Capt Benjamin Hallowell Homestead
This article originally appeared in the Boston Daily Globe on December 29, 1901.
An historic old house is the old Hallowell homestead in Jamaica Plain. It is nearly 170 years old, having been built in the year 1738 by Capt Benjamin Hallowell. Here Admiral Benjamin Hallowell, one of the most noted fighters of the British navy, was born. He fought with Nelson on the Nile and at Trafalgar. And here also his brother, Ward Nicholas Boylston, was born. The latter was one of Boston and Roxbury’s most distinguished citizens, and was the man after whom Boylston St., market and school were named. Instead of calling himself Hallowell, for patriotic reasons he preferred to adopt his mother’s name of Boylston. The house stands on Center St., at the corner of Boylston.
The interesting house was erected by Benjamin Hallowell, who was staunch and true to the English cause. He was for a while known as the most unpopular, not to say most hated, man that lived in the city of Boston, or of Roxbury, and his appearance on the street during a certain period was generally the signal for a small riot, and it is related that on several occasions he barely escaped with his life.
In early life this Capt Benjamin Hallowell was the Commander of a small vessel in the British navy, and took a very prominent part in the war that ended in the conquest of Canada. His ship was a 20-gun boat called the King George, and Capt Hallowell rendered very distinguished service, notably at the occupation of Newfoundland.
After this war he moved to Boston to take up his residence, and built the old house which is now standing. He held several political positions under the King, and as the relations between England and the American provinces became more and more strained he became more and more disliked because he was looked upon as more than a direct representative of the British Crown. He finally accepted the position of Mandamus Councilor, and reached the height of his unpopularity. The resignations of various colonial officers who were in sympathy with the cause of the colonists were tendered the British government about this time, but Hallowell retained his office as Councilor, much to the disgust of every patriot.
An attack which was made upon Hallowell was virtually the cause of his leaving his homestead in Roxbury and taking up his residence within the British lines in the city proper. It seems he was passing through Cambridge Common in his chaise, accompanied by a servant on horseback, on Sept 2, 1771, the very day that the populace had assembled to accept the resignations of Danforth Lee and Olliver, other Mandamus Councilors. When the people saw him they set up a great shout, and started to pursue Hallowell’s carriage. A great mob followed him, and a squad of about 160 horsemen pressed rapidly after the unpopular man, but before they had caught him several of the wiser and cooler heads among the crowd prevailed upon them to desist from the chase and let Hallowell go in peace. A few of the more belligerent kept up the chase, however, and caught up with him just as he was passing through Roxbury.
Hallowell, to defend himself, drew a pistol and attempted to fire it, but it did not go off. He then leaped upon his servant’s horse and rode madly to the city, and fell exhausted inside the gates. From that day he kept his residence inside the town, and did not return again to his mansion, and, in fact, never passed another day under its roof as the owner of the house.
From this time until he left Boston, in March, 1776, Hallowell had very little peace, and there are on record several hand-to-hand encounters that he had to engage in upon the streets and in other public places. One in particular was with Admiral Graves in August, 1775. When the Provincial Congress met in 1775, his name was among those that it refused to pardon, and it is said that this was done in retaliation for the famous order of Gen. Gage which refused to pardon Hancock and Samuel Adams.
Hallowell left with his family for Halifax in 1776, and while there tried in vain to get a commission in the British ranks that he might engage against the colonists, but he was unsuccessful, and in July of that year went to England, where he remained until 1796. He returned to America in that year, and was very kindly received by the people that once had hated him, and spent a great deal of his time with his son, Ward Nicholas Boylston. He finally died in York (Toronto) in 1799, aged 76.
After Capt Hallowell left his home in Roxbury it was occupied for a time by a man called Jonathan Mason. It was confiscated by the State in 1791, and was sold very nearly at the time to a Frenchman named Lepirlette. When Capt Hallowell died, however, his son, Ward Nicholas Boylston acquired the home by process of law and lived there until he died in 1828.
The present owner, Dr C.E. Wing, came into possession of the property from his father, who in turn had it from the Boylston estate. The house is in an excellent state of preservation, and is exactly as it was when occupied by the original owner and builder, except for a slight addition which has been made in the rear.
The life of Admiral Benjamin Hallowell, the eldest child of the founder of the house and one of the seven Boston boys who distinguished themselves afterward in the British navy, is most interesting. He was a very dear friend of the great Nelson and fought with him in many campaigns, notably on the Nile. During these engagements he commanded a very smart ship, the Swiftsure, and it is said that his gallantry and the very fine fighting qualities of his ship were very important factors in Nelson’s achievements in Egypt. He presented the famous Admiral with the coffin that afterwards enveloped his remains.
It was rather a gruesome present for one man to make to another, but it is related that Nelson received it with good grace and much gallantry and propped it up in his cabin, where it remained for many days. The coffin was made from a mainmast of the ship Orient. Hallowell had the piece of wood picked up and made into the coffin that went to Nelson, and thus the hero of the Nile and Trafalgar had a very historical piece of wood in his bier.
Ward Nicholas Boylston, the other brother of the house, adopted his mother’s name on account, it is said of the unpopularity of his father’s name during the revolutionary period. He occupied the house until 1828, when he died. He is well known to all Bostonians, and was famous for his works of charity and for his endowments of learning. He made many valuable donations to Harvard and other institutions.
The present owner, Dr. Wing, recounts a story which he had from his father about a search for buried treasure that was made on the place. It was made during the present incumbent’s lifetime and was most mysterious in many particulars. It seems that one Sunday morning his father went into the orchard, and, while leaning on his cane under a tree, the cane suddenly slipped from his hand and went down into the earth near his feet.
He felt the sod with his toe, and found that it sank in after the cane, and then calling some workmen, they proceeded to investigate, and found that some one had removed the sod and made an excavation about three feet deep. They had done their work so neatly and carefully that not a trace of misplaced earth lay on the sward, and the sod itself had been replaced so cleverly that it defied scrutiny. The excavations were continued at the instigation of the elder Mr. Wing, but no treasure was disclosed, and it is supposed that some one had been directed there by a clairvoyant and hoped to find a fortune, presumably belonging to the old house of Hallowell. Other excavations that were made at night were subsequently found, and a close watch on the orchard never disclosed the diggers. The work has been done at intervals, although within the last eight or nine years the ground has not been disturbed.
Benjamin Hallowell Won His Fame as a British Naval Officer
Published in the Boston Daily Globe on July 29, 1906
Drake has it that Boston has given birth to seven boys who have reached distinction in the British army and navy. Among these are two Admirals, Sir Isaac Coffin and Sir Benjamin Hallowell-Carew.
