Trustees of Dorchester Savings Bank

Posted on November 26, 2023 by earltaylor

Dorchester Illustration 2644

Trustees of Dorchester Savings Bank

Dorchester Illustration 2644

Dorchester Savings Bank was incorporated on March 19, 1853 by an act of the Massachusetts Legislature.

“William Richardson, Oliver Hall, Lewis Pierce, their associates and successors, are hereby made a corporation, by the name of the Dorchester Savings Bank March 19, 1853.”

            Private and Special Statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, for the Years 1849, ’50, ’51, ’52, ’53.  Volume IX.  (Boston, 1860), 599.

The photo of the trustees, from left to right: Edward Pierce, Thomas Groom, E.P. Tileston, William Pope, Lewis Pierce, John H. Robinson, Daniel Denny, W. Lindsley, Ebenezer Eaton, Oliver Hall, Nathaniel Safford, Robert Vose, Joseph Dix, Nathan Carruth.

Selected stories:

Thomas Groom made his money in the stationery trade. He was the first to introduce the popular Gillott’s pens into the American market, and for years, his establishment was a headquarters for Russia quills.

Edmund Pitt Tileston went into his family’s paper manufacturing business, Tileston & Hollingsworth.

William Pope was a lumber merchant and builder.

Daniel Denny was a merchant and landowner.

Ebenezer Eaton owned a tavern at the base of Meetinghouse Hill on Bowdoin Street, where Coppens Park is now located.

Oliver Hall was a furniture manufacturer, served in the Massachusetts Legislature, as well as president of the Mattapan Bank.

Nathaniel Safford was a lawyer in Lower Mills.

Joseph Dix had a business of boot and shoe findings in Boston, but went into real estate in the late 1860s. In the early 1860s, he lived at Harrison Square, also know as Clam Point. Between 1861 and 1865, he built a house on the north side of Centre Street, where his sister lived for a time, Dorothea Dix, the social reformer.

Nathan Carruth was the first president of the Old Colony Railroad. He lived on an estate for which Carruth Street is named.

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Spaulding Brothers’ Swiss Bell Ringers, Dorchester Illustraton 2643

Posted on November 19, 2023 by earltaylor

Spauldng Brothers’ Swiss Bell Ringers

Dorchester Illustration 2643

Swiss bell ringers came to the United States in the 1840s, bell ringing became popular entertainment, often part of a larger show. John Franklin Spaulding, a violinist from Boston joined the Swiss Bell Ringers group. In 1866, John and some of his relatives set themselves up as Spaulding Brothers’ Swiss Bell Ringers. Georgia Dean and William Spaulding (John’s cousin), both harpists, married in 1865. The family eventually set up a permanent residence in the Neponset section of Dorchester.

The following excerpts comes from

The Spaulding Bell Ringers at Legg Hall

“Georgie Dean Spaulding was the real deal, and she set the Spaulding Bell Ringers apart. Nor was William a slouch; one writer noted, “ ‘Mr. Spaulding is one of the most versatile performers in the profession, playing on any instrument from a harp down to a penny trumpet, while his solo on the bass bells is said to be wonderful.’

“John Spaulding returned to the Peak Family (a touring group of musicians) in 1870, making William the sole manager of the Spaulding Bell Ringers. Georgie added the cornet to her repertoire, hired another cornet player, Nellie Daniels, and the troupe became known as the Spaulding Bell Ringers and Ladies’ Cornet Band. When Georgie acquired a gold cornet, the name stretched out to The Spaulding Bell Ringers and Ladies’ Gold & Silver Cornet Band.

“Over the next ten years, the troupe toured extensively in the eastern U.S. and Canada. They packed every hall, at 35 cents a seat. They played New York for eight weeks. In Montreal, they played Queen’s Hall for three days, and 1600 tickets were sold for a single matinee performance.

“Georgie was something of a marvel. One of her set pieces was to play, “Yankee Doodle” with one hand on the harp strings and “The Fisher’s Hornpipe” with the other, and sing “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, The Boys Are Marching,” a Civil War favorite, at the same time. More than one reviewer noted that all three melodies could be heard distinctly. Her husband and manager proclaimed, “ ‘Her execution of three different and difficult melodies at one time is the wonder of the 19th century.’

