister, a Scot who came to America with strong pro-colonial views and later wrote one of the earliest histories of the American Revolution. The Rev. Charles Dole was a noted pacifist and the father of a lad who went to Hawaii and became “the pineapple king” in the business world.

First Church Burial Ground
Behind the 1895 parish hall addition in granite to the 1853 church building is First Church’s small burial ground, Jamaica Plain’s only ancient burial spot. This is not too surprising because in farming communities, families often created their own burial grounds, and in the 18th century Jamaica Plain was pretty much a farming community. The First Church Burial Ground was established in 1785 despite Rev. Gordon’s objections. It contains 24 tombs in mounds created on two of its edges and in the central portion, and tombstones in fine condition. Three of the local men who marched against the retreating British on April 19, 1775 are buried here, their tombs marked with flags every Memorial Day in ceremonies by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. The burial ground was never filled up because it was established relatively late, and the Forest Hills Cemetery was established by 1850.

St. John’s Episcopal Church
The founding of St. John’s Episcopal Church was largely due to Charles Belmont, father of Frank Belmont, who once lived in the house called “Lakeville” in the 1830’s. In 1840 a lot was purchased of Mr. Charles Bennett at the end of a lane that took its name from the church off Centre Street, and a wooden chapel was built and consecrated the next year by Bishop Griswold. The rectory was completed in 1849. The congregation flourished and outgrew its Victorian Gothic gingerbread chapel. In 1882 Gen. W. H. Sumner, son of Governor Increase Sumner for whom the Sumner Tunnel is named because of his business dealings in East Boston, who had extensive land holdings on the hill area east of Centre Street, bequeathed the church its present location. The present church was built there in English style of Roxbury puddingstone. Jamaica Plain formerly also had the mission congregation of St. Peter’s on Paul Gore Street, a wooden structure that burned. It has since become a neighborhood garden site.

The Baptist Church
The imposing stucco Baptist Church with its notably lofty steeple on the corner of Centre and Myrtle Streets was dedicated in 1859. A decade ago it suffered a tragic fire but has been restored to its grandeur.

Congregational Churches
The unique 19th century two-story wooden hall near the corner of Boylston and Danforth Streets was first used as a primary school. After the Town of West Roxbury built a larger Chestnut Street School in 1870, the Boylston Congregational Church formed and worshipped in the hall until it built its current big wooden church at the corner of Boylston and Amory Streets on the other side of the railroad tracks. Then the St. Peter’s Episcopal Mission formed and worshipped there until it built its own church on Paul Gore Street. Local Germans then bought the building to form yet another German club in Jamaica Plain, the Boylston Schulverein, which stayed on the site until it moved to Westwood in the 1960’s. The building continues to serve the area.

Dr. George Faulkner established the Central Congregational Church in May 1852 and others held its first services in the Village Hall on Thomas Street (later the G. A. R. Post but demolished in the 1960’s for a municipal parking lot). Their first house of worship was at the corner of Greenough and Centre Streets, where the Greenough apartment block now stands. Moving toward Jamaica Plain’s commercial center at Woolsey Square by the Green Street railroad station near the base of Sumner Hill, the congregation built a new house of worship at the triangular lot at the end of Roanoke and Seaverns Avenue. A fire in the 1930’s totally destroyed this grand structure, and the present red brick Georgian style building replaced it.

Catholic Churches
Catholic churches began in our area as German and Irish immigration to the United States increased during the 19th century, and are an excellent indication of the changing demographics and character of Jamaica Plain. Poor but eager, these people worked hard and long hours to make their world a better one than they as children had known, and with them they brought Mother Church.

Thus Blessed Sacrament Church and its school began as a mission from the Mission Church on Roxbury’s great cross street, Tremont. All early visions were crowned when the present Romanesque style building by Charles Greco was dedicated on June 10, 1917. Very much in the Italian style and particularly patterned after St. Paul’s-outside-the-walls in Rome, the Church of the Blessed Sacrament features red brick with limestone trimming in vast airy proportions. The church basically was to serve this side of Parker Hill and its adjacent valley.

Yet even during the days of the Town of West Roxbury, Archbishop Williams of Boston looked into the future and delineated St. Thomas Parish in 1865, under the Rev. Thomas Megennis, who had been ordained in Montreal. The church of St. Thomas Aquinas began at Curtis Hall in that year and soon moved down South Street to build its pleasant brick edifice (recently renovated) and school. Before the turn of the 20th century Our Lady of Lourdes had been established as a mission on Brookside Avenue to serve the Stony Brook Valley. The old church now serves as a vast parish hall to the newer brick edifice and school. As the 20th century progressed St. Thomas became the parent church for St. Andrew’s in Forest Hills, St. Theresa and Holy Name Churches in West Roxbury, and Sacred Heart in Roslindale.

Other Churches
St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Church, 24 Orchard Hill Road, Forest Hills
Our Lady of the Cedars of Lebanon Church, 61 Rockwood St., Moss Hill
Rock Hill Alliance Church, Centre and Boylston Streets
Greater Faith Temple (COGIC), 66 Seaverns Avenue, Sumner Hill
Jamaica Plain Trinity Latvian Lutheran Church, 100 Rockview St.
Kingdom Hall, 236 Chestnut Ave. (English); 19 Kingsboro Park (Spanish)
Little Rock/Mother Storms AME Zion Church, 40 Elm St., Sumner Hill
The United Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain & Roxbury; Iglesia Bautista Hispania, 322 Centre St.
Iglesia Metodista Unida San Andres, Amory and Atherton Streets
Covenant Congregational Church, 455 Arborway

Public Schools
Schools are another excellent indicator of local population. Their number and names can tell much about a local community, especially at the present time when schools get to be named for someone attached to the community rather than being named after a remote U. S. President. Also in Jamaica Plain’s history, the number of Catholic parochial schools, which have played a great role in alternative education, must be taken into account.

The Eliot School was the school from the colonial period through the period of the Town of West Roxbury until after the annexation with the City of Boston (1873). Yet its administration under a private board of Trustees made for difficulties with public education offered by the City of Boston, and the systems parted ways with the Eliot School, which, under its Trustees, became a showpiece for crafts education. Later, it was re-adopted by the Boston Public Schools. Given this history, Jamaica Plain High School always claimed as its inception date that of the Eliot School (1689). Its independent existence began in the Village Hall in 1855. It moved to the fondly remembered site on Elm Avenue in 1868 under the proper name of West Roxbury High School, as a plaque on the building, now a condominium, proclaims. With the demise of the Town of West Roxbury it became Jamaica Plain High School and a new wing was added in 1901. The famed building on Elm Avenue was known for its agricultural department, just as all the high schools in the city were known for their individual specialties. West Roxbury High School came into being again recently when its modern building was constructed off the V. F. W. Parkway near the railroad’s Needham branch. A new Jamaica Plain High was built off Washington Street even more recently. This later building was amalgamated with English High School in a round of economic moves as school population dwindled in the city.

Most longtime Jamaica Plain residents recall the Agassiz School on Burroughs Street just past the corner of Centre. The old Agassiz School, dating from 1859, was a smaller brick building with large rectangular windows. It was the precursor to the New Agassiz School, a huge brick affair with a vast auditorium on the third floor that was the grammar or elementary school. The school was named for Louis Agassiz, a Swiss-born natural scientist (1807-73), who started Harvard’s Peabody Museum. His daughter Pauline married local Quincy Shaw and lived on the present Cabot Estate north of the Pond and did much to establish kindergartens in the United States. When these brick structures were razed in the 1960’s for a municipal parking lot, the Agassiz School was rebuilt in modern school architecture on Call Street off South Street.

Other feeder schools:
Joseph P. Manning (Moss Hill) - named after the Boston cigar manufacturer and philanthropist of 80 Pond Street (1867-1944).
Ellis Mendell School (Egleston Square) - named after a minister of the Boylston Congregational Church (1851-1903).
Margaret Fuller School (Glen Road) - named after the famed feminist of Forest Hills, who tragically died in a shipwreck as Countess Ossoli (1810-59).
Rafael Hernandez School (Egleston) - named after the prominent Puerto Rican song writer (1893-1965).

Junior high school (now termed middle school) was the rare art-deco-style Mary E. Curley School built in 1931, named for the gracious first wife of Mayor and Governor James Michael Curley, who died of cancer that same year. Its former primary division was transferred to the James Michael Curley School, built recently at the back of the school named for his wife on Pershing Road.

Former Jamaica Plain feeder schools:
Francis Parkman (Walk Hill Street) and Wyman (Wyman Street).

Forest Hills Cemetery
The Roxbury City Council on March 28, 1848, gave an order for the purchase of the farms of the old Seaverns family to establish a rural municipal park cemetery. In the same year another 14 ½ acres were purchased from John Parkinson. This made for a little more than 71 acres at the cost of $27,894. The acreage was later increased to 225 acres.

One of the most beautiful spots in Boston, along the lines of a European burial park, Forest Hills Cemetery boasts the artificial Lake Hibiscus and many imposing monuments of all eras by sculptors famous or not. Among these are Daniel Chester French’s Death Staying the Hand of the Sculptor at the entrance, a memorial to Boston sculptor Milmore. Milmore himself did the Civil War Monument for the City of Roxbury by the Walk Hill Street entrance. The names of Roxbury’s dead are inscribed on the surrounding granite balustrade.

The Cemetery Office by the Morton Street entrance furnishes a map for free that features the locations of the graves of some of the famous people buried in the cemetery, some local and others who happened to die in Boston after finding fame elsewhere. An outdoor copy is also posted just inside the main gate for weekend visitors. The cemetery is open to all during the hours of daylight for rambling along pavements and paths named for the flora of the world.

The Arnold Arboretum
The expanse of the Arnold Arboretum from the Arborway’s ridge across to Faulkner Hill and ending at South and Walter Streets is taken almost for granted as the natural place for a park. Yet the Arboretum began along South Street as it turns away from Forest Hills to snake toward Roslindale, where Benjamin Bussey in 1835 left land and money to Harvard College for a school of horticulture and agriculture. By 1871, a small portion of the eastern part of the estate had been built over with the Bussey Institution. It premiered agriculture at first and then applied biology. After being totally integrated into Harvard University, the old Victorian stone building was demolished after a ravenous fire, and the present State Lab for the Department of Public Health was built along with research space for Harvard.

By 1872 the remaining share of the estate (120) acres was being turned into what would become one of the largest (and youngest) botanical gardens in the world (now with some 7,000 species of trees, shrubs, and vines). This Arboretum was named after James Arnold of New Bedford, who had also left Harvard money for the study of agriculture and horticulture. Bussey’s initial gift and the lack of land near the Harvard campus in Cambridge made the university go to noncontiguous tracts (the first of many for colleges). A 1,000-year lease makes Harvard the caretaker of the plants, while the City of Boston owns, polices, and maintains the roads of this park for public and academic use. This is where Frederick Law Olmsted, the pioneer landscapist, began his park work in Boston in consultation with the Arboretum’s first Director, Charles S. Sargent, and together they achieved plantings in eternal harmony with the natural features.

Over the years 145 additional acres were acquired piecemeal. This allowed the Arboretum to spill over Bussey Street up Peter’s Hill - the highest of the Arboretum’s three drumlins at 237 ft., with a fine view - and across South Street to Stony Brook, which is now covered over by the railroad tracks. A fine library and bookstore are at the main entrance beyond Murray Circle on the Arborway. Lilac Sunday is a cherished annual event, and walking is easy as no cars are allowed. Jamaica Plain’s only visible surviving brook leisurely meanders its way west to east, and all plants are marked for the walker’s reference in this living museum of flora of the entire Northern Hemisphere.

The Jamaica Elm
One notable tree in Jamaica Plain did not stand in the Arboretum. This was the Jamaica Elm that stood into the 20th century at the corner of Green and Rockview Streets. It was the largest of its kind in the City of Boston and was featured among the 100-plus local post cards that were issued in the first half of this century. Like so many of its species it fell victim to Dutch elm disease and had to be removed.

Miscellany

The Jamaica Plain Branch Libraries
Jamaica Plain’s library service began on the first floor of Curtis Hall in June 1876 as a delivery section of the Roxbury Branch Library. A year later the Library became an independent branch on the first floor of Curtis Hall. After a fire there in 1908 the branch continued in rented quarters in Jackson Hall at Centre Street and Seaverns Avenue. The current building, on the Sedgwick Street side of Curtis Hall, was erected by the City of Boston in 1909-11 and was the first branch building built for library purposes.

