Very Ancient History

Roxbury Puddingstone is the bedrock of Jamaica Plain. Anywhere you see a rock outcrop, you can expect it to be of the famous conglomerate. Churches, walls and foundations have been made of it throughout the community, with much of it probably coming from either the site or very nearby. In looking for an online source of information on our state rock, I came upon this entry from an old book. For anyone with questions about Roxbury Puddingstone, I think that's the best you'll get without going to a good library.

Just to clarify: Roxbury Puddingstone may be glacial in origin, but it is not the product of the (relatively) recent ice ages that shaped the surface of modern Massachusetts. This is some very old rock - recent sources date it to 500 million years - that's Precambrian for you geologists and paleontologists.

Welcome To The Slaughterhouse

This segment of an 1858 map shows a slaughter house at the end of a lane between Centre street and Chestnut avenue. Look just to the right of center on the map.



It's really not as ominous as it sounds. Jamaica Plain was a farming community, and it did have at least one slaughterhouse over the years. The second short entry notes a fire at the slaughterhouse of Mr Goldsmith, and his name show up at the top of the above-mentioned lane on the map. The first article is dated 35 years before this map was published. The reference to the estate of Dr. Warren suggests that the site is the same, as Dr Warren lived near where Green street was later laid out.

Addendum: I just noticed that a Goldsmith place is now located right about where the lane to the slaughterhouse is shown on this map. I'm not familiar with Goldsmith place, and wouldn't have remembered the name unless I looked at a current map. It looks like the slaughterhouse would have been between the end of Goldsmith place and Enfield street. I hope there are no vegans living there now - they'd probably be haunted by nightmares and never know why.

Do you suppose there are any cow bones in the ground where the old slaughterhouse was located? I'd bet some digging in the right place would find some, if they weren't all found when the streets were laid out and houses built.


Columbian Centinel November 5, 1823


On Monday, Nov. 24, at 3 o'clock, P.M. two lots of Land, on Jamaica Plain, opposite the seat of John Hubbard, Esq. and adjoining the estate of the late Doct. Warren, being a donation given in care to the trustees of Eliot School, by the late Mrs. Abigail Brewer. One lot of about fifteen acres is bounded on the Main Road, about eighteen rods, being licensed for, and having a Slaughter house thereon. An opportunity now offers to young men who wish to establish themselves in that business, that does not often occur. This lot of Land is superior in quality, having two living springs that have never failed, and an interval that bears two crops a year without dressing.

The other lot contains about five acres, adjoining the river upland and meadow. Conditions liberal, made known at time of sale. For particulars inquire of


Committee of Sales

Jos Curtis,
Paul Gore,
Benj. T. Williams,

Roxbury, Nov 3, 1823




New Hampshire Sentinel December 27, 1849


[Excerpt]

On Friday night, shortly after ten o'clock, the slaughterhouse of Mr Goldsmith, Jamaica Plain, was discovered to be on fire, and was mostly consumed. It was the work of an incendiary.

Susan E. Tracy - Occupational Therapy Pioneer

Susan E. Tracy is credited with being the first to train nurses in occupational therapy in a series of lectures at the Adams-Nervine Asylum on Centre street in Jamaica Plain. Her 1906 lectures were followed by a 1910 book, Studies in invalid occupation: A method for nurses and attendants. During World War I, she trained nurses in occupational therapy to work with returning disabled soldiers.


Kansas City Times June 1, 1918


To Teach Crippled Soldiers.

Detroit Women Nurses Will Educate Maimed Fighters.

From the Detroit News.

Preparation for the task of re-educating United States soldiers disabled in the war has begun in Detroit with the organization of a school in invalid occupation to train pupil nurses for work in the government reconstruction hospitals for maimed soldiers.

Miss Susan E. Tracy, director of the experiment station of invalid occupation, at Jamaica Plain, near Boston, has been engaged by the Detroit Community Union to train a class of fifty Detroit nurses for the work of teaching crippled soldiers simple trades by which they may make a living even though confined to their beds or wheel chairs for the remainder of their lives.

"Even though confined to their beds for life, soldiers may be taught to manufacture small articles of furniture, and clothing, from the sale of which they can easily make enough money to support themselves," Miss Tracy says. "After this war the task of re-educating maimed soldiers will be one of the greatest problems with which this country will have to contend. Enough nurses should be trained so that no time will be lost in teaching our crippled boys how to be independent and busy."

The articles which disabled American soldiers will be taught to manufacture, Miss Tracy says, are cane seats for chairs, bed slippers, tea trays, baskets, ladies' purses, pocketbooks, baby shoes, lamp shades, flower and plant stands, match scratchers, bill folders, leather caps, gloves and many other articles of clothing and furniture.