Benjamin Hallowell was born in a house which is still standing at the corner of Center and Boylston Streets, Jamaica Plain, and which is locally known as the Hallowell House, on January 14, 1750.
His Parents were Benjamin Hallowell, a native of England, who had seen service, with the rank of Captain, in the provincial navy of America, and Mary Boylston, a native of Brookline, who was the daughter of Thomas Boylston, a Boston shopkeeper.
The Hallowells reared a family of 11 children, of whom the Admiral was the second son.
The eldest son, Ward Nicholas Hallowell, in after years and for property reasons, changed his name to Ward Nicholas Boylston, and under that name became locally famous for his benefactions.
The Admiral, Benjamin Hallowell, known in history as Sir Benjamin Hallowell-Carew, also for like reasons of property, made an addition to his name.
The naval career of the Boston-born Admiral was full of picturesque incidents and brave and daring deeds. Sir Benjamin entered the navy at an early age and he reached a lieutenancy under the command of Sir Samuel Hood in American waters before the storm of the American Revolution broke over the land. A man of towering frame and with a personal courage to match, Hallowell was rapidly promoted and at the battle of the Nile, where he rendered most distinguished services, he was in command of Nelson’s flagship, the Swiftsure, and with that ship, says his biographer, Hallowell’s name is linked for all time.
Just prior to the battle of Trafalgar in 1801 the Swiftsure, while on detached duty, was captured by four French frigates-of-the-line, and Captain Hallowell became a prisoner of war at the very time in his whole career when such a misfortune proved the greatest professional disaster. For Hallowell possessed the confidence of his chief, Lord Nelson, to an extent that was hardly exceeded by any other of Nelson’s Captains, and at the great commander’s final and most notable victory at Trafalgar, this Boston-born Admiral, if he could have been present, would have but added to his naval fame.
In 1807, in command of the 80 gun ship Tigre, Captain Hallowell bore a leading part in an expedition to Egypt, and in 1812 Admiral Hallowell hoisted his flag on the Malta, which at that time was said to be the finest ship in the British navy.
In 1828 Admiral Hallowell was place on the retired list. It was at that time also that he received his Carew inheritance, which was given at the price of the name he had rendered so illustrious on British naval decks.
He died, a Carew, in 1834. But as the Boston-born Benjamin Hallowell he won his fame as a British naval officer.
More recent research has disproved many of the elements of the 1901 Globe account on Benjamin Hallowell. Sandra Webber, a historian who has published on Hallowell, has provided the following information to address the inconsistencies as they relate to Hallowell’s career, his family, and the house that once stood in Jamaica Plain:
by Sandra L. Webber
Hallowell’s life have come down to us more or less intact, due to his relationship
to Boston events leading up to the American Revolution. However, many often
repeated details, such as some of those told in the above reprinted newspaper
articles are very inaccurate. As someone who has been researching Mr.
Hallowell for over ten years, and has published about the family’s shipyard
business, I would like to take this opportunity to correct the record where I am in
possession of more accurate information. Although I am working on a complete
biography of Benjamin Hallowell, I will confine myself to addressing the
inconsistencies in the above entry, as relates to his career, his family, and the
house in Jamaica Plain.
Benjamin Hallowell and Family
Benjamin Hallowell was born in Boston in 1725, the eldest son of eight children
in an old Boston family that ran a shipyard at the juncture of Batterymarch and
Milk Streets. The Hallowells arrived in Boston in the mid-17th century, and by
the mid 18th century were also running a merchant shipping business.
Benjamin began his own career as a ship’s captain on board privateer vessels
and armed merchantmen, developing a reputation for bravery against predatory
French privateers. During the 1740s and 50s he captained large merchant
vessels from Boston to London and back, via the Carolinas, the West Indies and
Jamaica. In 1757, at the beginning of the French and Indian or Seven Years
War, he was appointed by Massachusetts-Bay to serve as Captain of the last
warship launched by the Provincial government, the 20 gun ship King George, a
vessel built in Boston by John Ruddock’s shipyard. Although the King George,
like many other armed colonial vessels, assisted the Royal Navy during the war,
Hallowell was never an officer with the Navy. He served as Captain for six years,
and in 1764, with what political pull he could use, turned his attention to what
he probably imagined was a less strenuous career. However, entering the
Customs Office at this time would create all sorts of havoc in his life, many
details of which are found in history books. In 1770, he was promoted to a post
on the American Board of Customs Commissioners, located in Boston, which
was the position he held at the time he and his family fled with the British fleet
in March 1776. The story of the chase cited in the news article is more or less
true, but took place on Sept 2, 1773, when he was returning to Boston from
Salem, where the interim government was situated by royal decree, when
Boston was under military rule and its harbor closed down due to the Tea Party
incident. Benjamin was never a Mandamus Councillor, but it was the forced
resignation of several of these Royal appointed councilors that had brought out
the crowd that chased Hallowell from Cambridge that day. The 1775 street fight
between Admiral Graves and Hallowell is also well documented and probably
provided a bit of entertainment during a very stressful time in Boston.
Because of his job and his political leanings, his name landed on the short list
of Loyalists who were later proscribed and banished from their homes. Most of
his own property and belongings were sold during the Revolutionary War.
Although the family passed through Halifax, Nova Scotia, they soon took up
residence in London, not far from Westminster, as Hallowell maintained an
interest in the affairs of government. Records show that Benjamin assisted
many desperate, exiled Loyalists with their applications to the Loyalist Board for
financial support from the British government. He returned to America in 1796,
being persuaded at the last minute to accompany his daughter Mary and her
new husband John Elmsley, who had just been appointed Chief Justice for
Upper Canada. Hallowell’s wife of almost fifty years, Mary Boylston Hallowell
(1723-1795), had died the year before and is buried in London. Hallowell spent
about a year in Boston, involved in various unfinished business, and was
pleasantly surprised at his reception, even from former adversaries. Benjamin
died in York (Toronto) in 1799 at age 75.
Although it is sometimes stated they had ten or eleven children, in truth only
three survived of the ten baptized children listed. In a higher percentage than
usual for America, the Hallowells lost six children shortly after birth, and one
fourteen year old daughter in 1771. The surviving children were Ward, born
November 22, 1749; Benjamin, born January 1, 1761, and Mary, born October
23, 1762. In 1770, at the age of twenty one, Ward had his name officially
changed, by Royal decree in London, to Ward Nicholas Boylston. This was to
honor his mother’s wealthy brother, Nicholas Boylston, who promised him a
bequest, and also to keep the Boylston name alive, as there were no male heirs
bearing the name in the family. It is certainly untrue that Ward wished to
distance himself politically from his father. In 1773, in poor health, Ward used
some of Nick’s bequest to travel to the Middle East, arriving ahead of the rest of
the family in London, where he helped make arrangements for them. Although
Ward had begun am importing business in Boston at the age of nineteen, he
had to begin again in London, and after years of struggling did manage to
become quite successful in business. Ward did not return to Boston until 1800,
drawn here by the deaths of several relatives, including his father Benjamin, and
his duties as executor. Although he did not intend staying in America, his
various legal actions detained him so long, he ended up taking up residence.
