Historic Forest Hills Cemetery

Andrew Carney of Carney Hospital

2011-04-08T06:38:00.002-04:00

The Caritas Christi~ Carney Hospital in Dorchester Lower Mills is a vitally important hospital that provides medical services to residents of the metropolitan Boston area. Spanning a large tract of land, the hospital is today one of the largest in Boston, however it began in 1863 with a modest gift from Andrew Carney. Andrew Carney (1794-1864) was born in Ireland of humble, God fearing people. He was apprenticed as a youth to learn the tailoring trade, and after his immigration to this country in 1814, he secured a position with the firm of Kelley and Hudson, tailors on State Street in Boston. Laboring long hours, he later joined with Jacob Sleeper and opened their own tailoring business, which not only succeeded, but prospered. For over two decades, Carney and Sleeper provided not just “ready made” suits, which were a novelty at the time, but expert tailoring. The partners had opened their shop on North Street in Boston’s North End, and Carney’s industrious and economical nature contributed to its success. After the business partnership was dissolved in 1845, Andrew Carney held positions of honor and trust in Boston. With no further business concerns to occupy his time, he took great interest in banking and assisted in the founding of the Bank of the Republic and the Safety Fund Bank (now Bank of America.) He was a director of the John Hancock Life Insurance Company and assisted in the founding and in the funding of Boston College, which was then located on Harrison Avenue in Boston’s South End, adjacent to the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Carney was considered a responsible and respected man in Boston and contributed liberally to numerous charities. One business associate said that Carney was “one of Boston’s many great Irishmen” and another said that he was “one of God’s best noblemen.” With such glowing accolades during his lifetime, one might consider his success, after such humble beginnings in Ballanagh, County Caven, Ireland as the impetus for his sincere interest in the less fortunate. In 1863, during the height of the Civil War, the Carney Hospital was founded “to afford relief to the sick poor; and, though it is in the charge of the Sisters of Charity, it receives patients of all religious denominations. Chronic, acute, and other cases are received, contagious diseases alone excepted.” The hospital, located in the once elegant Howe Mansion on Dorchester Heights in South Boston, had not just an elevated site with cooling breezes and magnificent panoramic views of Boston and the Boston Harbor islands, but convenience to downtown Boston. The hospital was founded upon the premise that it should be “a hospital where the sick without distinction of creed, color or nation shall be received and cared for.” Carney’s gift of $13,500.00 enabled the purchase of the property, and the conversions necessary top provide medical services for the poor and immigrant classes of Boston. The Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, after the request of Bishop John Williams, were presented with the hospital and began their care for the medically needs on June 9, 1863. Its director was Sister Ann Alexis, who was superior of the Orphan Asylum on Camden Street in Boston, and is said to have been “very quiet, but most active, energetic, and skillful [as a] manager.” With an addition to the former Howe Mansion in 1868, the Sisters of Charity commenced a hospital that supplied a much needed service in Boston. After his initial donation had allowed for the purchase of the Howe Estate and the supplies necessary top convert it to a hospital, Andrew Carney continued to donate large sums of capital to ensure that the hospital provided medical care to those who could not afford it elsewhere. His total donations amounted to $75,000.00 by the time of his death in 1864, an enormous sum in the mid nineteenth century when a family might expect $1,000.00 annually. Carney’s intention to endow Carney Hospital did not materialize, for he died prior to signing the codicil of his will bequeathing further monies. However, though his involvement with Carney Hospital was for only a short period of time, his commitment and interest in a hospital that would provide medical services and convalescence for those who needed it “without distinction of creed, color or nation” was to ensure its continued efforts. Today, the Caritas Christi~ Carney Hospital, which had moved in 1957 to a new hospital designed by Carney, Carney, Carney & Keefe in Dorchester, attracts a diverse staff who serve an equally diverse patient base. It’s mission statement says that the “Cariras Christi Health Care, rooted in the healing ministry of Jesus Christ, is committed to serving the physical and spiritual needs of our community by delivering the highest quality care with compassion and respect.” It clearly seems that Andrew Carney’s vision of the Carney Hospital still holds true to this day. We salute not just Caritas Christi~ Carney Hospital, but the man who was “a kind-hearted, whole-souled, generous friend and protector” to all.

The Carney Lot at Forest Hills Cemetery is one of the most prominent, sited near Like Hibiscus.

Elida Rumsey Fowle

2011-04-07T20:11:00.004-04:00

Elida Rumsey Fowle (1843-1919) was known during the Civil War as the “Songbird of the North,” as she entertained Union soldiers with rousing patriotic songs, and is reputed to have been the first to sing in public Julia Ward Howe’s anthem “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The Rumseys had moved to Washington, DC from Tarrytown, New York in 1861, and Miss Rumsey gave informal concerts at her family’s home on Judiciary Square. Popular, she was one of a quartet asked to sing for Sunday services at the House of Representatives. It was here that she met her future husband, John Allan Fowle of Boston. After services, the two began to visit hospitals in the vicinity, giving religious tracts from the American Tract Society, and homemade jellies and cakes to recuperating Union soldiers. Many times, Elida was induced to sing such songs as “The Rebel Flags” and “The Dying Soldier Boy,” songs written by Fowle expressly for Elida Rumsey. After a short courtship, the two were married in the House of Representatives by Chaplain Alonzo Quint, the minister that held services there on Sunday mornings. They were married in 1863 with almost four thousand people attending their wedding. With members of Congress, the Senate and numerous Union soldiers who were recipients of their largess, it is still the only wedding to have taken place in the Congressional chambers. With a request from the gallery, Elida Rumsey Fowle stood on the desk of the Speaker of the House and sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Just after receiving their wedding guests, the Fowles went to the library they had worked so diligently to open in Washington, DC for the benefit of Union soldiers and known as the Soldiers Free Library. The Fowles had collected funds and books from numerous benefactors in the North. Among their friends was Eleanor Baker of Dorchester, who purchased fifty books herself, and enlisted the aid of her friends in Dorchester. The Fowles provided a place for soldiers on leave to find a quiet place, with stationary, pens and stamps to write letters to loved ones at home. Books, tracts and scrapbooks were among the literature available, and occasionally an impromptu concert filled the library with song. They built the library from a small collection into one of renown, and asked each soldier using the collection to sign a pledge to abstain from “profane language, from alcoholic drink, as a beverage, and from all other vices in the Army and Camp.” Their departure from Washington, DC in 1863 prompted a resolution to thank the couple for their work in Washington, with a Bible and photograph album being presented to them by their friends. After the Civil War, the Fowles went to Brooklyn, New York where John A. Fowle was in the wool brokerage trade. They remained there until 1877, when they moved to Dorchester, Massachusetts. They purchased a brick row house on Boston Street (now Columbia Road) across from the firehouse. In retirement, the Fowles remained active, with Mrs. Fowle founding the Wintergreen Club, a reading room in Upham’s Corner for children. She founded the “Grandchildren of the Veterans of the Civil War,” and became active in the Dorchester Historical Society, which was founded in 1891. Her husband wrote a short history of the Old North Burying Ground in Upham’s Corner, across from their home, in 1912 and the couple received greetings on the 50th wedding anniversary, which was celebrated in the Hall of Flags at the Massachusetts State House with over two thousand people in attendance. Their activities also included the raising of two daughters of Aunt Sally, a slave of Colonel Robert E. Lee. It was Aunt Sally that gave Mrs. Fowle a silver salver and a few pieces of china from Arlington House, the Lee home in Virginia, to keep for protection. A bond was developed between the two, and after the war the Fowles raised two of her children in the North, educating them in the north. Their stories and experiences of the Civil War and their own participation in the events of that time attracted a plethora of friends. Their vast collection of Civil War relics was deposited at the Blake House in Dorchester. Upon her death in 1919 she was buried at Forest Hills Cemetery; Mrs. Fowle was the last remaining member of the Nurses of the Civil War. With her went many of the firsthand memories of a full and active life that revolved around the Civil War. The Fowles are buried on Larch Avenue at Forest Hills Cemetery.

H. Eugene Bolles

2011-04-07T20:03:00.002-04:00

No trip to New York City is complete for me without a trip to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side. Its collection of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts are superb, and its gift shop a boon to my lack of time for shopping, but what interests me most is the collection of American Decorative Arts, which have a strong connection to Dorchester. In 1909 the MET hosted an exhibit of American Decorative Arts in recognition of the 300th anniversary of the founding of New York, and it was known as the Hudson-Fulton Exhibit. The exhibit included furniture, paintings, pottery, glass and textiles in one of the most important retrospective exhibits ever held in the United States up to that time. Among the numerous lenders to the exhibit, which attracted a record 300,000 people, was H. Eugene Bolles, a resident of Dorchester. Hezekiah Eugene Bolles (1853-1910,) a graduate of Boston University Law School and a noted attorney in Boston, lived in a grand house at 401 Quincy Street in Dorchester. The son of William and Cornelia Congdon Palmer Bolles, he was born on Bolles Hill in New London, Connecticut, and moved to Dorchester in 1882 when he married Elizabeth Clapp Howe (1853-1920,) a daughter of James and Martha Neal Jenkins Howe of Dorchester. After their marriage, Elizabeth and H. Eugene Bolles commissioned local architect John A. Fox (1835-1920) to design a large house in 1885 at the crest of Quincy and Bellevue Streets, just up the hill from Columbia Street (now Columbia Road.) They lived like other affluent Dorchester families in the post annexation years, except that they added to their family heirlooms inherited by Mrs. Bolles from her Dorchester ancestors with fine examples of furniture, glass, china and textiles from the early 17th century to the Federal period. Bolles, who had begun collecting fine antiques in the early 1880’s, was so serious a collector that he was a founder of The Walpole Society, along with Henry Knight and Luke Vincent Lockwood, a scholarly group of museum curators, professionals and above average collectors who met at fellow members’ homes, museums and historic houses for private and in-depth tours and lectures. The Bolles House was literally crammed with furniture ranging in style from Pilgrim chests and chairs, Court cupboards to Chippendale highboys, lowboys and chairs to high style Federal card tables, chairs and sofas; not just was the house furnished with museum quality antiques, but they were stored in the attic and in an off site storeroom. Interestingly, the Bolleses not only had a deep appreciation and increasing awareness of their collection, they actually used it on a daily basis, which is a remarkably healthy attitude for someone who collects antiques. During the year leading up to the New York exhibit, the Bolleses were often visited by Henry W. Kent, a friend who was also an assistant to Robert de Forest, secretary to the museum and chairman of the celebration committee on art exhibits. Kent was on friendly terms with many early art and antique collectors who had amassed important collections, such as George S. Palmer, R.T.H. Halsey, Alphonse Clearwater and H. Eugene Bolles, who was induced buy his friend to loan forty one objects to the exhibit. H. Eugene Bolles and his wife came to the realization that their collection of American Decorative Arts, which spanned the period from 1630 to 1815, was not only an important collection with a wide spectrum of styles and objects, but that it should be preserved intact. Following the exhibit, he was induced by Henry Kent to sell the collection, which encompassed four hundred and thirty four pieces of furniture and included “miscellaneous objects ranging from cooking utensils to fire buckets and helmets,” to the MET, where it was displayed in period room settings and like-object exhibitions. Unfortunately, even though the Bolles’ collection was preserved intact, he sold it to the museum rather than donating it and the collection was actually purchased by the museum with funds donated by Mrs. Russell Sage (1828-1918,) a wealthy benefactor of the museum and is known today as the Sage Collection, rather than the Bolles Collection. To Kent, who must have been ecstatic in having secured the Bolles Collection for the museum, H. Eugene Bolles wrote in a letter “We hope… that before long we shall have the pleasure of another visit from you. If we have no chairs for you to sit in, you will understand the reason why, and I am sure under the circumstances will not object to sitting on the front stairs.” Well, with such a vast amount of antique furniture shipped from Dorchester to New York, one can imagine how empty the house on Quincy Street actually was. So, the next time you are in New York, plan to stop by the MET and visit their impressive decorative arts collection. While admiring these premier pieces of American craftsmanship, remember that it was through the discerning eye, diligent collecting skills and tenacity of a fellow Dorchesterite that ensured that they were enjoyed by the public after his death.

The Bolleses are buried on Daffodil Path at Forest Hills Cemetery.

Maria Susanna Cummins

2011-04-07T20:01:00.001-04:00

The concept of social reform and responsibility was a great factor in the behavior of many 19th century Dorchesterites, and no person was more aware of this than Miss Cummins. Maria Susanna Cummins (1827-1866) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, the daughter of The Honorable David and Maria Franklin Kittredge Cummins; her father was the judge of Common Pleas of Norfolk County. She was educated at the exclusive Mrs. Sedgwick’s School in Lenox, returning to her father’s home in Dorchester after her “finishing.” The Cumminses were a well-to-do family of education and wealth, who had moved to Dorchester’s Meeting House Hill in the 1840’s. The Cummins Family had purchased the former Turks Head Tavern, on Bowdoin Street, an 18th century tavern that had been built by Reverend John Danforth, minister of the Dorchester Meetinghouse, in 1712. Once the family had settled, they began to attend the First Parish Church on Meeting House Hill and Maria Cummins began to teach Sunday School at the church, where interestingly the first Sunday School class had been formed in 1822, one of the first Unitarian classes in the area. Under the direction of William Taylor Adams (known by his nom de plume Oliver Optic,) Miss Cummins led a defined and religious life, devoting herself to her students. Reverend Theodore Clapp said of her in 1854 that “No lady of my acquaintance is more richly endowed with those mild, social, refined and gentle qualities which, in view of our sex, generally, constitute the principal beauty of the female character…. [and that] simplicity is the crowning ornament to her manners, as well as he writings” It was in 1850 that she undertook the writing of a novel to please her nieces, the daughters of her sister Helen and Edmund Pitt Tileston. Helen Cummins had married Edmund Pitt Tileston, co-owner of the Tileston & Hollingsworth Paper Mill on the Neponset River. He was a founder in 1843, the year of his marriage, of the Dorchester Historical & Antiquarian Society, and active in numerous charities. Their daughters, Florence, Grace and Katherine Tileston, were doted upon by their aunt, and with the publication in 1853 of her book The Lamplighter, were flattered by the attention. The book, a tribute and gift from their aunt, was to bring Maria Cummins a great deal of attention. Published anonymously, it was to sell over 65,000 copies within five months. The novel went through numerous editions, and was placed in many Unitarian Sunday School classes throughout New England. In the period between 1850 and her death in 1866, Miss Cummins wrote Mabel Vaughan, El Fureidis, Little Gerty and Haunted Hearts. She also contributed numerous articles for the prestigious Atlantic Monthly. The books were all of a semi-religious type, and well received by her readers. Of a deeply religious nature herself, Maria Cummins joined the First Parish Church in 1864, and died after a lengthy illness. She was to be buried from the church on Meeting House Hill on October 1, 1866, and interred in her family lot at Forest Hills Cemetery.

Colonel Charles Barnard Fox

2010-11-20T16:50:00.003-05:00

With the sensationalism garnered in the movie “Glory,” we reveled in the drama and impact of the Civil War however it also served to remind us of why that war was fought. The 54th Regiment, led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, was the first African American regiment formed in Massachusetts, yet few of us realize that the all black 55th Regiment was led by a Dorchester, Massachusetts resident. Charles Barnard Fox (1833-1895) was the son of the Reverend Thomas B. Fox, editor of the “Boston Transcript.” He had been born in Newburyport while his father had been minister of the Unitarian church in that town, but the family moved to Dorchester in 1845. Educated in the local schools, Fox studied, then entered the field of civil engineering. His brother, the noted architect John A. Fox, was also a civil engineer and considered the "Father of Stick Style" architecture in this country.

Fox had enlisted in the Civil War at Lyceum Hall on Dorchester's Meeting House Hill, which was the local recruiting office. He received his commission as Second Lieutenant in the Thirteenth Massachusetts Infantry; one year later he was made First Lieutenant. In 1863, he was transferred to the Second Massachusetts Cavalry, with the same rank. That same year he was made Major of the 55th Regiment, an African American regiment, being promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on November 3, 1863. The 55th Regiment had been trained at Camp Meigs, and was composed of African American men who had everything at stake in the war. Fox, with his fellow officers, were well trained, and were to be commended for their service. In Fox’s obituary, it was quoted as saying that “It was abundantly shown in his long and meritorious service in the army during the civil war, and especially in his readiness to enter a branch of the service that was not regarded with favor even by many who in theory favored perfect equality between races, and which was not calculated to attract the young soldier powerfully, in comparison with the more popular and agreeable positions in white regiments. But Colonel Fox believed in the equality of the black men with the white, and whatever he believed he lived up to, and the relations which existed between him and the colored soldiers in his command were ever the most intimate and mutually regardful nature.”

Fox was reared in the Unitarian faith, and upon the family’s removal in 1845 to Dorchester, they became connected with the First Parish Church on Meeting House Hill. The minister was the Reverend Nathaniel Hall, a fierce anti-slavery opponent who expounded upon the evils of both slavery and the subjugation of blacks in the South. His sermons, many of which were published for a more general readership, were vociferous and pointed in his belief that slavery was immoral, and could only be abolished through the war. Thomas B. Fox was undoubtedly influenced by Hall, and by his own father’s opinion, which was quite often read in the daily editions of the “Boston Transcript.”

Charles Barnard Fox served in the Army of the Potomac until after the Battle of Fredericksburg, in the Siege of Charleston and in the Campaign in Florida, the Battle of Honey Hill being particularly gruesome. His record of bravery and courage was made known when he was made brevet Colonel of the 55th Regiment; he resigned his commission on June 25, 1865 at the end of the Civil War and decided to remain in the South. For three years after the war, Fox managed a cotton plantation on Sea Island off the coast of South Carolina, it was not until 1868 that he returned to Boston, becoming an inspector at the Boston Customs House. In partnership with his brother and his friends, he assisted in the establishment of Holbrook & Fox, a real estate and land auction house in Boston. It was his friend Silas Pinckney Holbrook and his brother John Andrews Fox who created the partnership. The firm of Holbrook & Fox was one of the leading firms of its kind in New England and was well respected for the development of the real estate market in the late 19th century. Fox married and built a home, designed by his architect brother, on Fuller Street in Dorchester. His connection with the development of the old farms and estates of Dorchester continued until his untimely death in 1895.

The contributions of Colonel Charles Barnard Fox in regards to the Civil War were important enough to have his convictions and personal beliefs supersede his comfort. He served his all black 55th Regiment well, and earned their respect with the title of colonel by brevet, and honor that few officers received for their service in the Civil War.

Colonel Thomas Barnard Fox is buried in the Fox Family Lot at Forest Hills Cemetery.

Pfaff Lager

2010-10-24T19:41:00.004-04:00

One of the eight stops on our "FOOD" tour at Forest Hills Cemetery was that of the Pfaff Family, whose brewery was once a well known place at Roxbury Crossing. We enjoyed sampling delicious cider at the stops to the Pfaff Mausoleum, and learning that this was one of almost two dozen breweries along the Stony Brook in Roxbury and Jamaica Plain.

Henry J. Pfaff (1826-1893) was a well-known lager beer brewer whose brewery was active from 1857 to 1918, and was located in Roxbury at 1276 Columbus Avenue, the present site of Roxbury Community College. The abundant and crystal clear water from Stony Brook, along with artesian wells bubbling to the surface around Mission Hill, in addition to the affordable land after the City of Roxbury merged with Boston in 1868 made Pfaff’s one of the major brewers. With his brother, Pfaff established the H&J Pfaff Brewery that imparted a little bit of old Germany that created the demand for the new German type Lager beers.

The Pfaff Mausoleum was designed by Whitman & Howard and is an impressive Egyptian Revival granite mausoleum on a knoll overlooking Tupelo Avenue, and the impressive Receiving Tomb. The use of Egyptian Revival architecture for a memorial is something that was popular throughout the nineteenth century as it represented an ancient culture that was devoted to the afterlife and reverence for the dead.

FOOD at Forest Hills Cemetery

2010-09-16T21:17:00.004-04:00

FOOD is the topic of an upcoming walking tour at Forest Hills Cemetery led by Anthony M. Sammarco on Sunday, October 17th at 2:00 PM. Watch the calendar of events for more information, or check this Blog for more details.

Don't miss this fun tour!

Among those who will be included on this tasteful walking tour are S.S. Pierce, Maria Parloa, Thaddeus Clapp, Samuel Downer, Henry Pfaff and Ruby Foo. This will be a special walk, discussing the many aspects of food with samples along the way. Samuel Stillman Pierce (1807-1880) (known as S.S. Pierce, pronounced Purse) was known as the purveyor of fancy goods and libations to Victorian Bostonians. Opening his store at the corner of Tremont and Court Streets in the old West End of Boston in 1831, he catered to the carriage trade and created a company that involved four generations of the Pierce Family in its successful operations. As a businessman, Pierce was said to be “a man of unflinching honesty and sterling integrity of character."

Maria Parloa (1843-1909) was an astute cooking instructor whose teaching methods were well received, and she opened Miss Parloa’s Cooking School on Tremont Street in Boston. This led to her teaching at the Boston Cooking School, which she is also credited with cofounding. Her partial ownership of the Ladies Home Journal magazine allowed her articles on food and its preparation to be read by women far and wide, and her cookbooks, beginning in 1878 with Camp Cookery, eventually numbered eleven, including Miss Parloa’s New Cook Book: A Guide to
Marketing and Cooking and Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes by Miss Parloa for the Walter Baker & Company.

Thaddeus Clapp (1811-1861) was the hybridizer of the Clapp Favorite pear, a cross between the Flemish Beauty and the Bartlett pears but an early ripening pear that was awarded a medal by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Clapp's white marble monument has a bas-relief of the pear carved upon it.

Samuel Downer was a noted hybridizer who achieved fame for the Downers Late cherry. He was proprietor of Downer's Landing in Hingham, an alcohol free family amusement park in the late nineteenth century, that had a boat leavin Boston for the landing throughout the summer.

Henry Pfaff (1826-1893) was a well-known lager beer brewer whose brewery was active from 1857 to 1918, and was located at 1276 Columbus Avenue, the present site of Roxbury Community College. The abundant and crystal clear water from Stony Brook, along with artesian wells bubbling to the surface around Mission Hill, in addition to the affordable land after the City of Roxbury merged with Boston in 1868 made Pfaff’s one of the major brewers. With his brother, Pfaff established the H&J Pfaff Brewery that imparted a little bit of old Germany that created the demand for the new German type Lager beers.

Ruby Foo (1904-1950) was proprietor of Ruby Foo's Den, a popular Hudson Street restaurant in Boston's Chinatown that was among the first to offer Chinese cuisine to Bostonians.

Don't miss FOOD at Forest Hills Cemetery.

The Lucy Stone Chapel at Forest Hills Cemetery

2010-09-13T06:46:00.003-04:00

The Massachusetts Cremation Society opened a crematorium on Walk Hill Street in 1893, and was financed by local cremation societies. The building was designed by local architect Ludvig Sandoe Ipsen (1840-1920) and built of Roxbury felsite in the classical style; an addition, designed by Thomas Fox and Edward Gale, was built in 1905 with a basement columbaria. The first cremation in New England took place here in 1893, and was that of Dorchester resident and women's rights advocate Lucy Stone.

In 1925, Forest Hills Cemetery acquired the crematory, and since that time has almost tripled its size.

The Lucy Stone Chapel, seen here, is the largest of the two chapels at the Forest Hills Cemetery Crematorium and was named in memory of Lucy Sone, wife of Henry Browne Blackell. Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was a leader of the national women's rights movement and referred to as "the morning star of the woman's rights movement." She was an organizer of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, the first Massachusetts woman to receive a college degree (Oberlin College in 1838,) the first married woman to keep her own name, and the founder and editor of the Women's Journal. However, she was the first person to be cremated in New England, which was at the Massachusetts Cremation Society, now the Forest Hills Crematorium, where her ashes are deposited in a large urn later co-mingled with those of her husband and daughter.

