Victorian Era

It was a snowy January night in 1832 when a meeting was held to found the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Two young abolitionists associated with NEASS—the white William Lloyd Garrison and the Black William Cooper Nell—bucked the tide of segregation in Boston. They went on toiling to end slavery and racial inequality while forging a close, working friendship that lasted through their deaths, half a century later. When they were both interred in Forest Hills Cemetery.

A talk by Stephanie Schorow and volunteers from the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands on A Boston Harbor Island Adventure: the Great Brewster Journal of 1891. In July 1891, four intrepid women from Lowell, Massachusetts, 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. But they did not include their names. In an illustrated lecture Schorow explores the journal’s discovery, its intriguing entries and photographs, and how volunteer researchers managed to identify the writers. Some of the volunteers read excerpts.

A talk by Emily Bowe of the Leventhal Map Center about the the Boston Public Library’s 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? Join Emily for a deep dive on bird’s-eye view maps of Boston, mapmaking techniques and more.

A talk by Stephanie Schorow about her book 'The Great Boston Fire’. For two days in November 1872, a massive fire swept through Boston, leaving the downtown in ruins and the population traumatized. Stephanie recounts the fire’s history from the foolish decisions that precipitated it to the heroics of firefighters who fought it.

There are four sculptures by Daniel Chester French at Forest Hills Cemetery but one is actually largely the work of his only woman assistant, his protégé Evelyn Beatrice Longman (1874 -1954). Longman was French’s only female assistant but went on to be a well-known sculpture in her own right. She successfully practiced her art creating both public and private commissions for 50 years.

At the corner of Carolina Avenue and Lee Street in Jamaica Plain sits a charming cottage on an unusually large parcel of land for the surrounding neighborhood. This house, at 101 Carolina Avenue, was the first to be built on the street. Though significant for its age, also important is the role it played in the history of Jamaica Plain. In 1913, the house transformed from a single-family home into the home of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood House Association. This article explores the history of the people who lived within its walls and, later, its life as a settlement house.

The application of the Jamaica Club, the leading social club of Jamaica Plain, for a club license to sell liquor has caused excitement in that section among the temperance organizations and churches. Boston Globe article from 1897.

A transcription of a booklet entitled ‘Health’ published by the Society to Encourage Studies at home in 1878. The authors were the Society’s Secretary Anna Eliot Ticknor who worked with Ellen Swallow Richards to produce this tract. The purpose - in their words: These pages are addressed to the Students of the Society to Encourage Studies at Home, to the women living in different parts of the United States, who have joined it for the purposes of home education. Grieved by the amount of ill-health revealed in the correspondence, the Committee resolved to make an appeal in behalf of the laws of health, not only on the usual grounds, but for the sake of the very studies which the Society aims to promote.

St. Thomas Aquinas – the Mother Church of Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury – turns 150 years old on August 17, 2019. [i] St. Thomas was established in 1869 and dedicated on August 17, 1873, the year before Jamaica Plain was annexed to Boston. As the seat of the Catholic faith in Jamaica Plain, out of it grew the churches of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Andrew the Apostle.

Memorial Day was born in 1866, out of the Civil War, and has grown to become a holiday to commemorate the dead of all wars.

Our Civil War street names focus on heroes of the war: the naval officer Porter, the general Sheridan, post-war president Andrew Johnson, Massachusetts war governor John Albion Andrew (also seen above an arch on the Monument), and perhaps, in a magnificent gesture, Southern commander-in-chief Robert E. Lee. 

The material that appears below was excerpted from National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form prepared by Candace Jenkins, Massachusetts Historical Commission, and Judith McDonald, Boston Landmarks Commission in March 1981 and was entered into the Register on June 1, 1982.

1897- This sketch was prepared by request to be read before the Jamaica Plain Ladies' Tuesday Club. Subsequently a desire was expressed to have it put in a more permanent form and offered for sale at a Fair for the Jamaica Plain Indian Association. Although personally reluctant to appear before the public in this way, I have allowed my desire to aid a good cause and give pleasure to my friends who have kindly received my paper to influence me in its publication.

The beginnings of baseball in Boston and its first connection to Jamaica Plain are found with Harry Wright and his brother George. Harry was born in England.

Isabella and John Joyce were the children of a Lynn dressmaker recently widowed. On Monday, June 12, 1865, they left their aunt’s home in the South End with a picnic basket and carfare for a day in the famed Jamaica Plain countryside.

Beer making in Boston was in its heyday in the early 1900s. Try to imagine the clatter of horse-drawn, iron-wheeled, wagons bringing raw materials in and finished product out of the 24 breweries in the Stony Brook valley.

The following material was drawn from the nomination form to the National Register of Historic Places for the Bowditch School on Green Street which was submitted on May 4, 1989.

The Boylston Schul-Verein was granted its charter by the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on September 17, 1874. This official date of incorporation was preceded by an initiative of a number of citizens of German descent living in the Boylston Station section of Jamaica Plain to found a club in 1871. 

When people talk about the Boston Police stable—and they have a lot lately, with the disbanding of the police horse unit—few of them know the term doesn’t do the place justice. Tucked away on a corner of the Brandegee Estate on the Boston/Brookline border at 165 Allandale St., the stable is likely Jamaica Plain’s least-known grand historic building.

A discussion of one of the two grand Victorian estates which eventually were carved out of the original land grant received by Joseph Weld in 1642. Despite pleasant views from the outside inwards, the estate’s hidden crown jewel is the Georgian Revival mansion, with seventy-nine rooms, built in 1901 for Mrs. Sprague.

Jamaica Plain's most familiar landmark may be the Monument at the intersection of South and Centre Streets. Officially it is the Soldier's Monument in West Roxbury, since our area was part of Norfolk County. 

The Jamaica Plain News, Jamaica Plain’s only previous one-hundred percent local newspaper, was printed by the Jamaica Printing Co. from 1872 — with roots from 1855 — until 1932 during the Great Depression. 

One of the most striking monuments in Forest Hills Cemetery is the Firemen’s Memorial across from the City of Roxbury’s Civil War Memorial near the Walk Hill gate.

As the 20th century dawned, it was said that within a mile of Roxbury Crossing there were twenty-five breweries. Now, as this 100-year era begins to bow out, none are still running, though a new one is about to start up.  [Written as Boston Beer was new]

The New England Hospital for Women and Children was founded in 1862 as an "all-women's hospital". Now called Dimock Community Health Center, women doctors started the institution at 55 Dimock Street in Egleston Square for the exclusive use of women and children patients.

Materials from a downtown Boston building re-used here in Jamaica Plain.