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Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of Miss Tracy. If I read the Boston Directory of 1925 correctly, she lived on the grounds of the Adams-Nervine Asylum where she worked.

Jamaica Plain Station

Photo courtesy of Ebay


This post card comes from the Divided Back period (1907-1914) of postcard history, and this particular one was postmarked Feb. 20, 1908. We're looking south on the inbound side. You can see the layout of the stations and adjacent buildings here (upper right corner). At the far left, you see the mansard roof of a building owned by the Old Colony Railroad Co. To the far right, the houses you see are on either Everett or Call street.

Band Concert - 1877

Cadet bands were very popular during the post-Civil War years. They grew out of military bands, but became concert groups, performing light classical and popular music. The top band leaders and soloists were stars of their day, Perhaps this concert was an effort by the City of Boston to show the benefits of annexation. Then again, maybe it was just a concert.



Boston Daily Globe August 1, 1877


City Concert at Jamaica Plain.

The Boston Cadet Band will perform the following programme of music at the junction of Centre and South streets this evening:

1. March --- "Royal Trumpeter." ......................Voight
2. Fantasie --- "Musical Soiree." .......................Bosquet
3. Baritone Solo --- "Souvenir de Donizetti." .... Claus

Performed by J.U. Odell.

4. Waltzer--- "Spring Flowers." .................Bosquet
5. Selection --- "Girotle Girotla." .........,,,,. Mullaly
6. Cornet Solo --- "Cleopatra." .................. Demare

Performed by Walter Emerson.

7. Bridal March from "Lohengrin." ............... Wagner
8. Fantasie for Piccolo..................................De Carlo

Performed by August Damm.

9. Songs by Mendelsshon, arranged by J.B. Claus

10. Potpourri --- "Harvard." .................... Mullaly
11. Galop --- "Pleasure Party." ................. Strauss

History Repeats Itself

I've come up with two double drownings in Jamaica Pond. In this case, the victims are horses as well as men. Across the colonial and antebellum eras, history did repeat itself, first as tragedy, and then as Darwin Award entry.




New England Weekly Journal August 14, 1727


On Wedneſday last one Robert Sweedland, driving a Cart from this Place to Mr. Stone's Farm at Roxbury, drove down to Jamaica Pond, ſo called, in order to give Drink to the Horſes, and the Horſes being eager for the Water, ran ſwiftly into the ſaid Pond, and there were Drowned, and the poor Man willing to do his utmoſt to ſave the Horſes, was himself likewiſe Drowned.



Essex Gazette July 19, 1839


Sunday morning, a young man named Henry Whalley, was swimming a horse in Jamaica Pond, Roxbury, in presence of nearly twenty persons. The horse was kept in the water a long time, and urged far out from the shore. Becoming exhausted he rolled partly over, and threw off the young man, who not being able so swim, seized the horse so violently about the neck, that it was difficult for the beast to keep his head above water. Finally he gave a plunge and threw the man off, who sunk; after swimming around a few seconds, the horse also sank, and both man and beast were drowned. The bodies of both were recovered in about twenty minutes, but life was extinct. --- Boston Gazette.

David S. Greenough Makes A Purchase

David Stoddard Greenough was the father of David Stoddard Greenough, and ancestor of three additional David Stoddard Greenoughs in a row. D.S. Greenough the First came into possession of the house of Loyalist Commodore Joshua Loring after the Revolutionary War, the house surviving today as the Loring-Greenough house at the Soldier's Monument in Jamaica Plain.

The Massachusetts Historical Society has been nice enough to make available transcripts of papers found in the David Stoddard Greenough papers (direct links below). The first is a bill of sale, dated July 13, 1785, from John Mory to D.S. Greenough.The property being exchanged, for the sum of five pounds, is a mulatto boy, five years of age, named Dick. The boy, son of Mory's negro servant Binah, is assigned as a servant until his twenty-first birthday.

The next year, an agreement of indenture was filed,in which five Selectmen of the Town of Roxbury, acting... in loco parentis?... signed over the labor of Dick Mory, negro child, to David Stoddard Greenough, for the next fifteen years in exchange for room, board and training as a farmer.

Please read the two documents, here and here.

So what goes on here? The documents can be interpreted in more than one way. Slavery in Massachusetts had been effectively outlawed by a court decision in 1783, but it took several years for the decision to be followed in practice. In this case D.S. Greenough buys a five year old boy two years after the legal ruling on slavery, and the contract explicitly states that the boy's service is only assigned until he turns twenty-one. The indenture document also stipulates service until the twenty-first birthday, so it seems as if indenture, rather than life-long slavery was indented from the start.