Miss Amelia Peabody

2010-09-07T12:48:00.004-04:00

Amelia Peabody (1890–1984) was a noted sculptor, having studied with Bela Pratt and Edmund Tarbell. She was the daughter of Frank Everett Peabody, who was a partner of Kidder Peabody and Company, and she “created a life-long reputation in her own right, not only for her artistry, but also for her philanthropy, patronage of the arts, civic leadership, love of animals, and equestrian pursuits.”

Amelia Peabody owned Mill Farm on Dedham Street and Powisset Farm on Powisset Street with vast acreage of woodlands and fields between them. On her death she bequeathed Powisset Farm and most of the open land to the Trustees of Reservations, now Noanet Woodlands. An avid horsewoman in her younger days, she was also an accomplished sculptor. Her studio was at Mill Farm.

The Peabody lot at Forest Hills Cemetery is set in a dense grove of trees, and is marked by a huge Roxbury puddingstone boulder.

2010-08-31T20:02:00.132-04:00

Peleg Tallman
1764-1841

The photo above is not that of Peleg Tallman. As a matter of fact this stone is not at Forest Hills Cemetery, either. [click on picture for better view]

Three reasons for showing this stone is that [1] the ship carved on it is the USS Trumball, [2] Tallman served on board this ship in 1780 and [3] Mr. Tallman never sat for his portrait to be painted. His stone at Forest Hills is rather worn and I need something in this space to catch your attention.

This photo which I took is of the gravestone of Lt. Jabez Smith Jr. of the US Marines who died of injuries during fighting against a British ship on board the USS Trumball and he is buried at The Granary Burial Ground in Boston. During that same action Tallman was severely injured. More about that later.

First, let me make you aware that this will be one long post. So if you're up to it get a snack, a cup of tea, or, if you're not up to a long post, maybe, find something else to do.

All of that said let me tell you about Peleg Tallman. [Pronounced: Pell-leg, I think.]

Born in Tiverton, RI on July 24, 1764, his name Peleg was a popular one among pious people of that area. Taken from the Old Testament, Peleg was one of the two sons of Eber and it's meaning is a watercourse. Quite descriptive of one whose life would be so connected to the sea.

Peleg's mother died when he was just 8 years of age. Four years later his father, Peleg Sr., remarried and it would seem that he would never receive the Father of the Year Award. At the age of 12 Peleg Jr. was left to fend for himself. The year was 1776 and Peleg did what so many boys who had no trade did, he went to sea.

The American Navy was non-existent at this time so privateers began running out of American ports all along the East Coast to capture British ships [or at least try to]. Any ship that could carry a few guns made the attempt.

Peleg served on board one of these privateers the sloop Beaver and they were able to capture a few British merchant ships. He next served on board the privateer Rover which was captured by the 64 gun HMS Reasonable. Very reasonable to expect a 64 gun ship to capture a sloop, I guess. He along with his ship were taken into Halifax and he was obliged to serve on board British ships for some time. He managed to escape near Penobscot, Maine while with a work party on shore. He walked back to Boston. You must realize that this was a boy of about 14, at the time.

He was soon on board another privateer the Rattlesnake which, also, was outgunned. This time it would be 2 British men-of-war and they ran the Rattlesnake ashore. Peleg managed to jump overboard and escape. The ship was burned by the British. Again, walking and this time from New Jersey.
Peleg, reached New London where he went on board the USS Trumball. This ship was one of the first 6 ships built for the US Navy.
The year is, now, 1780 and unlike the privateers Trumball carried 28 guns. And our Peleg was a seasoned sailor who stood out among the "green" hands on board.
Trumball ran the British blockade of New London and on June 2nd spotted the British privateer Watt of 36 guns. In what has been described as the most intense sea battle of the Revolutionary War one that lasted for almost 3 hours, the American ship was not defeated. Didn't win but did leave the Watt a wreck floating away from the scene of battle. Trumball's main mast was shot away and she was unable to pursue the British ship.
Watt had 92 killed or wounded while Trumball had 39. Peleg Tallman was given command of the 2 after guns at the height of the battle and it was there that he was severely wounded.
Grapeshot [a type of shrapnel] was fired at Peleg's position and it tore his left arm off at the shoulder. How he survived the trip back to Boston is nothing short of a medical miracle but he did.
He was treated in Boston by Dr. Joseph Gardner and in 6 months Peleg was ready to go to sea, again.

On board a privateer of 16 guns which had no success in capturing British ships, Peleg returned to Boston and went on board another privateer of 20 guns. This ship, also, had no success at sea except to be captured by HMS Recovery.
Peleg and his crew-mates were taken to Kingsale, Ireland and "...hove into a loathsome prison...". Many months later they were transferred to Fortune prison in England and spent several months there until the peace in 1783. According to Peleg more than "...half of the prisoners died of smallpox and other disorders."

Years later Peleg Tallman wrote about his release... "The prison was cleared of its contents, and we were sent over to Havre, in France, and there landed naked as we were. We had no means of getting to America from there. I, with six others, walked through France, down to Nantz, I believe about 400 miles. We there got a passage on board a ship bound to Philadelphia, and there--pray, sir, look at my condition-- I was landed in the rags I stood in, without friends and only one arm, and knew not where to get a meal of victuals."
Peleg: "However, I made the best of my way to Boston and called on my old friend Dr. [Joseph] Gardner...".
When Peleg returned from his imprisonment in 1783 the only one that he could turn to was the doctor. Dr. Gardner realized that Peleg was someone quite capable. So, before Peleg could have returned to sea the doctor sent him to Maine to check on the doctor's extensive property holdings there. This was in 1785 and thus began a relationship that would start this one armed young man on a career that led to his becoming one of the most successful men in Maine.

Dr. Gardner had a merchant ship built and put Peleg in as the Master. In this capacity he served for three years until the death of Dr. Gardner. He purchased half interest in the ship and continued as Master until 1791 when he sold his interest in it. For the next 8 years he commanded ships to India and other distant ports.
He had received a commission as Lieutenant in the US Navy and would have served on board the newly launched USS Constitution [Old Ironsides] if he had accepted it. But Peleg was happy where he was and returned it with his regrets.
That commission would be the only time that a seriously disabled private citizen was given such a position.

He married Eleanor Clarke on June 15, 1790 and their marriage would last 51 years. A sum of years extraordinary by most of today's standards. They settled in Bath, Maine on land Peleg bought from his father-in-law. This land fronted on the Kennebec River and he would build a wharf, there. He began his shipbuilding business across from his home on Front Street [now Oak Street]. He would, eventually, own a fleet of 18 vessels. Bath, ME in the 19th century was producing more wooden ships than any other city in the world. At one time there were 40 ships under construction, along the Kennebec River.The home was torn down in the early 20th century and the land is, now, a public park.

By 1801 Peleg Tallman was involved in politics in the Democratic Party. In served in the Massachusetts Legislature in the years 1801 through 1807. At that time Maine was a part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and would remain so until 1820.
He went on to represent the Lincoln District of Maine in the 12th Congress in Washington from 1811-1813.
Like many in New England he was opposed to the war with England in 1812. Like so many wars the one in 1812 was not only wrong-headed but dumb. Granted that most merchants in the area opposed war with England because it would [and did] destroy their shipping business.
I've been sitting, here, at the keyboard for awhile wondering if I should go off on a rant about the war many believe the 1812 Overture was written for. Well, they play it at the fireworks at the Fourth of July concert on the Esplanade, don't they?
OK, OK, I'll spare you that one for another time.

Well, speaking of July 4th, in 1831 Bath, ME celebrated the day and Peleg Tallman hosted a grand banquet on his property. A few veterans of the Revolutionary War were in attendance and Peleg was proclaimed as "..one who has bled for his country."
Wealthy and generous, owning property in Maine, Boston, and Rhode Island, Peleg was "..not known to be a man of piety..". He did give generously to several area churches, though. His wife, Eleanor, who lies beside him at Forest Hills was pious to a fault. Many "religious" and missionary organizations were always buzzing around this wife of a very wealthy man for donations. She gave without Peleg's knowing, most of the times.
In his will he forbade any of his money being used for such causes. Somehow, though, Eleanor managed to continue giving. There is an account of one "religious" outfit who Eleanor hired to supply her with a few gold watches as gifts for her grandchildren. She paid for gold and got brass.
I feel that to emphasize her beliefs I should quote from a letter that she wrote to Peleg in 1836. "Could I but see you making any preparation for that world to which we are fast hastening, how it would rejoice my heart."
There is no reply, extant, but his love for Eleanor would cause him to save the letter.

Years at sea and many in command of ships along with his difficult, early history had made Peleg somewhat "..rough and tyrannical..". He was not without compassion as his personnel account books attest. Many are the entries for individuals and families who were generously assisted by him.

Peleg remained active to the end of his life. Six weeks after making his last entry in his cash account book, he died at the age of 76 on the 8th of March, 1841.

I should begin wrapping this post up, now. But a few items that need mentioning need to be mentioned.
One of his daughters married into the Gardiner [not Gardner, as in Dr. Joseph Gardner] of Gardiner, Maine and members of that family are next to Tallman. I began this search for information on that family and discovered Peleg Tallman. Asphodel Path is where you will find the Tallmans. Their part of the lot [it's all one lot] is overshadowed by the Gardiner monument, so look for that one. To find Asphodel Path find Mount Warren, first. On the right of the Warren lot [large puddingstone boulder] you will find a set of stairs, down, to the first terracing. The steps are rustic which means watch your step. At the bottom turn to the right and on the left you'll see the Gardiner monument.

The Tallmans were buried, originally in the Maple Grove Cemetery in Bath. His daughter, Caroline Gardiner, made the decision to move them to Forest Hills Cemetery in November of 1865 to the recently purchased Gardiner lot.
Many of the "Residents" of Forest Hills have been moved, some many times. I might do a posting on that issue, alone, in the future.

I have tried to do justice to the life of this courageous, brave, intelligent man but there is so much more to him. My words and ramblings, I hope, will lead some to look for more on Peleg Tallman. Again, I believe, the proper pronunciation is: Pell-leg. Any who know of a different pronunciation please inform this writer.
More information is available through, at least, 2 privately printed pieces of Peleg Tallman. One is by William M. Emery printed in 1935: "Honorable Peleg Tallman-1764-1841". This available at the New England Historical and Genealogical Society's website: newenglandancestors.org The other is by Walter Henry Sturtevant in 1899: "Sailor of the Revolution,Master Mariner and Member of Congress." read before the Maine Historical Society on March 31st, 1899:http://www.archive.org/details/pelegtallmansail00stur This link takes you to the Archive site. For some reason it will not take you to the Tallman piece. If I was a real blogger I could make the link work. You have to remember I'm just some guy with a computer who has some information about Forest Hills Cemetery.

One more! Asphodel Path is named for a flower [as all the paths are named] that was used by the ancients for plantings by the tombs of loved ones. Some believed that the dead preferred the Asphodel as food. Strange. Maybe, just the roots, I don't know.
This is a description of what the flower looks like: http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/a/aspho080.html I couldn't find a good site to link to for a picture. You can find a picture online , though.

Please inform your not so humble writer if any of the links do not work or you have any other concerns.

Thanks for staying with this. Any who have been out with me on the grounds of Forest Hills on a hot Sunday afternoon tour know that I love to share what I have discovered.
We have so many more interesting "Residents" at the "Ol' Boneyard" that are not known as well as the Top Forty you always hear or read about. I will try to inform you on as many of these as I can in the near future.... Your Boston Correspondent, Al Maze.

Summer Discoveries: Storytelling

2010-08-23T15:15:00.011-04:00

The Summer Discoveries visits from Boston area summer camps have ended at Forest Hills. For the last seven weeks we have enjoyed introducing children aged 5 to 14 to the cemetery’s history, discussed contemporary art placed here and joined them in reveling in the beauty of being outdoors. We thank our students for sharing their thoughts and feelings; for making connections and imagining interpretations that enlivened our discussions. Recognizing our students’ interest in storytelling, in the last weeks of our program we started teaching a tour in which we talk about fiction writers, journalists, poets and painters.

Book imagery abounds in the cemetery: sculpted in stone, they lie atop gravestones, some are closed, some open; many remind of the Bible, others look like children’s story books. One mausoleum along our route even has a stained-glass window featuring an open book which our students always find particularly impressive.
Further along the way, we visit e.e. cummings’ unassuming final resting place and then cross the street to see his memorial “Opening”, made in 2002 by Mitch Ryerson. Hidden inside the hollowed-out tree is a book of cummings’ poems, which our students discover with delight. We take time to sit in the shade of a tree and read some of these poems and discuss what we understand them to be about. Other stops along out way provide further jumping-off points for discussion about how stories are a reflection of history, what they may mean, how they relate to our own experiences, and how they make us feel.

Here is a map so you can walk the tour, too:

At the end of our tour we settle down next to the gravestone of a Bostonian dry-goods seller who, in his spare time, wrote popular stories in the dialect spoken by the many German immigrants of the 19th century. Here, children learn how to bind books – we use a lightweight card stock for the cover and fold white printing paper for pages. Cover and pages are tied together with colorful ribbon threaded through holes punched at the spine. After constructing their own book, our students have decorated the cover and filled the pages with drawings, leaf collections, collages, written stories and their own poetry.

Summer Discoveries: Home and Family Tour

2010-08-19T10:01:00.006-04:00

The idea of family and home is central to the design and conception of Forest Hills. Much of the cemetery is divided into family plots and many tombstones are marked with familiar relationships: “father,” “mother,” “brother,” “sister.” Many families created homes here either through marking family plots with stairs and stone railings or building house-like mausoleums.

  Talking about home and families helps make cemetery history accessible to children, and they easily pick up the introduced concepts. They want to know about the relationships between those buried here and are eager to make connections and parallels between these stories and their own family life. Our students excitedly point out family plots as soon as they learn how to recognize them. They love to peek inside the mausoleums that dot our tour, especially when there is a beautiful stained glass window to discover. We talk about how mausoleums are like homes but very grand ones made out of stone and fine materials. Many of the contemporary sculptures also emphasize family. The children are always intrigued by Nightshirts, which represents a Victorian family. We also look at Christopher Frost’s Neighbors on the hillside on the way to the lake. We talk about the cemetery as a neighborhood that echoes the city.

Here is a map of the tour so you can walk it, too:

The children process these ideas by making books shaped like houses. Each child is free to draw his or her own idea of home, so each one is individual. These are then cut out and pages and a back cover cut in the same shape are added. Many of the children want to draw something based on one of the mausoleums they have seen.

Frank L. Young

2010-08-18T10:56:00.002-04:00

Frank L. Young (1852-1937) was the head of the Frank L. Young Oil Company in South Boston, which was "believed to be the largest oil manufacturing house in the United States" in the early twentieth century.

It was said that "he exemplifies as perfectly as any businessman in Boston that type of strong, self-reliant character which surmounts all obstacles, and with no aid from external sources... achieves a most remarkable and thoroughly deserved success."

Young lived in a magnificent Colonial Revival mansion designed by the noted architect Edwin J. Lewis, Jr. at 294 Ashmont Stret in Dorchester, between Adnac Terrace and the Cavalry Baptist Church. The Young Lot at Forest Hills Cemetery is on Milton Hill.

Edmund Pitt Tileston

2010-08-17T13:18:00.003-04:00

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.

Dr. Joseph Warren & The Suffolk Resolves

2010-08-16T21:34:00.005-04:00

Seen on the left in a bronze statue at the Roxbury Latin School and in a portrait on the right in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Dr. Joseph Warren (1741-1775) was a graduate of the Roxbury Latin School and Harvard, and was a noted and well respected physician. Author of the “Suffolk Resolves,” which were a list of grievances against King George III and carried by Paul Revere to Philadelphia (see below,) Dr. Warren was an ardent patriot and Son of Liberty. During the Revolution, Warren was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and his remains were eventually to be moved three times before finally coming to rest in this lot, which had purchased by his nephew in 1852.

The Warren Family Lot at Forest Hills Cemetery surmounts Mount Warren and is marked by a huge boulder of Roxbury puddingstone against which are arranged the slate headstones of various members of the Warren Family who were reinterred here from the Eustis Street Burying Ground in Roxbury. The Warren Family continued to use this large lot well into the twentieth century, with Colonial Revival slate headstones echoing those of the late eighteenth century.

The Suffolk Resolves was written by Dr. Joseph Warren, and at a meeting of the delegates of every town & district in the county of Suffolk, on Tuesday the 6th of September, 1774 at the house of Mr. Richard Woodward, of Deadham, & by adjournment, at the house of Mr. Daniel Vose, of Milton Village, on Friday the 9th instant, Joseph Palmer, Esq. being chosen moderator, and William Thompson, Esq. clerk, a committee was chosen to bring in a report to the convention, and the following being several times read, and put paragraph by paragraph, was unanimously voted, viz. Whereas the power but not the justice, the vengeance but not the wisdom of Great-Britain, which of old persecuted, scourged, and exiled our fugitive parents from their native shores, now pursues us, their guiltless children, with unrelenting severity: And whereas, this, then savage and uncultivated desart, was purchased by the toil and treasure, or acquired by the blood and valor of those our venerable progenitors; to us they bequeathed the dearbought inheritance, to our care and protection they consigned it, and the most sacred obligations are upon us to transmit the glorious purchase, unfettered by power, unclogged with shackles, to our innocent and beloved offspring. On the fortitude, on the wisdom and on the exertions of this important day, is suspended the fate of this new world, and of unborn millions. If a boundless extent of continent, swarming with millions, will tamely submit to live, move and have their being at the arbitrary will of a licentious minister, they basely yield to voluntary slavery, and future generations shall load their memories with incessant execrations.--On the other hand, if we arrest the hand which would ransack our pockets, if we disarm the parricide which points the dagger to our bosoms, if we nobly defeat that fatal edict which proclaims a power to frame laws for us in all cases whatsoever, thereby entailing the endless and numberless curses of slavery upon us, our heirs and their heirs forever; if we successfully resist that unparalleled usurpation of unconstitutional power, whereby our capital is robbed of the means of life; whereby the streets of Boston are thronged with military executioners; whereby our coasts are lined and harbours crouded with ships of war; whereby the charter of the colony, that sacred barrier against the encroachments of tyranny, is mutilated and, in effect, annihilated; whereby a murderous law is framed to shelter villains from the hands of justice; whereby the unalienable and inestimable inheritance, which we derived from nature, the constitution of Britain, and the privileges warranted to us in the charter of the province, is totally wrecked, annulled, and vacated, posterity will acknowledge that virtue which preserved them free and happy; and while we enjoy the rewards and blessings of the faithful, the torrent of panegyrists will roll our reputations to that latest period, when the streams of time shall be absorbed in the abyss of eternity.

Therefore, we as members of the delegation adopting the Suffolk Resolves have resolved, and do resolve:

1. That whereas his majesty, George the Third, is the rightful successor to the throne of Great-Britain, and justly entitled to the allegiance of the British realm, and agreeable to compact, of the English colonies in America--therefore, we, the heirs and successors of the first planters of this colony, do cheerfully acknowledge the said George the Third to be our rightful sovereign, and that said covenant is the tenure and claim on which are founded our allegiance and submission.

2. That it is an indispensable duty which we owe to God, our country, ourselves andposterity, by all lawful ways and means in our power to maintain, defend and preserve those civil and religious rights and liberties, for which many of our fathers fought, bled and died, and to hand them down entire to future generations.

3. That the late acts of the British parliament for blocking up the harbour of Boston, for altering the established form of government in this colony, and for screening the most flagitious violators of the laws of the province from a legal trial, are gross infractions of those rights to which we are justly entitled by the lasws laws of nature, the British constitution, and the charter of the province.

4. That no obedience is due from this province to either or any part of the acts above-mentioned, but that they be rejected as the attempts of a wicked administration to enslave America.

5. That so long as the justices of our superior court of judicature, court of assize, &c. and inferior court of common pleas in this county are appointed, or hold their places, by any other tenure than that which the charter and the laws of the province direct, they must be considered as under undue influence, and are therefore unconstitutional officers, and, as such, no regard ought to be paid to them by the people of this county.

6. That if the justices of the superior court of judicature, assize, &c. justices of the court of common pleas, or of the general sessions of the peace, shall sit and act during their present disqualified state, this county will support, and bear harmless, all sheriffs and their deputies, constables, jurors and other officers who shall refuse to carry into execution the orders of said courts; and, as far as possible, to prevent the many inconveniencies which must be occasioned by a suspension of the courts of justice, we do most earnestly recommend it to all creditors, that they shew all reasonable and even generous forbearance to their debtors; and to all debtors, to pay their just debts with all possible speed, and if any disputes relative to debts or trespasses shall arise, which cannot be settled by the parties, we recommend it to them to submit all such causes to arbitration; and it is our opinion that the contending parties or either of them, who shall refuse so to do, onght to be considered as co-operating with the enemies of this country.

7. That it be recommended to the collectors of taxes, constables and all other officers, who have public monies in their hands, to retain the same, and not to make any payment thereof to the provincial county treasurer until the civil government of the province is placed upon a constitutional foundation, or until it shall otherwise be ordered by the proposed provincial Congress.

8. That the persons who have accepted seats at the council board, by virtue of a mandamus from the King, in conformity to the late act of the British parliament, entitled, an act for the regulating the government of the Massachusetts-Bay, have acted in direct violation of the duty they owe to their country, and have thereby given great and just offence to this people; therefore, resolved, that this county do recommend it to all persons, who have so highly offended by accepting said departments, and have not already publicly resigned their seats at the council board, to make public resignations oftheir places at said board, on or before the 20th day of this instant, September; and that all persons refusing so to do, shall, from and after said day, be considered by this county as obstinate and incorrigible enemies to this country.

9. That the fortifications begun and now carrying on upon Boston Neck, are justly alarming to this county, and gives us reason to apprehend some hostile intention against that town, more especially as the commander in chief has, in a very extraordinary manner, removed the powder from the magazine at Charlestown, and has also forhidden the keeper of the magazine at Boston, to deliver out to the owners, the powder, which they had lodged in said magazine.

10. That the late act of parliament for establishing the Roman Catholic religion and the French laws in that extensive country, now called Canada, is dangerous in an extreme degree to the Protestant religion and to the civil rights and liberties of all America; and, therefore, as men and Protestant Christians, we are indispensubly obliged to take all proper measures for our security.

11. That whereas our enemies have flattered themselves that they shall make an easy prey of this numerous, brave and hardy people, from an apprehension that they are unacquainted with military discipline; we, therefore, for the honour, defence and security of this county and province, advise, as it has been recommended to take away all commissions from the officers of the militia, that those who now hold commissions, or such other persons, be elected in each town as officers in the militia, as shall be judged of sufficient capacity for that purpose, and who have evidenced themselves the inflexible friends to the rights of the people; and that the inhabitants of those towns and districts, who are qualified, do use their utmost diligence to acquaint themselves with the art of war as soon as possible, and do, for that purpose, appear under arms at least once every week.

12. That during the present hostile appearances on the part of Great-Britain, notwithstanding the many insults and oppressions which we most sensibly resent, yet, nevertheless, from our affection to his majesty, which we have at all times evidenced, we are determined to act merely upon the defensive, so long as such conduct may be vindicated by reason and the principles of self-preservation, but no longer.

13. That, as we understand it has been in contemplation to apprehend sundry persons of this county, who have rendered themselves conspicuous in contending for the violated rights and liberties of their countrymen; we do recommend, should such an audacious measure be put in practice, to seize and keep in safe custody, every servant of the present tyrannical and unconstitutional government throughout the county and province, until the persons so apprehended be liberated from the bands of our adversaries, and restored safe and uninjured to their respective friends and families.

14. That until our rights are fully restored to us, we will, to the utmost of our power, and we recommend the same to the other counties, to withhold all commercial intercourse with Great-Britain, Ireland, and the West-Indies, and abstain from the consumption ofBritish merchandise and manufactures, and especially of East-Indies, and piece goods, with such additions, alterations, and exceptions only, as the General Congress of the colonies may agree to.

