Dorchester
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Anthony Mitchell Sammarco
Anthony Mitchell Sammarco is a noted historian and author of over sixty books on Boston, its neighborhoods and surrounding cities and towns. He lectures widely on the history and development of his native city.
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Dorchester - Anthony Mitchell Sammarco
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INTRODUCTION
Settled in 1630 by a group of Puritans from the west country of England, Dorchester is among the oldest of the towns of Massachusetts Bay Colony. The vast boundaries of the town once reached from present-day South Boston to within a few hundred feet of the Rhode Island border, and included the present Boston neighborhoods of South Boston and Hyde Park, and the towns of Milton, Canton, Sharon, Stoughton, Foxboro, Wrentham, Raynham, and parts of Dedham and Squantum. As early as 1634, the Neponset River had been harnessed for waterpower, and mills grew up along its banks. Among these were a gristmill erected by Israel Stoughton, a gun-powder mill, a paper mill, and a chocolate mill, all of which lent prominence to the town and made Dorchester an industrial beehive.
For the first two centuries after the settlement of the town, Dorchester saw the setting off of lands for new towns, but the center remained focused on Meeting House Hill, which not only was the religious center of Dorchester but also had been the hub of town government since 1670. The selectmen of Dorchester had established a form of representative government shortly after the town was founded, and thereafter selectmen would oversee town government. The town had an industrial center at the Lower Mills on the Neponset River, and the majority of the land was used for agrarian purposes. However, by the early 19th century, Dorchester began to see development, with the establishment in the 1840s of the Old Colony Railroad, which connected South Shore towns to Boston by a train that had passenger depots in Dorchester. Depots such as Crescent Avenue, Savin Hill, Harrison Square, and Port Norfolk allowed residents to commute to the city for business and pleasure. Within a short time, the Dorchester and Milton Branch of the Old Colony Railroad was laid out in 1856 to Mattapan, with depots at Field’s Corner, Shawmut, Ashmont, Milton Village, Central Avenue, and Mattapan. This ease of transportation to and from Boston revolutionized Dorchester as a place of residence. In the period between 1850 and the Civil War, the town’s population increased tremendously, with the beginnings of a residential building boom that went unabated for the next seven decades.
By the 1860s, Dorchester’s population had doubled from just a few decades before, with many new residents finding the town both attractive as well as convenient. In 1800 there were 2,347 residents, and by 1850 that number had grown to 8,000. Homes were built on the numerous hills that overlooked Dorchester Bay and Boston Harbor, affording residents breathtaking vistas. The Blue Hills in the distance and the open lands to its west gave Dorchester a rural aspect that attracted people from the city who opted to live in the country, albeit a 20-minute train ride away. The networking of horse-drawn streetcars along Dorchester Avenue in 1856—connecting Dorchester Lower Mills to downtown Boston—brought a wave of newcomers who built houses, filled the schools with their children, and clamored for increased services. By the late 1860s, residents had begun to suggest annexing the town to Boston as a ward of the city (as nearby Roxbury had done in 1867), which would provide the advantages of urban services that included public schools, libraries, fire and police departments, as well as necessary amenities such as streets, sewerage system, and water and gas connections. On June 22, 1869, the voters of