Should we think of this as simply a way to get around the slavery ruling of 1783, and get a slave in fact, if not in name? That's what I thought at first. Then again, why a five year old boy? At that age, he's useless as a servant/worker, and you have to feed and cloth him until he's old enough to be of use around the house and farm. Given that indenture was still legal, why not just get yourself an able-bodied young man and put him to work immediately?

Buying a slave, or binding an indentured servant at the age of five makes no sense to me. What could lead to D.S. Greenough the First to taking on the expense of caring for a five year old boy? Could the agreement to take on the boy actually be considered in a positive light? I could imagine a story in which Mr Greenough takes on the boy to provide him a job and a home while he grows to adulthood. It's hard to justify the need for legal contracts under that scenario, but I still wouldn't rule it out.

Then there's another explanation. Binah, the mother of the boy Dick, is described in the first document as a negro. The boy is called a mulatto. The difference may not matter, but it does raise the question: who was the father? Hmmm.... Are you thinking what I'm thinking? It turns out that the Greenoughs only married in 1784, so an interesting possibility seems highly unlikely.

In the end, the mystery, such as it is, remains a mystery. David S. Greenough purchased a young boy to work as a servant until he reached his majority - that much we know. Why he did so remains a puzzle to me. The simple answer certainly my be the correct one. On the other hand, the loose ends implied by the language in the documents may complicate the story in ways that we cannot decipher. In school I was taught that indenture usually lasted for seven years, and that it was an agreement among adults. In this case, we have a child indentured until adulthhood by the town fathers. The details make the story a bit messy, but that's history.


Addendum: For a great look at slavery in Massachusetts and the other northern states, check out Slavery in the North. Definitely required reading.

Bussey Institute - Part II

It took a while, but I'm finally getting back to this second and final entry on the Bussey Institute. The first entry - here - included an article written in 1899 extolling the virtues of the agricultural and horticultural program at the Institute. Just nine years later, the undergraduate program described in the Globe article was shut down, and the Institute was reorganized as a graduate school that would focus on scientific research.

The new research institute featured two men who would become leaders in the effort to understand the mechanisms of inheritance. William Castle worked with mammals and Edward Murray East with plants at a time when the nature of inheritance was still very much a mystery. The work of Austrian monk Gregor Mendel in the mid-1800s had done much to unlock the mystery, but it was not recognized at the time. It wasn't until the turn of the century that multiple researchers came upon the same results Mendel did, and proper genetic research could begin. Thus, the new Bussey graduate program was begun just as a new science took hold, with faculty and students capable of playing a major role in new discoveries. Among the students who came to the Bussey Institute in its early days (1912-1915) was Sewall Wright, who became, with Englishmen R.A. Fisher and J.B.S. Haldane, one of the founding fathers of population genetics as it applies to evolutionary biology. A later student, and one better known to the general public - though not for his Bussey work - was Alfred Kinsey (1916-1919), who made an exacting study of gall wasps for his Ph.D.

The actual work done by the Bussey faculty and students is beyond the scope of this site, and would no doubt sit unread if I bothered typing it up. Suffice it to say that the Bussey evolved from a quaint agricultural school to a modern research institute in the early 1900s. As such, it would probably have disappeared from sight for the residents of Jamaica Plain. News of work done at the Institute would be carried by scientific journals and institutional publications, not newspapers, and they would only be read by other scientists in the same field.

By 1936, the program was closed, and the staff transferred to Cambridge. During the 20th century, the state purchased Bussey land for vaccine production and diagnostic testing laboratories, and in 1963 the entire grounds were purchased from Harvard, ending their connection to the land. A new hulking monstrosity was built in 1969, and the main building of the Institute was torn down in the early 1970s. Today, the Institute is probably remembered in more detail by students of the history of science than it is by Jamaica Plain residents.

Sources: Records of the Bussey Institution, Kinsey biography, Sewell Wright and Evolutionary Biology, by William B. Provine.

Kids And Guns

Here are two stories from early in the last century, both involving children and guns. The first has an element of humor, while the second is pure tragedy.



Boston Daily Globe March 19, 1913


Asks To Be Kept In Cell.

Jamaica Plain Boy, Held in Shooting Case, Escapes From Juvenile Home but Police Send Him Back.


Preferring a cell in the Jamaica Plain police station to the comparative liberty of a juvenile home in Wellesley, Charles A. Burrows, 14 years old, of 37 School st, Jamaica Plain, who was held in $3000 bonds on a charge of assault with a loaded revolver on Carl G.A. Danielson of 41 School st, Jamaica Plain, made his escape from the institution yesterday afternoon.