15. That under our present circumstances, it is incumbent on us to encourage arts and manufactures amongst us, by all means in our power, and that be and are hereby appointed a committee, to consider of the best ways and means to promote and establish the same, and to report to this convention as soon as may be.

16. That the exigencies of our public affairs, demand that a provincial Congress be called to consult such measures as may be adopted, and vigorously executed by the whole people; and we do recommend it to the several towns in this county, to chuse members for such a provincial Congress, to be holden at Concord, on the second Tuesday of October, next ensuing.

17. That this county, confiding in the wisdom and integrity of the continental Congress, now sitting at Philadelphia , pay all due respect and submission to such measures as may be recommended by them to the colonies, for the restoration and establishment of our just rights, civil and religious, and for renewing that harmony and union between Great-Britain and the colonies, so earnestly wished for by all good men.

18. That whereas the universal uneasiness which prevails among all orders of men, arising from the wicked and oppressive measures of the present administration, may influence some unthinking persons to commit outrage upon private property; we would heartily recommend to all persons of this community, not to engage in any routs, riots, or licentious attacks upon the properties of any person whatsoever, as being subversive of all order and government; but, by a steady, manly, uniform, and persevering opposition, to convince our enemies, that in a contest so important, in a cause so solemn, our conduct shall be such as to merit the approbation of the wise, and the admiration of the brave and free of every age and of every country.

19. That should our enemies, by any sudden manoeuvres, render it necessary to ask the aid and assistance of our brethren in the country, some one of the committee of correspondence, or a select man of such town, or the town adjoining, where such hostilities shall commence, or shall be expected to commence, shall despatch couriers with written messages to the select men, or committees of correspondence, of the several towns in the vicinity, with a written account of such matter, who shall despatch others to committees more remote, until proper and sufficient assistance be obtained, and that the expense of said couriers be defrayed by the county, until proper and sufficient assistance be obtained, and that the expense of said couriers be defrayed by the county, until it shall be otherwise ordered by the provincial Congress.

Mary Hunt~ Temperance Reformer

2010-08-16T12:25:00.007-04:00

Mary Hunt was a noted American Temperance Reformer and Educator. She lived both in the town of Hyde Park and near Upham's Corner in Dorchester and was recognized during her lifetime for her contributions to the awareness of alcohol temperance and education in the public schools.

Mary Hannah Hanchett Hunt (1830-1906) was born in South Canaan, Litchfield County, Connecticut as was the daughter of Ephriam and Nancy Swift Hanchett. Her father was an ardent abolitionist, and operated an ironworks in Salisbury, Connecticut. Hanchett was the vice president of the first temperance society in the United States. Educated in the local schools, Mary Hanchett taught at a country school for a year after her graduation before entering in 1847 Amenia Seminary in New York; a year later she entered the Patapsco Female Institute, an elegant finishing school in Baltimore, Maryland. Following her graduation, she became a professor of natural sciences at Patapsco, during which time she began her lifetime study of the physiological effects of alcohol on the body and mind.

In 1852 she married widower Leander B. Hunt, a salesman and steel agent, and they moved to the new town of Hyde Park, Massachusetts that had been incorporated in 1868 from sections of the towns of Dorchester, Milton and Dedham. The Hunts built a large, imposing house on Central Avenue, just north of Everett Square and here they raised their family. During this time, the Hunts belonged to the First Congregational Church in Hyde Park, and through the persuasion of her minister Mary Hunt became active in the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union (the WCTU) where she applied her long held belief that the "real nature and effects of alcohol upon the mind and body needed to be taught to children.... [and] that instruction in the negative effects of alcohol to children should not be optional, but mandatory."

During the last decades of the ninteenth century Mary Hunt oversaw a new public school carriculum on hygene in which there was a section on the evils of alcohol. Her quest was to educate but to also make the evils of alcohol aware even to children. She said that her goal was to produce "from the schoolhouses all over the land... trained haters of alcohol to pour a whole Niagra of ballots upon the saloon."

The Eighteenth Amendment is often traced back to the influence that Mary Hunt had on schoolchildren. Though Mary Hunt died before its enactment in 1920, her life work helped bring into law the prohibition of the manufacturing, sale and consumption of alcohol in the United States which lasted from 1920 to 1933.

Rear Admiral John Ancrum Winslow

2010-08-13T11:10:00.003-04:00

Rear Admiral John Ancrum Winslow (1811-1873) is buried in a large lot at Forest Hills Cemetery with a huge boulder in the center of the lot, which was donated by the citizens of Warner, New Hampsire in memory of their hero.

Winslow had entered the United States Navy as a midshipman in 1827 and progressively was promoted to the rank of lieutenant in 1839 and commander in 1855. During the Mexican War, he was commended for gallantry for his activities at Tobasco. In 1864, he led troops to victory in one of the Civil War's most notable naval actions, the battle between the USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama. The Alabama was sunk in the 1864 Civil War sea battle, and Rear Admiral Winslow was to be decorated by President Abraham Lincoln.

In retirement the Winslow Family lived on Kearsarge Avenue in Roxbury, just off Warren Street and opposite the Roxbury Latin School that had been there until its move to West Roxbury in the 1920s. This decorated Civil War hero is one of many soldiers and sailors buried at Forest Hills Cemetery who valiantly and courageously faught to preserve the Union of the United States.

Summer Discoveries: Exploring Identity

2010-08-13T10:55:00.036-04:00

Through the Forest Hills Summer Discoveries Program, we welcome 8 visiting summer camp groups every week for a 2-hour field trip. Two Summer Discovery teachers lead tours that explore the many roles of Forest Hills: It is an inviting park that is home to many animals - a landscape that features hills, lakes, exotic and local trees, old wild forest and carefully maintained plantings. Forest Hills is, of course, also a cemetery full of stories and histories; a place that can lead us to remember, reflect and discuss. Finally, Forest Hills is an outdoor museum featuring both Victorian and contemporary sculpture that has been thoughtfully placed to become part of this historical and natural environment.

A tour we have taken with several of the older Summer Discoveries groups explores identity and self-presentation. Walking from a ship captain’s memorial that shows his best sailing ship in relief to a delicate life-size portrait sculpture of a little girl to a thought-provoking civil war monument, we investigate how these representations provide us with clues about the individuality of each person memorialized. We ask ourselves how and why these descriptions of personality and identity are a reflection of the time these people lived in.

Here is a map so you can walk the tour, too:

Through our art activity, we think about how we ourselves are shaped by our history, our environment; we try to express what it is that makes each of us unique. By decorating and filling cardboard “time capsules”, we can imagine we are leaving information about ourselves for people to see in 100 years. Like the Victorian Bostonians who designed memorials for their families, we aim to capture an eternally readable image of who we are, what we are like, who we love, what we believe.

Some students wrote letters and made small books, others built wooden planes, cars, and structures; they drew pictures and made sculptures of themselves, their friends and their family, and several children dedicated their time capsules to people that are important to them.

2010-08-13T10:49:00.002-04:00

The walking tour last evening at Forest Hills Cemetery was wonderful, with a very large attendance, many of whom had never been to the cemetery before. In fact, there were seven dogs that also attended, and all agreed that it was a resounding success and enjoyed by all.

This walking tour was on Milton Hill and among the "permanent residents" that were included were William Milton, whose farm in Jamaica Plain was incorporated into the cemetery and laid out as "Milton Hill," which attracted families that purchased large lots. Among those included were William Alfred Paine (1855-1929) (seen on the left,) co founder with Wallace Webber of Paine Webber and whose exedra monument was designed by Tiffany Studios. The tour also included Eben Dyer Jordan (1822-1895) of Jordan Marsh & Company fame, whose monument is a large cenotaph; Pietro Paulo Caproni (1862-1928) who was owner of Caproni & Brother, which brought plaster casts to an art form; George Robert White (1847-1922) whose Cuticura soap sales provided the financing for the George Robert White Fund. These are only a few of the people discussed on this tour, but it was a lovely balmy evening enjoyed by all. Plan on joining us on an upcoming tour!

Library of Life Twilight Tour

2010-08-12T14:02:00.004-04:00

Join me this evening at 7:00 PM for a special walking tour on

"A Library of Life Stories" which is part of the August Twilight Tour series of Forest Hills Cemetery that is sponsored by the Forest Hills Educational Trust.

This tour will include not just the bucolic rural cemetery that was founded in 1848 and laid out by Henry A.S. Dearborn, first president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and mayor of the city of Roxbury, but also a select group of "permanent residents" of Forest Hills Cemetery that add to the rich layers of Boston history.

Among the graves to be visited are those of Fanny Lily Gypsy Davenport, a legendary 19th century actress, Samuel Reed, owner of some of the fastest clipper ships of the 19th century, the Perkins Family, whose mansion "Pinebank" was a Jamaica Plain landmark, Governor Alexander Rice, a politician and papermaker, and Alonzo Ames Miner, a Universalist minister and president of Tufts University.

Bring a flahlight and $10.00 for an enjoyable and fascinating tour!

Summer Discoveries: Animals Tour

2010-08-05T11:17:00.015-04:00

We have been having a wonderful summer in the Summer Discoveries program. So far we have served about 500 kids from summer programs in and around Boston. Trips include a walking tour and then an art project. One of our favorite tours is a tour that focuses on animals. While walking through the cemetery, we talk about how Victorian Bostonians used animals on tombstones as guardians and to show who they were. In addition, we look at contemporary art. At Opening, shown above, we talk about animal homes inside of trees. The kids also love discovering animals that live here. We have seen big bullfrogs sitting with their heads above water and also little turtles swimming in and out of the lily pads. They love seeing birds, too, such as cardinals, blue jays, and even, on occasion, a hawk.

Here is a map so you can walk the tour, too:

At the end of the tour we create guardian animal lamps. Kids cover clear cups with colorful tissue paper and then cut out construction paper animals to glue on top. When a small electric tea light is placed inside, the animal shapes stand out against the tissue paper.

William Dawes Jr.... mostly unknown and mostly misplaced.

2010-07-27T13:21:00.028-04:00

The photo on the right, [click on picture for enlargement] taken from the internment book at Forest Hills Cemetery, should settle the case of where William Dawes, Jr. [1745-1799] is buried.

This was hand written in 1882 when tomb #131 at the Central Burying Ground was emptied and the persons buried within where removed to Forest Hills Cemetery. Proof that Dawes, his wife Mehitable May, and 15 others of the May family made their journey from the Boston Common graveyard seems not enough.

But let me backup a little at this point.

Some may ask who the heck is William Dawes, Jr.? The answer would be that Dawes made a ride the same night as Paul Revere's well known ride on the 18th of April, 1775, on the same mission, and sent by the same person [Forest Hills' own Joseph Warren]. He, also, began his ride before Revere and went by way of Roxbury Neck [the only land route in or out of Boston, at that time].

Joseph Warren headed the Boston Committee of Safety which was instituted to keep watch on the activities of the occupying British forces. Overheard conversations of British officers and soldiers indicated that they, very soon, where planning to move their forces into the countryside. The colonists had begun stockpiling ammunition and weapons for a coming confrontation with a steadily growing belligerent British army. Besides capturing the arms, British forces wanted to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, then in Concord. These two important leaders of the colonists would then be transported to England to be tried for treason. We can be sure that they would have been found guilty and, also, be sure that they would not have received probation and a warning.

William Dawes was an important member of the Sons of Liberty. Earlier he had smuggled two brass cannons out of Boston without the British commander's knowledge. He would, also, pretend to have drank too much and be passed out at a tavern where British soldiers where drinking. He would then listen to their conversations for any military information that would be useful to the Committee of Safety. His ability to leave Boston, to begin his ride to Concord, when Boston was being sealed off to prevent word of the actions of the British spreading is informative of Dawes ingenuity. So many times had he rode out over Roxbury Neck posing as a farmer and a tipsy one, I might add, that the Redcoats guarding the Neck knew him. They felt him harmless and let him pass.
Much has been made of Revere's ride and too little of Dawes. But, they where not the only ones out that night. The countryside was ready for any action by the Redcoats, they had planned for this for some time. As soon as word arrived that, "The Regulars are out!" church bells began ringing, bonfires were lit, and other riders sped to nearby communities to call out the Minute Men. That's why they were called Minute Men, they could be ready in minute's notice. Today, we have missiles that are called Minute Men that do not work a lot of the time. Luckily the real Minute Men did do what they were intended for.

Dawes reached Lexington shortly after Revere. The route being longer for Dawes as he rode through Roxbury, Brookline, Cambridge [Harvard Square], what is now Arlington, and into Lexington. Neither men ever reached Concord that night. Upon leaving Lexington after warning Adams and Hancock they met on the road with Dr. Samuel Prescott. Being "... a warm patriot..." Prescott decided to join in turning out the countryside all the way up to Concord. The three men were soon stopped by a British patrol. Dawes rode off in one direction, Prescott in another. Dawes was thrown from his horse and walked back to Lexington. Prescott was the one who reached Concord that night.

So, why did Revere get so much credit for that night? Well, he was a highly regarded Patriot and did much more than that single ride. I refer you to "Paul Revere and the World He Lived In" by Esther Forbes. There are more recent books than her's but her's is so much more interesting.
Two things helped Revere receive so much credit: 1.. he wrote 3 depositions of his ride [Dawes, none], and 2.. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Longfellow was a great poet [we could use a few, today] but not much of an historian. At the start of the Civil War he wanted to write a patriotic poem to help with recruiting soldiers for the Union. He came upon Revere's depositions and the rest is, as is said, history [or not]. Let me mention a couple inaccuracies. "...I on the opposite shore shall be...". No. Revere was in Boston and it was his idea for the lanterns. He didn't need them to tell him about British movements. Midnight Ride? No. Dawes was sent out before 10 o'clock and Revere a short time later.
Dr. Samuel Prescott was out late that night visiting his fiancee when he met Dawes and Revere. Later in the war he will die as a prisoner of war of the British.

Dawes was not completely forgotten by poets. In 1896 Century Magazine published this written by Helen Moor [or Moore] ......... Ahem!

I am a wandering, bitter shade,
Never of me was a hero made;
Poets have never sung my praise,
Nobody crowned my brow with bays;
And if you ask me the fatal cause.
I answer only, "My name is Dawes."

'Tis all very well for the children to hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
But why should my name be quite forgot,
Who rode as boldly and Well, God Wot?
Why should I ask? The reason is clear-
My name was Dawes and his Revere.

When the lights from the Old North Church flashed out,
Paul Revere was waiting about,
But I was already on my way.
The shadows of night fell cold and gray
As I rode without a break or a pause;
But what was the use when my name was Dawes!

History rings with his silvery name;
Closed to me are the portals of fame.
Had he been Dawes and I Revere,
No one had heard of him, I fear.
No one has heard of me because
He was Revere and I was Dawes.

A good friend of mine, who I consider one of Boston's Best Tour Guides, has said that Revere gets a city named for him and Dawes gets a traffic island in Harvard Square.

Dawes returned to being an affable fellow and moved to Marlborough to set up a grocery. His wife Mehitable [May] Dawes bore them six children. Of these six, one died at less than two years off age another at about three years. Mehitable died in 1793 and was buried in her family's lot at the Central Burying Ground. William, Jr. [Jr.] [how does one describe a Jr.'s, Jr.?] lived to be eighty five and had moved to Ohio as a young man. This is where you will find descendants of our William, today. They have a website http://www.wmdawes.org
While we in Boston, generally, do not know this homegrown patriot, we have him "buried" at the King's Chapel Burying Ground on Tremont Street, downtown, the good folks out in Ohio honor this man and his connections to history. You'll see at King's Chapel the brass plaque placed there in 1899 by the Sons of the Revolution [by way of Wikipedia]/wiki/W: http://en.wikipedia.org illiam_Dawes

Nice try you Sons of the Revolution but you got the father: William Dawes. Dawes Jr. had been buried with his first wife, Mehitable, over in the May family lot about one hundred years before your plaque placing. Sorry. But you do have everyone believing that Dawes Jr. is there. "Well, there's a plaque there and By Golly those plaques don't lie." say tour books, lots of tour guides, King's Chapel, National Park Service, and, also, the Boston Globe which, by the way, printed an article about my discovery three years ago. www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/02/25/whos_buried_in_dawe
I'm not sure if this link works, as a matter of fact, I'm not sure if any of my links work. I'm not a real blogger, I'm just one who has been asked to blog.

So, where was I??

Dawes' younger sister, Lydia, married a Col. John Coolidge in 1772. That would make the Dawes family in a genealogical line with President Calvin Coolidge. Better yet, Coolidge's vice-president was Charles Gates Dawes, whose great-grand father was our William Dawes Jr. Personally, I wish it was a better presidential duo than those.

More oddities: during WWII a Liberty Ship was named for our Dawes Jr. and it was sunk by the Japanese off of New Zealand. Another William Dawes a Captain in the Royal Marines did surveying in that area of the Pacific in 1788. He, also, was wounded in 1781 in fighting against America while on a British ship.

I could go on and on and I wonder if anyone is left at this point?

If you are still there let me know what you think of this rambling.

Thanks, Your Boston Correspondent.... Al Maze.

The Horticulturalists of Forest Hills

2010-05-04T09:50:00.003-04:00

On Sunday, May 16th at 2:00 PM, Anthony Sammarco will lead a walking tour on "The Horticulturalists of Forest Hills."

During the nineteenth century, many Bostonians cultivated fruits and flowers on their estates as "gentlemen farmers," and some became proiminent members of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The founder of Forest Hills Cemetery, Henry A.S. Dearborn (1783-1851,) served as first president of the horticultual society and would cultivate hybrids fruits on his Roxbury estate "Datchett House." Dearborn had intended Forest Hills to serve the Boston community as a lush green sanctuary, an arboretum and picturesque park as well as Boston's most beautiful burying ground. He was to create the first jewel in the Emerald Necklace a generation before Frederick Law Olmstead came to Boston.

Among the prominent horticulturalists whose graves at Forest Hills we will visit are Marshall Pinckney Wilder, hybridizer of such notable camellias as the Camellias Wilderi, Mrs. Abby Wilder, Mrs. Julia Wilder and the Jenny Wilder; Samuel Downer, hybridizer of the "Downer's Late Cherry;" Thaddeus Clapp, hybridizer of the "Clapp's Favorite Pear;" and John Richardson, hybrizider of many peonies among them the "Festiva Maxima" peony.

Participants will sample some of their edible creations such as pears and cherries along the way.We will meet at the Main Gate and please wear comfortable shoes. $9.00

For info (617) 524-3354

R. Clipston Sturgis

2010-05-03T16:32:00.006-04:00

Yesterday, the walking tour sponsored by the Forest Hills Educational Trust featured the buildings of Forest Hills Cemetery, as well as a few of the architects and builders who are buried at this magnificent cemetery. Among those discussed was Richard Clipston Sturgis, a past president of the Boston Institute of Architects.

R. Clipton Sturgis (1860-1951) was a major architect who was to contribute to the fabric of Boston's rich architectural heritage. Sturgis was the son of Russell Sturgis of Boston, and a nephew of John Hubbard Sturgis; he attended St. Paul's School after being graduated from Harvard would succeed to his uncle's prominent architectural practice in Boston. During his early career, he was to finish his uncle's work in 1876 on the Church of the Advent on Brimmer Street on the flat of Beacon Hill. Sturgis also was to design many other buildings, including the Boston Athletic Association as well as in his own words "houses for the Thayers and Peabodys and Cabots, and shortly thereafter an addition to the Museum of Fine Arts." He also designed buildings for the Winsor School in Boston's Fenway and a hospital for St. Paul's School, from which he had been graduated. It was said in his obituary that for "more than 60 years he almost singlehandedly set Boston's architectural fashions before and after the turn of the [twentieth] century."

Sturgis was a major society architect in Boston, and his rich and solid designs that drew on English traditions included the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (1907,) the Perkins School for the Blind (1911-13,) the Robbins Memorial, the Arlington Town Hall (1913,) additions to the Massachusetts State House (1914-1917,) and the Federal Reserve Bank, in Boston (1922.)

During his illustrious career, R. Clipton Sturgis served as president of the Boston Institute of Architects, the American Institute of Architects and the Society of Arts and Craftys in Boston. His architectural drawings and papers are in the collection of the Boston Athenaeum.

Fireman's Memorial

2010-04-21T15:28:00.003-04:00

The Fireman's Memorial at Forest Hills Cemetery was erected in 1909 in memory of deceased firefighters of the Boston Fire Department. The impressive monument consists of a granite plinth base upon which stands a bronze statue of a firefighter wearing his firefighting apparel. The base of the monument was constructed at Quincy Granite by J.M. White and Sons, and the bronze statue was cast at the Spaulding Foundry in Chickopee, Massachusetts.

The overall height of the monument is twenty six feet, and the bronze figure of the firefighter was designed by John Wilson of Boston; Wilson also designed the four bronze tablets which are attached to the four sides of the granite base. The tablets depict a steamer, a hook and ladder truck, a protective wagon, and an old-time hand tub. Imbedded in the front of the base are the words "In Memory of Departed Comrades."

The monument was the result of many years of unceasing labor on the part of the Charitable Association, Boston Protective Department, subscriptions from fire companies of Boston and Roxbury and friends. The monument was dedicated on June 13, 1909. The Boston Globe reported that the veteran and regular firemen gathered in the morning at the rooms of the Barnicoat Association hall located at 380 Tremont Street. The various organizations lined up and with several bands playing dirges the men marched to East Lenox Street where they boarded electric cars for Forest Hills Square. At Forest Hills Square under the direction of Chief Marshall Captain Edward A. Bennett were the following aides: John A. Collicut, Henry S. Pike, Captain James F. Hutchins, Squire S. Rogers, Major George M. Quinby, George Fitzgibbons, James J. Hughes, John Durham and Lt. John P. Lane. The line of march to the cemetery and the firemen,s lot was taken up with Captain Walter McLean as adjutant. The line marched into the cemetery in following order: Boyd's Brass Band, escort of 30 men from the Protective and Fire Departments; Captain McCarthy in command; Charitable Association of Boston Fire Department; 60 men with the President Hoseman Daniel W. Mahoney Engine Company 42 in command, Chief Marshall Captain Edward A. Bennett and staff, Tenean Veteran Association; Peter J. Kelley president, Charlestown Veteran Fireman's Association, Mission Church Drum and Bugle Corps., Roxbury Veteran Association; James A. Mitchell president, Boston Veteran Association; John Taylor president, Barnicoat Association; Walter W. Delano president, Fairbank's Band, Jamaica Plain Veterans; John H. O'Brien president, Star of Jamaica Veterans Association; James E. Knight president.

At Forest Hills Cemetery, the marchers met the carriages which were carrying the dignitaries. In the first carriage was Chief of Department John A. Mullen, Honorable John R. Murphy the orator of the day, Fire Commissioner Samuel Parker and Captain Brown S. Flanders Superintendent of Fire Alarm. In the second carriage was ex-mayor John F. Fitzgerald, Nathanial H. Taylor, ex-commissioner Wells and Frederick J. Brand Chairman of the Board of Aldermen and acting Mayor. The following carriages carried distinguished guests, city officials and veteran firemen unable to march. At the Firemen's Lot, there was a tent for the speakers and guests and as the bands alternated playing dirges, the firemen and veterans marched within the roped-off enclosure and stood at attention when Chief Marshall Bennett opened the ceremonies. The Boston Post in their reporting of the unveiling and dedication ceremonies reported that seven hundred men formed and rode to Forest Hills Square and all marched to the cemetery. The Post further reported that the firemen's lot was surrounded by a hollow square of red shirted and blue coated figures. The Boston Herald reported that five thousand were in attendance.

The opening address was made by acting Mayor Frederick J. Brand in which he paid tribute to the bravery of the firemen of Boston, those of today as well as the noble men about whose whose last resting place the throng had gathered. Mr. Nathaniel Taylor of the Boston Globe remarked, "The many noble firemen who served the City of Boston effficiently and honorably did the best they could for the public good. The saving of life was their province. That they did all that was possible for human beings to do in their line of duty is the sincere belief of all our citizens."
"To the departed we say rest in peace. To their living comrades we say your life work is thoroughly appreciated by the City of Boston." Following Mr. Taylor's remarks, the monument was unveiled by Margaret and Josephine McLean of Dorchester, the young daughters of Fire Captain Walter McLean of Engine Company 46. Fire Captain McLean served as Chairman of the monument committee.