Another branch was established for upper Jamaica Plain near Hyde Square when the Connolly branch was built in the more traditional branch architecture of that period. It was named for the beloved leader of the nearby Blessed Sacrament Church a quarter of a mile away.

The Faulkner Hospital
Our local hospital is named for its founder, Dr. George Faulkner, the legendary physician of the late 19th century. A graduate of Harvard, Dr. Faulkner determined to come back and serve the people with whom he had grown up. He practiced for 32 years, his carriage a familiar sight with his Scotch terriers and his invalid daughter Mary with him. Upon Mary’s death in 1896 the Faulkners set up a trust to build a local hospital. On its acreage fronting on the Arboretum for southern exposure the first Faulkner Hospital was more like a nursing home at the time of its opening in March 1903.

From its initial care for 30 patients in cozy rooms with fireplaces, even free to those who needed the care but who could not pay at the time, progress in medicine soon made it into a large teaching hospital with a famous Nursing School and all sorts of departments. Dr. Faulkner died in 1911, but his rich spirit has caused it to increase in size and specialties, notably the headache and breast centers of the present time. The Adams Nervine Asylum just up the road on Centre Street, dating from the 1880’s and pioneering in the treatment of mental disorders with drugs like Lithium, merged with the Faulkner later on. The current hospital building dates from 1967, and “Whose life is it anyhow?” was filmed there.

Composition of Community
The following statement, made by an anonymous Jamaica Plain Library chronicler in the 1930’s, reflects the Jamaica Plain community in which this editor grew up in the 1940’s:

The earliest settlers in Jamaica Plain were English Protestants. Their descendants dominated the community until the middle of the nineteenth century when immigrants from Germany and Ireland swelled the population. During this century many different nationalities have settled here: Italian, Greek, Latvian, and most recently Cuban. There is a sizable Jewish community now concentrated in the Moss Hill area. Quite a number of colored families now reside in the less attractive area in the vicinity of the railroad tracks. There are now very few descendants of the original settlers in Jamaica Plain. The more prolific Irish Catholic families have replaced them in numbers as well as influence. The present population of approximately 19,000 is predominantly Catholic of Irish descent

With the upheaval after World War II and the civil rights movements of the 1960s and the growth of Boston in general, Jamaica Plain demographics have changed yet again. Notable is the establishment of the largest Hispanic population here in all of the City of Boston, at 30% in 1990. As Boston’s colleges have expanded and more students live off campus, Jamaica Plain’s nearness to the city core has not escaped notice of students seeking housing.

A walk along Centre Street demonstrates a rich diversity of peoples of various backgrounds, cultures, and experiences making it somehow in contemporary America. At Christmas the streetlights are decorated with the national flags of people who, from these varied countries all over the world, come to live in Jamaica Plain. Many are the flags to be seen on both sides of Centre Street, from Green Street to the Monument. They symbolize the great future as well as the past of our fair area; probably still “an Eden of America” just as it was called when the first Europeans settled here. With ongoing community cooperation and sensitivity to issues the Eden can continue - no Utopia perhaps but a place where many peoples can come together and live in some comfort.

Appendix: Some Notable Persons of Jamaica Plain

Artists:
Horatio Greenough (1805-1852)

Authors:
Samuel Goodrich (Peter Parley 1793-1860)
Francis Parkman (1823-1893)
William Ticknor

Civic Leaders:
Samuel Adams (1722-1803)
Sir Francis Bernard (1712-1779)
James Michael Curley (1874-1958)
Eugene Foss
John Hancock
Malcolm Nichols
Andrew Peters
Gen. William Sumner
Maurice J. Tobin (1901-1953)

Educators:
Michael Anagros (1837-1906)
Elizabeth Peabody Agassiz (1804-1894)

Jurists:
John Lowell (1743-1802)

Reformers:
Emily Balch (1867-1961)
Rev. James Freeman Clarke (1810-1888)
Rev. Charles Dole
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850)
Molly Rogers (1882-1955)

Scientists:
Ellen Richards (1842-1911)
Charles Sprague Sargeant (1841-1927)
Dr. John Warren (1778-1856)

Soldiers:
William Heath (1737-1814)
Joseph Weld

Among those who rest in the Forest Hills Cemetery
Milmore Memorial - sculpted by D. C. French
Mount Warren -Gen. Joseph Warren - American Revolution
Mount Dearborn - Gen. H.A.S. Dearborn - American Revolution
Gen. William Heath - American Revolution
E. E. Cummings - Poet
William Gaston - Governor of Massachusetts (1875-1876)
Eugene O’Neill - Playwright
Adelbert T. Alden - Statuette sculpted by D. C. French
James Freeman Clarke - Author
Edward Everett Hale - Author
William Lloyd Garrison - Abolitionist
John Reece Monument - Inventor of Buttonhole Machine
Fannie Davenport - Actress
James Bennett Forsyth - Founder of Forsyth Dental Clinic
Eugene N. Foss - Governor of Massachusetts (1911-1914)
Curtis Guild - of Massachusetts (1906-1909)
John Lufkin - Inventor of the shoe vamp machine
Channing H. Cox - of Massachusetts (1921-1924)
Andrew Carney - Founder - Carney Hospital
Rear Admiral John A. Winslow - Admiral of Civil War
Jacob Wirth - Restaurateur
Bishop Theofan S Noli - Premier of Albania

Compiled by Walter Marx. Production assistance by Frank Norton. Edited by Chris Globig, Charlie Rosenberg, and Jennifer Stewart.
Copyright 2003 © The Jamaica Plain Historical Society

 

 

Revised and augmented from Jamaica Plain: Collected Bibliographies, Boston Landmarks Commission, 1983, as part of its Jamaica Plain Preservation Survey. This revised edition was produced by Walter H. Marx in 1991. BPL numbers represent Boston Public Library call numbers.

Maps

The Town of Roxbury by John G. Hales (surveyor, selectman, publisher), 1832; 100 rods=1 inch; shows churches and some industries; also included in both editions of F. S. Drake, The History of Roxbury, 1878 and 1910. BPL# Map 81.36.1832

The Town of Roxbury by Charles Whitney, 1843 with revised edition 1849; with churches pictured on top and bottom and houses indicated but not named, 24"X 30" - BPL# Map 81.36.1849

Jamaica Plain in West Roxbury from Walling's Map of the County of Norfolk, 1859 on a generously large scale; with all buildings indicated and named - West Roxbury Historical Society

A plan of Boston's Roxbury by N. Henry Crafts (city engineer), 1867; 500' = 1"; with major public buildings and named wharves; 36" X 40" - BPL# Map 81.3.1867

A Map of the Towns of Brookline and West Roxbury (1867) from frontispiece to The Brookline & West Roxbury Directory for 1868-69; with no buildings named nor indicated - Jamaica Plain Public Library Branch

Dorchester, Roxbury, and West Roxbury by Boston Suburban Book Company, 1907; 1200' =1"; with very detailed streets - BPL# Map 81.3.1907

View of Boston Highlands, Wards 19-22, by G. H. Bailey & Co., Boston, 1888; with border pictures of churches and factories and showing all buildings in view with a numbered key of many of them below; 30" X 36" - BPL# Map 81.36.1888

Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, Ward 23, City of Boston, by G. H. Bailey & Co., Boston, 1891; with border pictures of churches, municipal buildings, residences, and store blocks and showing all buildings in view with a numbered key of many of the buildings, 24" X 34" - Loring-Greenough House.

Real Estate and Street Atlases

Boston Public Library History Reference Section, Copley Square

Boston Athenaeum

Harvard College Library Map Room, College Yard

Boston Building Department, Boston City Hall

Atlas of West Roxbury by Hopkins, Philadelphia, 1873

Atlas of West Roxbury by Bromley, Philadelphia, 1884, 1890, 1896, 1914, 1924

Boston Board of Street Commissioners, Boston's Streets, Avenues, Courts, and Places, also in Northeastern University Library Boston, 1912 and later; later editions are mere listings but the 1912 edition contains history on the streets and an appendix on the legal bounds of the City of Boston.

Jamaica Plain Preservation Study, ed. C. Kennedy et al., Boston Landmarks Commission, also in Jamaica Plain Branch Library, 2 Volumes Volume II gives some house histories by address

Business Directories

An Almanac & Business Directory for the Environs of Boston, by G. Adams, Boston, 1848, 1849, 1850, with ads and brief descriptions - BPL# 44892.5

The Roxbury Almanac and Directory, by G. Adams, Boston, 1847 through 1866 BPL# F74.R9.A18

The Brookline & West Roxbury Directory, by G. Goodnough, Boston, 1868, Jamaica Plain Branch Library

The Blue Book of Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and West Roxbury, N. Cambridge, 1895 through 1899; with ads and lists of residents - BPL# 2358.22

The Blue Book of Roxbury and Dorchester, Boston, 1915 - BPL# 2359a.142

The Boston Blue Book or City Directory), Boston, 1876 through 1937 - BPL# F73.22.B8 or available on film in the Microtext Room on the Boston Public Library at Copley Square

Newspapers

The Roxbury Advertizer (weekly) April 4, 1846 - December 29, 1848; first called The Mutual Advertizer BPL# N1169.14

The Roxbury Citizen (weekly) January 4, 1936 - present; now part of The Jamaica Plain Citizen - available in the BPL Microtext Room, BPL# AN2.M4.R7

The Roxbury Gazette & South End Advertizer (weekly) January 2, 1942 - available in the BPL Microtext Room, BPL# AN2.M4.R71

Jamaica News (weekly) January 1, 1897 - available in the BPL Microtext Room, BPL# AN2.M4.J38; The Jamaica Plain Branch Library has the years 1898, 1899, 1901, 1902, 1903

The Jamaica Plain Press (weekly) November 1939 - available in the BPL Microtext Room, BPL# AN2.M4.J380

The Jamaica Plain Citizen (weekly) January 1, 1937 - present; bound editions available for inspection along with The Roxbury Citizen (1942-1963) at the publisher, Tribune Publications, 1281 Hyde Park Ave., Hyde Park, Massachusetts and at the BPL Microtext Room, BPL# N2.M4.J35

Town Reports

Roxbury Town Records (1648-1849), reels #217-18 - available in the BPL Microtext Room, BPL# F73.B7

West Roxbury Town Records (1851-1879), reels #222-25 - available in BPL Microtext Room, BPL# F73.B7

West Roxbury Town Reports (1851-1874) - yearly paperbound reports in the possession of the West Roxbury Historical Society at the West Roxbury Branch Library

Other Documents

Order of Exercises at the Celebration of the Completion of Two Centuries since the Settlement of Roxbury, October 8, 1830, single sheet - BPL# XH80.225 No.14

Roxbury Centennial, November 22, 1876; 104 pp. - BPL# F74.R9R9

Mayor's Address to the City Council of Roxbury (yearly, 1848 through 1867) - incomplete set, BPL# 6341.1

Commissioners on the Subject of the Union of the Cities of Boston, Roxbury, 1867, 20 pp., City Document #3 - BPL# 4455.152

Rufus Choate, Application to Set Off Wards 6-8 of the City of Roxbury as an Agricultural Town, Boston 1851, the noted Massachusetts lawyer (whose statue is in the Suffolk County Courthouse in downtown Boston) together with Jamaica Plain citizen, Arthur W. Austin (for whom Centre St. was renamed as long as the Town of West Roxbury existed) were spokesmen for the petitioners to the Massachusetts General Court in a successful attempt to separate West Roxbury from Roxbury. The document is useful for the social and political history of the town - available at the Jamaica Plain Branch Library and at Harvard Widener Library 13187.41.10

Report of the Committee on the Location & Erection of a New Town House, West Roxbury, 1866, with an appendix by the architects, Ware and Van Brunt; the suggested location was not the one finally selected - available at the Jamaica Plain Branch Library and at the Harvard Widener Library #13187.41.23

A. W. Austin, Address at the Dedication of the Town House of West Roxbury, Boston, 1868; a synopsis of the history of West Roxbury together with a review of the history of the separation from Roxbury in a very amusing writing style - available at the Jamaica Plain Branch Library and at the Harvard Widener Library #13187.41.23