His primary city dwelling was in Brookline, and later he built a large house in
Princeton Massachusetts, on land he won on behalf of his uncle Thomas
Boylston’s estate in a suit against the estate of Moses Gill, his uncle by
marriage. Ward died in 1728 and is buried in a private tomb in the center of
Princeton.
His brother Benjamin was sent to private school in England as a young boy, and
through connections his father had with Admiral Samuel Hood, Ben was taken
into the Navy at a later age than most lads. The stories about his enormous
height, humor, courage, and great friendship with Admiral Nelson are quite true,
and he died an Admiral himself in 1834. The addition of Carew to his surname
is a complicated story of young love and loss, which manifested years later as a
real-estate gift in exchange for the name alteration. Young Benjamin’s sea
exploits are beyond the scope of my research, but he is the subject of various
Naval stories, and several people are presently preparing biographies.
Their younger sister Mary married in 1796 and moved to York (Toronto) with her
husband Elmsley and her father Benjamin Hallowell, in 1797. Hallowell died
there in 1799, and Elmsley died of a fever in Montreal in 1805. Mary returned to
live in England with her children.
The Jamaica Plain House
The family always referred to this house as being in the area of Roxbury, as it was originally
situated in that town; apparently later town boundaries placed the house in
Jamaica Plain. This bucolic area lying outside of Boston was the summer
residence of many of Boston’s political elite in the 18th century. The close
proximity to Boston, yet it’s removal from the violence that was worsening in the
city, is probably what prompted Benjamin’s wife Mary to buy the house in the
early 1770s. She purchased the property from the estate of John Dolbeare, and
although all references give the building’s date as 1738, Mary Hallowell’s
purchase is the first time the house was connected to the family, as far as I
know. She probably used a bequest from her favorite brother Nicholas, who had
died in 1771 and left her some money. The Hallowells principle residence was
always in Boston proper, Benjamin having built a splendid new house in 1764 on
Hanover Street, probably with prize money earned aboard the King George.
Hallowell’s job as Boston Custom House Comptroller and later Customs Board
commissioner would have kept him in Boston.
During the Siege of Boston in 1775-76, the Jamaica Plain house was used as a
hospital, and reportedly there are, or were, a number of grave-sites on the land,
supposedly along the Boylston street side. After the siege, the State leased
the property to Jonathan Mason, and it was sold in 1791 to Dr. Louis Leprelet.
Benjamin Hallowell’s properties in Boston were confiscated and sold, but by a
loophole in the laws his son Ward was able to regain the Jamaica Plain property
in 1801, following a lawsuit, on the basis that his deceased mother, and not his
father, had actually been the owner. It seems Ward made friends with Leprelet,
who was quite sympathetic to the unusual situation. The house needed very
extensive repairs when it came back into the family, according to
correspondence between Ward and his brother. Ward paid for most of the
restoration, as the house was gifted to the children in the mother’s will, leaving
Ward a larger share. It appears the house was retained out of sentiment, as I
don’t believe Ward ever lived in the house himself, but rather rented out the
house with its seven acres. I do not know when the property left Ward Nicholas
Boylston’s ownership, but suspect it was sold from his estate after his death.
Note: A second photo of the house can be found in William R. Comer’s small
1911 book, Landmarks in the Old Bay State, Norwood Press, along with some
of the above information. The rest of the facts come from too many sources to
list here. John Singleton Copley portraits of Benjamin and Mary Hallowell still
exist; his is jointly owned by Bowdoin and Colby Colleges, and hers is in the
collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The separate paths of these two
paintings after 1800 is still somewhat shrouded in mystery. Anyone interested
in the family’s shipyard can consult my article “Proud Builders of Boston: The
Hallowell Family Shipyard, 1635-1804”, in The American Neptune, Vol 61, No.
2, Spring 2002.
Colonial House Survives at 18 Pond Street
Originally published in the August 12, 1948 edition of the Jamaica Plain Citizen
Old House Holds Out As Art Citadel By Shunning Newer Fads and Fashion
Colonial Structure Now Home Of Common Sense Pen, Brush Expert
by Tom O’Day
A house, like a man, can have a life-story and a destiny. Over on Pond Street there is a venerable structure which has had a stormy, varied history but a seemingly singular destiny – to nourish and sustain education, refinement and art.
18 Pond Street
This old place (at 18 Pond) is only a fragmentary suggestion today of its early splendor. Once it formed the wing of a Colonial mansion owned by a proud British Tory; he was one of those gentlemen who grabbed his suitcase and left in a huff when those “Yankee upstarts” of 1776 dared to question the right of his Royal Highness George III to do with the colonists what he pleased. Yet today, as this house stands in its original site (the rest of it having been chopped up into smaller units and distributed around the immediate locality) the arresting nostalgia of its long dead past still clings to its spacious chambers and halls. You can walk in the front door and in doing so walk back a couple of centuries into the past. It is not a museum, nor a show place for collected antiques, but the home of a very matter-of-fact, unassuming gentleman who earns his living as a practitioner and a teacher of art-drawing, sketching and painting.
You have to look at his work to realize the great extent of his capabilities. You certainly could not tell it by looking at him, for he is the most unaffected man-of-talent this reporter has ever run across. His name is Frank Rines, author of several text books on drawing; former art instructor at Boston University, now associated with the New England Center of Adult Education; member of North Shore Art Association and one of the board of governors of the Copley Society. Mr. Rines’ wife and son are both artists.
Eighteen Pond Street is an abode of art, and that is why, in view of its history, the old house is unique today. A hundred-and-twenty-five years ago the entire estate was a boy’s school known as Linden Hall or C. W. Green’s Academy (the old blackboards are still under the wallpaper in one of the rooms). This school gained considerable reputation for teaching boys the useful arts of drawing and sketching, along with its other program of injecting the usual dosage of three “Rs” and classics.
A chapter in the art of dancing might well be written into the history of Linden Hall for in 1840 Signor Papanti, continental dance master, conducted classes where many a starched, polished and, more than likely, unhappy boy was prodded through a minuet or polka with some, possibly, none-too-willing partner. The education of gentlemen was very serious business here in the old days.