After the Mission Church band played "Departed Comrades," the Honorable John R. Murphy of Charlestown who was the orator of the day spoke as follows. "We have gathered here today to dedicate this memorial in honor of the men of the Boston Fire Department. It is fitting that it should be erected here amidst the graves where sleep so many of the dead who have served our city. It is a memorial of beautiful and simple design, yet noble in its simplicity, symbols of the brave deeds of the men in whose honor it was erected. In your day-to-day fire duty, your heroic and monumental accomplishments have, at time, become legendary - and yet you are known far and wide for helping others, even when you are off duty. It seems that many of you can always find time to help youth movements, work in community affairs or help innumerable charitable organizations. A perfect example of that of which I speak is your very presence here this morning - time you take from a precious Sunday to pay respect to your deceased brother firefighters. In closing, I would like to repeat these most appropriate words written by the late Henry Gillen and dedicated to your most honorable profession:

"All honor unto gallantry in reverence we pay that others might have days to be these gave their lives away now glory shall enshrine each name and times their deeds defy since humble men who sought no fame have taught us how to die"

Members Buried At Forest Hills Cemetary Who Died In The Line Of Duty are:

Hoseman John W. Tuttle May 2, 1858 Tremont 12
Hoseman Francis F. Cutting May 2, 1858 Tremont 12
Ladderman Charles Carter Feb 18, 1860 Ladder 1
Hoseman Reuben Hanaford Feb 24, 1862 Hose 5
Hoseman Geo. Abercrombie Jul 11, 1862 Engine 7
Ladderman George Golliff May 11, 1868 Ladder 1
Hoseman James Sturks Feb 27, 1873 Engine 15
Hoseman Joseph Pierce Aug 13, 1884 Engine 4
James Sweetzer Jul 3, 1885 Protective 1
Ladderman Frank P. Loker Nov 28, 1889 Ladder 3
Hoseman John P. Brooks Nov 28, 1889 Hose 7
Hoseman Michael Murnan Nov 28, 1889 Hose 7
Firefighter Edward Connolly Mar 21, 1986 Ladder 17
Firefighter David A. Middleton May 29, 2007 Engine 51
Firefighter Warren J. Payne August 29, 2007 Ladder 25

Lysander Spooner

2010-03-29T19:09:00.005-04:00

Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) was an American individualist anarchist, entrepreneur, political philosopher, abolitionist, supporter of the labor movement, and legal theorist of the nineteenth century. He is also known for competing with the United States Post Office with his American Letter Mail Company, which was forced out of business by the United States government.

His lifelong activism began with his career as a lawyer, which in itself violated Massachusetts law. Spooner had studied law under the prominent lawyers and politicians John Davis and Charles Allen, but he had never attended college. According to the laws of the commonwealth, college graduates were required to study with an attorney for three years, while non-graduates were required to do so for five years. With the encouragement and support of his legal mentors, Spooner set up his practice in Worcester after only three years, openly defying the courts. To prevent a person from doing business with a person without a professional license he saw as a violation of the natural right to contract. After a disappointing legal career (his radical writing seems to have kept away potential clients) and a failed career in real estate speculation in Ohio, Spooner returned to his father's farm in 1840.

In 1844, Spooner founded the American Letter Mail Company, which had offices in various cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Stamps could be purchased and then attached to letters which could be sent to any of its offices. From here agents were dispatched who traveled on railroads and steamboats, and carried the letters in hand bags. Letters were transferred to messengers in the cities along the routes who then delivered the letters to the addressees. This was a challenge to the United States Post Office's monopoly. Although Spooner had finally found commercial success with his mail company, legal challenges by the government eventually exhausted his financial resources. He closed up shop without ever having had the opportunity to fully litigate his constitutional claims. The lasting legacy of Spooner's challenge to the postal service was the 3-cent stamp, adopted in response to the competition his company provided.

Spooner's influence extends to the wide range of topics he addressed during his lifetime. He is remembered today primarily for his abolitionist activities and for his challenge to the post office monopoly, which had a lasting influence of significantly reducing postal rates. Spooner's writings contributed to the development of libertarian political theory in the United States, and were often reprinted in early libertarian journals such as the Rampart Journal.

Lysander Spooner was buried in the Field of Ephron, to the right of the main entrance gates. His grave was recently marked by a large upright granite monument.

Dr. John Collins Warren

2010-03-06T08:14:00.004-05:00

Hinckley's paiting at the Ether Dome

Dr. John Collins Warren (1778-1856) was the son of noted doctor, professor and founder of the Harvard Medical School Dr. John Warren and Abigail Collins Warren. He was graduated from Boston Latin School and Harvard College in 1797, then began the study of medicine with his father. In 1799, he continued his medical studies in London and Paris, including work with the pioneer anatomist Sir Astley Cooper (1768-1841). On his return to America in 1802, Warren entered into partnership with his father and also assisted him with anatomical lectures, dissections, and demonstrations at Harvard Medical School. He was named Adjunct Professor of Anatomy and Surgery in 1809, then, at his father's death in 1815, assumed the Hersey Professorship of Anatomy and Surgery, which post he held until retirement in 1847.

Considered to be one of the most renowned surgeons in the nineteenth century, Dr. Warren in 1846 performed the first public operation in which ether was used to anesthetize the patient. A tumor was removed from the jaw of Gilbert Abbott, a printer, which was not only a success but proved that ether, discovered by Dr. William Morton, allowed for painless surgery. Dr. Warren was one of the founders of the Massachusetts General Hospital, where he served as the first surgeon. In 1847 he endowed the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard with an extraordinary teaching collection of anatomical and pathological specimens.

Dr. Warren once said that "Anaesthesia had been the dream of many surgeons and scientists, but it had been classed with aerial navigation and other improbable inventions."

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes said that “Dr. Warren was supreme among his fellows, and deservedly so. He performed a great number of difficult operations; always deliberate, always cool; with a grim smile in sudden emergencies, where weaker men would have looked perplexed, and wiped their foreheads. He had the stuff in him, which carried his uncle, Joseph Warren, to Bunker Hill, and left him there, slain among the last in retreat.”

The Warren Family Lot surmounts Mount Warren and is marked by a huge boulder of Roxbury puddingstone against which are arranged the slate headstones of various members of the Warren Family who were reinterred here from the Eustis Street Burying Ground in Roxbury. Also buried here was Dr. Joseph Warren, the author of the "Suffolk Resolves" who lost his life in the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution. The Warren Family continued to use this large lot well into the twentieth century, with Colonial Revival slate headstones echoing those of the late eighteenth century.

S.S. Pierce

2010-03-04T21:14:00.005-05:00

When Founder Samuel Stillman Pierce (pronounced purse) opened his first store at the corner of Tremont and Court Streets in Boston's old West End in 1831, he vowed "I may not make money, but I shall make a reputation."

Samuel Stillman Pierce (1807-1880) was known as the purveyor of fancy goods and potent libations to Victorian Bostonians. He catered to the carriage trade and created a company that involved four generations of the Pierce Family in its successful operations. With its own coat of arms adorning a distinctive red label on canned goods, and the largest line of privately packed fancy foods in the world, S.S. Pierce sold its delicacies not only through eight New England stores of its own but also through 3,500 distributors across the U.S. and by mail order worldwide. The the lavish 1886 catalog for S.S. Pierce & Co., Importers and Grocers there are myriad items for sale in its Grocery, Wine, Cigar, and Perfumery Departments: gelatine, isinglass, chutneys, French vegetables in glass jars, Alghieri's soups, Wiebaden goods, imported and domestic wines, Russian cigarettes, Egyptian cigarettes, quadruple essences, tooth brushes, soaps assorted, inexhaustible salts and much more.

Service was paramount and the company would hired horse-drawn sleighs to deliver groceries when snowstorms closed roads to auto traffic, and maintained a well-drilled corps of salesmen who would phone housewives at appointed hours. They not only suggested menus but answered such arcane questions as how to cook an ostrich egg (boil it) or how to extract the flavor from a 6-in. vanilla bean (bury a 1-in. cutting from the bean for a month in a pound of sugar). As a businessman, Pierce was said to be “a man of unflinching honesty and sterling integrity of character.” After amost a century and a half of a four generation family operated business, S.S. Pierce & Company was sold in 1972 to Seneca Foods Corporation, of New York.

The Pierce Family Lot is on Poplar Avenue in Forest Hills Cemetery.

2010-03-04T06:47:00.002-05:00

The Jacob Wirth memorial Fame was sculpted by Adolph Robert Kraus and is located on Catalpa Avenue. This bronze monument is of a pensively draped allegorical seated figure contemplating a cameo portrait of the famous restaurateur in the stele below. The monument was cleaned in 1997 through the generosity of the Fitzgerald Family, who had in 1975 bought the then century old Jacob Wirth Restaurant.

Judge John Lowell, III

2010-03-03T19:12:00.003-05:00

A large boulder of Roxbury puddingstone marks the Lowell Family Lot on Blue Hill Avenue with a bronze marker to John Lowell (1824-1897) and his wife Mary Buckminster Lowell. He was the son of John Amory and Susan Cabot Lowell and was born at Bromley, the Lowell Family seat in Roxbury.

Educated at Harvard College and the Harvard Law School, he served as judge of the District Court of the United States. In the rear of the lot are the individual headstones of Mary Emlen Lowell, John Lowell, and their son John Lowell Jr.

The Old Judge Lowell

2010-03-03T19:03:00.004-05:00

Judge John Lowell (1743-1802), known as the “Old Judge”, headed a family that shaped New England history for two centuries. As a member of the Continental Congress, he was called “the very mirror of benevolence.” In 1783, Lowell was one of the founding directors of the First National Bank of Boston.

In 1785, Judge Lowell bought a ten acre farm in Jamaica Plain and led the life of a gentleman farmer, the precursor to the horticultural elite espoused by his son John Lowell (1769-1840) and Henry A.S. Dearborn a generation later. The Old Judge and members of the Lowell Family were removed from the family tomb in the Boston Common Burial Ground in 1895 to Forest Hills to allow for the construction of the Boylston Street subway.

Henry A.S. Dearborn, mayor of Roxbury

2010-03-01T08:21:00.003-05:00

Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn (1782-1851,) a retired statesman and ardent horticulturalist whose Roxbury estate "Datchett House" was that of a gentleman farmer and who served as the second mayor of the city of Roxbury, laid out Forest Hills Cemetery. Dearborn had impressive credentials, as he was among the founders and the first president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, founded in 1829, as well as having laid out Mount Auburn Cemetery, a rural cemetery north of Boston. Opened in 1831, Mount Auburn Cemetery was the progenitor of the picturesque rural cemetery movement in the United States, closely following the example of Pere La Chaise, a cemetery founded in 1804 in Paris.

Like its predecessor, Forest Hills Cemetery was envisioned as a very different place from the colonial burying grounds throughout the city of Boston, addressing the public health problems and concerns of these overcrowded places of burial. Rural cemeteries were laid out with lands undulating in different topography, with dells and valleys and curvilinear carriage roads and paths lined with a variety of trees and shrubs, all of which created not just a place of burial but an arboretum, or a park to be enjoyed by family and friends visiting their departed ones. The new cemetery allowed for the flowering of a romantic landscape of marble gravestones and funerary sculpture of the Victorian era. Forest Hills was envisioned as a burial place with a cross-section of people that reflected almost every aspect of Victorian Boston, from statesmen and political leaders to industrialists, artists, writers and the people of every day life.

John Reece

2010-02-27T15:19:00.006-05:00

John Reece (1854-1896) was the president of the Reece Buttonhole Machine Company in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1881 Reece invented and received a patent for a “Button Hole Sewing Machine” that revolutionized hand sewing with a machine that increased production and standardized the size of the buttonholes. Reece lost his life when he was killed trying to save an employee in his factory, who was in danger of being crushed by a moving elevator. Reece lunged for the elevator rope, hoping to stop the elevator, but missed the cord, falling to his death.

The Reece Family Monument on Spruce Avenue was sculpted by William Ordway Partridge (1861-1930) a prominent sculptor who had studied under Pio Welenski in Rome. In his studio on Milton Hill, a town just south of Boston, he was to model a heroic seated statue of Shakespeare that was erected in Chicago, and busts of famous Americans. Lee Lawrie was to work as a studio assistant to Partridge in the late nineteenth century.

The Reece memorial is in the form of an exedra, an elliptical bench with a high back, decorated with a bronze wreath and a seated bronze of John Reece that is set on an attractively landscaped corner lot.

Little Grace Allen

2010-02-26T19:14:00.004-05:00

The Allen Lot on Lobelia Path has a large granite monument surmounted by a draped allegorical figure. On the left is a remarkably well preserved white marble statue of Gracie Allen, which has been under glass for well over a century.

Grace Sherwood Allen (1876-1880) was the daughter of William H. Allen and Emily J. Allen and she died prior to her fith birthday from whooping cough and was immortalized by sculptor Sydney H. Morse (1832-1903) who depicted the young girl in a buttoned dress, boots and bow-tied hair. In her hand are drooping flowers, the petals of which have begun to fall. The glass enclosed memorial is adjacent to the Allen Monument

Life More Abundant

2010-02-23T21:14:00.005-05:00

The Clapp Family Monument, of Charles and Georgiana Derby Clapp, is at the corner of Cedar and Rock Maple Avenues at Forest Hills Cemetery and it depicts a seated classical figure holding a plaque declaring “Life More Abundant” which might be explained in the quote from the Bible “I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full” John 10:10. The figure is clad in a diaphanous gown that swirls around her body and in her left hand she holds a bouquet of flowers.

Charles Martin Clapp (1834-1897) was the son of Martin Gillett Clapp and Mary Ann Gillett Clapp and was born and raised in Watertown, New York. He served as president of the Aetna Rubber Mill in Jamaica Plain and as a trustee of Forest Hills Cemetery. Clapp had entered the rubber business and eventually formed C. M. Clapp & Co., which operated Aetna Rubber Mills and was also affiliated with the Good Year Rubber Company; he was also the general agent of the National Rubber Company. The company closely worked with the Boston Fire Department to repair fire hoses, and manufactured shoes for members of the Boston Police force.

The monument is quite impressive but its placement in front of a tall hemlock hedge provides a verdant background is the perfect and dramatic backdrop for it as one descends from Tupelo Avenue.

The Boy in the Boat

2010-02-21T12:40:00.003-05:00

The Boy in the Boat is on Citron Path and is one of the most beloved memorials at Forest Hills Cemetery.

In 1886, while in a small boat near the shore of a pond, Louis Mieusset (1881-1886) noticed his pet rabbit running along the bank. Wishing to bring the rabbit with him, he tried to reach for his pet, but lost his balance and fell out of the boat and drowned. It is this last moment of life that Louise Hellium Mieusset chose to commemorate in her son's last resting place in Forest Hills Cemetery.

The marble monument was enclosed in a glass and bronze vitrine-like enclosure that has remarkably preserved it.

The Agassiz of Harvard's Agassiz Museum

2010-02-15T18:48:00.004-05:00

Alexander Emanuel Agassiz (1835-1910) discovered a rich copper lode known as the Calumet conglomerate on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Lake Superior in Michigan. He managed the Calumet & Hecla Copper Mines that were not just extensive, but through the prudent and judicious investment by fellow Boston Brahmins, not only became among the largest copper mines in the world, but surely the most profitable, with dividends being paid annually and on a consistent basis. Agassiz was a major factor in the mine's continued success and he visited the mines twice a year. He innovated mining by installing a giant engine, known as the Superior, which was able to lift 24 tons of rock from a depth of 1,200 metres. He also built a railroad and dredged a channel which led to navigable waters.

A son of the naturist and Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, he largely funded the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, and donated many of the exhibits that he collected throughout the world. Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, he emigrated to the United States with his father in 1849. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1855, subsequently studying engineering and chemistry, and taking the degree of bachelor of science at the Lawrence Scientific School of the same institution in 1857, and in 1859 he became an assistant in the United States Coast Survey. Agassiz served as a president of the National Academy of Sciences, which since 1913 has awarded the Alexander Agassiz Medal in his memory.

There are simple brownstone crosses on Sweet Briar Path that mark the graves of Alexander Agassiz and his wife, Anna Russell Agassiz, and which are located at the crest of Mount Dearborn at Forest Hills Cemetery. The simplicity of design, material and style belie the immense philanthropic generosity of the Agassiz.

Governor Curtis Guild

2010-02-10T18:17:00.003-05:00

Governor Curtis Guild, Jr. (1860-1915) was the son of Curtis and Sarah Courtnay Guild; in 1892 he was married to Charlotte H. Johnson.

He was the editor and publisher of the Commercial Bulletin, a newspaper founded by his father, Curtis Guild. In 1891, Guild joined the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia earning the rank of Brigadier General. During the Spanish American War, he served as Inspector General of Havana. He was Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts from 1903-06, and was then elected as governor of Massachusetts, serving from 1906 to 1909. He later served as special Ambassador to Mexico, and later as Ambassador to Russia just prior to the Russian Revolution. He was a member of the Freemasons, the Society of Colonial Wars, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the American Forestry Association.

The Guild Family Lot on Rock Maple Avenue has a profusion of white marble monuments, including two angels, one seeming to reach toward Heaven and the other holding an oval plaque marking the graves of this prominent family. The base of one angel is engraved “The spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” Curtis Guild (1800-1849), the family progenitor, was a merchant in the East India trade and his son and grandson continued the family’s commitment to public service.

Benjamin Seaver, Mayor of Boston

2010-02-08T14:15:00.005-05:00

Benjamin Seaver (1795-1856) was the son of Benjamin and Debby Loud Seaver, and was

born and raised in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He was married to Sarah Johnson Seaver (1796-1865.) Seaver served as the thirteenth mayor of Boston, in 1852 and 1853. He had been a member of the Boston Common Council for five years, and at the time of his election was in business as an auctioneer. Seaver was mayor when the city voted to establish a public library, which was a major undertaking as previously there were only private library societies or the Harvard College Library. Seaver applied most of his efforts to keeping down the expenditures for municipal purposes. On his recommendation, the Board of Land Commissioners was established in 1853, in place of a joint committee of the City Council. It was also during his term as mayor that an act was passed that prohibited the burial of people, except in certain cases, within the city limits, which effectively ensured the success of the rural cemetery movement at Forest Hills Cemetery.

The Seaver Lot has a large obelisk, at the corner of Cypress and Larch Avenues.

You See, She Was Addicted to Facts

2010-02-06T07:58:00.004-05:00

Annie Haven Thwing (1851-1940), was the daughter of Supply Clap and Anne Shapleigh Haven Thwing, and was born and raised on Fort Hill in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She was an historian and children's author, and her book The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston 1630-1822 has become not just a fascinating read, but indispensible to Boston historians. When asked what prompted this masive research project, she was quoted as saying that it was simplty "to find out where my ancestors lived, who were their neighbors, and what the neighborhood was like." The result of this project and its interrelated research made her blighthly say that she had become "addicted to facts."

Miss Thwing compiled an enormous card index of subjects related to the history of Boston, which she donated to the Massachusetts Historical Society, where the cards occupied seventy-four library drawers in the catalog room. She also created a 3-dimensional model of the town of Boston as it appeared in 1775, based on her meticulous research. This model featured the eighteenth-century street pattern she had so carefully researched over the previous years and had over one hundred handcarved building replicas, and was carved by a carpenter by the name of Munsey who lived on Orr's Island, Maine, where the Thwing Family had a summerhouse. The massive model of the Town of Boston is now on public display at the Old South Meeting House, and still fascinates adults and children alike.

However her book on the streets of Boston which by 1920 had reached the Boston Globe best-seller list, and has gone through numerous reprints. Miss Thwing also wrote a book for children, Chicken Little, with illustrations by Nelly Littlehale Umbstaetter, which appeared in 1899.

The Thwing Lot is on Cherry Avenue, with a simple slate headstone surmouting a terraced hill on natural looking grass terraces.

A Mystery Monument at Forest Hills Cemetery

2010-02-05T15:16:00.002-05:00

In and among the wonderful archives of Forest Hills Cemetery is a photograph of a large white marble monument that states "In Memory of Those Who Were Killed in the Discharge of Duty." It is set in a circle of grass with a walkway, but it is a mystery to me.

Do any of you Bloggers recognize this monument?

"He Who Would Be Heard"

2010-02-05T15:09:00.005-05:00

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) was among the most vociferous of the abolitionists in Boston in the three decades leading up to the Civil War. Garrison was the editor of “The Liberator,” a weekly newspaper that from 1831 to 1865 was the voice piece of the abolitionists advocating for the abolition of slavery in the southern states. Garrison’s credo in regards to his views on abolition was "I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation… I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD."

In 1832, Garrison founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society and the next year, he co-founded the American Anti-slavery Society and made a name for himself as one of the most articulate, as well as most radical, opponents of slavery.

The Garrison Family monument is on Smilax Path.

Fanny Davenport, Actress

2010-02-03T18:48:00.007-05:00

Fanny Lily Gypsy Davenport (1850-1898) was a well-known actress in the late nineteenth century. Born in London to Edward Loomis and Fanny Vining Davenport, who were both noted Shakespearean actors, she was the sister of actors Edgar Davenport and Harry Davenport. Fanny Davenport was educated in the Boston Public Schools, and appeared at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, as the child of Metamora, at the age of seven. Davenport was successful as an actress, with a wide spectrum of roles that went from Shakespeare to French melodrama; she achieved fame by obtaining the American rights to the dramatist Victorien Sardou’s highly emotional plays. This photo from c.1880 depicts her as the spendthrift Lady Teazle in the comedy of manners “School for Scandal.” Her first husband was the actor Edwin B. Price, to whom she was married in 1879 and later divorced. She was the wife of Willet Melbourne MacDowell (later a silent movie actor), her second husband, to whom she was married in 1889. She died in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She was the aunt of actress Dorothy Davenport.

The Davenport monument is quite unique, as it is a white marble tree trunk on Arethusa Path.

Major General William Heath

2010-01-31T07:48:00.004-05:00

The Heath Monument is a huge granite slab that commemorates the Revolutionary War heo, Major General William Heath (1737-1814.)

Heath was a farmer, soldier, and political leader from Roxbury, Massachusetts who served as a major-general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Heath made his home for his entire life at his family’s farm in Roxbury and was born on a farm that had been settled in 1636 by his ancestors. He became active in the militia and was a captain in the Suffolk County militia in 1760. In December 1774 the revolutionary government in Massachusetts named him a brigadier general. He commanded Massachusetts forces during the last stage of the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775. As the siege of Boston began, Heath devoted himself to training the militia involved in the siege. In June of that year, Massachusetts named him a major general in the state troops, and the Continental Congress made him a brigadier general in the new national army, the Continental Army.

After the war, Heath served as a member of the Massachusetts Convention that ratified the United States Constitution in 1788. He served in the Massachusetts Senate 1791–1792, and as a probate court judge. The town of Heath, Massachusetts is named in his honor.

The Heath Monument dominates a curve of Nesutan Avenue.

Governor Channing Harris Cox

2010-01-29T14:57:00.004-05:00

Channing Harris Cox (1879-1968) was the son of Charles Edson Cox and Evelyn Mary Randall Cox and was born and raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. He was married to Mary Emery Young in 1915. Cox was a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Harvard Law School, and served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 1911 to 1919 and served as Speaker of the House from 1915 to 1918. Cox served as Lieutenant Governor to Calvin Coolidge and continued his policies after Coolidge declined reelection to serve as governor. Eventually, Coolidge was to become president of the United States. Cox served as governor of Massachusetts from 1921 to 1925.

