The Pierce School the Municipal Triangle, Part 1

The map below shows the triangle formed by Harvard Street, Washington Street, and School Street in Brookline Village. It is the location of the Town Hall, the Public Library, the Health Department, and -- for 170 years -- a succession of buildings of the John Pierce School.

You might call it the Municipal Triangle.

The northern part of the triangle was, from 1974 to last year, the location of the fifth building to carry the name Pierce School. It was recently torn down and will be replaced by the sixth building in the long history of Pierce.

The oldest of those buildings, erected in 1855, still stands, along with a larger 1904 addition.

That combined 1855/1904 building--its interior completely changed--will continue to be a part of the school.

I've put together Part 1 of an online history of the municipal triangle. It tells the story of the school, three Town Halls, and other town buildings up to 1970 and the decision to build a new Pierce School, the recently demolished 1974 building.

Part 2, still to come, will cover the 1974 school and bring the story of the Pierce School and the municipal triangle up to the present.

You can watch the illustrated and narrated 30-minute presentation at https://bit.ly/pierceschoolpart1

BHS to Change the Name of the Sagamore

Kudos to the editors of the Sagamore, the Brookline High School newspaper whose hard work has led to an important decision about the paper's name. After extensive research, discussion, and thought, the editors announced yesterday that they will change the name of the nearly 130-year-old publication.

"We have decided [they wrote] to change the name of the newspaper out of respect for Indigenous peoples. Continuing to use the name actively disregards the meaning of the word and the history that surrounds it, thereby harming Indigenous communities."

1930s version of the Sagamore banner

The article announcing the decision notes the editors' conversations with Faries Gray, the current leader, or Sagamore, of the Massachusetts tribe, from which the name is derived. It also cites information I shared with a former editor of the paper in 2021. I was pleased to see that the information I provided was, according to the editors, a "turning point" in their deliberations.

The paper's article, though rich in detail, didn't go into all of the background I shared with the editors, so I thought I would provide a little more of what I found. I've also been able to find some additional information, thanks to the recent digitization of Brookline newspapers by the Public Library of Brookline.)

The word “Sagamore,” used by Indigenous peoples of New England to describe a leader of a group or tribe, became popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in New England and elsewhere, as a name for many kinds of things.. 

I found references to several ships, at least two hotels, an office building, a mill, and other things named Sagamore. Teddy Roosevelt, in 1886, named his estate on Long island, New York, Sagamore Hill.  

Examples of things named "Sagamore" in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Top to bottom and left to right: The Sagamore Hotel in the Adirondacks; the S.S. Sagamore cargo ship; young workers known as "mill boys" at the Sagamore Mills textile factory in Fall River; advertisement for a business in the Sagamore Building in Lynn; and Teddy Roosevelt and his family at their Sagamore Hill estate. (Click image for a larger view)

It's possible that the students, in choosing that name, were just following a trend. An article in the Boston Journal newspaper announcing the new Brookline High School publication said "The name given the new magazine is 'The Sagamore,' which has an historical romance attached to it."

But there may also have been a more direct connection which, if not the actual reason the name was chosen, may have contributed to it being on the minds of the students who produced the new publication.

At that time, the title "Sagamore" was also used as the name of certain officers of a fraternal organization called the Improved Order of Red Men. (The top officer went by another native title: Sachem.) This was an organization, like the Freemasons, the Elks, the Foresters, the Hibernians, and others that engaged in charitable works and other activities and generally adopted different symbols, costumes, customs, terms, and regalia. 

In the case of the "Red Men," these were all drawn from Native American history, or at least what the white men who were the members thought were from Native American history. (The organization was supposedly inspired by the men who dressed as Native Americans when dumping British tea in Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party.)

A Brookline "tribe" of the Improved Order of Redmen was formed in 1889. The local newspaper article announcing this listed the officers, including the Sachem, the Senior Sagamore, and the Junior Sagamore. Also listed, as the Assistant Chief of Records, was C.A. Spencer. 

This is Charles A.W. Spencer, publisher of the Brookline Chronicle. His son, Arthur Spencer, was the first editor-in-chief of the Sagamore.

