Today’s illustration is a photograph showing the view from the corner of the Old Dorchester North Burying Ground before the current brick wall on the border of the cemetery was installed. It shows the intersection of Columbia Road and Stoughton Street (coming from the left between the fence and the masonry building at the left). When Stoughton Street crosses Columbia Road, it becomes Dudley Street. The wood-frame building in the center right of the photo is the Upham Store at the corner of Columbia Road and Dudley Street. The photograph probably dates from the 1880s, because the configuration of buildings seems to match the 1884 map.
Amos Upham opened a market at the southwest corner of the intersection of Columbia Road and Dudley Street in the early part of the 19th century. His family operated the market in a wood-frame building until the 1890s, when the building was replaced with a one-story masonry building and later with the multi-story Columbia Square Building brick building that stands there today. From American Series of Popular Biographies. Massachusetts Edition. Boston: Graves & Steinbarger, 1891. Included in the entry for Charles James Upham: Amos Upham came to Dorchester 1817, purchased a tract of land and established a grocery store at the place now known as Upham’s Corner. His death took place January 25, 1872.
Contrast those words with the following from Leading Business Men of Back Bay, South End, Boston Highlands, Jamaica Plain and Dorchester. Boston: Mercantile Publishing Company, 1888
Messrs. J. H. Upham & Co., at Upham’s Corner. This firm, although one of the most progressive in the city and quick to adopt any modern improvement, is concerned in the management of one of the oldest grocery enterprises in town, for the business was founded over three quarters of a century ago by Mr. Joseph Capen, who was succeeded after many years of faithful service by Mr. Amos Upham, who in 1843 admitted his son Mr. J. H. Upham (the present senior partner) to the firm, this latter gentleman having been brought up in the business and by that means, acquiring that perfect knowledge of its every detail for which he is noted.