Cox was noted for advancing progressive labor legislation and adjusting administrative laws to reflect the changing economy, and his administration expanded upon many existing laws. Workman's compensation payments were increased, farmers and domestic workers were included as workers and made eligible for state benefits, compulsory education was extended to all children, and child labor laws were expanded. Governor Cox also responded to changes in the Massachusetts economy. He advocated policies and reforms to discourage speculative investment with borrowed funds. He instituted a corporate tax on income from real estate holdings and enabled trade unions both to sue and be sued.

Cox was active in numerous groups and served as president of the Old Colony Trust Company. He also served as a director of the United Fruit Company, the Revere Sugar Company, the First National Bank of Boston, the Boston Herald Traveler, and the Deaconness Hospital.

Governor Cox is buried on Greenwood Avenue on Milton Hill in Forest Hills Cemetery.

Andrew J. Peters, Mayor of Boston

2010-01-28T13:05:00.004-05:00

Andrew James Peters (1872-1938) was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, the son of Andrew James Peters and Mary Richards Whitney Peters. He was married in 1910 to Martha R. Phillips, a descendant of Boston's First mayor John Phillips. The Peters lived on the family estate on Asticou Street, near Forest Hills, a farm in Dover, Massachusetts and on North Haven Island, Maine.

Peters attended Hopkinson’s School in Boston and St. Paul’s School. He was a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School and was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1897. He was elected to Congress where he would serve from 1907 to 1914. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury before he was elected mayor of Boston, serving from 1918 to 1922. During his term as mayor, the Boston Police Strike of 1919 occurred, and failing to call out the state militia it was left to Governor Calvin Coolidge to act, which made him a national figure and catapulted him to national office. After serving as mayor, he resumed his law practice and served as president of the Boston Chamber of Commerce from 1926 to 1928.

Peters' Hill at the Arnold Arboretum was named for him, and he served as a trustee of Forest Hills Cemetery, and is buried in the Peters Lot on Althea Path.

In a ditty he wrote after leaving office, he said:

I've done my job as Mayor,

And they say I've done it well,

So I'll give up public life

And rest and play a spell.

Bvt. Brigadier General Thomas Coffin Amory

2010-01-26T20:27:00.004-05:00

Thomas Isaac Coffin Amory (1828-1864) was the son of Jonathan and Letitia Austin Amory and was born and raised in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. He was appointed a cadet at West Point by former president of the United States John Quincy Adams, and was graduated in 1851 from the United States Military Academy. In 1853 he was married to Mary B. Nolan. Amory was made a Captain in the 7th United States Regular Infantry at the start of the Civil War. He was subsequently promoted to Major of the 8th United States Regular Infantry before being commissioned in the Volunteer service as Colonel and commander of the 17th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. He was then appointed as Commissary of Musters for the XVIII Corps serving in the Department of North Carolina. He was serving on active duty in Beaufort, North Carolina when he died in October 1864.

Amory was brevetted Brigadier General, US Volunteers on October 1, 1864 for "gallant and meritorious services during the war."

2010-01-23T14:55:00.002-05:00

A Place to Stay was created by artists Michael Beatty and Mike Newby from painted steel, wood and copper. The artists said “Our birdhouses rework the architectural motifs of the cemetery and provide shelter for its living, breathing, animated residents. By manipulating mass and volume in the construction of the supporting framework, we aim to integrate a sense of the traditional with a new, deconstructed model. The subtle humor incorporated in these birdhouses is a foil for the sense of the inevitable that surrounds the present day visitor to Forest Hills.” The artists also pay tribute to birds as ancient symbols of both the soul and transition, appropriate metaphors in the context of the cemetery.

This majestic "Place to Stay" is the ultimate in a bird house with a Gothic inspired octagonal house with a two-story dwelling available to lucky birds at Forest Hills Cemetery. Set on Mount Warren, this piece of functional art successfully integrates a "sense of the traditional with a new, deconstructed model. The subtle humor incorporated in these birdhouses is a foil for the sense of the inevitable that surrounds the present day visitor to Forest Hills."

Thomas Norton Hart, Mayor of Boston

2010-01-23T09:39:00.005-05:00

Thomas Norton Hart (1829-1927) was born in North Reading, Massachusetts. He married Elizabeth Snow, and they lived at 298 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston's Back Bay.

It was said by E.W. Emst that "Thomas N. Hart comes of sturdy New England stock, his ancestors residing in Lynnfield, Massachusetts, including the first ancestor, Isaac Hart, who settled there in 1656. His mother's father, Major John Norton of Royalston, fought in the Revolution of 1776. He was graduated from Bowdoin College, and came to Boston in 1842 and was employed by Wheelock Pratt and Co. dry goods dealers, and two years later by Philip A. Lock Company, hat dealers.

Hart was a noted businessman and in 1880 he became President of the Mount Vernon National Bank. An active Republican, Hart was a member of Boston's Common Council from 1879 to 1881, and the Board of Aldermen from 1882 to 1886. From 1891 to 1895 he served as Boston's Postmaster General. Hart was elected mayor of Boston from 1889 to 1890 and 1900 to 1902. Hart founded Hart, Taylor & Company which was one of the largest cap and hat manufacturers in New England. A publically minded man, he served as a Boston alderman, member of the Common Council and as mayor. It was said that “while mayor, he attended strictly to his duty, seeing that the streets were swept, the city finances were put into systematic shape.”

In his inaugural of 1901, Mayor Hart discussed the confusing mixture of city, state and county government imposed on Boston, observing that this scattering of power 'would never have taken place had City Hall proved equal to all demands.' According to his view, home rule for Boston could probably be realized when 'playing games' ceased and municipal conditions became such as to deserve it.

"He was well-liked by all parties during his term; was courteous, genial and efficient in all the relations of life, with clear and quick perceptions, and is capable of any office in the United States."

The Hart Family monument is on Blue Hill Avenue at Forest Hills Cemetery.

The Hero of the U.S.S. Kearsarge

2010-01-22T22:09:00.004-05:00

John A. Winslow was the son of Edward and Sara E. Ancrum Winslow and was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1811, but hailed from New Engand ancestry. Rear Admiral John Ancrum Winslow, USN (1811-1873) entered the Navy as a midshipman in 1827, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in 1839 and to Commander in 1855. During the Mexican War, he was commended to gallantry for his activities at Tobasco. During the Civil War, he was assigned as Executive Officer of the Western Gunboat Flotilla, and he took command of USS Kearsarge in 1863 and over the next eighteen months he patrolled European waters in search of Confederate raiders. In 1864 he led them to victory in one of the Civil War's most notable naval actions, the battle between the USS Kearsarge and the CSS Alabama. The naval engagement lasted an hour and twenty minutes. After the last shot was fired the Alabama sank out of sight, having had about forty killed, and seventy were made prisoners, so that thirty-nine escaped. Only three men were wounded in the Kearsarge, one of whom died. Only twenty-eight projectiles struck the Kearsarge out of the 370 that were fired by the Alabama, and none of these did any material damage. One 100-pound shell exploded in the smoke-stack, and one lodged in the stern-post of the Kearsarge, but did not explode. The Kearsarge fired 173 projectiles, and few failed to do some injury. Winslow was promoted to the rank of Commodore as a result of this action. He became a Rear Admiral in 1870 and commanded the Pacific Squadron from then until 1872.

Rear Admiral Winslow was always known as a solid, courageous, determined officer. Shortly after his retirement, he died at his home in Roxbury, on Kearsarge Street off Warren Street that had been named for his famous ship. His coffin was draped in the U.S.S. Kearsarge battle flag. The Winslow Family Lot is on Orange Path. The granite curbed lot is dominated by a huge boulder, which came from Mount Kearsarge, New Hampshire. The boulder was donated by the citizens of Warner, New Hampshire in memory of the hero, John A. Winslow, who served as the captain of the U.S.S. Kearsarge, which sank the C.S.S. Alabama during an 1864 Civil War sea battle. His wife Catherine Amelia Winslow Winslow, to whom he was married in 1837, was highly respected and it was said that "their union could only strengthen the highest and most admir- able traits in human nature, and must have done much to develop in the youthful officer those characteristics which brought him so brilliantly- through the deep trials of his later life."

I had sooner have fought that fight than any ever fought upon the ocean!

Cast By Caproni

2010-01-19T14:05:00.004-05:00

Pietro Paulo Caproni (1862-1928) was born in Barga, Italy and left for Boston in the late 1870s. He was founder and co-owner with his brother Emilio Caproni of PP Caproni & Brother, manufacturers of plaster reproductions of classical and contemporary statues. These cast reproductions were, in an era before commercial photography, an integral educational tool in teaching people the history of art and antiquities. Caproni casts can be identified by a metal hallmark imbedded into the base of the cast. Early casts have brass hallmarks bearing "PP CAPRONI & BROTHER PLASTIC ARTS, BOSTON, MA." In later years the medium changed to aluminum. In 1932 the company changed names to 'Caproni Galleries, Inc' and was a supplier to Disney for the plaster figurines of all the Disney characters. Amadeo Nardini, owner of a casting company which specialized in ecclesiastical subjects, bought the company around 1940 and ran it as "Caproni Galleries of Amadeo."

Symphony Hall in Boston has sixteen life sized mythical and real life statues in niches by Caproni. The memorial to Pietro Caproni, and his second wife Gertrude Brinkhaus, is on Summit Avenue on Milton Hill and was designed by Ralph Adams Cram (1863-1942.) The monument is flanked by statues of the Sleeping and Awakening Lions, which are based on Antonio Canova's design for the Tomb of Pope Clement XIII in Rome.

"The quality of a reproduction is of the greatest importance. In an original work of merit there is a subtleness of treatment- a certain feeling which, if captured in reproduction, places the finished piece within the realm of art itself."
Pietro Caproni, 1911

Edwin Upton Curtis, Mayor of Boston

2010-01-10T19:29:00.007-05:00

Edwin Upton Curtis (1861-1922) was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. He was the son of George Curtis and Martha Ann Upton Curtis, and was married to Margaret M. Waterman.

Graduated from the Roxbury Latin School, he was fitted for college at the Little Blue School in Farmington, Maine. He was graduated from Bowdoin College in 1882, and apprenticed as an attorney and was admitted to the Suffolk Bar. He was the law partner of William Gardner Reed in the firm of Reed & Curtis. He commenced his political career as city clerk of the city of Boston. He progressed steadily in positions with increasing responsibility from thesecretary of the Republican City Committee, mayor of Boston, Asistant United States Treasurer at Boston, Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston, and as a member of the Metropolitan Park Commission.

In his inaugural as mayor of the city of Boston in 1895, he advocated the importance of special financial provision for educational buildings and facilities, the desirability of a Board of Election Commissioners, the policy of having special examinations of the city's financial system and resources, and making provision for public parks and other needs. All election machinery was placed in the control of a Board of Election Commissioners, composed of four men, two from each political party. It was said that his administration was characterized by a regulation of expense.

Curtis was also the police commissioner during the 1919 Boston Police Strike, which broke out when he refused to permit the creation of a police union. The strike, which plunged Boston into civil chaos, heralded a dramatic shift in traditional labor relations and views on the part of the police, who were unhappy with stagnant wages and poor working conditions. Then Governor Calvin Coolidge intervened in the strike brought him national fame which, in turn, led to his nomination as the partner of Warren Harding as running mate for Vice-President in the 1920 presidential election.

The Curtis Monument is an elegant white marble piece on Catalpa Avenue. It once had a pair of bronze eagles that flanked the tall center shaft.

Neighbors in "Dwellings"

2010-01-09T15:27:00.004-05:00

Artist Christopher Frost created Neighbors, which are cast concrete replicas of the temporal homes of some of Forest Hills Cemetery’s permanent residents. These small houses, perched atop a sloping hillside of Roxbury puddingstone, are from the left the home of Boston’s “Lead King” Joseph Chadwick on Cushing Avenue in Dorchester, the home of temperance educator Mary L. Hunt on Trull Street in Dorchester, and in the foreground the summerhouse of gourmet grocery purveyor S. S. Pierce on Marsh Street (now Gallivan Boulevard) in Dorchester. The artist said “I chose structures from the thousands of possible residences in order to include a variety of architectural styles. Just as the houses’ architecture reflected the diversity of their occupants’ background, social status, ethnicity, and other traits during their lifetimes, so the architecture of their monuments and grave sites reflects those traits after their deaths.”

The houses represent the residences of Charles V. Whitten, merchant (1829-1897); Mary L. Hunt, temperance leader (1830-1906), John A. Fox, architect (1836-1902); Joseph H. Chadwick, industrialist, whose Gothic Revival mausoleum is on Fountain Avenue (1827-1902); Ralph Martin, wagon-driver, who perished in the Great Molasses Flood; Samuel S. Pierce, grocer (1807-1881); and Anne Sexton, poet (1928-1967).

The Gatehouse at Forest Hills Cemetery

2010-01-07T19:39:00.007-05:00

The Gatehouse, located along the majestic drive from Morton Street (Route 203) known as Forest Hills Avenue, was designed by Gridley J. Fox Bryant (1816-1899) and Louis P. Rogers (1838-1905) and built in 1868 adjacent to a secondary entrance to the cemetery.

A charming two-story Gothic Revival cottage, it is built of Roxbury puddingstone and buff sandstone with a steeply pitched dormered roof with bands of red and black slate. Built as the gatekeeper’s residence, it is today leased by the trustees of the cemetery as a private residence.

2010-01-07T19:39:00.003-05:00

Robert Bennet Forbes (1804-1889) was a sea captain, China Trade merchant, ship owner, and writer. He was born at “Pinebank” in Jamaica Plain, the son of Ralph Bennet Forbes and Margaret Perkins Forbes; Mrs. Forbes was the sister of well-known Boston merchants James and Thomas Handasyd Perkins. Robert Bennet Forbes attended Milton Academy, but due to his father's financial difficulties, had to leave school and go to work. After a short stint as clerk for his Perkins uncles, he sailed to China at the age of 13 and eventually became a sea captain and China trader associated with Russell & Company. Receiving his first command at the age of 20, he was prosperous enough at 28 to return to Boston and set up shop as a merchant. As a member of the prominent Perkins and Forbes Families of Boston, much of Robert Bennet Forbes' wealth was derived from opium and the China Trade and he played a prominent role in the outbreak of the Opium War. Despite the ethical problems of dealing in opium, he was also well known to engage in humanitarian activities, such as commandeering the USS Jamestown to bring food to Irish Famine sufferers in 1847. After the Civil War, Captain Forbes retired from business and embarked on a new career as a philanthropist and writer. He wrote several pamphlets on methods and devices for improving the safety of ocean travel. Forbes maintained an interest in ship construction and rigging and developed a rig for sailing vessels that bore his name, and he also helped to establish a home for retired sailors in Massachusetts and was an active supporter of the Massachusetts Humane Society, serving on its board of directors for many years.

The Forbes Family Lot is on Magnolia Avenue on Consecration Hill. The monument has a large granite base with white marble inset panels, which is surmounted by a granite obelisk that is a simple but massive monument. The lot was said to be “a beautiful one in its situation, and commands a view of the hills of Milton and the intervening valley and slopes, a scene of beauty and quiet which seems to impress the beholder with a sense of the fitness of the spot for a burial place.”

The Captain Robert Bennet Forbes House Museum is at 215 Adams Street on Milton Hill; he commissioned Isaiah Rogers to design this mansion known as "The Castle" as a summerhouse for his mother Margaret Perkins Forbes, and as a memorial to his late brother Thomas Tunno Forbes, who died in 1829 in China. www.forbeshousemuseum.org

Her mission is to observe all that transpires

2010-01-06T13:38:00.004-05:00

Adam Osgood, assistant to Jean-Louis Lachevre, cleans the bronze sculpture The Sentinel by local sculptor Fern Cunningham. Modelled in Brookline in 2000, it was cast in 2003 in Johnston, Rhode Island and is part of the acclaimed Contemporary Sculpture Path at Forest Hills Cemetery.

Set atop a large outcropping of Roxbury puddingstone, The Sentinel depicts “the wise old woman of Africa” and represents Cunningham’s interest in themes involving humanistic ideals, particularly those that deal with women and children. Fern Cunningham once said "I see myself as an educator through my sculpture and I am always trying to bring forth what is missing in American sculpture and to pay homage to the people who have not been acknowledged."

The casting of this sculpture was supported by a generous grant from the George B. Henderson Foundation, and continues the aspect of public art at Forest Hills Cemetery.

John A. Fox, Father of Stick Style Architecture

2010-01-06T11:28:00.004-05:00

John Andrews Fox (1836-1920) is considered the “Father of Stick Style” architecture in the United States. Born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts, he served in the Civil War with Co. I and F of the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which lasted from 1862-1865 and included Sherman's "March to the Sea." He was initially associated with the civil engineering firm of Garbett & Wood and later had an independent architectural practice in Boston for fifty years. He was active in the Boston Society of Architects and the Boston chapter of the American Institute of Architects, which he helped found in 1870. He lived at 25 Trull Street in Dorchester, just west of Upham's Corner and where he designed many of the new residences being built following the annexation of Dorchester in 1870 to the city of Boston. Many of his private residences in the “Stick Style” were built in the metropolitan area as well as the Town Hall in Provincetown in 1886, and the Home for Aged Couples on Seaver Street in Roxbury.

The Fox Family monument is on Weigelia Path.

The Author of the "Suffolk Resolves"

2010-01-03T09:13:00.003-05:00

Dr. Joseph Warren's family had been in Massachusetts for a century and a half at the time of the Revolution. The Warren family was a representative New England middle-class colonial family that farmed and played a role in minor local politics. Joseph Warren was raised thinking and feeling as an American. This “American” outlook is seen in his education and practice of medicine. He was educated at the Roxbury Latin School and Harvard College, graduating in 1759.

Warren apprenticed with the leading Boston doctor, James Lloyd, who provided him with access to both the most advanced medical practices and to the prominent Boston families. Medicine, as practiced at the time in England, was highly segmented and subject to social and class distinctions. A physician was considered to be a gentleman and a professional; however, a surgeon or apothecary was not. This led to exclusiveness and rigid practices at the expense of learning and experimentation. In America, these distinctions were rarely if ever exercised, the emphasis being upon what is practical in a distinctive Yankee “can do” manner. Because of the educational requirements of the profession, physicians became closely aligned with the clergy. Unlike their English counterparts, American physicians saw themselves as having, along with the clergy and government officials, an important role in protecting the public welfare. Warren clearly demonstrated that he recognized and accepted his civic role in his work in public clinics and heroic work conducting smallpox vaccinations and administering to its victims in Boston. It was while practicing medicine that Warren met both the Boston aristocracy and the radical colonial leaders who would shape his future path and define his sense of purpose as a political figure. He remained in Boston during the 1763 smallpox epidemic, administering to the ill, and opened an inoculation hospital at Castle William in Boston Harbor. The success of the inoculations in reducing deaths established Dr. Warren's reputation in Boston, and his practice expanded from the poor end of Boston to include the wealthy and influential. His patients included both future Whig leaders such as John Adams and Tories such as Thomas Hutchinson, the Colony's lieutenant governor. The names of Paul Revere and William Dawes also appeared on his medical ledgers, along with long lists of the poor and common laborers. Dr. Warren learned the value of direct action in providing public service while practicing medicine for a broad spectrum of the citizens of Massachusetts.

Dr. Warren's political involvement grew as his contact with the Boston leaders expanded. His warmth, charm, and intelligence were widely noted by those who knew him, including his political enemies. His profession provided easy access to all classes of society, and he soon found himself a popular figure throughout Boston. Dr. Warren also became a leader in the Masonic lodges. This leadership became an important factor in his revolutionary activities, providing another secret yet powerful organization with which to expand his political and intelligence network. Warren's leadership and popularity were recognized in 1769, when, at the age of 28, he was commissioned the “Grand Master of Masons of Boston, New England, and within one hundred miles of same." The Earl of Dumfries, the Grand Master of Scotland, issued another appointment to Warren, dated March 7, 1772. This made Warren “Grand Master of Masons for the Continent of America,” thus installing Warren as the senior Mason in all of the colonies.
Joseph Warren's political activism began with his writings about the Stamp Act, and he began to be noticed as a public figure in 1766. Warren maintained and expanded his medical practice while becoming a political leader and propagandist. The Sons of Liberty had grown out of the Stamp Act, and Warren developed his ties with this hotbed of grassroots activism. Dr. Warren appears to be unique in his ability to move freely between these groups. He was trusted and respected by the common citizenry and admired by the intellectuals.

The anniversary of the Boston Massacre provided an occasion for oratory, and Warren participated in this event annually. In 1772, Dr. Warren was the featured speaker, and his oration followed a format that would be reflected throughout most subsequent American revolutionary prose: a statement of political philosophy, a list of grievances against the British, and the actions that must be taken to ensure liberty. References to sacrifice and spilling of blood were made and became stronger when he again made the anniversary oration on March 6, 1775.
In September 1774, Warren penned the Suffolk Resolves, which were adopted on September 9th at the home of Daniel Vose in Milton Village, Massachusetts. The document, the most radical statement of colonial intent to date, was rushed to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia by Paul Revere, arriving on the 16th. The Second Continental Congress was scheduled for May 1775 in Philadelphia. The British Commander, General Gage, had to demonstrate that he was in control of the colony, in response to the royal harsh policy towards the radicals in Boston. The militia ammunition and cannon stored in Concord provided Gage with an opportunity to make a dramatic show of force and seize the supplies in a one day operation. The reports that Sam Adams and John Hancock were in Lexington made the operation more irresistible to Gage if these two radical leaders could be captured. Warren's spy network worked well, and on the evening of April 18th, he dispatched Revere and Dawes on their famous missions to alert the rebels.

Warren participated in the harassment of British troops retreating from Lexington and Concord on April 19th as both a soldier and doctor ministering to wounded rebels. He was subsequently selected to be the president of the Provincial Congress and thus the Rebellion's executive leader of the colony. He knew the value of garnering support for the American cause in Britain, so he convinced Congress to charter a speedy packet boat to deliver his account of the April 19th events to Benjamin Franklin in London. His letters did reach England far ahead of British General Thomas Gage's account and were widely distributed by Franklin, causing quite a stir and extreme domestic embarrassment to the British government. He requested that Franklin tell the British citizens that the Americans would sell their liberty “only at the price of their own lives." Joseph Warren was elected president of the Third Provincial Congress, which met on May 31, 1775. On June 14, 1775, the Congress appointed Warren a major general. He now had to balance this commission with his political duties and re-establish his relationships with the military leaders in light of this new position.

Just a few days after his appointment, Warren voluntarily joined the militia defending Breed's Hill (a turning point in the war that is often mistakenly described as the "Battle of Bunker Hill.") When Warren arrived on the hill that overlooked Boston, Colonel William Prescott had lost many men during the night that had gone to the rear for any number of reasons and had not returned. The remaining soldiers were tired after a night's digging and were looking for supplies and reinforcements. The British had landed and were forming ranks. Warren met Putnam at General John Stark's position along the rail fence. David Putnam records the following conversation in his 1818 publication. After Putnam offered command to Warren, Warren replied, “I am here only as a volunteer. I know nothing of your dispositions; nor will I interfere with them. Tell me where I can be most useful." Putnam directed him to Prescott's redoubt on Breed's Hill. As the final British assault breached the walls of the redoubt, Warren remained with the covering force. A musket blew apart his head as he protected the last soldiers fleeing the exit of the redoubt. The famous Trumbull painting of the battle features Warren as the central figure, dying with a gunshot wound in the forehead and surrounded by Prescott, Putnam, and Stark. Paul Revere identified his own silver bridgework and teeth on Warren's skull when he was dug up after the British evacuated Boston. His body was reinterred several times in the ensuing years, the first in the Minot Tomb at the Granary Burial Ground and later in the Warren Tomb at St Paul's Episciopal Church in Boston. The final time was in 1856 when he was moved to the crest of Mount Warren, in a large family lot at Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.

Lost on the RMS Titanic

2010-01-01T14:02:00.014-05:00

Fletcher Fellows Lambert Williams (1868-1912) was the son, and youngest child, of George Foster Williams and Susan Lucy Fellows Williams and was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts. George F. Williams was the partner of Henry Hall in the prominent Boston firm of Hall & Williams, later known as Tucker & Williams, and a trustee of estates. Fletcher Lambert Williams married Mary E. Leeds Goddard, and they lived at Bickenhall Mansions on Gloucester Place in Marylebone, London.