Ceremonies at the Dedication of the Soldier's Monument in West Roxbury, Boston, 1871, 32 pp.; primarily a record of the event and speeches but with a fine concluding description of the monument - available at the Jamaica Plain Branch Library and at Harvard Widener Library #13187.41.25

General Published History

Charles M. Ellis, The History of Roxbury Town, Roxbury, 1847, 146 pp. - BPL# 2358.84 or B4129.59

Francis S. Drake, A History of Roxbury, Roxbury, 1878 (rep. by the City of Boston, 1910), chaps. 10-12; the most available source - BPL History Reference Room (#562.1.34) or BPL#6350a.41 and G293.1.34 and at the Jamaica Plain Branch Library and at the Harvard Widener Library #US13187.41.15

Roxbury Past & Present, ed. H. J. MacElaney, Boston, 1918, 98 pp. with plates and maps - BPL #4359.68

Harriet M. Whitcomb, Annals & Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain, Cambridge, 1897; a detailed lecture originally for a local ladies club in Jamaica Plain by one who on her death in 1941 was one of the oldest residents in the city - BPL#F74.J3W5 and Widener #13314.5 and Jamaica Plain Branch Library

C. Kennedy et al., Jamaica Plain Preservation Story, vol. I, Boston Landmarks Commission, 1983 and Jamaica Plain Branch Library

Historic Sites in the West Roxbury District, City of Boston, 1907 and Jamaica Plain Branch Library

Jamaica Plain, Boston 200 Neighborhood Histories Project, Boston, 1976, 7 pp. and Jamaica Plain Branch Library

Specific Published Histories

I. Loring-Greenough House
Eva Boyd, "Jamaica Plain by Way of London" in Old Time New England, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston, and Jamaica Plain Branch Library

Eva Boyd, A Garden Pageant - The Place Remembers, Portraying Ten Episodes in the History of the Loring-Greenough House in the Neighborhood, Jamaica Plain, 1930 (reprint Jamaica Plain Historical Society, 1989) - BPL#F73.68.J3.B6

Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club, The History of the Loring-Greenough House, 1956 and at the Jamaica Plain Branch of the Public Library

Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club, The Story of the Loring-Greenough House, n. d. and at the Jamaica Plain Branch of the Public Library

II. The First Church (Unitarian at the Monument)
Rev. Dr. Thomas Gray, A Half-Century Sermon, Boston, 1842, pp. - available in the Jamaica Plain Branch Library: With a memorandum on town development and the "Eliot Lands"

F. Seaver, The Founders of the Third Parish of Roxbury in Jamaica Plain - Who They Were and Where They Lived in 1769, Boston, 1917 with map - available in the Jamaica Plain Branch Library

A History of the First Church Unitarian, n. d., 3 pp. - available in the Jamaica Plain Branch Library

III. Central Congregational Church
Ellen L. Ernst, The First Congregational Society of Jamaica Plain 1769-1909, Boston, 1909 - available in the Jamaica Plain Branch Library

IV. The Footlight Club
100th Performance 1877 - 1906, Cambridge, 1906 - available in the Jamaica Plain Branch Library

V. The Children's Museum
Adelaide B. Sayles, The Story of the Children's Museum, Boston, 1937 - available in the Jamaica Plain Branch Library

VI. Fire Department
A.W. Brayley, A Complete History of the Boston Fire Department, Boston, 1889 - available at the Boston Public Library

VII. The Former Adams Nervine Asylum
Annual Reports of the Managers of the Asylum, Boston


Boston Landmarks Commission, Study Report for the Asylum, Boston

VIII. The Former German Club
History of the Boylston Schulverein, Boston, 1924; with English synopsis on pg. 28 - available in the Jamaica Plain Branch Library

IX. Jamaica Plain Neighborhood House
Marion C. Balch, A History of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood House Association, Boston, 1953 - BPL# HV878.B.35

Newspaper Articles

"The Old Home Town", Boston Sunday Post, December 12, 1943 - Jamaica Plain description with cartoon on full page

"Jamaica Plain - It Has Everything", Boston Post, January 9, 1944 - another full page description

"The Old Curtis Farm", Boston Globe, September 13, 1970, pg. B-49

Collections

Henry A. May, Scrapbooks with Historical & Biographical Articles of Roxbury, West Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain (1890 - 1901), vols. 2-19, BPL#H80.217

W. H. Marx, Jamaica Plain Citizen, Jamaica Plain Historical Society, 1989 - present - a series of essays on local history originally printed in The Jamaica Plain Citizen

Miscellaneous

A List of 99 Ways of Spelling Jamaica Plain, Boston, 1886 - available in the Jamaica Plain Branch Library

Boston Architect Department, Annual Reports, 1891 through 1894, Boston; reports for the years when E. M. Wheelwright was City Architect and contains documentation for municipal buildings erected in Jamaica Plain, including some schools, the Jamaica Pond Boathouse, and a Precinct House addition - available in the Harvard College (Fogg Art Museum) Library #FA2635.2

Photographs and Illustrations

The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities

The Boston Athenaeum

Print Room of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square

The Jamaica Plain Branch Library

Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) General Planning Documents
B65R General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, BRA, 1962 Jamaica Plain Summary

B65R Jamaica Plain Survey & Planning Application, Survey Jamaica Plain Renewal Area, n.d.

B65R Jamaica Plain Community Organization, c.1965 Comp 0

B65R J. Boland & R. Cady. Housing Market Study-Jamaica Plain

B65R Jamaica Plain, General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, 1965 G

B65R Draft Jamaica Plain-Parker Hill Planning District, n. d.

B65R Jamaica Plain, Background & History, n. d.

B65R Jamaica Plain Real Estate Analysis 1953-1955, n. d.

S51 Larry Smith & Co., Economic Analysis, Jamaica Plain E GNRP Area, prepared for BRA, 1964

B65R Code Enforcement Program - Jamaica Plain, 1965

B65R Jamaica Plain, Community Conservation Program - Application for Federal Grants

J62 Application for Federal Grants under the Provisions of BRA neighborhood improvement program, community facilities, open space land and urban beautification and improvement - Jamaica Plain, n. d.

D40.6 Survey of Properties Owned by the City of Boston, BRA BRA Planning Department, June 1970. Part 6, Jamaica Plain

B65R Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Improvement Program, n. d.

B65R Jamaica Plain Reference File

B65R Jamaica Plain-Mission Hill, Parks Study, Draft, BRA JM February, 1973

B65R Jamaica Plain, Background Information, Planning JP Issues and Preliminary Neighborhood Improvement Strategies, June, 1975

Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) Development Studies & Proposals
B65R Cabot Estate Studies, n. d.

B65R Cabot Estate Open Space Task Force Report, 1971

B65R Cabot Estate - Summary of Alternative Development CaS Schemes, n.d.

R21 Replacement of the Agassiz/Old Agassiz Elementary BRA3 Schools, BRA, May, 1965

R61 Hughes, John T., Jr. A Police Station for the Consolidation H of Division 13 & Division 17, Boston, MA. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of B. Arch, MIT, Boston, 1960.

Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) Transportation
T10 Jamaica Plain Community Council. Impact of the Proposed J Expressway on Jamaica Plain, January, 1968.

T40 Tippets-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton. Roxbury-Jamaica Plain T499R (Boston), MA. Areawide Topics Plain, No. 40. Prepared for the Mass. DPW in cooperation with the US/DOT, FHA. Chestnut Hill, MA. Sept. 1972.

D40 Boston's Southwest Corridor Development Potential; B65R analysis and projection of the social & economic B impact, August, 1974.

Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) Miscellaneous Documents
B65G.B Boston Globe. Boston's Neighborhoods. n.d.

C436 Centre St., An Exhibit & Fair by the Boston Children's C Museum, 1975

R37 Jamaica Plain Community Council Youth Committee. J How does Jamaica Plain provide for its youth? A survey of youth programs in Jamaica Plain. Boston, 1967

Jamaica Plain is like many other American places. Though established in the 1630’s within the Town of Roxbury, it has never had its own political existence. Thus, its boundaries, some fixed and others not, draw varied responses. The question that gets asked most frequently is the origin of our area’s name. Readers of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society’s first publication, “JP Streets”, already know the answer, but here is the fullest account ever, incorporating the latest thoughts.

The earliest remaining record of the name is found in Hugh Thomas’ deed of 1677 to provide land for a school here (where the Monument stands), which terms it “Jamaica End.” Rev. John Eliot’s 1689 deed to provide revenue for the school calls it “Jamaica or the Pond Plaine.” The 1683 Roxbury Town Records present a compromise in the name used today. “End” certainly is a geographical term, but the level area about the Pond and village was better teamed with “Jamaica,” a term first associated with the Pond.

The Island
Prior antiquarians liked to derive “Jamaica” from the substantial West Indian Island near the middle of the Caribbean Sea amongst the Greater Antilles. Discovered for Spain by Columbus in 1494 on the north coast and only slightly colonized by the Spanish, Jamaica was a prize for England’s Admiral Penn (father of the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania) in May 1655. After a failed attempt on Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, Penn had wanted something to bring back to the cantankerous Puritan English ruler Oliver Cromwell.

Massachusetts’s settlers sympathized greatly with Cromwell and were aware of the death by fever of Edward Winslow, three-time governor of Plymouth, during the capture of Jamaica. After one attempt at re-conquest by the Spanish in 1657 the English were established, and by 1664 a governor and council were in place along with the culture of cocoa and sugar cane. Trade could begin in the dastardly triangle of sugar, rum, and slaves. Herein lie the explanations of JP as Jamaica (rum served) Plain or the fact that the early locals made their money on rum-very doubtful as farming was the economic staple here.

The runaway husband
Charles Ellis’ premier history of our area in 1847 dashes water on the West Indian island theory while telling three legends. First, gentlemen from the island are supposed to have summered here, but the first man known with such connections came just before the Revolution. Second, a Londoner on the run from his wife told her he was going to Jamaica. She followed him, found nothing, and chanced to come to Boston. She heard of a man residing at the Pond Plain who kept speaking of a trip to Jamaica. The two met, and thereafter the region was called Jamaica Plain.

The rum
When it comes to legend number three, this time concerning Indians, Ellis terms it “the most probable account” and approaches the key issue. The story went that local Indians came into Roxbury and purchased Jamaica rum, saying “Indian love Jamaica.” The Roxbury settlers began to apply the term to the Indians’ place. and Pond Plain became Jamaica Plain. Yet Ellis doubts that numbers of Indians lived here and that liquor was sold to them.

Two Indian names
From the earliest English writers here it is known that the sachem or head of the local Indians (the Massachusetts who lived in and around the City of Boston) was Chickatabut (House of Fire), who lived along the Neponset River. His uncle Kuchamakin had brought him up. While Kuchamakin was acting as regent for the young Chickatabut, John Eliot began his missionary work among the American natives. While the regent agreed to do homage to an English king across the sea, he told Eliot that he already had a King in heaven.

John Eliot then turned his efforts to another native group living on the Newton/Brighton line, and his Christianization program took root. Though Kuchamakin (Big Feather) lost one chance at immortality he succeeded in another fashion. For he had a connection with our magnificent and unique local treasure, the Pond, via a primeval Morton Street. This was a summering place and later became a place of retreat to allow Chickatabut to reign on his own when he came of age.

Another account would have our area named for an Indian woman named Jamaco who lived at the Pond where she made fine baskets. Once again the native element comes forward. The whole tale may well be that she was the wife of Kuchamakin, who long outlived him. No matter what, we seem to have an easy corruption of the name of a local tied to a geographical description of the area he cherished after earlier names were tried and made into the form we know. It is a fitting combination of two primeval elements to name our vibrant modern area.

Article by Walter H. Marx

Sources: C. M. Ellis, The History of Roxbury Town, 1847. F. S. Drake, The Town of Roxbury, 1878. JP in Boston 200 Neighborhood History series, 1975. The Gleaner Geography & History of Jamaica

Reprinted with permission from the January 17, 1992 Jamaica Plain Gazette.
Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.

