The City Record and Boston News-Letter

Political Places of Boston on the Road

Clint Richmond, author of Political Places of Boston, sent me notice of the following events:

1) Sep. 15 (Sat.), 10:30 am, Walk Boston tour of the South End starting at the Mass Ave. T station. "Political Places of Boston: South End Tour - from Boston Arena to City Hospital". $10 for non-members. For more information visit www.walkboston.org or call 617-367-9255 to register.

2) Sep. 18 (Tue.), 6 pm. "Political Places of Boston: Municipal sites -famous and overlooked". Sponsored by the Friends of the City Archives, at Doyle's, 3484 Washington Street, Jamaica Plain. Free. For information, visit the Friends at www.orgsites.com/ma/boston-friends

These should be fun and informative events and I hope City Record readers will find time to attend.

Shark Attack!

Seeing as how Jay Fitzgerald at Hub Blog is shamelessly trying to drive traffic to his blog via his "Shark Week" post, the City Record and Boston News-Letter is compelled to remind its readers that the Museum of Fine Arts has an excellent depiction of a historic shark attack in its collection, John Singleton Copley's 1778 masterpiece "Watson and the Shark".  Brook Watson survived the shark attack and went on to become Lord Mayor of London and commissioned Copley to create the painting.  Copley's name remains in Boston's history as "Copley Square", the reasons for which J. L. Bell explores over at Boston 1775.  And to complete the circle, the MFA's location was in Copley Square before moving out Huntington Avenue.  To quote the A-Team's Hannibal Smith: "I love it when a plan [or blog post, ed.] comes together!"

News of the Day, 7-8-9 August

More news from An Almanac for Bostonians, 1939, just to bring everyone up to date:

7 August

The West Point cadets made their first visit to town on this day in 1821.  Everyone turned out to see them march, including a lot of folks from neighboring towns. * * * Boston was all stirred up in 1880 over the prospect of the construction of an elevated railway.

8 August

New England Rum was retailing at 35 cents a gallon in 1827. * * * Spiritualist mediums were holding a convention in Washington Hall in 1852.

9 August

All business suspended on this day in 1642.  Everybody who was anybody was over at "Newetowne" (Cambridge) where the college was holding its first commencement. * * * A "Dreadful fate awaits those who travel by proposed steam railways," it was dispassionately predicted on this day in 1827 by a Stage Line publication.

Boston's Population, 1638-1880

The population of Boston, 1638-1880 from the 1890 Boston Municipal Register. Click to enlarge, otherwise you won't be able to read a thing.

I've had a lot of searches recently looking for information on Boston's population a subject which has long been of interest to readers of the City Record (See the  Boston Population 2004, Boston Population 2006, and Boston Population 2006 Revised Upward posts).  The chart above provides a handy overview of Boston's population between 1638 and 1880 because it breaks down population growth in Boston proper as well as for the communities which would eventually be annexed by Boston.  The handwritten notation on the chart shows the fact-checking of the 1890 Municipal Register: the Boston Record Commissioners (that's the BRC you see on the image) were engaged in a project to transcribe and republish Boston's early records and a different population total was found in the early records than had been previously reported.  What I find most interesting about the population statistics is how few people remained in Boston in 1776.

I Wonder if She Could Declare War on the Duck Boats?

The City Record and Boston News-Letter is currently on vacation in an undisclosed location, but that won't stop us from occasionally posting.  We found a copy of An Almanac for Bostonians 1939 at a used book dealer in Townsend, MA, and bought it as we were traveling to the aforementioned secure bunker/lake home.  The almanac, which was compiled by the workers of the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration in Massachusetts, is a compendium of useful and not so useful information about Boston, to wit:

4 August:  Shirley Temple was made Admiral of the Swan Boat Fleet in the Public Garden in 1938.

5 August:  On this day in 1877 there were 2332 licensed liquor purveyors in the city.

6 August: In 1855 the city was annoyed by a gang of rowdies who were breaking the monotony of the long summer evenings by beating up the police in Essex Street.  Another minor irritation was the number of mosquitoes about.  Favorite remedy was the application of moistened cigar ashes to the injured spot.