An exponent of one of the newer arts is also sheltered at the present time by this comfortable old house. He is Leo Egan, noted baseball and sports announcer. Although Leo might vigorously protest the label of artist being applied to him, at least the fans readily admit that sports announcing requires considerable skill in observation and rapid oral composition. Mr. Egan is married to the niece of Mrs. Rines.
Very early records show that the Pond Street estate was used to quarter Connecticut troops in the Revolutionary War just after its Tory occupant went back to England. Legend has it that several of the Revolutionary soldiers were buried in the yard of Linden Hall and later reinterred in their own communities.
The last remaining visage of Linden Hall still gives a good account of itself for it provides shelter and inspiration for a man of talent.
Colonial Stones Mark Miles from Old Roxbury to Old State House
Recent discussion concerning a section of the City of Boston known as
Roxbury brings to mind the fact that this area existed as its own
political unit from its founding in 1630 until its inhabitants voted
for incorporation with Boston in 1868.
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).
Pictured at right: Marker #5 located by the monument at Centre and
South Streets in Jamaica Plain. Photograph by Frank O. Branzetti in
1940. Library of Congress.
All these milestones have a common name associated with them. Dudley, a
family that lived in the town of Roxbury in colonial times and which
served prominently in the colony's politics and acted generously toward
the town's Latin school and the local college, Harvard. The name Dudley
remains in the heart of old Roxbury (if only to some readers as an MBTA
stop).
Paul Dudley (1673-1750) was born in Roxbury and educated at Roxbury
Latin (Class of 1686) and later at Harvard (Class of 1690). He studied
law in London, and he returned home to become a successful attorney
general of his colony. Dudley was appointed Justice of the Supreme
Court and elected Chief Justice in 1745.
He left a permanent legacy by erecting milestones. From 1729 onwards
Dudley erected several granite milestones showing the distance to the
Boston Town House (now the Old State House) with the judge's initials
usually added. All distances assume a route along Washington Street to
Eliot Square in the heart of Roxbury, where, as a crowning touch in
1744, Dudley had a Parting Stone carved. The stone still remains and
can be seen at the junction of Centre and Roxbury Streets.
Pictured at right: Marker #4 at 366 Centre Street in Jamaica Plain.
Photograph by Frank O. Branzetti in 1940. Library of Congress.
The road to the left of the Parting Stone which leads to the south is
dotted with these informative milestones: stone #3 built in a retaining
wall diagonally opposite the junction of Centre and Gardner Streets,
stone #5 by the Civil War monument in Jamaica Plain (the chattiest of
all the Dudley stones), and stone #6 set in a retaining wall of the
Arnold Arboretum opposite Allandale Road.
If one takes the right-hand road at the Parting Stone, as did William
Dawes, Paul Revere's fellow rider of April 18 and 19, 1775, one meets
another series of Dudley milestones on the original route to Cambridge.
Stone #4 still serves on Huntington Avenue, nicely built into the
western end of a brick wall that now encloses Mission Park. Stone #5 is
on the grounds of the United Parish Church on Harvard Street near
Coolidge Corner, while stone #7 stands in a cement block before 240
North Harvard Street in Brighton.
Dudley continued marking the roadways through Roxbury and Dorchester
and on out toward Milton. Thus an action early in the 18th century set
in motion a chain of events that evolved into the mile signs we take
for granted while driving. It is truly amazing that so many of the
Dudley stones have survived.
Originally published in the Jamaica Plain Citizen on December 11, 1986.
Milestones, not signs, marked the way
By Walter H. Marx
En route to a recent meeting this chronicler was on the southern end of
Blue Hill Avenue. On the outbound side, a rectangular granite marker
almost four feet high, eight inches thick and nearly two feet wide was
revealed. It had to be an early milestone in the tradition of the Judge
Paul Dudley milestones (seen in finest form at the Civil War Monument
here in JP).
In the early 1950's, two investigators, C. Howard and H.
Hannaway, checked out the old milestones leading form Boston and
produced two maps with pictures of the stones they found and brief
descriptions of each. Their 1950 map featured several chains of
milestones (as these inscribed stones are) south out of Boston, while
their 1952 map featured two western chains that broke off from the
southerly ones by the Dudley Street Station.
The two westerly chains, one following Centre Street out to
Dedham and the other swinging through Brookline and Brighton to
Cambridge, were the work in 1730 of Judge Paul Dudley, whose
descendents still live in the area. The hard-to-follow Cambridge route
is ridden by a modern William Dawes on horseback every Patriots Day.
For the first milestones chain to Dedham a Jamaica Plain driver
watching his odometer (preferably on Sunday) starts at Eliot Square in
Roxbury and ends at the Faulkner Hospital. He will easily spot stone
#3, #5 and #6, and possibly #4.
Marking miles (1,000 paces, named by those master road builders of
antiquity, the Romans) is hardly new. Many inscribed Roman milestones
have survived with modern terminology: destination, distance, sponsor
and date. Boston milestones may be the earliest. Boston judge and
diarist Samuel Sewall noted in 1707 that he had set two milestones on
the road over the Boston Neck to Roxbury.
The Romans erected their Golden Milestone in the Forum at Rome to mark
the point from which all distances in their empire were measured;
Sewall made his origin the Old State House. The custom was continued as
the chains of milestones increased, but today distances in the
Commonwealth are measured from the center of the dome of the (New)
State House. Sewall placed his stones along Washington Street, since it
was the only land route out of the then peninsular Town of Boston.
The Upper Road from Boston, which breaks with Washington at Warren
Street, was marked by Judge Dudley, who erected another of his familiar
stones at Blue Hill Avenue and Warren Street (Grove Hall) at the
Roxbury/Dorchester boundary to the Neponset River at Lower Mills. Here
the Upper Road met Lower Road into Adams Street. The Blake House at
Everett Square preserves stones #4 and #6 with #7 by Dorchester Park.
The road beyond the river through Milton Village and up the hill
continues the chain of stones; past the panoramic Hutchinson's Field,
the home of the next to last colonial governor (1769-74), Governor
Belcher (1730-41), and on out to Braintree. This was the coast or Bay
Road to Plymouth and the Cape, which had a rebirth when it was marked
with granite rectangular markers with the Old Colony seal during the
Pilgrim Tercentenary in 1920. These are seen from Dorchester Lower
Mills to Provincetown.
Sewall's tradition was carried on in 1823 by J. McLean (1761-1823). The
Boston merchant who gave Massachusetts General Hospital the psychiatric
hospital that was named after him and still continues.
McLean simply continued with six stones from the 1735 Paul Dudley stone
at Grove Hall. The road today continues its service as Rt. 138 to the
Blue Hills and beyond. Boston's other milestones have a tale to tell of
survival despite change all around them. They were the markers until
the task of signing roads between municipalities was taken up by the
state.
