A presentation for the residents of the Allandale Condiminiums on the section of Jamaica Plain we refer to as Allandale. The area has quite an interesting history. The public is also invited to attend via Zoom, please click through to register.
Fifty years ago, in February 1976, a suspicious fire consumed a massive old factory building at the corner of Centre and Bickford Streets in Jamaica Plain. Displacing roughly a hundred artists-in-residence, the old factory had once been home to the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company, employing up to five thousand workers at its peak. Marking the 50th anniversary of that devastating fire, this presentation explores the origins of the Plant shoe factory in 1896 and its mercurial French Canadian owner, Thomas Plant, known for his pioneering business and corporate welfare practices. We’ll also discuss the thousands of immigrant workers who labored there and sometimes challenged Plant’s anti-union policies. Click through to register for Zoom option.
For Women’s History Month Jen Hale, Lead Archivist of the Perkins School for the Blind will talk about the remarkable women associated with the Kindergarten for the Blind in Jamaica Plain during the late nineteenth century. Please click through to register if you plan to attend via Zoom.
Join The West End Museum (WEM) at the Connolly Branch of the Boston Public Library for an interactive community history workshop. Learn to use the crowdsourced history database When and Where in Boston to create pins on a digital map that tell the story of the who, what, when, and where in the West End's history. Share the details of what makes JP such a unique place to live.
In this talk Prof. Catia Confortini will reflect on the legacy of Emily Greene Balch, not only as an scholar and thinker but also as a teacher and activist. Her work for peace and justice as a professor at Wellesley College and as a founder and leader of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom are relevant for today's world, which continue to be mired in the violence of racism and imperialism. Please click through if you would like to register to attend via Zoom.
The Annual Members’ Event is open to all the active members of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society.
After the 19th Amendment passed in 1919, Jamaica Plain women were eager to register to vote. Join members of the Mary Eliza Project to learn about their work to transform Boston’s 1920 Women’s Voter Registers into a searchable dataset. Hear about the stories of JP women that they have uncovered during this process and learn how to use the free dataset for your own research! Hybrid event, please click through to register for Zoom.
Come visit us at our table on Centre Street (near the corner of Thomas Street) during the annual JP Open Streets event.
As the big finale to our 30th season of historic walking tours, we are offering a special tour of Parkside - the area of Jamaica Plain which hugs Franklin Park. In the early 19th century the area was dominated by huge estates. After the Civil War, Parkside began to be sub-divided into smaller (yet still large by Boston standards) home sites for the new emerging middle class. Come along to learn about this charming area and the people who have called it home.
The Jamaica Plain community is invited to gather together to read and talk about Frederick Douglass’s influential address, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? . Designated readers will each read out a portion of the speech to be followed by a discussion of the meaning of the speech to us today.
Join us for a talk at Allandale Farm on the history of Boston’s only working farm. Helen Glotzer, the General Manager of Allandale Farm will offer a chat on the terrace overlooking the pond. She will discuss the many faces of the farm over the past 60+ years and how the land, the ownership and the community have participated in helping to shape the current business and the future of the farm. Helen will discuss the evolution of agricultural operations, land stewardship and community engagement.
In 1775, at the outbreak of the American Revolution, Sarah Winslow Deming escaped British-occupied Boston and took temporary refuge in Jamaica Plain. Lucinda, whom she enslaved, was with her. Speakers Natalie Eldridge and Emily Curran of Hidden Jamaica Plainwill share their research on Deming’s vivid account of their escape and on Lucinda’s life. This will be a hybrid event, please click through if you want to register for the Zoom link.
To celebrate Women’s History Month we are having a presentation by the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. In 1989, a group of Boston Public School teachers and students decide to highlight the overlooked contributions of women to Boston’s history. Modeled after the Freedom Trail and Black Heritage Trail, the BWHT celebrates the past accomplishments of remarkable women in Boston, claiming their rightful place in our City’s history through education, reflection, and an interactive city-wide monument. This is a hybrid event, please click through to register for Zoom
Plant exploration – documenting and collecting wild plant diversity – is not just a Victorian Era activity, but is alive and well in 2025. Veteran plant explorer Michael Dosmann uses examples from his own expeditions in Asia and North America to compare and contrast the historic and modern plant hunter, placing these activities in the context of scholarship, global change, the search for improved garden plants. Hybrid event, please click through for the Zoom link
The Annual Members’ Event is open to all active members of the Jamaica Plain Historical Society.
Join us as we celebrate 20 years of marriage equality in Massachusetts with an engaging and heartfelt discussion about its impact on the LGBTQ+ community. This event will look back on the transformative journey that started two decades ago and explore how marriage equality has shaped lives, families, and communities. This event will be in a hybrid format, please click through to register for Zoom link.
Learn more about this institution, which celebrated its centennial in 2019 and where compassion has met promise for over 100 years. Our speaker will be Susan Keays, the CEO of the Italian Home. This event will have a hybrid format, please click through to register for the Zoom link (if you want to attend virtually).