[The Jamaica Plain Historical Society has received the following response to this article from Ed Quill of Pembroke MA:
I know you would want to make a correction in your article if there was an error in history. The Grand Sachem Chikataubut (House-a-Fire) died in 1633, of smallpox in the great pestilence. His brother Cutshamekin (the English had several spellings for Native American names) became the guardian to Chikataubut’s son who was under age for a sachem.  The son’s name was Wampatuck (White Goose).  The confusion rises because Wampatuck (also Wompatuck) also later used the Christian name Josias and also his father’s name Chikataubut.  In signing many land grants as Wampatuck, Wompatuck, Josias Wampatuck, and Josias Wampatuck Chikataubut, he confused many historians.  But your article seems to suggest that Cutshamekin was the uncle of the great sachem himself, who was the chief ruler of the Massachuset when the Puritans arrived in 1630 and had villages at Moswetuset Hummock (Squantum), Titicut (Middleboro), Mattakeeset (Pembroke/Hanson), Neponset (Dorchester) and the Blue Hills.  Much of these lands were sold off by either Cutshamekin or Wampatuck after the great man’s had died.]

A Guide to Boston Information Sources
Published by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society

Since records for your house and lot go by city and county respectively, any JP resident checking on these topics must be aware of our area’s history. Jamaica Plain has never been a separate political entity but rather a part of the Town of Roxbury from its founding in 1630 until 1851, when it became a part of the Town of West Roxbury during its existence from 1851 until 1874. When that town was annexed by Boston in 1874, all the municipal records of West Roxbury were taken over by the City of Boston, which had already annexed Roxbury in 1868.

In the matter of counties also Jamaica Plain has gone back and forth—a rarity in Massachusetts cities and towns. Simply put, our area was part of Suffolk County (mostly Boston to us nowadays) from the founding of Roxbury in 1630 with the county seat in Boston. When Norfolk County was created in 1792, Roxbury and Jamaica Plain were included in it with the county seat in Dedham. That remained the case until our area joined Boston in 1874 and once again became part of Suffolk County. Thus, if the information that you desire runs before 1874, you must search not only in downtown Boston but also in Dedham Square.

About your Lot
A quick way to see a dated plan with its owner of your parcel of land for 1874 to 1924 is to consult the Real Estate Atlas of the City of Boston. Private surveyors such as Bromley, Hopkins, or Sanborn, to name a few, compiled these. They show plot lines, building outlines, and the owner’s name; thus, they furnish a fine dating device for the researcher. Click here for an example. Our area is fittingly in the West Roxbury volume, and once you find out on what map plate your plot is located, that map plate number remains the same in all editions of that atlas. Sets of various completeness exist at county registries, the City’s Inspectional Services Department, the Bostonian Society, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Boston Public Library in Copley Square (see sources listed on the last page of this publication.) We also have a number of maps in low resolution available here in the resources section of this web site. Several companies sell reprints of these maps and allow for you to view them on-line.  See: Community Heritage Maps and Ward Maps LLC. New maps are being added to other web sites each day so if you don’t find the maps you need at any of these sites, try doing a Google or Bing search.

Current ownership of any building or plot in the city can be determined through tax assessor’s records at the city’s Assessing Information Center. Lots are listed alphabetically by street address for each ward, which yields a parcel and bill number. Owner’s names and addresses are indexed by bill numbers. A Jamaica Plain ward map can be viewed here.

Tracing previous owners of your lot involves a title search. Through a tedious process, your effort may also yield information about construction dates and changes on the property. Since records of deeds are matters for county courts, recall the initial note above and then proceed to the Norfolk County Registry in Dedham Square, or the Suffolk Registry of Deeds on the 4th and 5th floors of the Old Courthouse just above Government Center in downtown Boston.

Title Tracing
Beginning with the present owner’s name and the building’s address; consult the most recent Grantee (i.e., Owner) Index, which lists purchasers of property alphabetically. Proceed backward in time until a transaction involving the present owner and subject property is located. This will yield a reference to the volume and page where the deed of the present owner is recorded. This deed will then lead to the previous owner, who can then be looked up in the Grantee Index previous to him and so on. In order to save time in tracing a particularly long line of ownership, owner’s names which appear in the real estate atlases (see above) can be used as starting points. Often the deed itself will refer to the previous transaction, which saves the trouble of consulting the Grantee Index.

The process is repeated until the original owner is found. By paying careful attention to the description of the property being conveyed and changes in boundary or price, you can often discern any building activity or other topographic changes that the property may have gone through. For instance, if a Greek Revival Style house is located on a parcel, which deed records show to have been first subdivided from a farm lot in 1838, it is safe to assume that the house was built shortly thereafter. Dramatic fluctuations in price can also indicate that a building has recently been erected or demolished.

A record should be kept of each deed references in the chain by volume and page number and should include Grantor (Seller) and Grantee (Owner) names and residences, date, price, physical and boundary description. Breaks in the chain of title occasionally occur due to such things as an unrecorded or missing deed or inheritance by an heir of different surname. The former situation is most often irresolvable, while the latter can usually be surmounted through probate records (see below.)

More on Title Searches
Mortgages have opening language almost identical to deeds and are recorded in the same books, so that it is advisable to take careful note whether the reference given in the Grantee Indexes is for a deed or mortgage. The type of document is also frequently identified in the margin of the Index page itself. The existence of two instruments with the same date conveying the same piece of property back and forth between two people almost invariably indicates that the Grantor has given a mortgage to the Grantee.

Note references to property plans, which are often recorded with the deed. If a volume and Page number are given, the plan is located in the bound volumes. A plan number indicates that a plan is on file at the Plan and Map Department of the Registry. Always feel free to consult a registry clerk.

Probate Records, documents relating to the inheritance of property, are often necessary to complete a chain of ownership. These are located in the Probate Courts of county courthouses and are employed as follows:

The name of the deceased person is listed alphabetically within chronological volumes of an Index, yielding a case number. The numerically indexed volumes listing these case numbers in turn provide volume and page references for each instrument related to the probating of the deceased’s estate: will, inventory, division of the estate, etc. The volumes are then consulted for the copies of the instruments.

Should you come across the names of streets that you do not recognize, consult the Society’s Concise Guide to the Streets of Jamaica Plain (1987) by its Historian or A Record of the Streets, etc. in the City of Boston by the Boston Street Commissioners (2nd ed., 1910) with its locations, dates of laying out, and prior name(s). These are available in local and university libraries. Street pattern development gives many clues about building activity in the neighborhood.

About your Residence
With any luck your house and lot may have been included in the Boston Landmarks Commission’s Jamaica Plain Preservation Study (C. Kennedy ed. et al., 2 vols., 1983.) available at libraries including the Jamaica Plain branch of the Public Library on Sedgwick St., Volume I is the Project’s Complete Report in 73 pages with a good history of the area, the methodology and recommendations, five maps, and three appendices. Volume II is the thick compendium of Inventory Forms (of selected places only) alphabetically by street address and may chronicle your home’s tale. A sample Boston Landmarks Commission Building Information form may be viewed here and here.

You may also have luck in the Boston Public Library Fine Arts Card File. The Fine Arts Department (Copley Square, McKim Building, 3rd floor.) over the years has compiled an extensive card file of information on Boston buildings and architects, including references to books, articles, obituaries, prints, photos, and plans. Indexed alphabetically by street address and by building name, as well as by architect, the card file can save much time in consulting pertinent sources.

If you have had no luck with these sources, the basic information source is the city’s Building Permit Records. If you are looking for information from the 1879-1903 period, you should begin by inquiring at the library’s Fine Arts Division to see if your property is listed in the Building Inspector Reports Index. The cards are arranged by address and refer to bound volumes elsewhere in the Library. If your inquiry yields citations, contact the Research Library Office, for an appointment to view them.

The permits themselves from 1871 to present, for existing buildings, are kept at the Boston Inspectional Services Department at 1010 Massachusetts Avenue. Ask to see the Building Division document jacket by your address with your ward number. As previously noted, a Jamaica Plain ward map can be viewed here. You will see all the building permits that they have on your house and lot, and thus all the changes made at that address. Alas! These are not always in the best order. These envelopes contain records of most buildings and alteration permits from 1871. The most useful document is the original building permit as it lists the first owner, architect, builder, cost, dimensions, type of building, and date. Permits for major alterations often contain useful information as well.

Unfortunately, there are limitations to the usefulness of the permit files. For one, they only go back to 1871 when the current permit system began. For another, not all known construction and alterations are documented in the building jackets. Thus, the presence or absence of a building permit is not always a reliable dating device.

Plans for all original construction and major alterations should also be available. To review them, check the Building Division document jacket for the appropriate construction permit and note the “Bin Number” (usually an alpha-numeric code, such as A-24.) If the construction was after 1970, ask a member of the staff how to view the microform aperture card with the desired plan. If the construction was earlier than 1970, Call the Boston Public Library Research Library Office, for an appointment to view them.

Further Information
Should you wish to flesh out prior owners, you might profit by consulting the Boston City Directory, which annually listed all city residents alphabetically by street address from 1789 into the 1970s. These are available at the Microtext Division of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, and at the Bostonian Society. These can tell about building occupancy and use.

Another invaluable source if you are lucky is someone who has lived in the neighborhood for a long time. They may be able to tell you where the heirs of a former owner live, who might have photographs of the old house. The neighbors might say, for instance, that a doctor once lived there who had his office in one part of the first floor, which might explain some distinct pattern of rooms on your first floor, or the presence of a former shop to confirm some artifact of the past that you have discovered in the cellar or attic.

Contemporary newspaper articles and obituaries of former owners can provide descriptions and other detailed information on buildings and biographical data on architects. Complete copies of virtually all Boston newspapers (including the Jamaica Plain Citizen (1942—) and its local predecessor the Jamaica Plain News) are in the Microtext Division of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square. However, until recently, only obituaries were indexed; hence references to buildings can only be found when a construction date is known.

If you know that your building suffered a fire, a call to the Boston Fire Department will reveal the date. Given that, you may be able to get more information from contemporary newspapers. Diehards will go on to find out former telephone numbers and the like by consulting the archives of utility companies.

Finally, it’s a matter of luck when it comes to finding earlier photos and prints to document the historic appearance of and subsequent changes to your building and area. The best collections for Jamaica Plain views can be found at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) and the Print Department of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square (3rd floor.) Smaller but still useful collections exist at the Boston Athenaeum and the Bostonian Society. Photos are generally indexed by street and/or building name.

 

Sources

Bibliographical:
Drake, Francis S., The Town of Roxbury: Its Memorable Persons and Places, Roxbury, 1878
Jamaica Plain Historical Society, A Jamaica Plain Bibliography, 1990
Boston Landmarks Commission, Jamaica Plain Preservation Study, 2 vols., 1983
Boston Street Commissioners, Record of Streets, etc. in the City of Boston, 2nd ed. 1910 (later editions omit street history)
Warner, Sam Bass, Jr., Streetcar Suburbs: The process of Growth in Boston, 1879-1900, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962
Von Hoffman, Alexander, Local Attachments; The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1994

Institutional:
Boston Assessing Information Center, City Hall, 3rd Floor
Boston Landmarks Commission, City Hall, Room 805
Boston Inspectional Services Department, 1010 Mass. Avenue, (617) 635-5306
Boston Public Library, Copley Square, Back Bay, (617)-536-5400
   Fine Arts Department, 3rd floor rear
   Microtext Department, 1st floor on left
   Prints Department, 3rd floor front balcony
*Boston Athenaeum, 10 1/2 Beacon Street, (617) 227-0270
*Bostonian Society, Old State House, (617) 720-1713
*New England Historic and Genealogical Society, 101 Newbury St., Back Bay, (617) 536-5740
*Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA) Archives, Harrison Gray Otis House, 141 Cambridge Street, near Government Center, (617) 227-3960
Norfolk Registry of Deeds, 649 High St. near Dedham Square, off Route 1, (617) 461-6122
Suffolk Registry of Deeds, 4th and 5th floors, Suffolk County Courthouse, Pemberton Square above Government Center in Boston, (617) 725-8575

*Private libraries that may charge use fees and require an appointment.

Copyright © Jamaica Plain Historical Society. All Rights Reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without written permission.

Reprinted below is the tenth chapter from the book "The Town of Roxbury, Massachusetts: Its Memorable Persons and Places, Its History and Antiquities With Numerous Illustrations of Its Old Landmarks and Noted Personages" by Francis S. Drake. It was published by Drake in October, 1878.

Jamaica Plain is one of the loveliest spots in New England. It abounds in springs and books, and its soil, light and gravelly, is easily cultivated. Environed as it is by beautifully sloping hills, forming a complete basin, the place is almost entirely sheltered from east winds, and on account of its peculiar salubriousness, has been caled the "American Montpelier." For fifty years its death rate averaged but one to one hundred. Its inhabitants were in the olden time principally well-to-do farmers, and until recently it was a market-garden for the supply of vegetables for Boston. Many elegant country seats are delightfully situated on the banks of the lake and elsewhere, and the Plain is dotted with the tasteful cottages of business men, who retire every evening from their avocations in the city to this charming spot. For more than a century it has been an attractive summer resort for Bostonians.