“She was also unflappable. On one occasion as she played the harp, the fashionably tight sleeves of her new dress cut off the circulation to her hands. She stopped playing for a moment, produced a pen knife, calmly slit the sleeves, and resumed playing to thunderous applause.”

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Thomas Trowbridge, ancestor of Cindy Crawford

Posted on November 12, 2023 by earltaylor

Thomas Trowbridge, ancestor of Cindy Crawford

Dorchester Illustration 2642

Sometimes our knowledge of former Dorchester residents comes from unexpected sources. We learned of supermodel Cindy Crawford’s efforts to trace her ancestry, through a YouTube video. One of her ancestors was Thomas Trowbridge.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA_UYcGDhYw

Thomas Trowbridge left Taunton, England where he was born, to live in Exeter in Devon. He established himself as a mercer (a dealer in textiles such as silks and velvets). He married an Exeter girl in 1627, Elizabeth, the daughter of Mrs. Alice Marshall.

Trowbridge was one of the early settlers of Dorchester, Massachusetts, probably about 1636, and of New Haven, Connecticut. In the late 1630s, he was a merchant engaged in the Barbados trade. He was likely a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company under the name listed as Thomas Strawbridge (the spelling was probably a scrivener’s error).

Trowbridge moved his family to New Haven about 1639-41 and appears in the census of 1641. His estate is given at 500 pounds, a large sum for the time.

He returned to England about 1641-44 and left his three sons under the charge of Sgt. Thomas Jeffries who came from the vicinity of Taunton, England. Jeffries was in Dorchester in 1634 and New Haven in 1637 or 1638. Trowbridge sailed for England leaving his houses, goods, lots and estates and chattel in trust with his steward, Henry Gibbons, who kept possession of Trowbridge’s estates at New Haven for many years. It appears that he never returned to New England.

Trowbridge served as a captain in Cromwell’s army in the English Civil War. He died in 1672 in Taunton, England.

Other information is available at https://homepages.rpi.edu/~holmes/Hobbies/Genealogy2/ps14/ps14_015.htm

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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Dorchester Illustration 2641 Bird-Sawyer House, Humphreys Street

Posted on November 5, 2023 by earltaylor

Bird-Sawyer House, Humphreys Street

Dorchester Illustration 2641

Thomas Bird arrived in Dorchester from England on the second voyage of the ship Mary and John in 1635. He was a poor man but he did well enough to buy a large tract of land west of Dorchester Brook, between what is now Dudley and East Cottage Streets.

Mary Bird Hill, grandmother of Charles Winthrop Sawyer, the owner in the late 1920s, told Sawyer that she had seen Thomas Bird’s deed to the land dated 1637 with an Indian’s thumbprint on it. Bird probably built his house soon thereafter. When he died, his estate was valued at 1,000 pounds and included “ye olde dwelling house” and “ye new dwelling House.” It’s not certain which of these was the house still standing in the early 20th century.
The following comments are from the Historic American Building Survey.

“Additions were necessary to accommodate grandchildren, so the house grew with the family. The original house consisted of two rooms, a bedroom and kitchen and an attic (illustration at top left). To this was later added a “lean-to” which was later incorporated into the house. The point of demarcation remained clear as one had to step down a few inches into the lean-to portion from the first floor of the original house. Later the roof was lifted to provide two rooms upstairs with a new attic above (illustration top center). Still later the attic roof was lifted to a higher peak and two more rooms were placed above those in the rear. Four rooms, two above and two below were built in 1804, replacing the second lean-to (illustration at top right). The low ceiling, the wrought-iron latches and locks, and the uneven flooring created an atmosphere of early pioneering Puritanism. In the kitchen, the great brick fireplace was the center of attention.”

Charles Winthrop Sawyer was an engineer and an avid firearms collector. He published Firearms in American History, 1600 to 1800 (1920). Later in life, he was unable to maintain the house. After it was vandalized, the house was taken down in the 1950s.