Sources: "Connecticut's Milestones," Boston Herald, August 2,
1987; "Old Milestones from Boston," Mass. Historical Society, 1909;
"Milestones In and Near Boston," Brookline Historical Society, 1909.
Reprinted with permission from the November 20, 1992 Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright, Gazette Publications, Inc.
Eliot School in Session Here Since 1676
Jamaica Plain is home to the fourth-oldest school in the country. The Eliot School was founded 329 years ago in 1676. Only Harvard, Roxbury Latin and Boston Latin are older than the Eliot School. 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.
Before 1676 was over, several residents gave land to fund the school. John Ruggles gave the triangular piece of land in front of the Unitarian Church where the Soldiers’ Monument stands. Hugh Thomas and his wife Clement gave their house, orchard, lot and night pasture to the school on the condition that the residents would take care of them as they got older. Others also donated smaller pieces of land.
The most significant donor was the Rev. John Eliot, for whom Eliot Street and Eliot Hall are also named. The minister to the Indians here gave 75 acres of land to the school in 1689. He wrote that the proceeds were to be used “for teaching and instructing of the children of that end of town (together with such negroes or Indians as may or shall come to said school)...”Eliot said the purpose of the school was “to remove the inconvenience of ignorance.”
The Eliot School has been at four different locations. First, it was located in two different buildings in the area where the Soldiers’ Monument is. Beginning in 1787, the school was at the corner of Centre and Green Streets. In 1832, it moved to the building at 24 Eliot St. next to the Unitarian Church where it is today. The West Roxbury School Committee became a partner to the trustees. In 1840 it became a high school, with the genders separated into different departments.
In 1855, the Girls’ Department, which was very popular, was moved to Village Hall where the city parking lot is behind Blanchard’s. In 1858, the Boys’ Department moved there, too, and the building at 24 Eliot St. was leased to the town, which used it as a primary school. In 1868, the Eliot High School moved to a new building on Elm Street on the site currently occupied by the old Jamaica Plain High School building. When the town of West Roxbury was annexed to the City of Boston in 1874, the trustees of the Eliot School terminated their connection to the high school and decided to move back to 24 Eliot St.
In the 1870s and 1880s, the Eliot School began its “manual training” era. Gradually, classes like drawing, painting, sewing and cooking were added. Stenography and typewriting were offered in 1887. The school provided classes for public school students in the area.
A book about the school published by the trustees in 1905 says the school’s purpose was to “satisfy that instinctive desire of human beings to create.” For an annual membership fee of $1, according to the book, adults and children could study woodworking, mechanical drawing, wood carving and sewing.
Eliot School Today
The Eliot School continues to change today. Jennifer Ellwood was hired
as director in July, 2004 to lead the school through two major
initiatives: expanding course offerings and managing a capital
campaign. The board of directors plans to hold community meetings and
focus group this year to gather input into planning.
The school is doing fund-raising to restore the 1832 building and make it wheelchair accessible. According to Ellwood, plans call for replacing the chain link fence with a wrought iron one and landscaping the walkway to the building. In the interior, plaster and paint need attention, and bathrooms need to be updated.
Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital Chief Executive Officer Paul Levy, who is lauded for turning around the finances at that institution, is a big fan of the Eliot School. He has been taking a woodworking class there for several years. “It’s a marvelous place, collegiate and friendly,” he said in an interview. “The teachers are great.”
Because he sees the building as “a gem in the rough,” Levy has committed fund-raising specialists at his institution to help the Eliot School devise a capital campaign.
Beginning with the current winter 2005 term, many new classes and teachers have been added with emphasis on fine arts and drawing skills. Internationally known artists Bob Siegelman and Dean Nimmer have joined the faculty. Enrollment for the fall term was up 35 percent over the previous year.
For a catalog or more information about the Eliot School, see eliotschool.org or call 617-524-3313.
Sources
The Eliot School, 1676-1905, compiled from an address by Benj. P.
Williams in 1832 and by D. S. Smalley, master of the school, in 1886.
A Brief History of the Eliot School, by Charles Fox, Newsletter of the Eliot School, Vol. 1.
Written by Sandra Storey. Reprinted with permission from the January 21, 2005 Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.
Honoring Jamaica Plain Revolutionary War Dead
By Walter H. Marx
On 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.
Earlier this spring, on April 29, members of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society and the First Church joined forces in the neighborhoods clean-up. They concentrated on the burying ground behind the church and followed up last year’s efforts by the church, when the infant forest in the cemetery was cleared.
This year the sacred ground’s history was uncovered so that one grave in the cemetery could be decorated on Memorial Day, along with the Civil War Monument, by the Society and the Rev, Terry Burke of the First Church.
Published remarks on this sacred area always single out one gravestone inscribed “In Memory of Capt. Lemeul May died Nov. 19, 1805, aged 67.” A further account notes a bronze tablet placed there by members of the family for their ancestor, who fought the British on April 19, 1775.
A walk in the cemetery before April 29 showed nothing, but on Memorial Day this Jamaica Plain man was able to be honored with a flag for the first time in many years, even though the tablet remains elusive, why all this labor for Captain Lemeul May?
The first May owned a ship that brought Puritan emigrants to Boston and settled here in 1640. Lemuel was born here on February 20, 1733, and supported the American cause as relations between England and Massachusetts grew strained. He became a lieutenant in the 3rd Company of the Roxbury Militia under the command of Captain Lemuel Child, who kept the Peacock Tavern at Centre and Allendale Sts., which Sam Adams later bought for a summer residence. Roxbury’s force formed a contingent of 140 under the command of Col. William Heath.
On the fateful morning of April 19, 1775, as news of the dawn fight at Lexington trickled through the country in all directions, Roxbury’s militia started for Lexington at 9 a.m., Heath having started earlier. The regiment met the returning British, rescued by Earl Percy’s relief force, below Arlington Heights. There, says Heath in his memoirs, the right British flank was exposed to the fire of the body of the militia which had come from Roxbury, Brookline, and Dorchester, with brisk firing on both sides for a few minutes.
After brief service at the Roxbury Camp during the siege of Boston, May became a captain in the 1st Suffolk Company of Col. McIntosh’s regiment of the Massachusetts Militia, formed in May 1776 after the British left. Here he remained until discharged in April 1778; His military duty was “intertwined with farming on the homestead he had bought in his native area four years before hostilities broke out. During the siege of Boston it was used as barracks for American soldiers.