May 1889 article in the Brookline Chronicle announcing the formation of a Brookline "tribe" of the Improved Order of Red Men.

It's not certain that the name was chosen specifically because of the association with the "Red Men";  the Brookline "tribe" didn't last long, disbanding in 1891, 3+ years before the founding of the Sagamore. (The Brookline branch of another, longer-lasting, fraternal organization named the Royal Arcanum called its local branch the Sagamore Council.) 

But it seems reasonable to believe that Arthur was perhaps more aware of the word than other people because of his father's involvement with the order. 

The Chronicle, upon formation of the Brookline branch in 1889 quipped that "There is no occasion for public alarm because a band of Red Men has captured the town. Many people will be content to call the new institution an Improved Order of White Men." This was not a criticism; remember that the paper's publisher was a member. (Membership in the organization nationally was open to white men only until 1974.) 

The Improved Order of Red Men still exists today, though it is much smaller in number of members and number of states represented. The organization still uses "Sagamore" and other Indigenous terms. There are seven branches, or "tribes" in Massachusetts listed on the website.

According to a press release from the Public Schools of Brookline, the newspaper will select a new name through a town-wide contest, where community members can submit name suggestions. Both the editors of the paper and Sagamore Gray of the Massachusetts Tribe of Ponkapoag said the name change was both the right thing to do an an opportunity to educate people about the history and the continued presence of Indigenous people,

“You’re not just changing a name," said Gray, "you’re changing minds."

A Long History of Girls Basketball at BHS

I saw a notice in my Facebook feed today that the Brookline High Girls Basketball coaching staff is kicking off its version of Basketball Night—coaching sessions for 3rd through 12th grade girls—at Schluntz Gym tomorrow night. By coincidence, just yesterday I had come across the picture below, showing BHS girls practicing basketball way back in 1902.

Image credit: Harper's Weekly (Click here for larger view)

The image is from an article on "College Girls and Basket-Ball" in the February 22, 1902 issue of Harper's Weekly. BHS is the only high school pictured, along with images from Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, and Newcomb College in New Orleans.

The location is uncertain. My best guess is that it's behind the 1893 high school building, the first built on the current site. That would put it approximately where the courtyard and the auditorium wing are today. (The rise in the background would be the beginning of Aspinwall Hill.)

Basketball was "the most popular sport with women across the United States in the first years of the twentieth century," wrote Paul John Hutchinson in a recent doctoral dissertation at Boston University.¹ That certainly appears to have been the case at BHS.

An 1898 report from the Committee on Physical Training of the Brookline Education Society reported that

The game of basket ball is at present very popular. It is a game which both sexes may play, but is especially appropriate for the girls. Several outfits for this game have been provided. The committee is not yet ready to report on the benefits of this plan.

In February 1898—just seven years after the game was invented by James Naismith in Springfield— an exhibition of BHS girls basketball was the closing event at a Town Hall demonstration of games and gymnastics engaged in by students in the Brookline schools.

By the early 20th century, the Brookline girls basketball team was playing in competition against other local high schools and even occasionally against college teams. 

Boston Globe, February 19, 1904

Boston Globe, December 14, 1904

Apparently, not everyone was in favor of girls playing basketball. In 1901, Prof.William F. Bradbury of Cambridge Latin School, responding to a favorable report by BHS teacher Arthur W. Roberts, spoke in opposition:

I have had some experience in Cambridge with basket ball [said Bradbury], and I find it makes the girls rough, loud-voiced and bold.

Let's be thankful his view did not prevail, and look forward to more loud-voiced, bold, straight-shooting girls on and off the court.

^{1 "Crafting an outdoor classroom: The nineteenth-century roots of the outdoor education movement." Paul John Hutchinson, Boston University, 2015}

Brookline High School, Class of 1898

They were 14 friends — 12 young women and 2 young men — who went to school together in Brookline more than a century ago. Their class (all but one graduated from Brookline High in 1898) was one of the first to attend the new high school that opened on Greenough Street in 1893.

Over time they went their separate ways. They had lives, families, careers. Some left Massachusetts for good; only two stayed in Brookline for long. The last of them died in 1982.