Fletcher Lambert Williams was the managing director of the Mono Service Company of England, of which the American company was a branch. Williams and his business partner Elmer Zebley Taylor, and Taylor's wife Juliet Cummins Wright Taylor, had boarded the Titanic in Southampton, England travelling as First Class passengers. Williams and Taylor were business partners in the American Mono Service Company, founded in 1910 and manufacturers of paper cups. The company furnished drinking cups to hotels, business places and railroads throughout the Eastern United States. The company was a large concern, with ten factories worldwide. They were on a return business trip from London to America.

In 1944 Elmer Z. Taylor wrote an account of his life that included a retelling of his own experiences on board the Titanic. Recalling the following circumstances which enabled him and his friend Fletcher Lambert Williams to come into close proximity to Captain Smith on the night of April 14th, the night of the sinking:

"Williams was a democratic sort of chap, did not hesitate to move among the high, the less high or lowly, so he selected a table for coffee in the Reception Room next to a table at which Captain Smith was entertaining a party. We were close enough to hear Captain Smith tell his party the ship could be cut crosswise in three places and each piece would float. That remark confirmed my belief in the safety of the ship."

Williams' body was never recovered after the sinking of the Titanic. A memorial prominently stating that he was lost on the R.M.S. Titanic was erected on the Williams Family lot on Cherry Avenue at Forest Hills Cemetery.

Robert Chamblett Hooper

2010-01-01T12:03:00.004-05:00

Saint Paul’s Roman Catholic Church on Hartford Street in Dorchester, Massachusetts is a fine example of the architectural work of the prominent architectural firm of Maginnis & Walsh. It was built on the former estate of Robert Chamblett Hooper (1805-1869), a wealthy Boston merchant. Hooper was born in Marblehead, the grandson of “King Hooper," a well-known and respected merchant. Robert Hooper attended Phillips Academy and was graduated from Harvard College in 1822. After he completed his education, he went to sea on one of his father’s fleet of ships, visiting Gibraltar, Marseilles, Nice and other ports known to most Bostonians as names only. His interest in the sea deepened, and he decided to follow his interest and made numerous voyages in his father’s ships. Sailing the Seas, his travels took him to the West Indies, Europe, India, and south America, and gave him a firm footing for a life at sea. Well-educated, his sea voyages made him well-equipped to assist his father, as the Hoopers were a wealthy seafaring family in Marblehead. Hooper’s first ship was the brig “Walga,” on which he sailed as captain and supercargo, a term for the officer in charge of the cargo. This voyage took him to Matansas and to Russia at the age of 21. Successful, he was entrusted with his father’s ship “Arbella.”

Continuing with his life at sea, he later married his cousin Anna Maria Hooper, who died in childbirth. His second wife was Adeline Denny Ripley, with whom he had children. Having made a fortune from his life at sea, he retired from it and established himself as a merchant in Boston. As a merchant, Hooper bought and sold ships. He also imported sugar and other foreign commodities to Boston and traded on Central Wharf, of which he owned a share. He later built Constitution Wharf, and moved his storehouses and office to the new location. It was in 1845, equipped with a large personal fortune, that he purchased an extensive tract of land in Dorchester. The land in Dorchester was composed of slight hills and valleys, with a superb view of Boston from the summit. It was chosen, according to Gertrude Hooper, his granddaughter, “so the sun would not blind him on the drive home from his Boston office.” He built a large and architecturally significant villa he named “Oakland,” and he entertained lavishly. He was probably among the most wealth residents of ninteenth-century Dorchester. In 1869, the last year the town published a Taxable Valuation, his house alone was appraised at the vast sum of $40,000. The twenty acre estate was bounded by Dudley Street and Hartford Street. The Hooper Family retained ownership of Oakland after his death in the same year, but subdivided the estate over the next four decades. Lingard Street was first known as Hooper Street in honor of the family. Robin Hood Street, Chamblett Street and Half Moon Street were laid out through the Hooper Estate, and substantial houses were built by well-to-do families. The aspects that had attracted Hooper to build in Dorchester were the same as those that attracted others in the early “Street Car Suburb” period: gentle slopes, outcroppings of puddingstone, superb views of Boston to the north and the Blue Hills to the south, and beautiful old oak trees. The Hooper family had built and moved to a townhouse on Beacon Street in the Back Bay, but they held ownership of Oakland until 1911, afterwhich the house and the immediate land surrounding it was sold to the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. The house was adapted for use as the rectory of Saint Paul’s priests. In the 1930s, the stone church of Saint Paul’s was designed and built by Maginnis & Walsh, the architects of the archdiocese. The rectory was used until the late 1970s, when it was demolished and a smaller building was erected on the same site chosen by Hooper over a century before. The gentle slopes, the panoramic views, and the picturesque aspect of the area remain to this day, but the former estate of Robert Chamblett Hooper is no more. The Hoopers are buried at Forest Hills Cemetery, on a terrace overlooking Lake Hibiscus.

Forest Hills Educational Trust

2009-12-30T12:47:00.002-05:00

The Forest Hills Educational Trust is a nonprofit organization founded in 1991 to preserve, enhance, interpret and celebrate the myriad aspects of Forest Hills Cemetery. The Trust organizes a variety of programs inspired by the Cemetery’s unique environment – walking tours, concerts, poetry readings, a summer camp program, and adventurous exhibitions of contemporary art as well as moving ceremonies of remembrance. These activities are designed to encourage the community to explore one of the city’s premier treasures. At first, many people are surprised to find so much happening in a cemetery. However, they quickly realize that Forest Hills is an extraordinary resource, a place to experience art, nature, and history as well as a tranquil sanctuary for reflection and remembrance. Forest Hills Cemetery is an active cemetery and the first rural, or arboretum cemetery in the city of Boston.

The Trust’s expert tour guides – many of them volunteers – give visitors a glimpse of the history of Boston through the stories of the people buried at Forest Hills Cemetery. Other tours reveal the meaning of the symbols carved in stone memorials – oak leaves for strength, ivy for a faithful nature – and stop at bronze and marble sculpture by the most eminent artists of the 19th and early 20th century; the Forest Hills Educational Trust raises funds to engage conservators every year to care for some of these endangered masterpieces, which are damaged by pollution and New England weather. The Lantern Festival and a traditional Day of the Dead are major community events that draw thousands every year; the beauty and spirituality of Forest Hills make it an inspiring setting to gather and celebrate the memory of family and friends. The Trust’s exhibitions of contemporary art offer new ways to think about age-old themes of family, ancestors, nature, remembrance, the cycles of life, and the world of the spirits. These programs are extremely innovative and have become a national model; however, the Trust is working to restore the original vision of the Cemetery as a destination, a welcoming place for the living as well as an eternal home for the dead.

Amy Beach~ Composer

2009-12-28T13:46:00.007-05:00

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867-1944) was born in West Henniker, New Hampshire. Musically precocious, she sang improvised harmony parts at age two, composed at age four, and began piano studies with her mother, Clara Imogene Marcy Cheney, at age six, giving her first public recitals at seven.
At the age of thirteen, she wrote “The Rainy Day” following a visit with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poem’s author. It was her first published song. In 1875 the Cheney family moved to Boston, where Amy studied piano, harmony, counterpoint, and composition with Ernst Perabo and Carl Baermann and formal training in composition with Junius W. Hill, with whom she studied harmony and counterpoint for a year. In 1885 she made her piano debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In 1885 she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach (1813-1910,) a socially prominent surgeon, Harvard professor, and musical amateur. In accordance with his wishes, she limited her public appearances and concentrated on composition until after his death in 1910. In 1911 she traveled to Germany, where she toured as a virtuoso pianist, playing and accompanying her own works to critical acclaim. In 1914 she returned to the United States, where she maintained an active schedule of winter touring and summer composing for many years and she spent time at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. In 1915, she wrote Ten Commandments for Young Composers, which expressed many of her self-teaching principles.

Mrs. Beach compsed works in many genres, including a Mass, a symphony, a piano concerto, and works for chamber ensembles, piano, mixed chorus, and solo voice as well as the first composition by a woman ever performed by the Handel and Haydn Society. Her thirty works for women's chorus, including several cantatas, are well-crafted in a romantic idiom, always with intelligent text setting.
Mrs. Beach's Three Shakespeare Songs, Op.44, all use verses in which fairies' beguiling and alarming magic makes nonsense of the human lovers' nuptial arrangements and the artisans' clumsy plans to put on a play, moving the action to the enchanted wood outside Athens and introducing Puck. "Come unto these yellow sands" (The Tempest 1.2) is the song the invisible Ariel sings to the shipwrecked, bewildered (and presumably still dripping) Ferdinand: an invitation to the dance that tells him he's not in Naples any more. "Through the house give glimmering light" (A Midsummer Night's Dream 5.1) is Oberon and Titiania's epilogue to the closing marriage banquet, proof that the fairies' happy influence now extends to the city, the banquet hall, and even to the marriage bed.

In 2000 at Boston's famous Hatch Shell on the Esplanade, the Boston Pops paid tribute to Beach. Her name was added to the granite wall on "The Shell". It joins 86 other composers such as Bach, Handel, Chopin and Beethoven. Amy Beach is the only woman composer on the granite wall. The Beaches are buried at Forest Hills Cemetery in a lot on Dahlia Path off Catalpa Avenue.

Beach once said that “no other life than that of a musician could ever have been possible for me.”

Lucy Stone~ Reformer

2009-12-27T15:18:00.004-05:00

Lucy Stone (1818-1893) was born in West Brookfield, Massachusetts and was descended from an old New England family. Her father, Francis Stone, was a well-to-do farmer and tanner who believed that men were divinely ordained to rule over women. Her mother, Hannah Stone, accepted this view, but even as a young child Lucy became resentful. Though her brothers were sent to Harvard College, her father was shocked when she asked to go to college, and he gave her no financial support. She determined to educate herself, and at age sixteen, she began to teach district school at a dollar per week. During this time her hostility toward the existing status of women increased, especially when she learned that women had no vote in the affairs of the Congregational Church in West Brookfield of which she was a member. Finally in 1843 she had earned the money to enter Oberlin College. At college she was looked upon as a dangerous radical, for she was an ardent abolitionist, was uncompromising on the question of women's rights and became Unitarian in religion. In 1847 she graduated from Oberlin, the first Massachusetts woman to earn a college degree. She refused an invitation to write a commencement address because she would not have been permitted to read it herself, owing to the prevailing belief that it was improper for women to participate in public exercises with men. The injustice was corrected thirty-six years later when Lucy Stone was an honored speaker at Oberlin's semicentennial jubilee. In 1850 she led in calling the first national woman's rights convention at Worcester, Massachusertts. Lucy Stone, who was only barely recovered from typhoid fever, made a speech that converted Susan B. Anthony to the cause. She married Henry Browne Blackwell, a Cincinnati hardware merchant and abolitionist in 1855 but kept her own name, calling herself Mrs. Stone and this radical action added the phrase "Lucy Stoner" to the language to denote a married woman retaining her maiden name. The birth of Alice Stone Blackwell in 1857 led Lucy Stone to give up some of her traveling and lecturing, but she continued to organize many campaigns for woman's suffrage. Perhaps Lucy Stone's greatest contribution was in founding and largely financing the weekly newspaper of the American Woman Suffrage Association, the Woman's Journal. During a run of forty-seven years, under the editorship of Lucy Stone, her husband Henry Blackwell and later Alice Stone Blackwell, the Woman's Journal more than any other journal was the voice of the woman's movement. After 1887 Lucy's voice failed, and she spoke only to small gatherings. Her last lectures were delivered at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. She died at her large mansion on Boutwell Street on Pope's Hill In Dorchester and her funeral was held at the Church of the Disciples in Boston's South End; she was cremated at the crematorium of the Massachusetts Cremation Society on Walk Hill Street, adjacent to Forest Hills Cemetery. Luncy Stone was the first person to be cremated in New England.

Temperance Reformer

2009-12-23T16:50:00.006-05:00

Mary L. Hunt (1830-1906) was a leader of the campaign for temperance education in the schools, Mary Hunt came to Dorchester later in life having lived previously in Hyde Park. Temperance was a family tradition. Mrs. Hunt's father had been an officer in the county temperance society, and while helping her son study college chemistry, she herself became seriously interested in the physiological effects of alcohol. She quickly took the lead in the agitation for education. In 1878 with Julia Colman, she marched upon the board of the Hyde Park School Committee and won over its members. In 1879 she presented to the national convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union a plan calling for thorough textbook study of scientific temperance in the public schools. In 1886, largely owing to her effective campaigning, the federal government passed a law requiring temperance instruction in schools under federal control. By 1901 every state had passed legislation of this sort. Legislation alone proved inadequate, and Mrs. Hunt began a campaign to improve the textbooks, supervising the writing of several texts. In 1903 the Committee of Fifty, an alcohol study group composed of eminent scientists, economists, clergymen and educators, issued Physiological Aspects of the Liquor Problem which marshaled impressive testimony challenging statements in W.C.T.U.-approved books, questioning the wisdom of giving young children detailed information about alcoholism, and pointing out the dangers of allowing those committed to a doctrinaire position to control the teaching of a controversial subject. Mrs. Hunt published a Reply to the Physiological Sub-Committee of the Committee of Fifty, and through the efforts of a sympathetic Senator, this work was published as a government document with the circulation of 100,000 copies to members of the W.C.T.U. After her death in 1906, the W.C.T.U. gave up efforts to intervene in textbook writing. Some have suggested that a generation of students brought up on the textbooks approved by Mary Hunt resulted in the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment. Yet the repeal of prohibition and the statistics on alcohol consumption after the years of her influence suggest that her campaign had only limited long-range effect.

The German Dialect Author "Yawcob Strauss"

2009-12-21T16:22:00.004-05:00

Charles Follen Adams (1842-1918,) the son of Ira and Mary Elizabeth Senter Adams, was born in Dorchester and received a common school education, leaving the grammar school at fifteen years of age. He went as a boy into the well-known house of N.D. Whitney & Co., Boston, to learn the business. He was afterwards salesman in the same house, then went into business for himself with John D. Clapp, under the firm name of J.D. Clapp & Co. In 1872 he became a partner in the firm of Nicholson & Adams, hair goods for ladies’ wear, and later on made a change in business to that of furnishing supplies for the five, ten and twenty-five cent counters that have had such a phenomenal run—the firm name being Newell, Adams & Co. He sold out his interest January 1, 1885, and is now doing a manufacturing and commission, in addition to his journalistic work. At the age of twenty, August, 1862, he enlisted in the 13th regiment Massachusetts volunteers, and was in the battles of Second Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg—wounded in the latter and held prisoner for three days, when he was re-captured and taken to the hospitals in New York and Rhode Island. After his recovery he was detailed as wardmaster in the convalescent hospital at Washington, where he remained until his term of service expired, in August, 1864. He returned home and established the business that has since demanded his attention. The literary portion of his life is only his diversion, never interfering with his methodical business habits. Charles Follen Adams, however is best known from his humorous and dialectic poems, he having sprung into recognition at once upon the production of his well known and immensely popular “Leedle Yawcob Strauss.” His first effort at rhyme was written in 1870, and his first dialectic verse, “The Puzzled Dutchman,” appeared in 1872. From that time he was an occasional contributor to numerous Boston papers, “Oliver Optic’s Magazine,” “Scribner’s Monthly,” and others until 1876 when “Leedle Yawcob Strauss” appeared in the “Detroit Free Press,” since which time his poems have appeared in that paper, “Harper’s Magazine,” and other publications. The house of Lee & Shepard, published Mr. Adams’s first volume of poems, entitled “Leedle Yawcob Strauss, and Other Poems.” His second volume, entitled “Dialect Ballads,” was published by Harper & Brothers, New York (1887), being a companion to the former volume. Mr. Adams was married in 1870 to Hattie Louise Mills, and they were the parents of Charles Mills Adams and Ella Paige Adams Sawyer. The Adams Lot is on White Oak Avenue, a large granite block monument with a curious log-frame motif.

Alice Stone Blackwell

2009-12-21T12:05:00.002-05:00

Alice Stone Blackwell (1857-1950) was the only child of Lucy Stone and Henry Brown Blackwell. She was educated at the Harris Grammar School in Dorchester, the Chauncy School in Boston at at Boston University. Alice described life in Dorchester from her perspective as a teenager in her journal published under the title Growing Up in Boston's Gilded Age: The Journal of Alice Stone Blackwell, 1872-1874. Catching the train at the Old Colony station at Neponset or at Harrison Square to ride into Boston to exchange books at the Boston Athenaeum or at the Boston Public Library. She would visit her mother at the office of the Woman's Journal at 3 Tremont Place. On Sundays she would go to church at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, then on Bowdoin Street, or at Saint Mary's Chapel, later the All Saints' Mission at Lower Mills. On school days, Alice would walk toward Harrison Square to attend the Harris School at the corner of Adams Street and Victory Road, formerly known as Mill Street. Her diary includes descriptions of her walks in the Dorchester countryside when it was still an area of large open spaces, and it was an era when people walked long distances or rode in a carriage pulled by horses. After her graduation from Boston University where she excelled and was president of her class, she went to work in the offices of the Woman's Journal, the paper edited by her mother. Over the next thirty-five years, Miss Blackwell bore the main burdens of editing the country's leading woman's rights newspaper, gathering copy, reading proof, preparing book reviews, and writing long columns of crisp, hard-headed arguments for female equality. Beginning in 1887 she also edited the Woman's Column, a collection of suffrage items sent out free to newspapers round the country. She effected a truce between the American Woman Suffrage Association and Susan B. Anthony's rival National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1890 the two organizations merged, and Miss Blackwell became recording secretary of the new national American Woman Suffrage Association. Lucy Stone's death in 1893 freed her daughter to find other evils to expose and underdogs to champion. For years she operated an informal employment service for needy Armenians, and she joined William Dudley Foulke and George Kennan in activating the Friends of Russian Freedom. She translated the poetry of oppressed peoples into English to widen American awareness. Alice also translated several other volumes of poetry into English from Russian (Songs of Russia, 1906), Yiddish (Songs of Grief and Gladness, 1907), Spanish (Some Spanish-American poets, 1929), Hungarian and French. In 1917 she edited The Little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution which is about the life of Catherine Breshkovsky. Her affiliations widened to include the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Anti-Vivisection Society, the Women's Trade Union League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the American Peace Society. Postwar reaction turned her into a socialist radical. One Boston newspaper refused to print her militant letters because of the controversy they provoked. In 1930 she published Lucy Stone, a well received biography of her mother, and in 1945, she received an L.H.D. degree (Doctorate of Humanities) from Boston University in recognition of her work.

For Whom the Sumner Tunnel was Named

2009-12-19T21:38:00.003-05:00

General William Hyslop Sumner (1780-1861) inherited Noddle’s Island through his mother and his greatest accomplishment was his effort to develop several islands in Boston Harbor. This undertaking created what is now known as East Boston. During the development, Sumner founded several companies, including the East Boston Company and The East Boston Lumber Company. In tribute to his tireless work for the development East Boston the Sumner Tunnel that runs under the Boston Harbor from East Boston to Boston bears his name. In Jamaica Plain Sumner Hill and in Cambridge, Sumner Street near Harvard University are also named for Sumner. The white Carrara marble monument on the Sumner Lot on Mount Warren Avenue was sculpted in Rome, Italy by Cantalamessa Papotti and was set on a natural outcropping of Roxbury puddingstone. Papotti’s angel is part of a long artistic tradition, as since the Renaissance they have represented messengers from God; they were, and still are, a popular cemetery motif. General Sumner’s monument was personalized on the base with a representation of a family crest, and on the front (now missing), in the circular medallion, a low-relief portrait of his profile.

Dr. Carleton and Carleton Willard Village

2009-12-19T12:58:00.005-05:00

Dr. Elizabeth Abbott Carleton (1851-1925) was the founder of the New England Aid Society for the Aged and Friendless, later known as the Home for Aged Couples, the first of its kind in New England. Organized in January, 1883, and incorporated on May 20, 1884, the first home was opened in 1884 at 431 Shawmut Avenue in Boston's South End. Three couples were received in the home in 1884 and three more in 1885, reaching the limit of capacity of its former quarters. The beneficiaries of the home must be at least 60 years of age. The number of applicants is so great that the trustees are enabled to make careful selection, and preference is given to those over 70 years of age. Preference is given in receiving residents to those who have no children or other relatives who might care for them.

In an article from the Boston Daily Globe on May 30, 1887, it said that "Life in the institution is essentially life at home. The inmates are free to come and go, and receive visitors. So far as they are able to work about the place, the men in the garden and woodshed, the women in their rooms, sewing or caring in their husband in sickness. One inmate is blind and another paralyzed, but good health is the rule. Preaching services are held on the second and fourth Sundays in each month by pastors of various denominations, and services of song are held on the alternate Sundays. Musical entertainments are held from time to time in the afternoon. In the summer season horse car rides are occasionally given by the city mission, and harbor rides by the Young Men's Christian Association. The latter organization also sometimes provides carriage rides for invalids in the Home, and other similar provisions are made by the management of the institution. The inmates take their meals at the same table, visit each other in their rooms and stroll in company in Franklin Park or about the grounds of the home."

The home moved to the former mansion of Edward E. Rice at the corner of Seaver Street and Walnut Avenue in Roxbury, afterwhich a large building designed by John A. Fox was built. The Home for Aged Couples merged in the late twentieth century with the Willard Home and moved to Bedford, Massachusetts where is has since been known as Carleton Willard Village. Dr. Elizabeth Abbott Carleton was a resident of Union Park in Boston’s South End, and a beloved physician and friend to the elderly of the city. The former site in Roxbury is now a part of Rogerson Communities, a non-profit organization serving low-income and elderly men and women through housing, adult day health programs, fitness training, and memory loss care and treatment programs. The Carleton monument is on Oak Avenue, adjacent to that of the lot for the Home for Aged Couples.

He Who Hybridized the Clapp's Favorite Pear

2009-12-18T20:17:00.007-05:00

Thaddeus Clapp (1811-1861) was the noted hybridizer of the "Clapp's Favorite" pear, a cross breeding of the "Bartlett" pear and the "Flemish Beauty" pear. From 1840 until his death Clapp was "celebrated among fruit growers for his theoretical and practical knoweledge, and obtained many premiums for choice varities and fine samples of fruit."

Born in Dorchester, the son of William Clapp (1779-1860) and Elizabeth Humphreys Clapp, he was educated at the academy of Hiram Manley before entering Harvard College, being graduated in 1834; he attained a distinguished rank with "the second honors of his class" and delivered the salutory oration in Latin. He was to receive his master of arts in 1838, and though he had taught at a private school in Brookline, his ill health precluded full time employment. During the 1840's he served as a member and secretary of the Dorchester School Committee (Dorchester remained an independent town from Boston until 1870.) In 1838 he served as tutor to the family of William T. Palfrey in Franklin, Louisiana thinking that the warm climate might be beneficial to his health. The Palfreys were from Boston, and were probably acquainted with his family, but he returned shortly therafter. He returned to his family home in 1840, a large Federal house built by his parents at 195 Boston Street and called the "Mansion House." His father was a well to do leather tanner with tanneries on his extensive estate that stretched back to South Bay and which had been in the family since the seventeenth century.