The May place was long famous as a fruit farm with its cherries, peaches, pears, apples, and berries. The original house was one of the earliest here, built in 1650 by John Bridge, a May ancestor. It fronted on May’s Lane (now May St.) on a farm lot of 38 acres in 1771. Here the Captain lived with his family and died. The house remained in the family until the 1900’s, though with changes from the 1771 houses, whose appearance is known. The old kitchen at the rear was removed and a wing added out from it, while the central chimney was replaced by ones on either side and the pentagonal corn barn was torn down.
In addition, the modernized version had a central porch at the front entrance with a bay window on the second story with a conservatory on the east end. When most of the old farm’s area was taken by the park Commissioners to build the Arborway boulevard system in 1890’s the home’s owners decided to blend the house with a new house in the rear.
Despite elaborate plans by the architect, this action could not be taken. On removing the roof it was discovered that the chimneys were out of plumb, in weakened condition, and that the old frame was in poor condition, in tearing down the building in the fall of 1896, the house told of its construction and history. Among other things, lead bullets, an old spoon, coins, and Continental Army buttons verified the barracks use in 1775 and 1776. Many items were saved for incorporation into the new house facing the Arborway.
Tangent to the old house was erected the unique turreted stone house that sits majestically at 61 Arborway today, In 1901, a popular naval hero of the Spanish-American War, Admiral Sampson, was there entertained by T.W. Carter, whose wife was the Captain’s great-great- granddaughter, when he gave a July 4th oration. Many of the former house’s furnishings surrounded that luncheon group: doors, hinges, locks, paneling, and brass fittings. Most notable was the reconstructed fireplace with its iron fireback dating to 1760 and iron cooking implements. Captain May deserved mention in two places in Jamaica Plain and must not be allowed to fade from our memory.
June 1, 1989
Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts
Jamaica Plain in Colonial and Revolutionary Times
An 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. The Bunker Hills, the Concords and Lexingtons were few and far between, but Jamaica Plain was typical of the great majority of towns in the early history of the country at the time; it furnished men and money for the defense of the Colony and also in the war of the Revolution, and thus bore her part in the struggle for liberty and independence, though there was no battle nor bivouac within its borders.
The history of Jamaica Plain is incomplete, for it was not settled until the third quarter of the seventeenth century, and was never a separate municipality, the nearest approach to it being when West Roxbury was set off from Roxbury, three-fourths of a century after the Revolutionary War.
Mr. Bauer described many of the old buildings in the section which is now known as Jamaica Plain, and told various interesting anecdotes connected with them. Among them were the old Curtis House, the John Elliot estate – the most extensive in the district – the Holloway House and the Benjamin May House, which latter is still standing; Linden Hall, occupied for a while by Reverend John Palfrey, minister of King’s Chapel and the owner of a distillery, and the home of Sir Francis Bernard, Colonial Governor of Massachusetts from 1760 to 1769. A row of English Elms is still standing there, said to have been planted by Bernard, a tradition of one being that it grew to a circumference of more than 25 feet.
Mr. Bauer also told the story of the seizure by the Commander of a British man-of-war of John Hancock’s ship Liberty, with a portion of its cargo of rum, for an evasion of customs duties; of the Town Meeting which adjourned from Faneuil Hall to the Old South Church, with James Otis as Moderator; of the appointment of a committee with Otis at the head to visit Governor Bernard and remonstrate against the encroachment upon the liberties of Boston. Bernard was found at his Roxbury home and listened patiently, but his answer was noncommittal, for he dared not interfere with the authority of the King, under which the Commander of the English vessel acted.
He also described the supposed location of the old town pump, down at the end of a lane, where was found the residence of Commodore Loring; the residence of Benjamin Temple, on what is now Center St. and the Peacock Tavern, out on the Dedham road, for a while the home of Governor Adams.
John Hancock also lived in Jamaica Plain for a while, when he was Governor, and gave a clock and a bell to the house of worship erected by the Third Parish after its secession from the Second.
The interesting details of the separation were told rather minutely, and included the action of Benjamin Templeton, who was the most active factor in the movement, and whose wife, Susannah, induced him to erect the building, which has 24 square pews, and three long seats for the poor; and of Templeton’s gift of some $5000 to obtain the final consent of the Second Parish to the separation.
For a while only voluntary services were held, and the people had not only to support these but to pay their taxes to the Second Parish. Finally, when the Third Parish was formally organized, it called William Gordon, a non-conformist from England, as Pastor. He returned to England in 1777, and there wrote a history of the American Revolution, which was supposed to be the greatest mine of history that America had and was so regarded by Bancroft and others until long after it was found to have been plagiarized from an annual published in London.
On June 19, 1779, the Second and Third Parishes asked the General Court that they be set off from Roxbury as the town of “Washington”, but this was refused and it was not until 1851 that they were set off and the town of West Roxbury created.
Returning to the time of the Revolution Mr. Bauer said that each of the three Parishes sent a good quota into the field at the first alarm; that of the Third Parish being under Captain Lemuel Childs and Lieutenants Lemuel May and Isaac Williams, every man of this company of Minute Men serving the entire 15 days. Afterward, although not sending a large quota, the people of Jamaica Plain did their full share of duty in the war of the Revolution.
Native Americans in Jamaica Plain
They are the people of little talk and stern look, of little
laughter, proud as well as arrogant. They go with rough hair on the
left knot-tied, trimming the tufts orderly in uneven masses. They have
a straight, robust, tall build, clad in deerskins against winter's
harsh cold, so that they may push the pulled-up pelt to meet the blast when
they please with right arm kept warm by a pelt, so 'tis easy to take up
the flexible bow. Deerskin coverings adorn their thighs and long legs,
while tight-fitting moccasins protect their feet.
-Wm. Morrell, Nova Anglia
Too 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, which will be dealt with in a later article.
More proof is found in the literature promoting New England to Old England, written in the later 1600's by the few Puritans (Eliot, Gookin, Morrell, Wood), who knew and loved the Indians they dealt with - in stark contrast to the prevailing Puritan notion that a good Indian was a dead one.
All of these authors give a uniform picture of one branch of the grand old Algonquin tribes of New England. Among them were the Massachusetts, who lived within the perimeter of our Rt. 128 under a sachem, Kuchamakin (after whom Jamaica Plain is probably named), headquartered at the mouth of the Neponset River with sagamores under him ruling various family groups. The tribal names, meaning "by the great (Blue) Hill," shows their location, as many Indian names do, and the name was spread westward on the map by the Puritans as this was the first tribe the dominant English met.
A male Indian of this tribe has almost always been on the seal of Massachusetts, even when a colony, as the stained-glass Main Stair Window in the State House shows. Part of the reason may well be some guilt rightly felt at the poor treatment of the natives. During King Phillip's War (1675-76), among other things, Rev. John Eliot's Christianized Indians in the 14 "Praying Towns" were shipped to Deer Island in Boston Harbor for the winter of 1675/6. Furthermore, the 2,500 natives here were almost extinct by 1700 due to diseases caught from the English, including alcoholism. Only two other states have Indians on their seal, seen on state flags and buildings.
