Five monuments remain in the early Roxbury town limits (including West Roxbury and Jamaica Plain until 1851), untouched for the most part by politics, urban redevelopment, and other forms of change and still performing their original function (if one knows how to read them). There is another five such monuments that can be found in Brookline, Brighton, and Dorchester. They are milestones showing the distance to the Boston Town House (now the Old State House).
Read MoreJamaica Plain is home to the fourth-oldest school in the country. The Eliot School was founded 329 years ago in 1676. On Oct. 2, 1676, 38 “inhabitants of Jamaica or Pond Plain” got together and pledged money, payable in corn, to support the school for 12 years. Now called the Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts, the institution thrives to this day, offering classes to children and adults days and evenings, taught by highly skilled artists and crafts people.
Read MoreOn Memorial Day members of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society and the First Church decorated the grave of Revolutionary War Soldiers Captain Lemuel May and others for the first time in many years.
Read MoreAn interesting address on “Jamaica Plain in Colonial and Revolutionary Times” was delivered by Frederic Gilbert Bauer yesterday to the Bostonian Society. Mr. Bauer remarked in opening that while the interest of many towns and cities was centered around stirring events which occurred in them, Jamaica Plain had no such incidents connected with her history.
Read MoreThis article is based on a talk by Marcis Kempe, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum, presented on December 7, 2014 at the Arnold Arboretum in Jamaica Plain. Mr. Kempe, an avid water-supply historian, discusses the early attempts by Boston residents to find drinking water on Shawmut peninsula. A system of wood pipes led eventually to the establishment in 1796 of Boston’s Jamaica Pond Aqueduct Corporation, which piped water directly to homes and businesses.
Read MoreToo many people in this area of Massachusetts believe Francis Drake's statement in his History of Roxbury (of which Jamaica Plain was a part) that no traces of aboriginal occupation were ever observed there. Proof to the contrary comes from the Indian artifacts from our major tract of mostly untouched land, the Arboretum.
Read MoreTucked away on the Walter Street side of the Arboretum just above Weld Street is an almost invisible cemetery, consisting of only eight slate tombstones with burial dates between 1712 and 1812. It also includes puddingstone boulder with a metal plaque erected by the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the Revolution in 1906.
Read MoreSeveral officers and members of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society attended a one-day conference on New England taverns held September 23, 2001 in Weston, Massachusetts. The event, “New England Taverns: A Symposium on Tavern Culture from Colonial Days to the Early Republic,” was held at the Community League Barn of the Josiah Smith Tavern
Read MoreA footnote in an annotated edition of Petronius's "Satyriancon" not only provides a Halloween story to put in a local setting, but also allows us to focus on a Jamaica Plain landmark in colonial days (unfortunately long since demolished).
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