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Dorchester Illustration 2640, Boston Insulated Wire and Cable Company

Posted on October 29, 2023 by earltaylor

Boston Insulated Wire and Cable Company

Dorchester Illustration 2640

Harry Benjamin Burley was born on May 26, 1867, in Epping, New Hampshire, to Joseph Cilley Burley, Elizabeth Haley. 

Harry married Louise Adelaide Wells in 1901, and they lived in Brookline, Mass. for about 30 years. He died on Aug. 22, 1954, at the age of 87, and was buried in Epping, New Hampshire.

Harry and Louise had three sons, Harry Benjamin Burley, Robert Maxwell Burley and Joseph Cilley Burley. After Harry’s death, Harry Junior and Joseph took over management of the company. Robert served as a director for many years.

Harry Burley founded Boston Insulated Wire and Cable Company in 1906 on Freeport Street in Dorchester. In 1907, he acquired several parcels of land south of Bay Street, stretching from the Dorchester Avenue eastward to the railroad. The company erected a manufacturing plant at 65 Bay St. in 1909, and two years later, they had a branch in Hamilton, Ontario, to take care of business in Canada. In the mid-1900s, the company went public and in 1988 merged with and was subsumed by Draka Industries (Netherlands).

The business grew by supplying wire to automobile companies. Then in the 1930s and 1940s, BIWC produced braided metal hose for aircraft engines. In 1938, BIWC began to make cables for television cameras and was the leader in supplying the TV industry into the 1970s.  In 1959-1960, Otis Elevator ordered cables for the tall buildings where other manufacturers’ cables had failed.

The Dorchester plant closed in the mid-1980s.  In 1994, the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corp. bought the property and cleaned up the site. In 2001, Spire, an international digital and graphics print company, broke ground on a new 78,000-square foot office building at the same site.

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Dorchester Illustration 2639 Future Dads

Posted on October 22, 2023 by earltaylor

Future Dads

Dorchester Illustration 2639

I like this design on a 45 rpm record sleeve released in 1981, recorded by the Future Dads called Dorchester Summer.

The band members included: Lee Harrington, bass, vocals; Richard Kerr, drums; Fritz Ericson, guitar, vocals; Robert “Moose” Parsons, saxophone; and Richie Parson, vocals, guitar, producer. Ted St. Pierre was the recording engineer.

There is a YouTube video at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dhkIpd4QxU

The band is described on that site as:

“Short lived Powerpop/Surf/New Wave band from Boston led by former Unnatural Axe member Richie Parsons. They released their Dorchester Summer titled EP on Modern Method Records in 1981. Bassist Lee Harrington also played with the Great Neighborhoods.”

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Dorchester Illustration 2638, Franklin Park Waiting Room

Posted on October 15, 2023 by earltaylor

Franklin Park Waiting Room

Dorchester Illustration 2638

Today’s photo shows the Franklin Park waiting room where people waited for streetcars. The photo is dated 1895. The building was on the east side of Blue Hill Avenue between Columbia Road and Ellington streets.

In 1887, four Boston horse car railway companies merged under the name West End Street Railway; the new company became one of the largest street railway systems in the world. 

As streetcar lines were extended farther out from the city center, construction of housing grew by leaps and bounds. In the 1880s, the streetcars were drawn by horses. In the early 1890s, the cars were converted to electric power by stringing wires from poles, allowing trolleys to travel along the rail system.

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Dorchester Illustration 2637, 478 Columbia Road Then and Now

Posted on October 8, 2023 by earltaylor

The house at 478 Columbia Road was built in the mid-nineteenth century. Today’s vintage photo is from about 1880.Note the differences in the modern image.

William B. Bradlee, Jr., a lard oil manufacturer turned druggist, was one of the early owners. He and his wife, Helen, had four children over a period of 19 years. Bradlee sold the property to Ralph Butler in 1874 for $15,000, and Butler also assumed an outstanding mortgage with a balance of $7,000.

Ralph Butler was from Portland, Maine.