Championship Baseball in Boston, 1891

Undated newspaper clipping from 1891 from an unidentified Boston newspaper (Image copyright The City Record and Boston News-Letter, all rights reserved)

I recently acquired a copy of the 1890 Boston Municipal Register which appears to have been originally owned by Thomas N. Hart, who was Mayor of Boston for 1889-90 and again from 1900-1902. (for his initial term, Hart defeated Boston's first Irish mayor, Hugh O'Brien).  Hart used his copy of the Muncipal Register as a scrapbook, pasting in newspaper clippings, letters and notes from city employees and other acquaintances, pieces of research he had conducted on the census, street railway ridership, and a host of other subjects.  The book is a fascinating look into how Boston's city government operated a little over a hundred years ago.  I will be scanning and posting some of the more interesting items in upcoming weeks, but the initial item is one that Hart hadn't intended to save because it was found on the back of newspaper clipping of an obituary.

I've written previously about the Congress Street Baseball Grounds, primarily because of its use as the temporary home for the Boston National League team when the South End Grounds burned in 1894.  But as the clipping above shows, the Boston Reds, who played in the American Association in 1891, also played at Congress Street. 

The Boston Reds began their 1891 season training in Charlottesville, Virginia and decimated the American Association during the regular season.  Managed by Arthur Irwin and led by  Hugh Duffy, the Reds finished in first place that year with a 93-42 record.  The St. Louis Browns, under the leadership of player/manager Charles Comiskey (Comiskey would eventually buy the Chicago White Sox, hence Comiskey Park in Chicago) finished second. (Statistics from baseball-reference.com, my favorite baseball research site)  Longstanding conflicts  between the two professional leagues kept Boston's National League team, the Braves, from meeting the Reds in a championship game (in prior years the National League champion had met the American Association champion) so it appears that Boston and St. Louis agreed to play one another as a substitute.  I've not found an account of the game they played, but will update as soon as I can.  What were some of the differences between the American Association and the National League?  According to Wikipedia,

The American Association offered cheaper ticket prices and more liberal libations to its patrons, and became known as "The Beer and Whiskey League", especially by supporters of the National League, in reference to the fact that many of its biggest backers were breweries and distilleries. The NL at that time prohibited the sale of alcohol on its grounds."

After the 1891 season, the American Association disbanded (selling beer only gets one so far), with some of its teams joining the National League, and its star players moving over to the National League, including Hugh Duffy, who simply switched to the Boston Braves where he starred for several years, including hitting .440 in 1894, an average greatly inflated by the return of the Braves to the Congress Street Grounds after the Great Roxbury Fire of 1894 left the team homeless.

The image below, from an 1899 map of Boston, shows the Congress Street Grounds as open space, but one can also see the projections for the new wharves and Northern Avenue.  The rail lines shown on the 1891 map above are gone.  Click image to enlarge. (Image copyright the City Record and Boston News-Letter, all rights reserved)

City of Boston Statues through 1930

Statues Belonging to City, Located in Parks and Public Grounds, from the 1930 Boston City Register            

Samuel Adams            
Adams Square      1880    Anne Whitney

Robert Burns            
Back Bay Fens     1919    Henry H. Kitson

Colonel Thomas Cass      
Public Garden    1899    Richard E. Brooks

Leif Ericsson                
Commonwealth Ave.    1886    Anne Whitney

Edward Everett            
Edward Everett Square       1867    William W. Story

Admiral David G. Farragut      
Marine Park, South Boston     1893    Henry H. Kitson

Benjamin Franklin          
City Hall Grounds        1856    Richard S. Greenough