After his return to Dorchester, Thaddeus Clapp "engaged in horticultural and pomological persuits, which he continued until the winter of 1860." During that time he and his brothers Lemuel and Frederick Clapp hybridized many pear seedlings which were quite successful and the names of which were given to new streets that were cut through the former Clapp Estate; the new streets were named Mayhew, Mount Vernon, Harvest, Dorset and Bellflower to perpetuate the early hybrid pears, but it was his pear seedling "Clapp's Favorite" that became reknowned as it was an early ripening fruit, in an age when fresh fruit was thought to ensure continued good health. So successful was this pear seedling that the the Clapp's Favorite pear, was greatly desired by the Massachusetts Agricultural Club, which wished to name it after Marshall P. Wilder, and to disseminate it for general cultivation. They offered Mr. Clapp one thousand dollars for the control of it, but the offer was politely declined. For two decades Clapp continued his horticultural persuits and was an active member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and the Norfolk Agricultural Society. He was said to be of a "most amiable disposition and led a life of unspotted integrity. In 1873, over a decade after Clapp's death, the "Clapp's Favorite" pear was awarded the Wilder Medal in 1873; this medal is awarded to individuals or organizations for distinguished service and contributions to the advancement of pomological science and for outstanding fruit varieties.

When he died, his widow Mary H. Dustin Clapp buried him at Forest Hills Cemetery. His white marble headstone has a bas relief of the celebrated "Clapp's Favorite" pear and that of his wife a shorn sheaf of wheat.

Milton Hill

2009-12-17T11:21:00.005-05:00

By the late nineteenth century the once open dells and valleys at Forest Hills Cemetery were being developed for both family lots as well as individual graves. With the purchase of "Milton Hill" from William F. Milton, the area was to be connected to Consecration Hill by an impressive stone bridge, designed by William Gibbons Preston, which arched over Greenwood Avenue. The area of Milton Hill was to be developed with large family lots in the first three decades of the twentieth century, and has a rich overlay of funereal monument styles, from Classical to Grecian, Egyptian and Romantic influenced designs which embraced the wide spectrum of available choices.

The early curvilinear avenues at Forest Hills Cemetery were to be augmented by new ones laid out connecting parts of the original cemetery to areas by Walk Hill and Canterbury Streets and west of the Field of Manoah. These new areas had a rich panoply of funereal stones, from colonial revival slate headstones to large limestone, marble and granite monuments often with angels, allegorical figures and classical urns, vases and other embellishments. The twentieth century also saw some spectacular mausoleums that were built throughout the cemetery, such as the Lufkin, Wilbur, Thym, Martyn, Hanley and Haste mausoleums.

Where there is sorrow there is Holy ground.
Oscar Wilde

Hunneman Fire Engines

2009-12-16T11:15:00.005-05:00

William Cooper Hunneman (1769 –1856) was the founder of a fire engine company in Roxbury that was operated by three generations of the Hunneman Family. His monument at Forest Hills Cemetery is an open Bible set on a marble altar. Hunneman was a successful blacksmith, having learned the trade from Paul Revere; he opened a blacksmith shop in Boston and manufactured brass hardware for shipbuilding. However, in the mid nineteenth century he began to produce standard pumper fire engines, the only difference with others being the angle upon which the pistons operated. Many of the builders of the early fire engines purchased the pump and accessories from Hunneman & Company. To complete these new pumpers, a local cabinetmaker was engaged to build the “tub” which is formed from sheets of copper, and designed to hold water. From 1792 to 1883, three generations of the Hunneman Family were to produce 750 fire engines that were shipped to all parts of the world, and helped to fight fires.

e e cummings

2009-12-15T16:16:00.005-05:00

Edward Estlin Cummings, more popularly known as ee cummings (1894-1962) was an important novelist and poet that not only captivated twentieth century readers with his evocative writing and poetry, but the fact that he created a distinctive lower case spelling of his name. One Cummings scholar believes that on the occasions Cummings signed his name in all lowercase letters, the poet may have intended it as a gesture of humility, and not as an indication that it was the preferred orthography for others to use for his name. A graduate of Harvard, Cummings was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, an autobiographical novel, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as a preeminent voice of the poetry of the Twentieth Century as well as one of the most popular. His grave is on Althea Path, his great grandfather being John Jones Clarke, the first mayor of the city of Roxbury, and ironically does not record his name in the lower case spelling he extolled during his lifetime but as "Edward Estlin Cummings."

Tumbling-hair

picker of buttercups

violets

dandelions

And the big bullying daisies

through the field wonderful

with eyes a little sorry

Another comes

also picking flowers

George Robert White

2009-12-15T16:08:00.003-05:00

George Robert White (1847-1922) was one of Boston’s greatest benefactors. President of the Potter Drug and Chemical Corporation, one of the largest wholesale drug firms in the United States a century ago, White’s success was ensured by Cuticura Soap, which literally translated as skin care, and embodied some of the medicinal properties of an ointment that cured rashes in additing to cleansing. This soap was marketed throughout the world and made a fabulous fortune. Samuel McComb said of George White that “His helpful hand was always stretched out to assist the weak. He was devoted to the highest welfare of the city.” White had created the George Robert White Fund “to be used for creating works of public utility and beauty, for the use and enjoyment of the inhabitants of the City of Boston.” John Singer Sargent did this sketch of the philanthropist in 1917. The Angel of Peace was sculpted by Daniel Chester French and installed in 1905 on the White Lot on Magnolia Avenue. The angel stands majestically with clasped hands in a classically draped gown and robust outstretched wings. The landscaping was designed by the firm of Olmstead Brothers to enhance the sculpture. Another angel memorial for White, also sculpted by Daniel Chester French, was erected in 1924 in the Boston Public Garden, which depicted an angel casting bread upon the water. White Stadium in Franklin Park was named in his honor.

Let Us Emulate the Enlightened

2009-12-11T15:50:00.003-05:00

As Henry A.S. Dearborn said in 1847 “Let us then emulate the enlightened and pious, the good and great, the affectionate and generous, the kind and the magnanimous of all other nations and ages, that were most distinguished for their advancement in civilization, and enable our fellow citizens to pay all possible respect and honor to the remains of those whom they loved and revered when living.” Thus, the rural cemetery was not just a link to nature, landscape design and horticulture, but also a link to architecture that embraced and enhanced the rural ideal, while serving a very necessary function. The buildings, gateways, fences and assorted structures erected at Forest Hills Cemetery were built for intended purposes, but their design and materials were reflective of Dearborn’s vision of integrating the ideal of romantic landscape design with symbolically appropriate architecture. The first thing seen by those arriving via Forest Hills Avenue was the gateway, originally a wood Egyptian Revival gateway that was replaced by a grander one of Roxbury puddingstone in 1865. This was an aesthetic experience and in some ways must have reassured mourners that this was a sacred place that was to embrace and offer a consoling garden sanctuary. Embracing the wooded landscape and the rough outcropping of Roxbury puddingstone rather than eliminating them, the cemetery evolved as a distinctive and unique interpretation of a rural cemetery.

Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design
Stephen Gardiner

Rock Maple Avenue

2009-12-11T10:49:00.003-05:00

Rock Maple Avenue, seen from the junction of Cedar and Tupelo Avenues, leads to White Oak Avenue and has terraced lots on the right with granite curbing and flights of stairs leading to the large family graves. These curbed lots, many replete with granite balusters and curbing, created a distinctively urban feel, almost recreating the urban residential streetscapes of Victorian Boston. The more flat and regular area on the left is a triangular area bounded by Cedar and Lake Avenues and the area were laid out with such names as Peony, Evergreen, Elder, Brook, Arethusa, Pyrola, Mimosa, Camellia and Veronica Paths.

Quincy Adams Shaw

2009-12-09T16:01:00.006-05:00

Quincy Adams Shaw (1825-1908) was a major investor in the Calumet & Hecla Copper Mines with his brother-in-law Henry L. Higginson. The copper mining property had been prospected by Louis Agassiz, and his son Alexander Agassiz, who was developing it and which proved to be an immensely important prospect. Quincy Adams Shaw was a major art collector and donated numerous impressionistic paintings by Jean-Francois Millet, Corot’s Dante and Virgil, as well as Donatello’s the Madonna of the Clouds to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He and his wife Pauline Agassiz Shaw lived in a large mansion on Perkins Street in Jamaica Plain, fronting onto Jamaica Pond and summered in Prides Crossing on Boston's North Shore. He was the son of Robert Gould and Elizabeth Willard Parkman Shaw and was named after John Quincy Adams. He was graduated from Harvard in the class of 1845, and over the next few years he and Henry Lee Higginson, his brother in law, shared the tremendous efforts that were made before the Calumet & Hecla mine became a dividend payer; it is said that Mr. Shaw put in nearly all the money he had before this happened. He picked up all he could afford to buy, even when it was selling at $1 a share. However, it was a lucrative if speculative business and when he died the June 13, 1908 edition of the Boston Daily Globe said that "Quincy A. Shaw [was] the heaviest individual taxpayer in Massachusetts, the largest individual owner of Calumet & Hecla stock in the state, and the head of the family whose members in various ways have done much to promote the educational and commercial interests of Boston" and had the cumbersome title as the "Heaviest Individual Taxpayer in the State." In fact he was said to be the wealthiest man in New England upon his death. Shaw was buired in a large lot on Nesutan Avenue on Eliot Hill.

Twentieth Century Vista

2009-12-09T10:05:00.003-05:00

This early twentieth century vista, looking south from Elm Avenue, shows the stone Canterbury Street Lodge (sometimes referred to as the Beech Avenue Chapel) in the center distance at the Canterbury Street gate. The open lands on the left were later to become St. Michael’s Cemetery, primarily an Italian Roman Catholic cemetery; to the left of the statue in the center can be seen the Edmund March Wheelwright (1854-1912) designed buildings of Austin Farm, the former property of Arthur Austin who is called the "Father of West Roxbury," and who successfully persuaded his neighbors to become an independent town known as West Roxbury in 1851. The property was later used as the Mattapan State Hospital and more recently as the Boston Nature Center of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. In the center is the statue monument on that grave of George B. Smith (1868-1949) and on the left, that of Nathan Sawyer (1819-1889.)

2009-12-04T22:39:00.004-05:00

Marshall Pinckney Wilder (1798-1886) was a distinguished and well respected horticulturist. He had purchased the farm of Governor Increase Sumner and created an estate near Grove Hall in Dorchester, Massachusetts that was known as “Hawthorne Grove.” Throughout the mid nineteenth century he developed an extensive pear orchard that contained at one time 800 cultivars, and his Dorchester Nursery was among the first mail order businesses for plants, seeds and bulbs. Wilder served as the third president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, from 1840-1847, as well as president of the American Pomological Society, which since 1873 awards the "Wilder Medal" which is given to pomologists who have contributed most to the improvement of cultivars of various kinds of fruit in this country. Wilder was probably best known for hybrizing camellias and among them are the award winning Camellias Wilderi, Mrs. Abby Wilder, Mrs. Julia Wilder and the Jenny Wilder. From his estate in 1839 went to the Boston Public Garden the entire collection of greenhouse and garden plants.

Oliver Ditson

2009-11-27T14:23:00.004-05:00

Oliver Ditson (1811-1888) was one of this country’s most successful music publishers in the Victorian period. The Oliver Ditson Company in Boston was to publish "a wider variety of music, music journals, and music education books than had ever before been available." "Jingle Bells" was first published by Oliver Ditson in Boston in 1857 and the lively holiday tune became one of the most popular songs ever heard at Christmas time. During the American Civil War, Ditson released a number of popular songs, including the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Tenting on the Old Camp Ground." Following Ditson’s death, his music publishing company continued unabated until it was purchased by Theodore Presser in Philadelphia. The Theodore Presser Company acquired the Oliver Ditson Company in 1931. Through this acquisition, Presser can trace its origins to 1783, when Batelle's Book Store (later the Oliver Ditson Company), began a music publishing business in Boston. The monumental and impressive St John the Evangelist was sculpted by Thomas Ball (1819-1911) in 1873 and placed on the Ditson Family Lot on Rhododendron Path. Ball was a well known sculptor and his equestrian statue of General George Washington was erected in 1869 in the Boston Public Garden, facing the Commonwealth Avenue Mall.

Father of Shingle Style Architecture

2009-11-25T15:04:00.004-05:00

William Ralph Emerson was a noted architect in Boston a century ago. He extolled the virtue of the "Shingle Style" of architecture, which had a direct reflection on the First Period of American architecture, but also with a touch of the exuberance and pomp of late Victorian architecture. In the period between 1865 and 1917, he made important contributions to architecture. It was said in his profession as an architect, he had won a high place, and that his designs of buildings were of great refinement, especially in country houses which are found throughout the Boston area and in Maine.

William Ralph Emerson (1833-1917) was the son of William and Olive Bourne Emerson, and was raised in Alton, Illinois. As a young man he came to Boston to live with his uncle George Emerson, whose home was on Pemberton Square in Boston, and where he trained as an architect in the office of Jonathan Preston (1801-1888.) In 1857, Emerson and Preston formed an architectural partnership which lasted four years; in 1864 he partnered with Carl Fehmer (1864-1873) and they continued as partners for nine years.

William Ralph Emerson initially designed in the classical revival style, of which his Post Office and Courthouse in Portland, Maine were important early examples. However by 1875 he was designing impressive structures that embraced Victorian elements such as the "Stick Style" and the beginnings of the "Shingle Style," among them the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital (1875) and the Boston Art Club (1881) in the South End and the Back Bay of Boston respectively. In 1871 Emerson, with Carl Fehmer, designed the impressive Receiving Tomb at Forest Hills Cemetery. The Receiving Tomb was said in Boston Illustrated in 1872 to be “the finest receiving-tomb in any cemetery in the country… and is built in the Gothic style of architecture in Concord granite.” The portico is of white Concord granite with an oak ceiling, and its floor paved with French encaustic tiles. However it was said that "country houses were his specialty, and many of the more noteworthy at Bar Harbor and Newport were designed by him." Emerson's first wife was Katherine Mears, who was the mother of the Harvard educated architect Ralph Lincoln Emerson, and his second wife was Sylvia Hathaway Watson, the daughter of Robert Sedgwick Watson of Milton.

Though Emerson was part of the city and its greater metropolis, he designed impressive residences in Milton, among the "The Pines," the home of The Misses Forbes and which was considered the premier "Stick Style" house, the Eustis and Tileston Estates, houses on Adams Street on Milton Hill and his own house on Randolph Avenue in Milton. With over five decades as an independent architect, William Ralph Emerson maintained a well connected Boston base with memberships in the American Institute of Architects, the Boston Society of Architects, the Boston Athenaeum and the Union Club. He was erudite, educated and well informed. He "lived on the gentler side of life, with books and art and the higher interests of his city, and Boston owes him much."

William Ralph Emerson was buried on Brook Path at Forest Hills Cemetery but no monument has yet been erected to mark the resting place of the "Father of Shingle Style Architecture."

“If I ever do take up charity, I intend to do it, and not half do it”

2009-11-18T15:11:00.010-05:00

Amelia Peabody (1890-1984) was a noted sculptor having studied under Charles Grafly at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and with such important artists as Bela Pratt and Edmund Tarbell, as well as in New York City and Paris. She commissioned a solar studio in her home and would sculpt her whole adult life. Her impressive work was exhibited widely, including at the New York World’s Fair (1939 and 1940), the Whitney Museum of Art, and locally at the Boston Athenaeum.

Amelia Peabody was the daughter of Gertrude Bayley Peabody (1859-1937) and Frank Everett Peabody (1856-1918,) who was graduated in 1877 from Massachusetts Insitute of Technology. Her grandfather Francis Peabody was associated with the banking house John E. Thayer & Brother with his brother Oliver White Peabody, and in 1865, Francis Peabody, Henry Purkitt Kidder, and Oliver White Peabody formed Kidder, Peabody & Co., and later her father was to become a partner. She was said to have “created a life-long reputation in her own right, not only for her artistry, but also for her philanthropy, patronage of the arts, civic leadership, love of animals, and equestrian pursuits.” She created two charitable foundations that after her death continue her benevolence to a wide spectrum of worthy charities.

Following World War I, Amelia Peabody began buying farmland in Dover, Massachusetts, where she was to devote herself to horse riding and animal husbandry. Over the next six decades, she acquired adjoining parcels of land, eventually forming an eight hundred acre estate that she called "Mill Farm" where she generously invited the public to share her many agricultural and conservation interests. Miss Peabody developed bridle paths throughout the lands she acquired for both herself and the Norfolk Hunt Club. By the end of World War II, she had acquired a herd of Hereford cattle and a number of Yorkshire pigs, the best specimens of which she entered in livestock shows throughout the region. Her immensely popular “Field days” for pig farmers and cattle breeders were frequently held at her farm. For many years, she was the Chairman of the Arts and Skills Service of the American Red Cross, which promoted art therapy for wounded servicemen during World War II, and continued to promote art therapy for hospital patients of all kinds after the War.

The Peabody Lot is set in a dense grove of evergreen trees at the junction of Lime and Chestnut Avenues, and is marked by a huge Roxbury puddingstone boulder with the family name unobtrusively carved on the front.

Ten Times Ten Is One

2009-11-17T15:08:00.006-05:00

Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909) was pastor of the South Congregational Church in Boston’s South End from 1856 to 1899. A graduate of Harvard College, class of 1839, Hale was the son of Nathan Hale, proprietor and editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser and the nephew of the great nineteenth century orator Edward Everett. Hale married Emily Baldwin Perkins in 1852.

Hale is probably best known as the author of A Man Without a Country which was published in 1863, and did much to strengthen the Union cause during the Civil War; in this book, as in some of his other non-romantic tales, he employed a minute realism which led his readers to suppose the narrative a record of fact rather than of historical fiction. His portrait was painted by his son Philip Leslie Hale (1865-1931) who is also buried in the family lot at Forest Hills Cemetery, along with his artist wife Lillian Clark Westcott Hale and their prolific authoress daughter Anna Westcott ("Nancy") Hale Hardin Wertenbaker Bowers. Combining a forceful personality, organizing genius, and liberal practical theology, Hale was active in raising the tone of American life for half a century. He had a deep and avbiding interest in the anti-slavery movement, as well as popular education, and the working-man's home. In addition to his long service as a minister, Hale was also an assistant editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser and edited the Christian Examiner, Old and New (which he assisted in founding in 1869 and which merged with Scribner's in 1875), Lend a Hand (which he founded in 1886 and which merged with the Charities Review in 1897), and the Lend a Hand Record. One of his charming two volume history of Boston and its personmages was Memories of a Hundred Years (1902.) He was also the prolific author or editor of more than sixty books, among them fiction, travel, sermons, biography and history.

In regards to his longstanding motto "Ten Times Ten Is One," Reverend Hale once said, "I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I should do and, with the help of God, I will do." This motto was first enunciated in 1869 in his Lowell Institure lectures which extolled "Look up and not down, look forward and not back, look out and not in, and lend a hand." This challenging motto was the basis for the formation of Lend-a-Hand Clubs, Look-up Legions and Harry Wadsworth Clubs for young people.

In 1903 he became Chaplain of the United States Senate, and lived in Washington, D.C.

The Hale Family monument is on Ageratum Path.

Madame Hepzibah Clarke Swan

2009-11-15T13:39:00.005-05:00

Hepzibah Clarke Swan (1757–1825) was a wealthy and well connected heiress who was among the most cosmopolitan, intelligent, and erudite of ladies in Federal Boston. Madame Swan was said to be charismatic, not least because of her wealth but also in good measure because of her effusive personal charm. With her close friend Sarah Wentworth Aprthorp Morton, they founded the Sans Souci Club in Boston, which revelled without regret! Her estranged husband, James Swan, who lived out his adult life in splendour in a Paris debtors prison, also sat for his portrait that was painted by Gilbert Stuart. She was to commission a portrait of her longtime companion, General Henry Jackson (1747-1809) who is also buried in the family lot at Forest Hills Cemetery. But while this sophisticated and charming doyenne of Boston society was said to enjoyed the rapt attention of many, she was also said to be a pendant to no one man in particular, neither in her long and eventful life nor in her soignee portrait. The Swan Family sandstone obelisk is located on Lilac Path and was originally erected in a secluded area of the Swan Estate on Dudley Street in Dorchester, Massachusetts where her companion General Henry Jackson, and later Madame Swan, was interred. Charles Bulfinch had designed her elegant Parisian inspired country house in Dorchester (as well of that of SArah Morton's who was also Bulfinch's cousin) and though she kept a town house on Franklin Place in Boston, it was a favorite resort for family and friends and where she entertained the Marquis de La Fayette on his triumphal tour of the Unuted States on the fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution. In 1872, with the sale of the estate and the encroachment of development after Dorchester had been annexed to the city of Boston in 1870, the obelisk and the bodies were removed by the family to Forest Hills Cemetery. The development of Woodward Park had been laid out through the once elegant grounds, and her descendants lived on Beacon Hill and Milton. In front of the sandstone obelisk is a large white marble urn that marks the graves of her daughter and grandchildren, members of the Sargent Family.

The Barron of Wall Street

2009-11-14T22:38:00.003-05:00

Clarence Walker Barron (1855-1928) is considered one of the most influential figures in the history of Dow Jones & Company. As a career newsman he was described as a "short, rotund powerhouse," but he died holding the posts of president of Dow Jones and de facto manager of The Wall Street Journal.

He is appropriately considered the founder of modern financial journalism.

Barron was graduated from Boston English High School in 1873. He was married to Jessie M. Waldron in 1900 and would adopted her daughters, Jane and Martha, and they lived at 334 Beacon Street in Boston's Back Bay. He was generous to charity and endowed the Clarke School for the Deaf with two million dollars. Jessie Waldron Barron died in 1918 and his adopted daughter Jane Barron married Hugh Bancroft in 1907, and Martha Barron married Henry Wendell Endicott, heir apparent to the Endicott Shoe Company. Barron worked at a number of newspapers throughout his life, including the Boston Daily News and the Boston Evening Transcript. He founded the Boston News Bureau in 1887 and the Philadelphia News Bureau in 1897, supplying much needed financial news to brokers.

In March 1903, Barron purchased Dow Jones & Company, following the death of co-founder Charles Dow. In 1912, he became president, and had control of The Wall Street Journal. Barron was renowned for pushing for deep scrutiny of corporate financial records, and is thus considered the founder of modern financial journalism. Barron's personal credo, which he supposedly urged the Journal to print and to closely follow, was that "The Wall Street Journal must stand for what is best in Wall Street." He was to expanded the reach of his publishing empire by merging his two news bureaus into what was to become known as Dow Jones. By 1920, he had expanded the daily circulation of The Wall Street Journal from 7,000 to 18,750, and over 50,000 by 1930. He also worked hard to modernize operations by introducing modern printing presses and expanding the reporting corps.

In 1921, he founded the Dow Jones Financial Journal, Barron's National Financial Weekly, which was later to be renamed Barrons Magazine and he served as its first editor. He priced the financial magazine issues at ten cents and immediately saw circulation surge to 30,000 by 1926, with high popularity among investors and financiers. Barron was a prolific writer and published a large number of books, among them The Boston Stock Exchange (1893,) Federal Reserve Act (1914,) The Audacious War (1915,) The Mexican Problem (1917,) War Finance, As Viewed From the Roof of the World in Switzerland (1919,) Peace Finance (1920,) Lord's Money (1922,) Twenty-Eight Essays on the Federal Reserve Act and My Creed. The Barrons and their daughter Martha Barron Endicott and her husband H. Wendell Endicott share a large family lot on Milton Hill at Forest Hills Cemetery.

After his death, Barron's myriad responsibilities were split between his son-in-law Hugh Bancroft, who became president of Dow Jones & Company, and his friend Kenneth C. Hogate, who became the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal. The Bancroft Family remained the majority shareholder of Dow Jones until 2007 when Rupert Murdock's News Corporation won the support of 32 percent of the Dow Jones voting shares controlled by the Bancroft family, which was enough to ensure a comfortable margin of victory. In his book My Creed, Clarence Walker Barron expounded upon his thoughts:

I believe in service. I believe in the laws, in the happiness, in the mutuality of service. I know no other happiness, I know no other laws. There is no other happiness; there are no other laws. In The Wall Street Journal, I have sought to create a service. I have striven for a creation so founded in principles that it can live as a service—live so long as it abides in the laws of that service. I believe there is no higher service from government, from society, from journalism than the protection and upbuilding of the savings of the people. Savings in the United States may become investments, when guided by financial knowledge, more readily than in any other country of the world. Wall Street steadily improves and increases its service to the whole country by reflecting the true position of American and world investments. The Wall Street Journal must stand for the best that is in Wall Street and reflect that which is best in United States finance. Its motto is: "The Truth in its proper use."

