Dr. Mary Morey Pearson was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka and graduated from the Boston University School of Medicine in 1885. She lived at 45 Eliot Street from 1910 to the end of her life (1931). She worked as the Medical Director for the American Benefit Society for much of her career and was an advocate for homeopathic medicines. It’s thought she had a medical practice at her home.
Read MoreThe Q&A session that came after the film screening of Borderland: The Life and Times of Blanche Ames Ames. Video of an event that was held via Zoom on June 5, 2021.
Read MoreAaron Schmidt, the Curator of Photographs for the Boston Public Library’s Special Collections speaks about Leon Abdalian. The photographer Leon Hampartzoum Abdalian was born in 1884 in what was Cilician Armenia, then located in the Ottoman Empire (now modern Turkey). He migrated with his family to the United States in April of 1896 and they eventually settled in JP. It is believed that he was largely self-taught as a photographer. For most of the time he was photographing (1913 -1967) he also worked full-time as a conductor on the Boston Elevated Railway.
This program was supported by a grant from the Bridge Street Fund, a special initiative of Mass Humanities. Photograph collection at the Digital Commonwealth.The event was held on April 25, 2021 at 2:00 p.m via Zoom.
Read MoreDr. Heather Clark discusses her acclaimed biography Red Comet: the Blazing Path and Brief Life of Sylvia Plath. Heather talks about her motivation for undertaking this book and the journey she took while writing it. After that, she takes questions from the audience.
Read MoreSusan Dimock was among the first female physicians in the US recognized as a surgeon. Apprenticed at the age of 18 to Dr. Marie Zakrzewska at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, Susan was recognized as exceptionally talented. In September of 1873, a seven-year-old girl from Nantucket was admitted to the NEHWC with a large tumor. Using ether as anesthetic, Dr. Dimock performed an operation to remove the tumor.
Read MoreJamaica Plain Spoken was a video/interview project that JP musician Rick Berlin started with his friend Todd Drogy in 2004. It consists of over sixty interviews with people of all genders, beliefs, ages and ethnicities. Just a bunch of local characters describing their lives and offering their opinions about Jamaica Plain. The project was stopped due to a lack of funding, so the YouTube clips are all that remain. Those links are gathered here.
Read MoreA brief biography of Christopher Jackson Spenceley, a Boston businessman of the latter half of the 19th century who constructed the C.J. Spenceley Block in 1888. The yellow brick building that stands at the intersection of Columbus Avenue and West Walnut Park.
Read MoreLearn about the Glennon family living in Jamaica Plain and Roxbury from 1880-1940. Employment in the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Factory and the Burton Brewery provided the family with both opportunity and hardship.
Read MoreOn the crest of Milton Hill, the highest drumlin in Forest Hills Cemetery, lie two recumbent stone lions shaded by upright Japanese yews, part of a monument honoring the artisan Pietro Caproni.
Read MoreA collection of 956 film negatives that document James Michael Curley during the years 1934-1958.
Read MoreThis story of the last practicing blacksmith in JP is based both on personal observation of Lovett’s McBride Street blacksmith shop in the 1940s and 1950s, and on an April 2017 interview with John R. Lovett, the last farrier’s son.
Read MoreLife for this busy man, who created more than 180 pieces of sculpture in less than fifty hears, circled around his home in Jamaica Plain MA, his studio, his professorship as head of the Sculpture Department at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.
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