Edmund Pitt Tileston

Edmund Pitt Tileston was the son one of the foremost businessmen in Dorchester in the nineteenth century. His father was the partner and brother-in-law of Mark Hollingsworth, and they were the owners of the Tileston & Hollingsworth Paper Company that was located at the Upper Falls (Mattapan) on the Neponset River. This paper mill was successor to the Boies & Mc Lean Paper Company and would survive into the twentieth century.

Edmund Pitt Tileston (1805-1873) was the son of Edmund and Ann Minns Tileston, and was born in Dorchester. He attended Milton Academy, was privately tutored by Reverend Joseph Allen in Northampton and was later fitted at Lancaster Academy. He entered his father's mill and was in 1831 to become a member of the firm of Tileston & Hollingsworth and a after 1835, president of this successful paper concern. It was said of Tileston that "as a businessman he was systematic, prompt and effective."

His first wife was Sarah Mc Lean Boies, and his second wife Helen Franklin Cummins, both well connected to prominent Dorchester families. He was also a partner in the well known publishing firm of Brewer & Tileston. Tileston served as a member of the Executive Council of Massachusetts during 1846 and 1847 under Governor George Nixon Briggs. He served as a founder and first president of the Dorchester Antiauarian and Historical Society, which was founded in 1843, for thirty years and he was a member of the committee to design a seal for the town of Dorchester.

Tileston lived in a large mansion near Four Corners, the corner of Washington and Dakota Streets, where it overlooked Dorchester Bay and Boston Harbor. He was buried at his family lot at Forest Hills Cemetery in 1873.