Originally called the "Pond Plain," it had as early as 1667 received its present designation, as appears by Hugh Thomas's conveyance of his property here for the benefit of a school, "to the people at the Jamaica end of the town of Roxbury." It is undoubtedly a slander upon the good people of this locality to assert that it derives its name from their fondness for "Jamaica" rum, and that they preferred it "plain." However, this may be, the fact that the island of Jamaica had not long before been taken by Cromwell from the Spaniards, and that its rum, sugar, and other products had already found their way to the adjacent port of Boston, is certainly suggestive. The nomenclature in question may, notwithstanding ingenious theorizing, be safely referred to the desire to commemorate Cromwell's valuable acquisition.

The beautiful sheet of water known as "Jamaica Pond" covers an area of nearly seventy acres, with a depth in some places of sixty to seventy feet; and until the introduction of Cochituate water into Boston in 1848, supplied that city be means of an aqueduct with excellent water. It now provides that metropolis with ice of the best quality. The right to draw water from the pond for mill purposes, granted to certain citizens in 1698, conditionally, was the frequent cause of litigation till 1851 when the Boston Water Board bought the right for forty-five thousand dollars, and in 1856 the city sold it for thirty-five thousand dollars to the present corporation, on condition that they should not bring water into the city proper. The Aqueduct Company was incorporated in 1795. About forty-five miles of pipes made of logs, were laid; the trenches were only three to three and a half feet in depth, which did not prevent freezing in severe weather, while the smallness of the pipes four-inch mains, limited the supply.

Speaking of the social and other aspects of the place, the Rev. Thomas Gray, in his half-century discourse, delivered in 1842, said: ­ "When I first came among you this was a quiet, retired, rural little village, and there was not a single allurement either to physical, moral, or religious intemperance or excess to be found within its limits. Its simplicity of manners remind one of Goldsmith's 'Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain.' "Fashionable manners were unknown here then. The good dame's visits were made at an early hour in the afternoon, each with her knitting work still going on while engaged in social converse, and at dusk rolling up their work and returning home, refreshed from their social intercourse, to their domestic enjoyments and duties, which they wisely and justly considered as paramount to all others. There was more of true happiness in those humble dwellings than all the modern refinement of art, of wealth, or fashion combined can now boast or ever impart. 'These were thy charms, sweet village. Joys like these, With sweet succession, taught e'en toil to please; These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed.' "There seemed also perfect union of purpose and action in almost every person and every thing. Whenever a new dwelling was contemplated the whole neighborhood volunteered its services, prepared and stoned the cellar and well, and gave often days of labor to aid and speed on the object. There existed also at that time but one religious sentiment and feeling, and until a very recent period all met and worshipped together in this place. In this whole town there were only three churches and three ministers, all as perfectly known, loved and understood by each other as though they had been brothers. Now (1842) there are eleven churches and ministers, besides fifteen other clergymen, making twenty-six in all, and of about as many varying creeds, most of them scarcely known to each other even by name, though residing so near, much less by neighborly or social and friendly intercourse as formerly."

In the summer of 1775 the Rhode Island troops under Gen. Greene were stationed at the Plain, and were quartered in different houses upon the inhabitants. Some were at Deacon Nathaniel Weld's and others at Joseph Curtis's, on Centre Street. Troops from Connecticut were also stationed on the plain. The soldiers were in general said to very impudent to the inhabitants, especially a company from the town of Methuen.

At the corner of Centre and Boylston Streets stands a quaint but picturesque dwelling, whose irregular proportions strike the eye agreeably. It was built about the year 1738. Early in April, 1775, it was hastily vacated by Capt. Benjamin Hallowell, its loyalist owner, who sought refuge in Boston, and it was used during the siege by the patriot forces as a hospital for the camp at Roxbury. Soldiers were buried from it near the road, about forty rods from the house, in the direction of Boylston Street Station. After the siege it was leased by the selectmen to Jonathan Mason, Esq.

The property, consisting of the dwelling-house and other buildings and about seven acres of land, was confiscated by the State, and was bought in 1791 by Dr. Lewis Leprilete; but after the death of Capt. Hallowell, his son, Ward Nicholas claimed the property in the right of his mother, assumed her name of Boylston, and obtained the estate by process of the law in 1801. The remains of the doctor and those of his son still occupy the estate, of which while living they were dispossessed, and the spot of their internment is marked by a stone with this Latin inscription: "In memoria Doctoris Ludovici Leprilete, Mass. Med. Soc. Socii, Nati Nante in Gallia, Oct. 10, Anno Domini MDCCL. Obit Julii die 29, MDCCCIV AEtat suae LIV. Celeberrimus in chirugia. Hic etiam, ejus filius solus Ludovicus Leprilete sepultus est, Natus Jan. 12 Anno Domini MDCCLXXXV. Obiit Oct. 30, MDCCXCII. AEtat suae octavo anno."

Near the house, on the corner of the lane in front, Dr. Leprilete built an English goods shop, kept by himself for some time, afterwards by Luke Baker, of Boston. In 1803 Mr. Boylston removed it to the hill directly opposite Boylston Hermitage, so called, on Boylston Street, and converted it into a dwelling-house, yet standing. The Hermitage was originally a brush-maker's shop, which was built by a Mr. Knowlton. Mr. Boylston bought and removed it to its present location in 1807, converting it into a dwelling-house as it now stands. It has since been removed to the corner of Lamartine Street. He entered it in December, 1809. The present owner of the old Hallowell mansion, Dr. Wing, has made additions to the original structure, and has had it thoroughly repaired. The engraving represents the old house as it formerly was.

Hallowell in early life was captain of a small vessel, and during the war ending in the conquest of Canada commanded the province twenty-gun ship "King George," rendering essential service, notably at the retaking of Newfoundland. As a commissioner of His Majesty's customs he was extremely obnoxious, and his acceptance also of the office of mandamus councilor made him a special object of public detestation. How intense was the popular excitement at this can be seen in the following occurrences: "A few nights ago," wrote Gov. Hutchinson to a friend, in June, 1770, "Mr. Hulton's house (in Brookline) was attacked. You will easily judge the distress of Mrs. Hulton, Mrs. Burch, and daughter, Burch, who has lately moved to Tom Oliver's house at Dorchester, lay upon his arms the next night, and kept his scouts out, but the women being so distressed, both Hulton and he went the day after to the castle with their friend Porter, and several of the officers lodged upon Jamaica Plain. Lady Bernard told me yesterday, at Cambridge, that all the gentlemen upon the Plain left their houses the night before, upon intimation that they were in danger, and that a search for officers was intended."

On Sept. 2, 1774, while the people were assembled on Cambridge Common to receive the resignations of Danforth, Lee, and Oliver, as mandamus councilors, Hallowell passed on his way to Roxbury. The sight of him so inflamed the people that one hundred and sixty horsemen were soon in pursuit at full gallop. Some of the leaders, however, prudently dissuaded them from proceeding, and they returned and dismounted, except one man, who followed Hallowell to Roxbury, where he overtook and stopped him in his chaise. Hallowell snapped his pistols at him, but could not disengage himself from him till he quitted the chaise and mounted his servant's horse, on which he rode to Boston at full speed, till, the horse falling within the gate, he ran on foot to the camp, through which he spread consternation, telling them he was pursued by thousands, who would be in town at his heels, and destroy all the friends of the government before them. It was his alarm that aroused the country, and started hundreds of armed men on the road to Boston.

His combativeness was irrepressible, and was confined to rebels, for the newspapers of August, 1775, give the details of a street fight between him and Admiral Graves. Hallowell was on of those excepted from pardon by the Provincial Congress, on the 16th of June 1775, in retaliation for Gage's proclamation, excepting Hancock and Samuel Adams. With his family of six persons he accompanied the British army to Halifax in March, 1776, and in July sailed for England. While in Halifax he frequently but vainly offered his services to the commander-in-chief in subduing the rebellion. On visiting Boston in 1796, he was kindly received and hospitably entertained. He died in York (Toronto) Upper Canada, in March 1799, aged seventy-five. This pen-and-ink sketch is from John Adams's Diary: "Jan 16, 1776 Dined at Mr. Nick Boylston's with the two Mr. Boylstons, two Mr. Smiths, Mr. Hallowell, and their ladies. The conversation of the two B.'s and Hallowell is a curiosity. Hotspurs all. H. tells stories about Otis and Sam. Adams. Otis, he says, told him that the Parliament had a right to tax the colonies, and he was a d--- fool who denied it, and that the people never would be quiet till we had a council from home, till our charter was taken away, and till we had regular troops quartered upon us. He says he saw Adams under the tree of Liberty when the effigies hung there, and asked him who they were and what. He said he did not know, he could not tell -- he wanted to inquire."

His son Benjamin was one of seven Boston boys who subsequently attained high rank in the British service, --Admirals Sir Isaac Coffin and Sir Benjamin Hallowell (Carew), and the Gens. Sir John and Sir Aston Coffin, Hugh Mackay Gordon, Sir David Ochterlony, and Sir Roger Hale Scheaffe. Entering the royal navy during the American war, he was at the time of his death, in 1834, an admiral of the Blue. He was a lieutenant under Rodney in his memorable fight with DeGrasse, and in command of the "Swiftsure," '74, contributed essentially to Nelson's victory of the Nile. From a piece of the mainmast of "L'Orient," picked up by the "Swiftsure," Hallowell had a coffin made which he sent to Nelson. The hero, who cherished a warm friendship for Hallowell, received it in the spirit in which it was sent, ordered it to be placed upright in his cabin, and to be reserved for the purpose for which its brave and worthy donor designed it. Succeeding to the estates of the Carews of Beddington, Hallowell assumed the name and arms of that family.

The large house on the corner of Pond Street, now Mrs. John William's, was built in 1755 by John Gould, for his son-in-law, Rev. John Troutbeck, assistant rector of King's Chapel, where he officiated for twenty years. Troutbeck, with other loyalists, left Boston in 1776. He was in London in 1777, in which year Benjamin Hallowell wrote his son, Ward, "Poor Parson Troutbeck, going round Newcastle in a collier, is taken by one of the pirates that is cruising in the North Sea." Possibly by Paul Jones, who was then making captures in that latitude, and who was thus stigmatized by the enemies of America. Of Troutbeck, who was a distiller as well as a clergyman, a Boston rhymester sings:

John of small merit,
who deals in spirit,
As next in course I sing;
Fain would I treat,
as is most meet,
This chaplain of the king.
His Sunday aim is to reclaim
Those that in vice are sunk,
When Monday's come he selleth rum,
And gets them plague drunk.

"Linden Hall" as it was formerly called, became the property of Mr. Greene, who added another story to the edifice, and fitted young men for college there. On the opposite corner of Pond Street is an old mansion, once owned by Benjamin May, blacksmith, who purchased four acres here of Nathaniel Brewer in 1732. This was afterwards the house of John Parker, who married Benjamin May's daughter. Benjamin was the great-grandson of John May, Sen.

A two-story cottage with dormer-windows, long known as Dr. John C. Warren's country seat, now the residence of Calvin Young, stands near the northerly corner of Green and Centre Streets. In 1740 Eleazer May sold this estate, including the house in which he dwelt, to Benjamin, nephew of Peter Faneuil, of whom it was bought in 1760 by his brother-in-law, Benjamin Pemberton. It originally contained seven acres, and extended back to the river. Mr. Pemberton, in a note to the assessors in 1783, speaks of the property as "now greatly out of repair, and much damaged by provincial soldiers."

When Dr. Warren bought the estate, about the year 1800, he found the dwelling-house constructed after the West India fashion of one story in front, with an addition of two stories in the rear. A large front door opened directly into a spacious hall. This door and the one opposite were perfectly plain on the inside, indicating that they were always to stand open. Facing you as you entered was the door at the other end of the hall, leading through a porch into a large carriage-yard. The two large windows in front were furnished with blinds of half-inch board, leaving spaces half a foot wide between them. On the right side of the hall were two doors, leading to bedrooms. Opposite there were windows made to shut down upon doors opening into a piazza, which led into a small garden adjoining the house. These windows formed each of them a good-sized door, the lower part of which seemed as if a piece of the paneling or wainscot had been cut out and placed on hinges. The hall floor was painted, and in its centre was the picture of a dog, admirably executed and lifelike. Three noble elms stood upon the road, one of which remains at the westerly corner of the house, while within were lindens, and beyond these two rows of fine horse-chestnut trees.