"The Lamplighter"

2009-11-14T14:13:00.006-05:00

The concept of social reform and personal responsibility for the benefit of the less fortunate was a great factor in the behavior of many ninteenth century Bostonians, and no person was more aware of this than Miss Maria Susanna Cummins (1827-1866.)

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, she was a daughter of Maria Kittredge Cummins and the Honorable David Cummins, a well respected judge of the court of common pleas of Norfolk County. Educated at the exclusive Mrs. Charles Sedgwick's Young Ladies School in Lenox, she returned to her family home in Dorchester after her "finishing." The Cumminses were a well to do family of social standing, education and wealth, and they had moved to Dorchester's Meeting House Hill in the 1840s. They had purchased the former "Turk's Head Tavern" (later the site of St. Peter's School) on Bowdoin Street, an eighteenth century tavern that had been converted to a dwelling of large proportions which was needed as Judge Cummins had eight children. Once the Cumminses had settled, they began to attend the First Parish Church on Meeting House Hill, and Maria Cummins began to teach Sunday School at the church, where the first Sunday School class had been formed in 1822, and which was one of the first Unitarian classes in the Boston area. Under the direction of William Taylor Adams (whose nom de plum was "Oliver Optic,") Miss Cummins led a defined and religious life, devoting herself to her students. It was in 1850 that she undertook a novel to please her neices, the daughters of Edmund Pitt and Helen Cummins Tileston. Tileston was a cofounder with Mark Hollingsworth of the Tileston & Hollingsworth Paper Mill on the Neponset River. He was also a founder in 1843, the year of his marriage, of the Dorchester Historical & Antiquarian Society that survived until 1907 when it merged with the New England Historic and Genealogical Society. Florence, Grace and Katherine Tileston were doted upon by their aunt, and with the publication in 1854 of her book The Lamplighter, were obviously flattered by her attentions. Published anonymously, one reviewer called it "one of the most original and natural narratives," and the premise of the book was of a child lost in infancy, rescued from a cruel woman by an old lamplighter, adopted by a blind woman, and later discovered by her well-to-do father. The book was an immediate best-seller and a cultural phenomenon. Said to be second in sales only to Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," published two years earlier, it reportedly sold 20,000 copies in twenty days and 65,000 copies in five months. The success of "The Lamplighter" was not limited to America, for it sold over 100,000 copies in Britain alone. At least thirteen British firms published the novel, often in multiple editions. It was to be translated into several different languages, including French, German, and Dutch, and it continued to sell well into the twentieth century.

In the period between 1857 and her death in 1866, Maria Cummins was also the author of "Mabel Vaughan" in 1857, "El Fureidis" in 1860, "Haunted Hearts" in 1864 and "Little Gerty" in 1869. She also contributed numerous articles to the "Atlantic Monthly." All of her books were of a semi-religious and benevolent aspect, and were well received by her avid readers. Of a deeply religious nature herself, Maria Cummins had joined the First Parish Church in 1864, over twenty years after she began attending divine services. She was buried from the church in 1866, and was interred in the family lot at Forest Hills Cemetery.

New England's First Crematorium

2009-11-11T12:03:00.003-05:00

The Massachusetts Cremation Society opened a crematorium on Walk Hill Street in 1893, which was financed by local cremation societies. This was a radical, and highly controversial topic in late Victorian Boston and was widely covered in both the local and national press. The building was designed by local architect Ludvig Sandoe Ipsen (1840-1920) and built of Roxbury felsite in the classical style; a later addition, designed by Thomas Fox and Edward Gale, was built in 1905 with a basement columbaria. The first cremation in New England took place here in 1893, and was that of Lucy Stone (1818-1893) a well known Bostonian who had been the first Massachusetts woman to be graduated from college (Oberlin in 1838,) the first woman in the United States to retain her maiden name after her marriage (to Henrey Browne Blackwell in 1855) and the first woman editor of a newspaper ("The Woman's Journal" in Boston.) In 1925, Forest Hills Cemetery acquired the crematory, and since that time has almost tripled its size. Dr. James Read Chadwick (1844-1905) was the first president of the Massachusetts Cremation Society. A graduate of Harvard College and of the Harvard Medical School, he served as president of the American Gynecological Society, the Dorchester Medical Society and as an officer and librarian of the Boston Medical Library. Two decades after the death of Dr. Read, the crematory was sold to Forest Hills Cemetery, which has operated it since that time.

Simon Willard: Master Clockmaker

2009-11-10T14:56:00.005-05:00

“Time was when it was a requisite to have one of Willard’s clocks…as it is now to have a piano forte.”

[1856 biography on Willard]

Simon Willard is considered one of the finest clock makers in American history. His tall clocks were made by hand, and placed in impressive “Roxbury cases” as well as his patent timepieces, commonly known as banjo clocks, which were prized possessions when new, and which are today coveted by families who inherited them as well as by collectors alike.

Simon Willard (1753-1848) was the seventh son of Benjamin and Sarah Brooks Willard, and was raised on a farm in Grafton where he and three of his brothers, Benjamin, Aaron and Ephraim became clock makers; Simon Willard was apprenticed at the age of thirteen to Mr. Morris in Grafton, learning his trade as a clockmaker. During the Revolution, he served in the Grafton Militia Company under Captain Aaron Kimball and was a “Minuteman” who responded to the Lexington alarm. In 1775, he married Hannah Willard, his first cousin, who died in childbirth the next year; his second wife was Mary Bird Leeds (1763-1823,) the daughter of Edward and Mary Starr Bird of Dorchester, and the widow of Richard Leeds, by whom he had eleven children.

Willard along with his brother Aaron Willard moved to Roxbury in 1780, to a small wood framed house at 2196 Roxbury (now Washington) Street, which led to “the Neck” the only land route into Boston and a prime location for his business. He lived and worked “At the Sign of the New Clock,” a large clock that projected from the building and became a prominent landmark and his “habits of industry, and the intense study of his art, left him but little time for attention to matters of public interest.” As a clockmaker, and an ingenious inventor, he patented in 1784 a clock jack that was used for roasting meat by rotation. In 1802 his “Willard Patent Timepiece” was recorded, and in 1819 his patent for an alarm clock was recorded; he also invented the machinery for the revolving lights for lighthouses. However, his skill as a hand maker of clocks was unrivaled and led to his being appointed, for fifty years, as Keeper of the Clocks at Harvard College, and commissions for a clock in the United States Capitol, the University of Virginia as well as gallery clocks (Roxbury Meetinghouse and the Second Church in Dorchester) as well as numerous turret clocks throughout New England. He retired in 1839 after seven decades of success with a name that had become synonymous with high quality timepieces and where he “passed his time in his family and shop; for the enjoyment of which ‘age withered not his powers.”

In later life, following the death of his wife in 1823, Simon Willard lived successively with his children, first at the home of Simon Willard, Jr. in Boston, then at Edward and Sarah Brooks Willard Bird on Boston Street (now Columbia Road) adjacent to the Old North Burying Ground, and later with his daughter Mary, the wife of Caleb Hobart. The Hobarts lived in an old house, later known as the Ruggles House, near the corner of Canton Avenue and Ruggles Lane, and here Caleb Hobart (1768-1843) worked as a butcher dealing chiefly in mutton. Hobart, a very married man having two wives and a large family before he married Mary Willard, owned a large tract of land just west of his home that was referred to as “Golgotha,” as “it was used as a place to dispose of the refuse from his slaughter house.” Of course, Jesus was crucified at Mount Calvary, and Golgotha known as the “place of the skull.” However, this area of Columbine and Valley Roads in the now elegant Columbine neighborhood of Milton, where Hobart deposited the accumulated refuse of his slaughter house, was so called for the vast amount of bones dumped there.

In the mid 1840’s Mary Willard Hobart (1793-1855) had taken her father in to live with her, as she had become a widow in 1843. Simon Willard, then an elderly man, had unimpaired sight and hearing, was described by his grandson, Alexander Claxton Cary as being a “little figure sitting in his arm chair by the window in Aunt Mary’s room at Milton. He used to sit in this arm chair most all day, now and then taking a short pair of steps by which he could reach the clock in the room, and opening it would do some little thing to it probably from habit, rather than from any fixing the clock needed. This clock was one of his own Timepieces. ….My brother tells me that at Milton, Grandfather went to visit Gen. [Moses] Whitney one day, upon coming home, our man Elijah offered to help Grandfather out of team. “Don’t help me out, don’t help me out,” said Grandfather “they will think I am an old man.”

Indeed by the mid 1840’s, Simon Willard was an old man, a grand old man, and had a justifiable reputation that was hard to emulate, even by his successful apprentices and rivals. He died in 1848 at the home of Isaac and Julia Willard Cary in Boston and was buried in the Eustis Street Burial Ground in Roxbury. His daughter Mary Hobart later moved her parents' remains to her lot at Forest Hills Cemetery where a Gothic brownstone monument designed by Alpheus Cary marks his final resting place. As it said in his obituary in the Boston Daily Advertiser that “Mr. Willard, after his long dealings with Time, has now left him for eternity. Pease [sic] to his blameless and honest memory!”

New Book on Forest Hills Cemetery

2009-11-07T08:06:00.003-05:00

SAVE THE DATE: Sunday November 15th at 4:00 PM

The launch of Anthony M. Sammarco's new book "Forest Hills Cemetery" will include a slide lecture and book signing at Forsyth Chapel, Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Avenue, Jamaica Plain. The cover of this lavishly illustrated book is of the Receiving Tomb at Forest Hills Cemetery which was designed by William Ralph Emerson and Carl Fehmer, partners in the architectural firm of Emerson & Fehmer in Boston, and built in 1871 on Consecration Avenue near the Main Gate. The high style granite Victorian Gothic Revival building has underground crypts where burials could be securely held during winter months while awaiting burial, or for transport elsewhere. Opposite the Receiving Tomb is a magnificent oval garden that has been bedded out with specimen plants and perennials for well over a century, with a central decorative playing fountain that was added in 1878.

Jacob Wirth: Lager King

2009-11-02T21:52:00.004-05:00

Jacob Wirth (1840-1892) was an immigrant from Kreuznach, Prussia who six years after he immigrated to America opened in 1868 his namesake Germanic beer-hall style restaurant on Stuart Street in Boston. Above the long mahogany bar is engraved the Latin motto “Suum Cuiqce” which literally translates “to each his own” and which aptly fits the character of this legendary restaurant. Jake Worth’s was operated by two generations of the family and has long been known for its delicious Sauerbraten and Weiner Schnitzel, and other traditional German style foods, as well as a wide selection of beers and lagers for every taste. The Jacob Wirth memorial Fame at Forest Hills Cemetery was sculpted by Adolph Robert Kraus and is located on a knoll overlooking Catalpa Avenue. This bronze monument is of a pensively draped allegorical female seated figure contemplating a cameo portrait of the famous restaurateur in the stele below. The monument was cleaned in 1997 through the generosity of the Fitzgerald Family, who had in 1975 bought the then century old Jacob Wirth Restaurant.

Author of the Suffolk Resolves

2009-10-31T21:08:00.004-04:00

Dr. Joseph Warren was a noted physician, Revolutionary War general and an ardent Son of Liberty. He was the son of Joseph and Mary Stevens Warren who lived in Roxbury, Massachusetts and had a large farm on what is now Warren Street. Dr. Joseph Warren was graduated from Harvard in 1759 and studied medicine with James Lloyd, opening his own medical practice in 1764. The same year he married Elizabeth Hooton and they would be the parents of Joseph, Richard, Elizabeth, and Mary Warren. His beloved wife, Elizabeth Hooton Warren, died in 1773, leaving him with young children to raise. In the early 1770s, he developed a close relationship with fellow patriots Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, and he was one of the original members of the patriotic organization, the Sons of Liberty. After the Boston Massacre, he was said to be at every town meeting, arguing for the rights of Americans, and in 1772 he made a speech for the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. Warren wrote the Suffolk Resolves, which said that the citizens of Massachusetts would create a militia to protect the citizens, and that if General Thomas Gage. who was then Royal Military Governor of Massachusetts, was to arrest anyone for political reasons, the citizens militia would retaliate by seizing crown officials as hostages. The Suffolk Resolves were signed at the Milton Village home of patriot Daniel Vose and then carried by Paul Revere on horseback to Philadelphia where they were accepted with great acclaim by the First Continental Congress, which directed that the colonies would support Massachusetts. On April 18, 1775, Warren sent Paul Revere and William Dawes by horseback to warn patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, as well as call out the citizens' militia, that the British Army was marching from Boston to the towns of Lexington and Concord to seize arms and rebels. Warren was chosen the Provincial President and on June 14 he was chosen as the second Major General of Massachusetts Militia. At the Battle of Bunker Hill he led the militia and while rallying them during one of the British advances on the hill, he was killed when a musket ball hit him in the back of the head, and died instantly. After the battle, he was removed from Bunker Hill and reinterred in the Minot Family tomb in the Granary Burial Ground, later being moved to the Warren Crypt at St Paul's Cathedral on Tremont Street in Boston. He was reinterred in the Warren Family Lot on Mount Warren in Forest Hills Cemetery, where family members were reinterred from the Eustis Street Burial Ground in Roxbury, their slate headstones encircling a huge boulder of Roxbury puddingstone.

November 15th Lecture and Book Signing

2009-10-30T11:42:00.003-04:00

The trustees of Forest Hills Cemetery and the trustees of the Forest Hills Educational Trust cordially invite you to join Anthony M. Sammarco – the author of more than 50 books on local history – as he unveils his latest title for Images of America: Forest Hills Cemetery.

A Book Party, Signing & Slide Lecture, co-sponsored by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society is on Sunday, November 15th @ 4:00 PM, at Forsyth Chapel, Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Avenue, Jamaica Plain.

Crammed with historic photographs, this fascinating “Who’s Who” of Victorian Boston introduces you to the financiers, industrialists, artists, radicals and revolutionaries buried in Boston’s premier cemetery. Find out “who’s in the book!” Purchase your own copy hot off the presses and have it signed by the author. $15/$10 Trust and JP Historical Society members.

If you support the the Trust’s education programs at this event by joining as a $100 Patron Member, we will thank you with a complimentary copy of Anthony M. Sammarco’s book

Forest Hills Cemetery as well as reduced admission!

The Soul of Milton Hill

2009-10-30T11:35:00.003-04:00

Richard H. Lufkin (1851-1922) was the inventor in 1877 of the vamp-folding machine that was to revolutionize the American shoe industry. A diploma from the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association stated that this “is a well-known and meritorious machine and is standard among shoe manufacturers. It turns the edges of leather and cloth for vamps or linings of shoe perfectly, making a superior finish indispensable in a nice fitted shoe. It is unrivalled and is in use in all parts of the country and also abroad.” This likeness of Lufkin, complete with his 22-pound vamp-folding machine, is in stained glass in his mausoleum. The Lufkin Mausoleum is prominently sited on Summit Circle on Milton Hill and was erected in 1928; the mausoleum serves not just as a memorial, but as a place of burial. Above the entrance and carved in enduring granite is the legend “The inventor of the first Vamp Folding Machine” with a three dimensional carving of the device with the patent date of 1877.

Jenney Oil & Gasoline: Fueling Boston

2009-10-25T13:48:00.004-04:00

Bernard Jenney (1827-1918) began the Jenney Manufacturing Company with his brother Francis H. Jenney in 1861; in 1812 their father Stephen Jenney had founded Jenney Oil Company in Boston as a kerosene, coal and whale oil concern. The Jenney bothers initially manufactured burning fluids, a mixture of camphene and alcohol, and after 1856 dealt exclusively in the production and distribution of petroleum. It was said that by the early twentieth century the works of Jenney Manufacturing Company in City Point, South Boston had a capacity of 500 barrels of oil a day. Jenney auto oil and gasoline became a major supplier by the time of 1920 and was a merged into Cities Service about 1965 and the Jenney name was ignobly replaced by Citgo. The Jenney family monument is on Carnation Path.

Flier of the "Black Horse" Flag

2009-10-23T07:02:00.003-04:00

William Fletcher Weld (1800-1881) was a shipping magnate during the golden age of sail. Weld entered the shipping trade that had enriched his father, William Gordon Weld. By 1833, Weld had made enough money to commission "The Senator", the largest ship of her time. Weld eventually became one of the most successful merchant ship owners in America, and he operated fifty one sailing vessels and ten steamers. His fleet sailed under the name and symbol of the "Black Horse Flag". He later invested in real estate and in railroad expansion. Weld multiplied his family's fortune into a huge legacy for his descendants and the public, donating Weld Hall at Harvard in memory of his brother Stephen Minot Weld (1806-1867.) The Weld Family Lot is on Linden Avenue and is marked by an octagonal white marble Gothic spire with shields along the base for each of the family members’ names interred here. Among them are William F. Weld’s first wife Mary Perez Bryant Weld (1804-1836) and his second wife Isabella M. Walker Weld (1812-1906.)

2009-10-22T08:23:00.001-04:00

The Forest Hills Educational Trust is a nonprofit organization founded in 1991 to preserve, enhance, interpret and celebrate Forest Hills Cemetery. The Trust organizes a variety of programs inspired by the Cemetery’s unique environment – walking tours, concerts, poetry readings, a summer camp program, and adventurous exhibitions of contemporary art as well as ceremonies of remembrance. These activities are designed to invite the community to explore one of the city’s treasures. At first, many people are surprised to find so much happening in a cemetery. However, they quickly realize that Forest Hills is an extraordinary resource, a place to experience art, nature, and history as well as a tranquil sanctuary for reflection and remembrance

The Trust’s expert tour guides – many of them volunteers – give visitors a glimpse of the history of Boston through the stories of the people buried at Forest Hills. Other tours reveal the meaning of the symbols carved in stone memorials – oak leaves for strength, ivy for a faithful nature – and stop at bronze and marble sculpture by the most eminent artists of the 19th and early 20th century; the Trust raises funds to engage conservators every year to care for some of these endangered masterpieces, which are damaged by pollution and New England weather. The Lantern Festival and a traditional Day of the Dead are major community events that draw thousands every year; the beauty and spirituality of Forest Hills make it an inspiring setting to gather and celebrate the memory of family and friends. The Trust’s exhibitions of contemporary art offer new ways to think about age-old themes of family, ancestors, nature, remembrance, the cycles of life, and the world of the spirits. These programs are extremely innovative and have become a national model; however, the Trust is working to restore the original vision of the Cemetery as a destination, a welcoming place for the living as well as an eternal home for the dead.

The Creator of Forest Hills Cemetery

2009-10-22T06:55:00.004-04:00

In the creation of Forest Hills, General Henry A.S. Dearborn with his own hand “marked out the winding avenues and shaded paths, observing how each should reveal some beauty while making available the gentle slopes or the rugged steeps as resting places for the dead…He modeled the imposing gateway at the principal entrance; he projected the chief adornments, and in a word, he stamped his own idea upon the cemetery in all the varied forms with which art has developed and increased the beauties of nature, an untiring industry, and a pious regard for the claims of the dead. Hardly was there a sign that he even desired to associate his name so intimately with the sacred shades of Forest Hills… though such an ambition were no unworthy one. But he labored rather for the love of his work, for the honor of the dead and the solace of the living.” In some ways, Victorians believed that “nature offered special keys for unlocking the mysteries of life and death.” In essence, Forest Hills Cemetery began in 1848 with what was then “a radical plan for burial and commemoration that linked nature, landscape design, and horticulture with art and architecture.”

Calm woodland shade! We here would lay
The ashes of our loved away;
And come at length ourselves to sleep,
Where thou wilt peaceful vigil keep.

from a Hymn composed by the Reverend C.H. Fay and sung at the consecration of Forest Hills Cemetery on June 28, 1848

Death Staying the Sculptor's Hand

2009-10-21T13:41:00.003-04:00

The Milmore Monument is known as Death Staying the Sculptor’s Hand, and is considered to be the masterpiece of Daniel Chester French. This memorial celebrates the lives of sculptor Martin Milmore (1844-1883) and his brother Joseph (1841-1886), a talented stonecutter who taught the art of carving to Martin. The beautiful allegorical figure of the Angel of Death gently lays her hand on the sculptor’s hand, as a reminder that she has come to usher him away. In her other hand Death carries a bouquet of poppies, which holds the promise of eternal sleep. The sculptor, wearing his work apron and holding his tools, is surprised, bewildered and seemingly unwilling to be interrupted. Martin Milmore was a native of Sligo, Ireland and a tall man with large dark eyes and unruly long dark hair; he was said to be “a picturesque figure” by his sculptor friend Daniel Chester French. He cut a dashing figure in his signature black broad brimmed hat and cloak and his “appearance was striking, and he knew it.” Milmore’s soul inspiring statues and monuments to the Union dead served as models for a generation of sculptors. The Milmore Monument was originally at the triangular lot bounded by Poplar Avenue, on the left, and Cypruss Avenue, and was beside the Hanley Family Mausoleum. The monument was moved in 1943 at the request of the Milmore family to its present site, near the Gateway on Forest Hills Avenue, and the lot landscaped by Arthur Ashael Shurcliff and Sidney Nichols Shurcliff.

Adolph Kraus' "Grief"

2009-10-21T12:55:00.002-04:00

The Randidge Monument on Fir Avenue commemorates George L. Randidge (1820-1890) and was executed in 1891 by sculptor Adolph Robert Kraus, with the enormous plinth base designed by the Boston architectural firm of Fehmer and Page. The bronze seated figure of Grief in classical robes leans in sorrow on an inverted torch; bronze funerary urns decorate the four corners of the base, which was designed by noted architects Carl Fehmer and Samuel F. Page. Said at the time of its unveiling the “whole monument in its chaste correctness and simplicity, its rich low color, a peculiar brownish granite polish, is a model for emulation in our cemeteries.” Adolph Robert Kraus was the sculptor of Grief, which is a poignant and somber rendering of a mourning maiden, resting her head on her hand which grasps an inverted torch which symbolizes death. Kraus was a well-known sculptor who also did the Jacob Wirth Memorial Fame and the bust of Karl Heinzen that surmounts his monument.

General Taylor of the "Boston Globe"

2009-10-21T07:35:00.002-04:00

General Charles H. Taylor (1846-1921) was a veteran of the Civil War, having served in the 38th Massachusetts Regiment. After working as a reporter for a few years, he purchased the “Boston Globe” in 1877, which had been founded five years previously, and set about creating the ideal of the modern newspaper of the Victorian era. Taylor began to publish an evening edition, a morning edition as well as a Sunday edition as a family newspaper, thereby pleasing the entire household while increasing its coverage for all of New England. Taylor was also the pioneer of the ten-cent magazine known as “American Homes.” Taylor had served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and as editor and publisher of the newspaper, which included three generations of his family. The Taylor Family Lot is on White Oak Avenue, and is dominated by a large hammered stone with a bronze tablet to Charles H. Taylor and Georgianna Davis Taylor. On either side of the lot are upright limestone crosses for members of the Taylor Family, all of which is encircled by large mature rhododendrons

Mayor Lewis of the City of Roxbury

2009-10-20T15:54:00.003-04:00

George Lewis (1820-1887) was the last mayor of the city of Roxbury before it was annexed in 1868 to Boston. A merchant in Boston, he served in various capacities as an alderman of Roxbury, a director of the Roxbury Gas Light Company and treasurer of the Granite Railway Company. He served as a trustee, commissioner and treasurer at Forest Hills Cemetery. His white marble bust, sculpted in 1868 by Martin Milmore, is in the collection of Forest Hills Cemetery. The Lewis Family Lot is on Cherry Avenue. Elijah Lewis (1773-1858) and Elizabeth Sumner Lewis (1791-1874) chose a white marble four-sided Gothic inspired monument, which is also the resting place of Mayor George Lewis (1820-1887,) the last mayor of Roxbury before it was annexed to Boston in 1868, and of his wife Susan Minns Lewis, and their descendants.