But they stayed together for decades in a set of exquisite photos kept by yet another friend and classmate. Those photos, presented here, eventually made their way back to Brookline and the collection of the Brookline Historical Society.

As a group, these 14 are probably no more or less remarkable than any random set of students taken from different eras in the history of the town. But looking at their long-ago faces and learning about their lives provides an unusual window into a small piece of Brookline’s past.

(NOTE : Click on photos below for larger views)

The Photos and Their Collector:
From Brookline to New Jersey and Back Again

The photographs belonged to Grace Whiting Mason, later Grace Mason Young, (1879-1971). The youngest child of Albert and Lydia Mason, Grace grew up on Corey Hill in the family home at 96 Summit Avenue. (The house is no longer there.) Her father was chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court from 1890 until his death in 1905. He is probably best remembered today as one of the judges in the Lizzie Borden murder trial of 1893.

Grace was an 1898 winner of the J. Murray Kay Prize given to Brookline High School seniors by the Brookline Historical Publications Society (forerunner of the Historical Society) for historical research. Her essay was on “The Development of the Metropolitan Park System.”

After graduating from Brookline High, Grace attended Smith College, graduating in 1902. In 1904, she married Percy Sacret Young and moved with him to New Jersey where they raised four sons and four daughters. Her grandson Mason, who grew up near his grandmother, remembered her as an avid reader who would regularly send books to her grandchildren. “She had definite opinions. She was very good about guiding you to a different way of seeing things,” he said.

Grace’s photographs of her classmates remained in the family until 2010 when they were donated, along with other family items, to the Millburn-Short Hills (NJ) Historical Society, which sent the photos back here to Brookline for our collection.

There were no photos of Grace in the set; the family no doubt kept those. But further research led to three of Grace’s grandchildren, who met with me in Manomet, MA in August and shared the photo above and several more, along with papers and stories of their grandmother.

Grace Mason, front left, with her mother Lydia, brother Charles
and sisters Martha (front right), Mary, and Alice (rear center and right.
(Photos courtesy of the family of Grace Mason Young)

The Classmates

Helen R. Jones, 101 Summit Avenue
Helen Reed Jones, later Helen Reed Whitney (1878-1956) is the only classmate to appear in more than one of the photos saved by Grace Mason Young. That’s likely because they were the closest of friends, growing up across the street from one another on Summit Avenue. (Helen’s home at 101 Summit still stands, though much altered.)

Helen studied painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1906 she married MIT graduate Philip R. Whitney, an artist and an instructor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work was exhibited in and around Philadelphia, as well as in New York, Chicago, and other cities. She and her husband summered on Nantucket for many years, and were active in the artist's colony there.

Additional photos of Helen Reed Jones along with her painting Ebb Tide

John R. Marvin, 88 Perry Street
& Martha F. Ritchie, 268 Walnut Terrace
John Reginold Marvin (1880-1967) and Martha Frothingham Ritchie (1881-1945) were first cousins. Their grandfather Edward S. Ritchie was an inventor and the founder of E.S. Ritchie & Son, a manufacturer of nautical compasses and scientific instruments in Brookline Village.

John Marvin was a co-winner with Grace Mason of the 1898 J. Murray Kay Prize for his essay “The Relation of Brookline to Norfolk County.” He earned a mechanical engineering degree from MIT and had a career as an engineer in the Boston area, the Midwest and, finally, Pennsylvania where he settled with his wife Grace Field Marvin.

Martha Ritchie's father and later her brother, both named Andrew, took over leadership of the E.S. Ritchie firm, which remained in the family until 1935. The Ritchie factory building still stands on Cypress Street, incorporated into the Cypress Lofts condominium complex.

Martha worked for a time as a teacher. She married the architect Austin Jenkins in 1911 and moved to the Chicago area.

Maud B. Dutton, 33 Colbourne Crescent
Maud Barrows Dutton, later Maude Dutton Lynch, (1880-1959) was the daughter of Samuel Train Dutton, the superintendent of schools in Brookline from 1890 to 1900.  She moved to New York with her father when he became superintendent of the Horace Mann Schools run by Teachers College, Columbia University.