Many changes have been made in the old house. One of the original features of the mansion, the elegant paneled wainscoting in the large room on the left as you enter, has been retained, but the windows no longer extend to the floor, admitting of free ingress and egress to the piazza; and the immense chimney that once buttressed its northerly side has been removed. During his residence here, Dr. Warren imported many trees and plants from Europe, and paid great attention to agriculture. He was the son of Dr. John and a nephew of Gen. Joseph Warren, and was one of the most distinguished surgeons this country produced. Mr. and Mrs. Young have resided here since 1837. The latter is a sister of the well-known historical writers, John S. and William Barry.

Burroughs Street, from Centre to Pond Street, the gift of William Burroughs, was accepted by the town in 1787. Thomas Street was named for Hugh Thomas, an early settler. On the corner stood a house, dating from 1716, known as the Sally Brewer house, now moved back to the end of the street. It was formerly the Brewer mansion, Stephen Brewer residing in it, and was on the Eliot land, leased by the grammar school trustees for ninety-nine years. The Eliot and Thomas estates, given to the school, extended from Thomas to Orchard Streets, and from Centre to Pond. Eliot Street was opened through to Pond in 1800. At its corner stands one of Paul Dudley's milestones dated 1735, inscribed, "Five miles to Boston town-house."

Opposite the intersection of Centre and South Streets, well back from the thoroughfare, stands the Greenough mansion, a large, square, old-fashioned, roomy edifice, in which lived the Tory, Commodore Joshua Loring. It is said to have been framed in England, and occupies the site of a dwelling purchased of Loring by Mr. Pemberton, who gave it to the parish for a parsonage, and who removed it to the spot where Dr. Weld resided near the Unitarian Church. The estate, formerly John Polley's, was bought by Loring, in 1752, of the heirs of Joshua Cheever, of Charlestown. In May, 1775, the house was the headquarters of Gen. Nathaniel Greene. In June it was occupied by Capt. Pond's company from Wrentham, but was soon converted into a hospital for the Roxbury camp. After the siege it was leased by the selectmen to Hon. William Phillips. Just back of the house a number of American soldiers who died of disease were buried. Their remains were in 1867 removed to the cemetery in the westerly part of the town.

In accordance with the act of the General Court of April 30, 1779, to confiscate the estates of "notorious conspirators," Loring's "large mansion house, convenient out-houses, gardens planted with fruit trees, together with about sixty-five acres of mowing land," were sold at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, in King Street, in June, the purchaser being the noted Col. Isaac Sears. From Sears it passed to the Widow Ann Doane, who in 1784 married David Stoddard Greenough, son of Thomas Greenough, a member of the Revolutionary Committee of Correspondence, whose sessions had at one time been held in the Loring house. It is still owned and occupied by the Greenough family, and taken in connection with its surroundings, is, in spite of its age, hardly surpassed by any of its more modern neighbors. Col. David Henley, who had charge of Burgoyne's captive army while at Cambridge, occupied the house about that time. The handsome Town Hall stands upon a portion of this estate. It was dedicated in August, 1868, on which occasion an interesting historical address was delivered by Hon. Arthur W. Austin.

The Loring family has the distinction of having been the only one of any prominence, among the natives of Roxbury, that adhered to the royal cause during the Revolutionary struggle. Joshua, who built this house in 1760, learned the tanner's trade with James Mears on Roxbury Street, but when of age went to sea, rose to the command of a privateer, and having been taken by the French in August, 1744, was for some months a prisoner in Louisburg. On Dec. 19, 1757, he was commissioned a captain in the British navy, was commodore of the naval forces on Lakes Champlain and Ontario, and participated in the capture of Quebec under Wolfe, and in conquest of Canada in the succeeding campaigns of Amherst. He was severly wounded in the leg while in command on Lake Ontario, and at the close of the war retired on half pay, at which time he settled down at Jamaica Plain.

When the charter of Massachusetts was altered, and the right to choose members of the governor's council was taken from the people and vested in the crown, Gen. Gage, by a writ of mandamus, appointed Loring to the office, and on Aug. 17, 1774 he was sworn in as one of Gage's select council. Gage's appointees were immediately subjected to the strictest surveillance, and the greatest pressure brought to bear upon them to induce them to throw up the obnoxious office. A diarist, under date of Aug. 29, speaking of a Roxbury town meeting recently held, says: "Late in the evening a member waited upon Commodore Loring, and in a friendly way advised him to follow the example of his townsman, Isaac Winslow (who had already resigned.) He desired time to consider of it. They granted it, but acquainted him if he did not comply he must expect to be waited on by a larger number, actuated by a different spirit. His principal apprehension was that he should lose half his pay." This fear seems to have determined him, for on March 30, 1775, the Provincial Congress denounced Joshua Loring and other "irreconciables" as implacable enemies to their country, and every town was ordered to enter their names as such upon its records.

On the morning of the Lexington battle, after passing most of the previous night in consultation with Deacon Joseph Brewer, his neighbor and intimate friend, upon the step he was about to take, he mounted his horse, left his house and everything belonging to it, and pistol in hand roade at full speed to Boston, stopping on the way only to answer an old friend, who asked, " Are you going, commodore?" "Yes," he replied, "I have always eaten the king's bread, and always intend to." The sacrifice must have been especially painful to him, as he is said to have deemed the cause of his countrymen just, but did not believe it could succeed.

He received a pension from the crown until his decease at Highgate, England, in October 1781, at the age of sixty-five. Mary, his widow, the daughter of Samuel Curtis, of Roxbury, also died in England, at the age of eighty. Their son, Joshua, Jr., in 1769 married, at the house of Col. Hatch in Dorchester, Miss Elizabeth Lloyd, of Boston. This is the man who, as deputy commissary of prisoners at New York, made himself so detested by his brutal indifference to the comfort of his unfortunate countrymen who were prisoners. In August, 1776, he wrote to Col. Hatch that he expected to spend the winter in Roxbury, and should clean up his house there for his place of residence. To the very last, the loyalists seem to have deluded themselves with the idea that the rebellion was a failure, and that they should soon reap the reward of all their loyal sacrifices. His son, Sir John Wentworth Loring, born in Roxbury, became an admiral in the British navy, and another, Henry, died archdeacon of Calcutta in 1832.

Col. Sears, who succeeded Loring, like him had commanded a privateer in the French war, and was afterwards a successful merchant in New York. He was one of the most active and zealous Sons of Liberty, so much so that he was popularly called "King" Sears, and was at one time a member of the Provincial Congress. Active throughout the contest, at its close his business and his property had disappeared. In 1785 he sailed with a venture for Canton, as supercargo, but was taken ill with fever, and died there in October, 1786 at the age of fifty-six.

The Third, or Jamaica Plain, Parish Church, opposite the Soldiers' Monument, owes its origin to Mrs. Susanna, wife of Benjamin Pemberton, who occupied the mansion now Mr. Calvin Young's. Her husband engaged heartily in the project, and had the edifice erected principally at his own expense. It was raised, in September, 1769, upon land bequeathed to the town by the apostle Eliot, and on the 31t of the following December, the first sermon was preached in the unfinished structure by the Rev. Joseph Jackson, of Brookline. The present handsome building, which stands on the corner of Centre and Eliot Streets, occupies the site of the first, which contained thirty-four square pews, and three long seats for the poor on each side the broad aisle next the pulpit, and a gallery. The original building was sold by the parish to Mr. S. M. Weld, who removed it to the opposite side of Eliot Street, the spot now occupied by Eliot Hall. Remodeled as a stable, it was nearly ready for occupancy, when, on May 24, 1853, it was destroyed by fire. The house was first warmed in January, 1805, by the introduction of an iron stove placed at the head of the broad aisle. In 1832 the first organ-music was heard here, the instrument having been made by Mr. William Goodrich, of Cambridge.

In 1820 the house was enlarged and repaired, thirty pews added on the lower floor, and ten in the galleries. Sir William Pepperell presented a Bible for the use of the pulpit in 1772, at which time he resided in the mansion of Gov. Bernard. In 1783, John Hancock purchased the bell which had been recently taken down from the New Brick Church, Boston and gave it to this church. This, the first bell placed in its steeple, was removed in 1821 upon the purchase of a new and larger one. The first bore this inscription: "Thomas Lester, of London, made me, 1742." Its weight was three hundred and forty-two pounds, its cost three hundred, thirty-three dollars and thirty-three cents. Hancock proposed at this time to send to England for a larger and better bell, but the parish thought best to secure "the bird in the hand," and it was well they did.

The Third Parish, or precinct, comprising thirty-five persons with their estates, -- thirteen members, -- was organized on Dec. 11. 1760; was incorporated in 1772; and on July 6th of that year, Rev. William Gordon after having preached to the society one year, was installed as "pasture," -- so says the record. In May, 1773, nine persons with their estates, Mr. Pemberton at their head, all belonging to the First or lower Parish, were, by an Act of the General Court, separated from that and united to the Third Parish, an act which was opposed by that parish, as appears by a printed memorial presented to the General Court. Before this time, it had formed part of the Second, or upper Parish, then under Rev. Nathaniel Walter, the limits of which did not extend above eighty rods below the spot the church now occupies. During the siege, the First Parish meeting-house being occupied by the American troops, town meetings were held here. The sessions of the General Court were also held here in the spring of 1778, on account of the prevalence of small-pox in Boston, Dr. Gordon officiating as chaplain. When, in later years, of the war, the currency became so alarmingly depreciated, the Doctor got the consent of his people to pay him his salary, nominally 15,000 pounds, in produce at peace prices, -- a great relief to him, and no disadvantage to his parishioners.

After Dr. Gordon's return to England in 1786, the pastorate was vacant for seven years, and until the settlement of Re. Thomas Gray. The war had impoverished the people, and the parish, small as it then was, felt the burden so severely that the pulpit was only occasionally supplied. The great patron of the parish, Mr. Pemberton, having upon a trivial account become offended with Dr. Gordon, had, by will, left his entire property, including the church itself, and most of the pews in it, in trust for the benefit of the poor of the town of Boston. He had previously promised that he would bequeath it to the parish for the sole support of its future ministers. It was pressed also by Dr. Gordon for arrears of salary due him. Under the long and successful pastorate of Dr. Gray, all existing difficulties were overcome, and prosperity and harmony were established.

The succession of pastors of this church has been:
William Gordon, D.D. · Ord. 6 July, 1772 (Dis. 17 March, 1786)
Thomas Gray, D.D. · 27 Mar, 1793 (Died 1 June, 1847)
George Whitney · 10 Feb, 1836 (2 April, 1842)
Joseph H. Allen · 18 Oct, 1843 (Dis. 21 Feb, 1847)
Grindall Reynolds · 1848 (1858)
James W. Thompson, D.D. · 1859
Charles F. Dole · 1875

The parsonage house was purchased by Mr. Pemberton in 1760 of Commodore Loring, and removed from the site since occupied by the Greenough mansion, to the corner of Center and Monument Streets, the recent residence of Dr. C. M. Weld. After Dr. Gray's family left the old house in 1851 it ws sold and moved to South Street, adorned for the sacrifice with a coat of yellow paint, and it became the habitation of Irish families. A few years later its gentility was lowered still another peg, and it again took up the line of march, this time towards the gas-house, where it still remains on the west side of Keyes Street, but bearing no resemblance to its former self. Rev. William Gordon, a native of Hitchin, England, had, prior to coming to Boston, been settled over a large independent society in Ipswich, England, and more recently at Old Gravel Lane, Wapping. His partiality to the cause of American liberty induced him to emigrate in 1770, and two years later he settled in Jamaica Plain as its first pastor. This connection was, after fourteen years of harmony and union, dissolved, and Gordon left for England on March 17, 1786 that he might publish his history of the American Revolution on more favorable terms than in this country. The materials for this work, which he published in London in 1788, were gathered from the papers of Washington, Greene, Knox, and other prominent actors in the war for independence. He began their collection in 1776, and his narrative its minute, and in general faithful.