“Ralph Butler … acquired a public-school education in Phillips, Maine. He obtained his first business experience in a country store in Augusta, Maine, which he carried on successfully until the gold-fever excitement of 1849 attracted him to the Pacific coast. With two other fortune-seekers, he built a bark [a sailing ship] in which, with thirty companions, he made the voyage to the Golden Gate by way of Cape Horn. Although arriving safely, most of the party were ill, which deprived the venture of its anticipated success. Mr. Butler, however, retrieved his losses by building and running the second steamboat on the Sacramento River. In this boat, called the ‘Orient,’ he owned a controlling interest for four years. Going to Sacramento when there were but three huts in the place, he erected a business block from which he derived substantial returns; and after remaining in California several years, he returned to Augusta. He shortly established himself in the wholesale flour business in Portland, Me., but later went to Chelsea, Mass., and eventually settled in Boston, where he was engaged in the same line of trade for twenty years, or until his retirement from business in 1885.” (Source: Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.. Boston, 1891)

Butler became a Dorchester land developer. He died in 1915 and is buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery. His family continued to occupy the house into the 1920s. The house is now owned and occupied by the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministry.

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Dorchester Illustration 2636, Samuel F. Perkins and Man-carrying Kites

Posted on October 1, 2023 by earltaylor

Samuel F. Perkins and Man-carrying Kites

Dorchester Illustration 2636

Samuel F. Perkins lived at 14 Rockmere St. He is the inventor of the man-carrying kite and continued experimentation from 1910 through the first World War and into the 1920s.

Perkins demonstrated his kites and skills at aeronautical exhibitions across the country. At the 1910 Harvard-Boston Aero Meet in Squantum, “he demonstrated that a man can be sent 2,000 feet in the air, supported by from 6 to 5 large 18-foot passenger-carrying aeroplane war kites.”  (The Boston Globe, Dec, 14, 1912)

In 1912, he received an order for 25 kites from Lt. John Rodgers of the U.S.S. Nebraska, docked at the Charlestown Navy Yard. Rodgers was the foremost researcher in the use of man-carry kites for the U.S. Navy.

The following is from https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.921073124624429.1073742437.779950035403406&type=3


“The principle was simple. A lead kite, eighteen feet high, was flown into the sky to test the wind. If conditions were right, a series of six to seven stringer kites would follow until there was enough lift to raise a man. A ground crew operating a winch could reel the “pilot” in or out depending on the weather, or what he needed to see.

Perkins may have been misguided, but he was no crackpot. He attended Harvard and MIT, and the U.S. Army Signal Corps as well as the Navy expressed serious interest in his invention as a means of observing the enemy. Admiral Byrd even took a Perkins kite on one of his Antarctic expeditions.

The biggest issue was stability. Getting Perkins’ kite into the air was easy, but if wind conditions changed the kite(s) could veer out of control. Perkins learned this the hard way during a test flight when he fell 150 feet to the ground. Nevertheless, he not only survived, he remained undeterred. The U.S. wasn’t the only country to experiment with kite observation systems—Germany and France employed them on a regular basis during World War I. However, it soon became clear that using a kite for observation was nothing more than a heroic investment in white elephant technology, and once again kites became the play things of children.”

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Columbia Village, Dorchester Illustration 2635

Posted on September 24, 2023 by earltaylor

Columbia Village

Dorchester Illustration 2635

The Boston Globe reported on May 14, 1950, that the families residing on Columbia Point in the former World War II Italian prisoner-of-war barracks complained about the conditions “unfit for human Habitation.”   The families had been assured that the housing was temporary, but at that time, some of them had been in the barracks buildings for four years.  On May 15, 1951, The Boston Globe printed a report citing statements that a 1500- new low-rent-housing project should be completed by July, the largest federally-aided project in New England. In 1953, the project was expected to be ready for occupancy in the spring of 1954. 

Today’s illustration shows Columbia Village in March 1956.

After a few decades of neglect, the housing project was due for renovation in the 1980s at a projected cost of $500,000 per unit.  A new development was constructed in the 1980s as a waterfront luxury development, with 400 of its almost 1,300 apartments subsidized for low-income tenants.  The project acquired a new name, Harbor Point.  All the residents of Columbia Point who wished to live in Harbor Point were provided new apartments (The Boston Globe, August 2, 1991).

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