Maud also followed her father in the education field, authoring a series of children’s books on “The World of Work” and on different countries and cultures. She married the Congregational minister, editor, and peace activist Frederick Lynch in 1909.

Marian D. Richards, 44 Linden Street
Marian Dudley Richards, later Marian D. Emerson, (1879-1949) graduated from the the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics, a teacher training school that later became part of Wellesley College, and the Tuckerman School on Beacon Hill.

She became prominent in the Unitarian Universalist movement as a Sunday school teacher, superintendent, public speaker, and social worker.

She was also active in support of peace movements, reproductive rights, and the welfare of Native Americans. (In a 1942 report to the Wellesely Alumnae Association she described her work for the Birth Control League of America as "rounding up sympathizers & convincing doubters.")

Marian married fellow Unitarian activist B. Homer Emerson in 1917 and continued to live in Brookline until her death.

Thomas I. Taylor, 294 Walnut Street
Thomas Irving Taylor (1880-1977), whose father was in the hat and fur business, worked for a railroad supply company and for Sprague Electric before managing Taylor Machinery, a metalworking firm in Boston. He was awarded a patent in 1921 for an automobile water gauge “so that the driver may be informed at all times by visible means from his position when driving, whether or not the radiator water supply is in need of replenishment.”

Tom, who was married twice and lived in Newton, later worked as a vault attendant for the Newton-Waltham Bank & Trust Co.

Grace B. Farquhar, 26 Gorham Avenue
Grace Bartlett Farquhar, later Grace Leavitt, (1880-1982) was the daughter of Joseph Farquhar, owner of a roofing company, and his wife Annie.  She married at a younger age (21) than the other BHS grads in the photos. Her husband, Frederick Leavitt, was in the real estate and insurance business in Brookline and also served in town and county government.

They lived in Brookline and later in Arlington. Grace died in Barnstable in 1982, having outlived all of the others in this group of BHS students.

Beulah Duncklee, 24 Williams Street
Beulah Duncklee, later Beulah Bugbee, (1879-1969) was born in Brookline, the daughter of Charles T., an attorney, and Sarah J. Duncklee.

In 1901 she married Edward Bugbee, a Brookline native and a teacher of mining engineering and metallurgy at MIT.

They lived in Brighton. Beulah moved back to Brookline after her husband’s death.

Isabel McCleery, address uncertain
Isabel Shaw McCleery, later Isabel Doig, (1878-1915) was born in Somerville, the daughter of William C. McCleery, a button manufacturer, and his wife Ada. She lived at various times in Boston and Newton and appears to have been in Brookline for only a short time.

She married Stephen G. Doig, a lawyer, and died in 1915 at the age of 38, the shortest life by far of this generally long-lived group.

Ethel W. Towle, 31 Kent Square
Ethel Ward Towle, later Ethel Haslet, (1880-1949), was the daughter of Unitarian minister Edwin Towle and his wife Isabel. Her father was pastor of Brookline’s Second Unitarian Church, which was formed in 1896 and moved into its new building (now Temple Sinai) on Sewall Avenue in 1901.

Ethel's father was later pastor in Hillsborough, NH, where, in 1921, he presided at Ethel’s marriage to widower George Haslet, president of the Hillsborough Woolen Mills. George died in 1928. Ethel moved to Boston where she died 21 years later.

Ella C. Fenno, 3 Kilsyth Road
Ella Cheever Fenno, later Ella Clough, (1878-1936) is the only student not to appear in her own, formal, photo. Instead, she appears in one with her arm around Helen Jones, one of four pictures of Helen in the Grace Mason set.

Ella married Charles Clough, an insurance executive, in 1904. (They are mentioned together in Boston Globe social columns in 1900 (at a dance) and 1901 (at a Clough family home in Maine). Charles survived Ella by more than 30 years.

Marion L. Sharp, 12 Fairbanks Street
Marion Louise Sharp (1878-1967) graduated from BHS in 1897, one year earlier than the other students. Her grandfather was Samuel A. Robinson who owned a tannery on Washington Street and lived in a house nearby where Marion was most likely born. He built a house in 1892 at 12 Fairbanks Street where three generations of the family lived.