William Lloyd Garrison    
Commonwealth Ave.    1886    Olin L. Warner

General John Glover         
Commonwealth Ave.     1875    Martin Milmore

Edward Everett Hale       
Public Garden      1913    Bela L. Pratt

Alexander Hamilton       
Commonwealth Ave.     1865    William Rimmer

Wendell Phillips         
Public Garden       1915    Daniel C. French

Josiah Quincy          
City Hall Grounds     1879    Thomas Ball

Charles Sumner         
Public Garden     1878    Thomas Ball

General Joseph Warren
Warren Square, Roxbury     1904    Paul W. Bartlett

George Washington      
Public Garden      1869    Thomas Ball

John Winthrop    
First Church Grounds     1880    Richard S. Greenough

Labor Group      
Franklin Park      1930    Daniel G. French

Science Group   
Franklin Park    1930    Daniel G. French

I've not checked to see how many of these are still in place.

Every Man His Own Historian, Sort Of

"If the essence of history is the memory of things said and done, then it is obvious that every normal person, Mr. Everyman, knows some history."  Carl Becker, 1931.

But what exactly is the nature of the history people know?  I've recently noticed several instances of historical claims being made with little justification.  J. L Bell has been observing Framingham with a close eye, the Boston Globe examined the oldest house claims of the Fairbanks House in Dedham and the Balch House in Beverly, while I have found yet another misleading claim about the origins of public education in this country, among other historical problems.  Jay Fitzgerald nails it, albeit on a different subject:  we're in the "Worst Historical Analogies Ever War".

In today's Boston Globe I read a letter from David Martin of Dedham, a member of the town finance committee there.  Martin, in defending Dedham against what he sees as an unfair portrayal by the Globe, claims, "In 1643, Dedham voted to authorize the first taxpayer-funded free public school in the country and has embraced the importance of public education ever since".  Without veering to far into angels on the head of a pin territory, it should be noted that Dorchester created the first publicly funded school in America in 1639.  In May of that year, the town meeting (a form of government  created by Dorchester) declared:

"It is ordered that the 20th of May 1639, that there shalbe a rent paid of 20ls yeerely foreur imposed upon Tomsons Iland to bee payd p euy p'son that hat p'prtie in the said Iland according to the p'portion that any such p'son shall fro tyme to tyem injoy and posesse there, and this towards the mayntenance of a schoole in Dorchestr this rent of 20ls yeerlyl to bee payd to such a schoolemaster as shall undertake to teach english latin and other tongues and also writing...."

It is pretty simple really:  the oldest public school is Boston Latin School which was created by the town of Boston in 1635, although students had to pay to attend, the oldest free public school was created in Dorchester, and then there are the pretenders like Dedham and Rehoboth.  When the Globe addressed the origins of public education last year, I wrote a letter to the Globe trying to clear up the mystery.  I see it didn't stick.

As to the title of this post, I refer readers to Carl Becker's 1931 presidential address to the American Historical Association.  It is well worth reading.

Fourth of July Warning

Be careful and enjoy your holiday.

My thought for the last Fourth of July holiday bears repeating:

"It is a remarkable characteristic of an enlightened state of public opinion, though resulting from the operation of obvious principles, that a greater degree of power may be introduced into a frame of government, which has its origin in the people themselves; and that this power may be exercised with less public excitement and discontent, than a similar degree of power under a system which has its origin in an irresponsible source."

John Adams Dix, Sketch of Resources of the City of New York (1827)

The Original Mount Whoredom

J. L Bell investigates the origins of Mount Whoredom in Woolwich, just outside of London.  Woolwich was the site of a royal shipyard and, by happy coincidence, appears in yesterday's entry of the online diary of Samuel Pepys.   For those who haven't seen it, the online Pepys diary is a source of constant  fascination for those interested in 17th Century London.

The history of Boston's Mount Whoredom remains the single most popular post in the history of the City Record and Boston News-Letter with something like 12,000 visitors the day it appeared.