In 1885, the legislature decided to set an official standard for the state seal. By happy coincidence, in 1888, workmen excavating for a railroad in Winthrop unearthed several Indian skeletons near the central railroad station. Archeological digs yielded 10 more skeletons in a crouched position at a depth of 2 Ω feet with some Algonquin artifacts, indicating burial about 1600 - a rarity among known Indian burials.
Grave one contained a complete six-foot male skeleton originally wrapped in a woven mat, along with 10 bone arrow-points, two beaver tooth knives, and a corroded iron bar. A brass arrow-point was imbedded in the lower spine, death having been caused to the man by being shot through the abdomen. Other graves yielded the more usual Algonquin brass beads made from sheets sold by European fishermen, who were in the vicinity long before any settlers. The fine condition of the remains enabled Harvard's Peabody Museum staff to flesh out this Massachusetts Indian.
He is dressed (after specimens in the Peabody) in winter clothing of pelt shirt, leggings, and deerskin moccasins rather than in pelt angled over the body, although natives are known to have ice-fished in Adam's state. The long hair flows naturally, though it was often worn differently. Summer clothing was usually limited to a breech-clout. Following early sources, feathers were added in the style still worn by other surviving Algonquin tribes. He wears no paint. The beads and arrow-points are modeled from those buried at Winthrop. The belt is that of King Philip, while the bow (the Indian symbol for hunting excellence) is modeled after the only Massachusetts bow known - both are at the Peabody along with the arrows.
The representation from the Peabody became the basis of the revised seal of the Commonwealth in 1898. Interestingly, the state artist fell under the influence of other seals designed after 1780 and shifted bow and arrows to produce a left-handed Indian who probably existed - but not on the seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The single arrow pointing downwards shows peaceful intent, reinforced by the fact that there is no quiver for a supply of weapons. Thus on our Commonwealth's seal is a perpetual genuine native of our area "whose feet in ancient time did walk upon New England's mountain green" as well as in our Arboretum, the area of Jamaica Plain nearest to the Indian's non-corrupting way of life.
Artifacts Reveal Much About Indians' Lives
By W. H. Marx
The last article in this column revealed the dress, weapons, government, and appearance of our area's primeval residents and made mention of their artifacts found in the Arboretum. The artifacts have recently been re-catalogued at Harvard's Peabody Museum and will soon return to the Arboretum's Visitor Center. Viewers will then note that these materials are all of that most indestructible item, stone, and that they were found on or near the surface as the Arboretum collection was being planted.
Other materials, easier to recognize, of shell, bone, or clay, were probably removed early on by white men in our area or were such that they disintegrated in the earth soon after usage. In addition, Indian families had few possessions.
The majority of their relics found - never of metal - are the Indian trademark of the arrowhead or the projectile point for a javelin. Compatible with these are the stone knives, scrapers, and a hatchet found at four places in the Arboretum.
All these point to the Massachusetts Indian diet of meat, chiefly from moose and deer, which also provided their pre-English clothing. Such artifacts would also be in use for fishing - an occupation still seen at Jamaica Pond, the only such body of water in the City of Boston. Contrary to popular belief these Indians were not keen on living by the seashore, but when the white men wanted forest as well as shore a collision was forthcoming.
An artifact associated with Indian sites but not found in the Arboretum is a grindstone - something easily carried off by the Indians or by earlier souvenir hunters. Grindstones were a keystone of the aboriginal diet: corn, processed and stored for use during the long New England winter along with pounded and/or dried vegetables, nuts, and berry pastes.
As was common in the culture, women tended the fields and did the domestic tasks, while the men hunted and trapped - all bringing disbelief to the first Europeans to our shores. The Massachusetts garden of that era consisted of beans, pumpkins, tobacco, wild rice, popcorn and maize corn - which so often saved the Pilgrims and Puritans from starvation.
The lone drill and the digging tool in the Arboretum's collection give evidence of the daily life of Indian women as well. They also worked the furs of the captured animals and were very proud of their fur jackets, but their usual costume was a skin skirt around the waist with a belt and hair dressed with great care. The drink for all was water with cider in season, so that it is no wonder they took to white man's "firewater" for a welcome change.
The Arboretum's Indian artifacts were found in four areas: the meadow by the Visitor Center, the summits of Peters and Bussey Hills, and a village site by Spring Brook.
The sites were chosen either for height for defense or water for drinking - nothing new in the history of human habitation.
The Massachusetts, like all the grand old Algonquins, lived in communal bark lodges, hemispherical in shape, made of branch supports and covered over with bark rugs, skins, and grass mats, all of highly perishable material. A small hole allowed the smoke to exit through the top of the dwelling, and seats were built onto the supports to allow for sitting or sleeping. These habitations are the type to be seen at Indian museums in New England. With little imagination, one can picture the Arboretum's Spring Brook Village with its background and naked Indian children at their games while their mothers worked and their fathers (if not out hunting) are playing ball, running races, dancing, or swimming.
This, then, was the Massachusetts tribe, one of the Algonquin language group stretching from Nova Scotia to Virginia to the Blackfeet in the Midwest as far as the Mississippi, with the fearsome exception of the Iroquois of New York, who drove a wedge up from the South between these very loosely associated and ever feuding tribes.
Agricultural and semi-sedentary, the Algonquins were fine fishermen and hunters who gave the white man the canoe and snowshoe - still in evidence today. In history they produced many famous and noble characters: Massasoit, Squanto, and King Philip being the prominent local examples. White man's diseases and vices soon slew the Massachusetts. The last full-blooded Massachusetts is said to have died at Natick in 1860.
Given all these tantalizing Indian bits, is it surprising that one Jamaica Plain boy, seeing earlier-gathered Indian relics, had his young imagination fired up? Thus in the summer of 1846 Francis Parkman went out West to see live Algonquin Indians (the Sioux) and recorded this experience in his "Oregon Trail". That summer inspired him to spend the rest of his life writing of the French and Indians - mostly by Jamaica Pond. Thus the statue marking his home there pictures an Iroquois Indian in the woods of New York State.
Walter H. Marx
December 29, 1988
Revolutionary War Burial Site Near Arboretum
The first thing that marks the Walter Street Cemetery is that on the left of the stone steps leading to the cemetery, one immediately sees a puddingstone boulder with a metal plaque erected by the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the Revolution in 1906. The plaque proclaims, "In Memory of the Soldiers of the Revolution Who Died in Hospitals at Jamaica Plain and Were Buried in this Lot".