Marion was a winner of theJ. Murray Kay Prize that year for her essay “Three Glimpses of Brookline: In 1700, 1800, and 1900.” She graduated from Smith College in 1901 and later taught school in Gloucester, Woburn, Brookline, and other towns.

The Mystery Student
Only one of the photos saved by Grace Mason Young did not have a name written on the back. Who was she?

One possibility is an 1898 BHS grad named Sabina Marshall (1879-1968) who lived on Summit Avenue near Grace Mason and Helen Jones. (See the map below.)

There is no question the three girls were old friends. They were photographed together on Corey Hill years earlier in this delightful picture shared by Grace’s family.

Left to right, Grace Mason, Sabina Marshall, Helen Jones. (Photo Courtesy of the family of Grace Mason Young)

Is Sabina Marshall the mystery student? Stay tuned, as our research continues.

Map showing the Mason, Jones, and Marshall properties on Summit Avenue
Source: WardMaps LLC

NOTE: A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2014 issue of the Brookline Historical Society newsletter.

Tab Hunter, Young Love, BHS, & The Spirit of St. Louis

A couple weeks ago a friend forwarded a link to a curious piece of Brookline trivia for sale on eBay.

It was a 1957 photo of the Brookline High School auditorium showing a group of students being addressed by Warren Bartlett, housemaster of the school's Lincoln House, and the young movie and recording star Tab Hunter. (The seller has placed a watermark on the online image and didn't want it reproduced, but you can view it here.)

Today's high school students may never have heard of Tab Hunter, but he was quite the heartthrob in 1957. Hunter established himself playing a young soldier in the 1955 Word War II drama Battle Cry.  The following year he co-starred with Natalie Wood in two movies: the Louis L'Amour western The Burning Hills and the romantic comedy The Girl He Left Behind.

Like many young actors today, Hunter then went into the recording studio. His 1957 hit "Young Love" spent six weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts. (You can listen to it here; tastes have certainly changed.)

But what was Tab Hunter doing at BHS?

The eBay offering showed a note taped to the back of the photo that said Hunter came to Boston to promote the Warner Brothers movie The Spirit of St. Louis starring Jimmy Stewart. But why would Hunter be promoting a movie he wasn't even in, and why at Brookline High?

Hunter himself explains in his 2005 autobiography Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star. It seems Jack Warner, head of the Warner Brothers studio had Hunter under contract and wasn't happy about his recording success.

At first [wrote Hunter], Jack Warner wanted to suspend me for making money for anybody other than him. Money was always on his mind, but that winter he was particularly concerned about having spent more than $6 million on Billy Wilder's film biography of Charles Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis.  He hit on a unique way of exploiting me and, in the process, teaching me a lesson in humility.

The Lindbergh biopic, it seems, had not proved appealing to young audiences, so Warner sent his young star on a 24-city tour to drum up excitement for the film. But the tour may not have turned out the way Warner expected.

Every place I stopped on the Spirit tour, radio stations, theaters, colleges, high schools — the response was the same. "Yeah, yeah, we know —he landed safely at Le Bourget. There was a fly in the cockpit that made the trip with him. Now tell us about 'Young Love.' " 

Warner Bros. was, in essence, paying me to make public appearances that drove sales of my records ever higher.

Hunter's appearance at BHS, reported on in the school paper, The Sagamore, fit the pattern.

Squeals and shouts must have been heard clear to Brookline Village, as Tab tried to tell the students about "Lindy" and the "Spirit of St. Louis." He presented an autographed copy of Capt. Charles A. Lindbergh's book, bearing the above title, to Lincoln House for the BHS library, as a memento of his visit. However, the demand for the "Tab Hunter autograph" has been so great that the book has had to be placed under lock and key, for all to see but not to touch.

The Sagamore, March 8, 1957

After Hunter's departure, reported The Sagamore, students returned to class, but

who was in a mood to study? Teachers gave up trying to teach and make their classes concentrate, believe it or not, for Tab Hunter had been to BHS! 

• Tab Hunter (Wikipedia)
• Tab Hunter (IMDB)