Its value was impaired, so it is said, by the expurgation of such passages as it was supposed might endanger prosecution in England. Dr. Gordon was a warm partisan of the Revolution, and took an active part in public measures. Made chaplain to the Provincial Congress, May 4, 1775, that body voted him a good horse for the services, also free access to all prisoners of war, and commissioned him to obtain Gov. Hutchinson's letter books, then in the hands of Capt. McLane, of Milton. "The alacrity with which," says Mr. J.S. Loring, "Gordon ambled on his gentle bay horse for this purpose, in his short breeches and buckled shoes, his reverend wig and three-cornered hat, was worthy of the spirite of a native-born patriot."

Gordon's manners were rude and blunt. His warmth of temper and lack of prudence and judgment embroiled him with Mr. Pemberton, the patron of the society, with whom he had a silly squabble, and also with Gov. Hancock, which led to the latter's removal from Roxbury. While chaplain to Congress, he preached a Fast sermon strongly expressing his political sentiments. He attacked, in a most pungent manner, Article V of the proposed Constitution of Massachusetts, a matter that, as a foreigner, it would have been more prudent for him to have let alone. This article, published on April 2, 1778, was immediately followed by his summary dismissal from his office of chaplain to both houses of the Legislature. This dismissal gave great umbrage to the Doctor, and the more so as many of his particular friends, and some even who were boarders with him, voted for the measure. The closing years of his life were passed at Ipswich, England, where he died in extreme poverty on Oct. 19, 1807, aged seventy-seven. Though not particularly interesting as a preacher, he was popular, and was facetious and social in disposition. He was the zealous champion of the negro race, and in numerous vigorously written newspaper articles called attention to the absurdity as well as injustice of holding them in slavery while carrying on the struggle for liberty. In one of these, after quoting from the Virginia "Declaration of Rights" "All men are born free and independent," he says, "If these are our genuine sentiments, and we are not provoking the Deity by acting hypocritically to serve a turn, let us apply earnestly and heartily to the extirpation of slavery from among ourselves." In another paper he asks this pertinent question: "Was Boston the first port on the continent that begun the slave-trade, and are they not the first shut up by an oppressive act?"

John Adams expresses his opinion of Gordon thus: "He is an eternal talker and somewhat vain, and not accurate nor judicious; very zealous in the cause, and a well-meaning man, but incautious; fond of being thought a man of influence at headquarters; he is a good man, but wants a guide." The Doctor, calling one morning on Mr. Pemberton, fastened his horse to the front fence, which had been newly painted. The latter requested him to remove him to a tree near by, which the Doctor declined doing. Mr. Pemberton then called his servant and ordered him to do it. Dr. Gordon peremptorily forbade him, and, on Mr. Pemberton's repeating his order, left the house. Mr. Pemberton refused during his last illness to converse with or to see the Doctor.

Joseph Curtis used to relate that the Doctor had a ready hand in applying the birch to the young catchiests, of whom he was one. After punishing several of them one severe winter's day, his feet slipped from under him as he stepped from the icy threshold of the school, and he fell at full length, his hat and wig rolling off his head. Thereupon, says Curtis, "we shouted in high glee, and gave three cheers." This was the Doctor's last appearance in that character.

Rev. Thomas Gray, second pastor, was born in Boston, March 16, 1772, and graduated at Harvard College in 1790. He married a daughter of Rev. Samuel Stillman, of Boston, by whom he was prepared for the ministry, and began to preach here on April 22, 1792. The parish, then small and poor, contained only fifty-four families. For seven years it had been without a minister, and even without the regular observance of ordinances, and the leading member of it, from some trifling cause, had withdrawn his support. For more than half a century he labored here, and left the society prosperous and united.

"Fifty years since," says Dr. Gray, in his half-century discourse, "I preached my first sermon to this society. The fulfillment of previous engagements alone prevented my remaining then, as requested. The small-pox had broken out in the mean time, and in the general alarm the doors of the church were closed till November 11, when I resumed my ministry here, and accepted a call on the twenty-fourth day of the next month to settle down in this place with a small handful of people, a people of exhausted means but of noble hearts, and here I have ever since continued."

Social and full of anecdote, Dr. Gray was greatly beloved by his parishioners. As a preacher he was practical, agreeable, and often effective. But it was as a pastor, in the faithful and affectionate oversight of his flock, that his chief excellence lay. Two of his valuable historical discourses have been printed: a "Half-Century Sermon," 1842; "Notice of Rev. John Bradford, and sketch of Roxbury Churches," 1825.

Upon the triangular piece of ground in front of the Unitarian Church, the gift of John Ruggles, where the Soldiers' Monument stands, the first schoolhouse in Jamaica Plain was erected in 1676. The present house on Eliot Street is the fourth school building, and was dedicated on Jan. 17, 1832. The principal benefactors of the school were Hugh Thomas, who, in 1676, gave to the town for this purpose all his real estate besides other property, and Rev. John Eliot, who, in 1689, gave it seventy-five acres of land. The Eliot School, named from the latter donor, was not incorporated until 1804. The monument erected in 1871 is of Quincy granite in the Gothic style, and is surmounted by the figure of a soldier. Upon a marble tablet within the arches at its base are the names of the men of West Roxbury who fell in the war for the Union. At a meeting in West Roxbury in 1862, it was proposed to lay out a new road; but on motion of John C. Pratt, it was resolved "that the only road desirable to be laid out a the the present time is the road to Richmond," and the town gave eighty-six thousand dollars for war purposes, to which private subscriptions added twenty-two thousand dollars.

In the rear of the church, on a part of the original parish lot, is the cemetery, established in 1785, It was laid out in spite of Dr. Gordon's efforts to prevent it, as injurious to the public health, the Doctor also insisted that the parish had no legal right to use the land for that purpose. Within its area are twenty-four tombs. Comparatively few internments have been made here since the consecration of Forest Hills Cemetery. One of the gravestones is thus inscribed: "In memory of Capt. Lemuel May, died Nov. 19, 1805, age sixty-seven." This patriot, who was a lieutenant of Roxbury minute-men at the Lexington battle, resided on May Street, and was the son of Benjamin May, who lived on the corner of Pond Street.

On the right, just above the Monument on Centre Street, is a large square mansion having ample grounds around it, with fine shade trees in its front, the residence of Mr. Moses Williams. This gentleman, who enjoys the distinction of being the oldest living male native of Roxbury, is still hale and vigorous, and preserves his memory and other faculties in a remarkable degree. The house, which is on a part of the Eliot School land, was built by Stephen Gorham. About the year 1807, Mr. John Andrews bought it and resided here until his death in 1821. Mr. Andrews, who has a merchant and a selectman of Boston, was quite an object of interest to the boys and girls of the neighborhood, as on every 'lection day it was his custom to bring out a huge bag of copper cents for them to scramble for. He has a still better claim to our regard as the author of the diary recently given to the public, and containing a most interesting and lifelike picture of Boston and its inhabitants a little more than a century ago. "As an evidence," says Mr. Williams, 'that real estate does not always rise in value, Mr. Gorham bought this lot in 1804, containing eight acres, for three thousand three hundred and thirty-three dollars. The house and stable, built in 1805, costing him fourteen thousand dollars, I bought for six thousand in 1833. So dull were estates and hard to rent at that time, that the house was shut up, and without a tenant for two years previous to my moving in in 1832."

Next to Mr. Williams was the country seat of John Hancock after he resigned the presidency of the Congress, more recently the estate of Nathaniel Curtis, and now the home of Mr. Curtis's widow. It was bought by Hancock of Dr. Lemuel Hayward, who received it for seven or eight shares in Long Wharf, then valued at only fifty dollars a share but at which the doctor's decease were appraised at one hundred thousand dollars. The present house was built in the year 1800, by Thomas Hancock, nephew of the governor whose cottage of one story and a half occupied the grounds in front of it. One who saw Gov. Hancock in June, 1782, while a resident of Jamaica Plain, relates that:

-- "Though only forty-five, he had the appearance of advanced age. He had been repeatedly and severely afflicted with the gout, probably owing in part to the custom of drinking punch, a common practice in high circles in those days. He was nearly six feet in height and of thin person, stooping a little, and apparently enfeebled by disease. His manners were very gracious, of the old style of dignified complaisance. His face had been very handsome. Dress was then adapted quite as much to be ornamental as useful. Gentlemen wore wigs when abroad, and commonly caps when at home. At this time, about noon, Hancock was dressed in a red velvet cap, within which was one of fine linen. The latter was turned up over the lower edge of the velvet one, two, or three inches. He wore a blue damask gown lined with silk, a white stock, white satin embroidered waistcoat, black satin small-clothes, white silk stockings, and red morocco slippers. "

It was a general practice in genteel families to have a tankard of punch made in the morning, and placed in a cooler when the season required it. At this visit, Hancock took from the hearth a full tankard, and drank first himself, and then offered it to those present. His equipage was splendid, and such as is not customary at this day. His apparel was handsomely embroidered with gold and silver lace and other decorations fashionable among men of fortune at that period, and he rode, especially upon public occasion, with six beautiful bay horses, attended by servants in livery. He wore a scarlet coat with ruffles on his sleeves, which soon became the prevailing fashion; and it is related of Dr. Nathan Jacques, of West Newbury, the famous pedestrian, that he walked all the way to Boston in one day to procure cloth for a coat like that of Hancock, and returned with it under his arm and on foot."

Hancock's removal from Jamaica Plain to Boston was occasioned by a quarrel with Rev. Dr. Gordon, which arose in this wise. He had been a treasurer of Harvard College from 1773 to 1777, and had neglected to adjust his account, greatly to the detriment of the institution. At a meeting of the overseers of whom Dr. Gordon was one, that gentleman spoke his mind upon the singular neglect of the treasurer so plainly and in so gross a manner as to mortally offend Hancock, who ceased all intercourse with him, and at once removed to Boston.

Dr. Lemuel Hayward, of whom Hancock bought the place, a native of Braintree, studied medicine under Dr. Joseph Warren, and establishing himself at practice at Jamaica Plain, continued there until his removal to Boston in 1783. Appointed in June 1775, a surgeon in the General Hospital, occupying the Loring house for this purpose, he served in that capacity until the British troops evacuated Boston. He then, in partnership with Dr. Jonathan Davies, of Roxbury, began the practice of inoculation for the small-pox. He retired from the profession, in which he acquired a high reputation, in 1798, and died in Boston on March 20, 1821.

Nathaniel Curtis, an eminent merchant of Boston, a man of strict integrity and sound judgment, resided here from 1819 until his death, April 7, 1857, aged eighty-three. He was fifth in descent from William, of Roxbury, and in the maternal line descended from William Mullins, one of the "Mayflower" Pilgrims. He represented the town in the Legislature for four years, and in the State Constitutional Convention of 1820, and was for many years treasurer of the Third Church and a trustee of the Eliot School. On the estate beyond, is the house built in 1774, in the West Indian style, of only one story, by Capt. Timothy Penney, of Jamaica, who occupied it until his return to that island about the year 1789. It was raised and enlarged by subsequent owners. Long the property of George Hallet, and afterwards of Capt. Crowell Hatch, it is now occupied by Mrs. Walker's school.

At the corner of May Street, formerly Lowder's Lane, is the estate of Mr. T.W. Seaverns, formerly the Bridge estate. Edward Bridge was one of the first settlers of the town, and a very old house is yet standing on the place. West of it, on May Street, is the farm bought in 1771 by Capt. Lemuel May. The old farm-house upon it had been used for barracks, and was, when he bought it, greatly in need of repair. His grandson, Benjamin May, now occupies and tills the farm which formerly included a portion of the hill south of May Street, upon which Messrs. Dixwell, Bowditch, Parsons, Brewer, whose mother was a daughter of Capt. May, resides on a part of the estate facing Pond Street. The elevation to the west was known a century ago as Dana's Hill.