The boy was arrested Saturday evening and spent Sunday in the Jamaica Plain Police Station, where he became friendly with the patrolmen. He was given in charge of the State Board of Charity Monday and was sent to the Wellesley institution.

After dinner yesterday he was allowed with the other children to play on the grounds of the home, and eluding an attendant he walked in upon his astonished parents just as they had finished the evening meal. He said he had no intention of escaping the authorities, but told them he did not like Wellesley and was perfectly willing to return to a cell in the Jamaica Plain Station.

Accompanied by his mother, he walked to the station house, where he greeted the patrolmen like old friends and went to a cell with a smile of satisfaction.

Hardly had he reached the cell when a telephone message from Headquarters was received ordering that the boy be sent at once to meet a representative of the Wellesley institution. He was accordingly taken back.

While Burrows and the other boys were playing "Wild West" at Franklin Park, Danielson was shot in the abdomen and is now lying at the City Hospital in serious condition. Burrows admitted he shot the lad with a 22-caliber revolver which he had bought that morning, but insisted it was accidental.



June 24, 1916


Absolve Hickox Of Myers' Death

Acquitted of Charge of Manslaughter

Accidentally Fired Revolver in Jamaica Plain Store

Officer Pulsifer, Its Owner, Breaks Down in Court



George HIckox, who fired the shot from a policeman's revolver which killed 14-year-old Kenneth T. Myers in a store at 95 Boylston st, Jamaica Plain, on the evening of June 16, was freed of the charge of manslaughter by Judge Perrins in the West Roxbury court yesterday.

Patrolman Pulsifer of the Jamaica Plain station, who owned the weapon, broke down and wept during his testimony. Especially was he affected when the revolver was handed to him for a demonstration of how he handed it to Hickox before the accidental shooting.

Pulsifer had been telling of the incidents leading to the accident when his gaze rested on his revolver. Then he put out his hand and, taking the weapon, lowered his head, unable to continue his testimony for two minutes.

Patrolman Pulsifer told of going into the store where Hickox was clerk, and the conversation in which he was asked his opinion about a new revolver the clerk had in the rear of the store. Hickox expressed surprise when told that it was worth about $1.50, and to explain the small value Pulsifer brought out his own revolver to show the greater grip.

A few seconds after Hickox received the officer's weapon there was an explosion from the revolver. Pulsifer testified that Hickox was startled by the shot and asked him (Pulsifer) if he was hit, and receiving a negative reply, asked young Myers the same question.

The lad also said no and started for the door of the store, but grew faint. The officer caught him before he fell, carried him to a table in the rear of the store and gave him a drink of water. The boy asked what the matter was and Pulsifer said he told him he had been frightened and fainted. He said Hickox was much upset and exclaimed "Why did I take that into my hand?"

Capt. Joseph Harriman of Station 13 told of first hearing of the shooting when informed by Medical Examiner McGrath, on the morning of June 17, of the bullet hole in the boy's body. Then Pulsifer and Hickox were sent for, and the officer's story was substantially that of his testimony on the stand.

Charl Schleich, aged 10, of 1 Jess st, who was in the store at the time of the shooting and was sent after a doctor, also testified, corroborating the facts as told by the principal witnesses.

Then Hickox went to the stand, and his story agreed with that of Pulsifer, that the shot was purely accidental.

Hickox was represented by Sewell C. Brackett, who argued that as his client had never fired a shot before in his life and was unfamiliar with firearms, his finger naturally went to the trigger, and in turning it over the shot was accidentally fired. Capt Harriman, who, with Inspector Greavey of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, conducted the prosecution, made no arguments.

Judge Perrins, in summing up, said that the case was one of the "didn't know it was loaded" variety, and that the whole affair was simply a regrettable incident. As far as had been shown, he stated, there was absolutely no malice or evil intent in the affair and he ordered HIckox freed.

Tonsorial Cartel Strikes Jamaica Plain

How is it that it took 45 years to go from 35 to 50 cents for a boys' haircut, but a loaf of bread goes up 25 cents in a week today? This is why I cut my own hair.




Boston Daily Globe April 27, 1920


Barbers Raise Prices In Roxbury, Jamaica Plain


Beginning Saturday, haircuts in Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Forest Hills are to be 50 cents, shaves 30 cents and children's haircuts 35 cents. More than 1(?) master barbers of those sections, meeting in Columbus Hall, Centre st and Columbus av, last night, voted unanimously in favor of the increase.

A permanent organization, to be known as the Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Forest Hills Master Barbers' Association, was planned. Dominick Scordino of Jamaica Plain was elected temporary chairman; Joseph Rando of Roxbury, clerk and Thomas Sullivan of Jamaica Plain, treasurer.