The Jamaica Plain community is invited to gather together to read and talk about Frederick Douglass’s influential address, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? . Designated readers will each read out a portion of the speech to be followed by a discussion of the meaning of the speech to us today.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the families living at the Loring Greenough House and farming the estate in Jamaica Plain used the labor of enslaved and indentured people. Scant information has long been known about their presence; recent research has uncovered more details. Join us for a talk to learn about the new findings and the ongoing study being conducted by volunteers. This will be a hybrid event, please click through to register for an in-person spot or to attend via Zoom.
Franklin Park is one of the great urban parks in the world. Generations of Bostonians have loved this landscape and invested it with many diverse memories and meanings. Today the park is at a turning point. Prof. Ethan Carr, the author of the new book Boston’s Franklin Park Olmsted, Recreation, and the Modern City. will be our speaker. This event will use a hybrid format, please click through to register if you want to attend via Zoom.
City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU) will share its rich history of organizing in Boston to build the power of working class and BIPOC communities to fight for systematic change. Founded in 1973, and currently located in The Brewery, City Life is known for its anti displacement organizing, fighting unscrupulous landlords; defending families from foreclosures and evictions. Zoom event, please click through to register!
At least 27 Africans were enslaved in Jamaica Plain in the 1700s. Hidden Jamaica Plain will present an overview of slavery in Jamaica Plain. This history includes land theft, enslavement first of Indigenous people and then expansion to Africans. Massachusetts Bay was the first English colony to legalize slavery in 1641. Chattel slavery existed in Massachusetts at the time of the American Revolution, and several Jamaica Plain patriots were enslavers. Hidden Jamaica Plain is a volunteer group researching the history of land theft, enslavement, resistance and community in Jamaica Plain Hybrid event, please click through to register for Zoom (if you want to attend virtually).
While completing his latest book, Alex Krieger realized that his own neighborhood of Jamaica Plain is emblematic of a number of American ideals. Americans still identify with Ralph Waldo Emerson who lamented, “I wish for rural strength and religion, and city facility and polish.” Krieger will use his talk to trace this long American desire to occupy a place in between: city and country; civilization and nature, sophistication and simplicity, community and family and to argue that JP is an answer to Emerson’s wish. This event will use a hybrid format, please click through if you wish to register for Zoom.
Join us for an event to launch the new book by Susan Wilson Women and Children First: The Trailblazing Life of Susan Dimock, M.D. in Boston. The book talk and reception will be followed by a visit to Susan Dimock’s gravesite.
Author Stephanie Schorow speaks about her latest book ‘A Boston Harbor Islands Adventure’. In July 1891, four intrepid women from Lowell set off for Great Brewster Island in Boston Harbor for an adventure they would remember all their lives. Calling themselves “the Merrie Trippers,” the women created a journal of their 17-day sojourn with entries, illustrations and photographs. This is a hybrid event - please click through to register if attending using Zoom.
The Boston Public Library holds a remarkable collection of approximately 500 bird’s-eye view maps from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. How were these maps produced? How accurate are they? What sorts of historical information can we learn from them? This is a hybrid event, please click through if you would like to register for Zoom.
A presentation for the residents of Springhouse on the section of Jamaica Plain we refer to as Allandale. The area has quite an interesting history. The public is invited to attend via Zoom, please click through to register.
The Jamaica Plain community is invited to gather together to read and talk about Frederick Douglass’s influential address, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? . Designated readers will each read out a portion of the speech to be followed by a discussion of the meaning of the speech to us today.
Dr. Wendy L. Rouse, Professor of History at San Jose State University,discusses her book 'Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement', which explores the important role of queerness and queer suffragists in the fight for the vote. This book highlights the alliances that queer suffragists built and the innovative strategies they developed to protect and preserve their most intimate relationships as they defied the gender and sexual norms of their day. Please click through to register for this virtual event.
Please join us for a presentation about Reverend Charles F. Dole by Paul T. Burlin who has recently completed a new book Charles F. Dole, Liberal Theology and Reform: A Life Well-Lived. Charles Fletcher Dole was a long-time Jamaica Plain resident (he lived at 14 Roanoke Street on Sumner Hill) and was the minister of the First Church in Jamaica Plain from 1876 to 1916.
The Massachusetts Historical Society, the Jamaica Plain Historical Society and the Jamaica Plain Branch of the Boston Public Library are teaming up to help you learn more about ways to research the rich and vibrant history of JP. Each organization will explain how to use the items in their collections to find out more about local history. Please click through to register for Zoom option.
Dana Pilson curatorial researcher and collections coordinator at Chesterwood, the historical home, studio, and gardens of sculptor Daniel Chester French in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, will present an illustrated talk focusing on French’s works in Jamaica Plain’s Forest Hills Cemetery. Please click through to register for Zoom option.
Join us on Zoom for a reading of the play Sophia Hayden Deserves Better by Stephanie Alison Walker. In 1891 a brilliant 23-year-old woman from Jamaica Plain won an architecture contest to design the Woman’s Building for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. What should have been the start to a flourishing career in architecture became career-ending. Please click through to register.
Joe Bagley, the Archaeologist for the City of Boston will present the initial findings from the dig conducted at the Loring Greenough House in the fall of 2022. Click through to register for Zoom.