On the southwest side of Jamaica Pond, fronting also on Pond Street, were situated the mansion and estate of sixty acres belonging to Sir Francis Bernard, the royal governor of Massachusetts from 1760 to 1769, a period of surpassing historical interest. This was and still is a most lovely spot, and here, but for the gathering clouds which darkened the political horizon, the remaining years of this scholarly and able representative of King George might have passed in the enjoyment of all that seems most desirable in life, -- a delightful home, set in a lovely landscape, and the esteem and regard of the people he had governed. His extensive and beautiful grounds were filled with choice fruit trees, plants and shrubs, including one hundred orange and lemon trees, besides fig, cork, cinnamon, and other rare exotics. After Bernard, the second Sir William Pepperell occupied the premises until he quitted the country for political reasons. This advertisement shortly afterward appeared in the "Boston Gazette" of March 10, 1775, but the times were not propitious for a sale, and the property soon changed hands without the formality:

"To be leased, a farm in Roxbury, lately occupied by Sir William Pepperell, on Jamaica Pond. It contains sixty acres of land, a dwelling-house of three floors, with four rooms to each, a building containing an elegant hall twenty-four by fifty, a green-house, stables, coach and other out-houses."

Then came the siege and the occupation of loyalist dwellings by the patriot troops, Bernard's being the quarters of Col. Miller of Rhode Island, in the summer of 1775. Afterward it was used as a hospital for the camp at Roxbury. The soldiers who died here were buried near a small fish-pond, on elevated ground some distance back from the buildings. This was obliterated by the plough many years since. To make it all the hotter for the enemy, the governor's hot-house was taken by Major Crane and converted into a magazine for the artillery. Confiscated by the State in 1779, the property was bought by Martin Brimmer, a Boston merchant, who died here in 1804. Capt. John Prince, who purchased it in 1806, in 1809 took down and removed the old house, a part of which had stood one hundred and forty-one years, and in which, no doubt, many a bumper of good wine had been drunk to the health of the seven sovereigns of Great Britain who had reigned during that period. Capt. Prince made a road through the property from Pond Street to Perkins Street, afterwards dividing the whole into good-sized building lots, on many of which elegant residences have since been erected. In front of the mansion house, now owned by J. S. Robinson, are some fine, large English elms probably planted by Gov. Bernard. One of these measures twenty-five feet in circumference.

A native of England and a graduate of Oxford, Francis Bernard chose the law for a profession, and after having for two years satisfactorily governed New Jersey was, at the age of forty-six, appointed governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and arrived in Boston on Aug. 3, 1760. The zealous champion of British authority, his administration was marked by the measures that initiated the Revolution. The writs of assistance in support of stringent revenue laws; the Stamp Act, which, however, he opposed; the introduction of troops to overawe the town of Boston, -- these and other like measures caused the people to hold Bernard in detestation, and greatly weakened their attachment to the mother country. Evidences of his duplicity were not wanting. While professing himself to a friend to the province, he was endeavoring to undermine its constitution, and was constantly importuning the ministry to send troops hither, while giving the strongest assurances to the contrary. When in August, 1765, the Stamp Act riots occurred, Bernard, deserting his post, "hurried trembling to the castle," says the historian Bancroft, " but could not, even within its strong walls, get rid of his fears, and a few days later gave way to the popular demands without dignity or courage."

The seizure of John Hancock's sloop "Liberty," for alleged infraction of the revenue laws, was the occasion of a town meeting at the "Old South" on the 14th of June, 1768, at which an address to the governor was agreed on, and twenty-one men appointed to deliver it. Late in the afternoon of the 15th of June, the day succeeding the meeting, the quiet country-seat of the governor at Jamaica Plain was invaded, not indeed by a noisy mob of rioters intent upon blood and rapine, but by a peaceful procession, consisting of eleven chaises, "Mr. Hancock with the moderator, Royal Tyler, Esq., leading the van in his phaeton, making a splendid appearance." Among the "highly respectable" committee of twenty-one who alighted at the governor's door were Hancock, Otis, Warren, Samuel Adams, and Josiah Quincy.

"I received them," says Bernard, "with all possible civility, and having heard their petition I talked very freely with them, but postponed giving a formal answer till the next day, as it should be in writing. I then had wine handed round, and they left me, highly pleased with their reception, especially that part of them," he significantly adds, "which had not been used to an interview with me." In his answer, Bernard promised to stop impressment; but his very next move was to have British regiments ordered to Boston. The arrival and landing of these troops when, as Dr. Byles punningly put it, "our grievances were red dressed," is described in a letter from Col. Dalrymple, their commanding officer, to Commodore Hood, dated at Boston in October, 1768. This officer's estimate of Bernard's character corresponds exactly with that of his "rebel" opponents.

"The governor prudentially retired to the country," says Dalrymple, "and left me to take the whole on myself. I encamped the Twenty-Ninth Regiment immediately; the Fourteenth remained without cover. By tolerable management I got possession of Faneuil Hall, the school of liberty, from the sons thereof, without force, and thereby secured all their arms; and I am much in fashion, visited by Otis, Hancock, Rowe, etc., who cry and offer exertions for the public service, in hopes by this means to ruin the governor by exposing his want of spirit and zeal for the public advantage."

Of Bernard he says:

"It is beyond the power of my pen to paint anything so abject. Far from being elated that the hands of government were rendered so respectable, he deplored the arrival of letters that made his setting out improper, and with earnest looks he followed a ship that he had hired for his conveyance, and in which he declared his fixed intention of going the moment the troops arrived. His actions were entirely of a piece with his words, for on a requisition for quarters he declared himself without power or authority in his province.

"By what I have related," says Commodore Hood, in a letter to Mr. Grenville, containing the above extracts, "you will plainly see how matters stand, and how little is to be expected from Gov. Bernard. I have long and often lamented his timid conduct, and yet not willingly bring on him more contempt than he must of course feel when the duplicity of his behavior is brought to light. Mr. Bernard is without a doubt a sensible man, but he has a vast deal of low cunning which he has played off upon all degrees of people to his own disgrace. His doubles and turnings have been so many that he has altogether lost his road and bought himself into great contempt. I am sorry it was not in my power to comply with his request for a ship to convey him to England, for most certainly the sooner he his out of America the better."

His recall to England came unexpectedly. True to his character he remained, vainly trying to get an appropriation for a year's salary. He left his seat in Roxbury on July 31, 1769, and embarked the next day from the castle, taking with him his third son, Thomas, thus making a timely escape from impending troubles. As he departed the bells were rung, cannon were fired from the wharves, Liberty Tree was gay with flags, and at night a great bonfire was kindled upon Fort Hill. He remained nominal governor two years longer, but though rewarded for his services with a baronetcy, he was never again employed, and died in June, 1779. Lady Bernard did not leave Jamaica Plain until December, 1770.

Though upright, and of courteous address, Bernard left few friends in the place where he passed ten years of his life. He had too little command of his temper, and lacked those mollifying arts which the ferment of the times required. Those of his own household were of the number who afforded amusement by furnishing the most ridiculous representations of his parsimony and domestic meanness. He seldom rode to Boston on Sunday, but commonly attended service at Brookline, where the preacher was, as he said, shorter in his services than most Puritanical divines, and in particular, than the Roxbury minister (Adams.) He had fine conversational talents, an extensive knowledge of books, and a memory so tenacious that he boasted that he could repeat the whole of the plays of Shakespeare. He was a friend to literature, and gave to Harvard College a large part of his private library. This passage from his favorite author must in his latter days often have occurred to him: --

My way of life Is fallen into the sear,
the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have,
but in their stead,
Curses not loud, but deep.

One evening at a period when mob law had become somewhat prevalent, the governor heard, not far from his house, riotous noises, and against remonstrances of his wife, went out to use his good offices, but meeting with some rude rebuffs he returned home, and was thus accosted by his wife: "Husband, have they beat your brains out?" "No, my dear, if I had had any I should have taken your advice and stayed at home." At the king's levee, his Majesty questioned Bernard about the climate of New England. He replied that it was much in extremes, but in general healthy. "I suppose Sir Francis," said the king, "you found it very warm during your residence there?"

The second Sir William Pepperell, grandson and heir of the distinguished captor of Louisburg, resided here between 1772 and 1775. He graduated at Harvard University in 1766, became a member of the council, and in 1774 was continued in that body under the mandamus of the king, and incurred the odium visited upon those who were thus appointed contrary to the charter, four of whom, Pepperell, Hallowell, Winslow, and Loring, were residents of Roxbury. He went to England in 1775, and as president of the American Board of Loyalists is the prominent figure in West's picture of the reception of these gentlemen, by Great Britain, in 1783. He is here represented in a voluminous wig, a flowing gown, in advance of other figures, with one hand extended, and nearly touching the crown which lies on a velvet cushion on a table, and holding the other hand, at his side, a scroll or manuscript, half unrolled. His vast estates having been confiscated, he was allowed 500 pounds per annum by the British government until his death, which occurred in London in 1816.

Next to Gov. Bernard's estate, on the right as you go up Pond Street, was the Whitney estate of nine acres. A handsome stone mansion of the Elizabethan style, the residence of Mrs. Abel Adams, stands on the elevated plain at the rear of the lot. The Whitney house, which stood about a quarter of a mile this side of the Brookline line, disappeared nearly a century ago, and on the removal of the family, the property was purchased by the Childs family, whose premises it joined. In the rear of the spot where the old house stood, the ground slopes gradually downward for several rods to a narrow strip of meadow, through which runs a pleasant little brook. Beyond the meadow the ground rises abruptly to an elevation many feet higher than the front of the lot, and still rises gradually, forming a slope of considerable dimension, and extending westerly to Brookline. West of the brook is a fine grove of forest trees. The name of John, the grandson of John Whitney, the first settler, appears in the list of members of the Second Church when gathered in 1712. Eli Whitney, the famous inventor of the cotton-gin, Rev. George, pastor of the Second and Third Churches of Roxbury, and Prof. William Dwight Whitney, the distinguished Oriental scholar, all belong to this branch of the Whitney family. Benjamin Child, the common ancestor of most of the name in Roxbury, Brookline, Boston and Woodstock, Conn., settled on the estate between Whitney's and the Brookline boundary, owned until recently by his descendants, and died in 1678. Besides his house and barn, he had eighty acres "conveniently adjoining to ye sd housing."

A century ago Capt. Lemuel Child kept the Peacock Tavern, a somewhat noted resort at the westerly corner of Centre and Allandale Streets, near the famous mineral springs of that name. When the British officers were in Boston they frequently made up skating parties for the suppers, and after exercising at the pond would ride over and partake of the good cheer of the Peacock. Upon one of these occasions, so says tradition, the pretty "maid of the inn," afterwards Mrs. Williams Williams, a niece of the innkeeper, was followed by one of these gay young bloods into the cellar, whither she had gone for supplies for the table. Being familiar with the premises, she blew out the lighted candle she held in her hand and made her escape, not forgetting to fasten the cellar door behind her. After thumping his head against the rafters in the vain effort to follow her, her persecutor was finally obliged to alarm the house before he could be released from his awkward predicament. Washington, Knox, and other distinguished officers were frequent visitors during the siege, the former stopping here on his way to New York after the evacuation of Boston. Capt. Michael Cresap, of the Virginia riflemen, immortalized in the celebrated speech of Logan, the Indian chief, lay here sick in September, 1775. Child led the minute company of the Third Parish in the Lexington battle. In the wall opposite is another of Paul Dudley's milestones, -- "6 miles to Boston. P. Dudley, 1735."

The son of Samuel Adams bequeathed to him his claims for services as surgeon during the Revolutionary war, and in May, 1794, the patriot expended a considerable portion of the amount in the purchase of the Peacock Tavern estate and forty acres of land with the buildings thereon, "late the property of Lemuel Child." Here the aged patriot resided during his gubernatorial term, and for the brief remainder of his days made it a summer residence. It was commonly said that had not the death of an only son relieved his latter-day poverty, Samuel Adams would have been obliged to claim a burial at the hand of charity or at the public expense.

Samuel Adams, the author of the scheme that organized the Revolution, -- the committees of correspondence, -- was of common size, with a muscular form, light blue eyes, light complexion, and was erect in person. He wore a tie wig, cocked hat, and red cloak. His manner was very serious. At the close of his life and probably from his early days he had a tremulous motion of the head, which probably added to the solemnity of his eloquence, as this was in some measure associated with his voice. Duponceau, the eminent jurist, who, while at Boston as secretary to Baron Steuben, made the acquaintance of many distinguished persons, relates this anecdote. "I shall never forget," he says, "the compliment paid me by Samuel Adams on his discovering my republican principles. 'Where,' said he 'did you learn all that?' 'In France,' I replied, 'In France? that is impossible.' Then recovering himself, he added, 'Well, because a man was born in a stable it is no reason why he should be a horse.' 'I thought to myself,' adds the polite Frenchman, 'that in matters of compliment they ordered things better in France.'"