The word 'finally' should be inserted before 'buried,' for the soldiers were reburied there. When the British were besieged in Boston from April 1775 to March 1778, smallpox broke out in the American camp at Roxbury. The Loring House (by the Monument) had been abandoned by its Tory owner since the first Patriots' Day, and after brief general headquarters use, it was made into a military hospital; one of the first in America, along with the Governor Bernard mansion on Pond Street.
The Loring hospital dead were buried on a gravelly knoll on the house's extensive acreage. From the number of small mounds with markings, it was discovered that 40 were buried there. When Everett Street was put through in the 1850s, bones were disinterred, and people felt that there should be hallowed ground reserved for them, lest the relics of these men's souls be lost forever.
A suggestion for a single mound on the site was not taken, so the Town of West Roxbury transferred all the remains to the abandoned Second Parish Burying Ground - now public property. The plaque's text implies that those (number unknown) who died at the Bernard mansion were buried on the small hill behind the house; this is as also true for those who died at the Hallowell House, and all were eventually laid to rest at the Walter Street Cemetery. Yet again in 1903, when this street was widened, the cemetery lost 300 square feet and 28 human remains were found. These are presumably in the brick crypt, easily seen in the cemetery. Thus, Jamaica Plain's Revolutionary soldiers finally came to rest in a site used as a rallying point for their army, and the informative boulder marks their memory and place forever.
The Welds were among the first settlers in this area. For his efforts in making a treaty with the Pequod Indians, in 1643 Joseph Weld was granted a vast tract in the westerly part of Roxbury, of which Mrs. Anderson's estate (named Weld) was the last held by the family. Her diplomat ancestor kept the tract to himself but encouraged settlement, and in the 18th century the family lived on Weld (now Peter's) Hill, which became the Arboretum in 1872.
By 1712, enough people lived on the Weld tract to support a petition that would establish a second parish closer to the tract than the meetinghouse in Eliot Square. Permission granted, a later Joseph Weld offered a location at South and Walter Streets, and so the modest first building of the Second Parish of Roxbury stood on the corner with its church plot up the hill. With more people living by Centre Street, in what is now the center of West Roxbury, a bigger church in colonial style was built in 1773 (where the Holy Name Church stands today). After destruction by fire in 1890, the congregation's present home was constructed at the corner of Centre and Corey Streets.
Article by Walter H. Marx
This article originally appeared in the Jamaica Plain Citizen on May 26, 1988
Photograph by Charlie Rosenberg from Jamaica Plain Historical Society archives. January 2003.
Taverns, Inns and Public Houses
The talks covered a variety of topics, including the social life of rural New England taverns, how taverns affected public life, tavern fare in the 18th century, songs from colonial taverns, and how the first hotels came to be established in the late 1700s. David Conroy, author of In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts, described how "public houses," or taverns, were used to conduct government, community and personal business: news was read aloud, small libraries were maintained, people posted signs to offer items for sale, meetings were held.
Jack Larkin, author of The Reshaping of Everyday Life: 1790-1840, and director of research, collections and library at Old Sturbridge Village, spoke on the foods of the early tavern period, when it was commonly believed that heated beverages were healthier than cold ones. A loggerhead, or heated poker, would be thrust into a drink in order to make it hot.
The conference was followed by tours of The Golden Ball Tavern Museum, an above ground "archaeological" site and historic house museum showing architectural, decorative and social change occurring over the 200 years of the Jones family residence. The Golden Ball is located at 662 Boston Post Road.
Werewolf in Jamaica Plain
All main roads in "the olden days" had inns. Some of which still survive as the most pleasant of eating places like the Publick House in Sturbridge, founded by a descendent of one of Old Roxbury's best families and the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brookline Village which stood from 1717 to 1833 at Boylston and Harvard Streets.
Jamaica Plain had its Peacock Tavern on the Providence Highway (Centre Street) at the western corner of Allandale Street opposite Judge Dudley's sixth 1735 milestone (still in place in the Arboretum walls.) The tavern was kept by Lemuel Child.
In pre-Revolutionary days the tavern was often frequented by British officers after a skating parties at the pond. F. Drake's "Town of Roxbury" relates that during such a visit one of spark of an officer followed the innkeeper's pretty niece into the cellar, where she had gone for supplies. Given her ardent colonial nature, this inn maid wanted nothing to do with the Briton and doused the light. Being familiar with the place, she easily got out and locked the door behind her. The embarrassed young blood was later released at her pleasure.
In the earliest days of the American Revolution, Peacock Tavern keeper Lemuel Child, now captain of a Roxbury militia company, led his men into action at Arlington on the afternoon of April 19, 1775.
In May 1794 Sam Adams (a sometime brewer, ardent patriot, second governor of Massachusetts, and cousin to the Adams of Quincy) bought the Peacock Tavern and its 40 acres of land. Here the aged patriot resided during his gubernatorial term (1754-97) and for the last summers of his life, which ended in 1803. A memorial plaque is being planned here.
Thus is the stage set for a werewolf tale from antiquity, as found in the 14th century collection of "Aesop's Fables" by Maximus Planudes, though the primeval tale is that of Lycaon, being charged into a wolf in Book I of Ovid's "Metamorphoses."
Place yourself by the door of the Peacock Tavern facing Centre Street as you read:
"A thief put-up at a certain inn and remained there for several days waiting in vain for a suitable opening in his line of business. Finally one day he observed that the innkeeper had put on a handsome new cloak, it being a holiday, and had taken his seat outside by the inn's door.
As there was no one in sight, the thief sat down by him and entered into conversation. After they had talked for some time, the thief all at once yawned and then howled like a wolf. The landlord, naturally surprised, inquired the reason for such a proceeding.
'Well,' answered the thief, 'I'll tell you, but first I want you to promise to keep my clothing for me. I'm going to leave them here with you. I don't know, sir, why I am attacked by these peculiar yawning spells- perhaps for my sins or for some reason I know not. But always after I have yawned three times, I turn into a werewolf, one of the man eating sort.' With these words he yawned a second time and howled again, as before. Upon which the credulous innkeeper rose up affrighted and started off.
But the thief clutched him by the cloak, crying out, 'Wait, sir, till I give you my clothes! I don't wish to lose them.' And with these words he opened his mouth and began to yawn a third time. Whereupon the innkeeper, in a panic lest he should be eaten up, ran back into the inn and locked the door, leaving his cloak behind him. Thus the thief having done a good stroke of business, went his way."
Article by Walter H. Marx
Sources: K. F Smith, "The Werewolf in Antiquity," Baltimore, 1893; F. Drake, "The Town of Roxbury," 1878, 1910
Reprinted with permission from the October 21, 1994 Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.
