Patriots' Day & the Dawes Family

William Dawes rode through Brookline on the night of April 18, 1775, on his way to Lexington to warn that British soldiers were on their way. The ride is recreated each Patriots' Day. But he was not the last member of the extended Dawes family to leave his mark on the town in the month of April.

Seventy-six years after Dawes' ride, on April 23, 1861, his grandson, William Dwight Goddard, became the first Brookline man to enlist in the Union Army at the start of the Civil War. Goddard was the son of William Dawes' youngest child, Mehitabel May Dawes.  Born in 1796, she married Samuel Goddard of Brookline in 1818.

William D. Goddard served only a short time in the army. He died in 1866 at the age of 32. Mehitabel Goddard died in 1882. Both are buried, along with Samuel and other family members, in the Old Burying Ground on Walnut Street.

Headstones in the Old Burying Ground marking the graves of Mehitabel May Dawes Goddard and her son William Dwight Goddard

On April 20, 1925, William Dawes' great-great grandson, U.S. Vice President Charles Dawes, came to Massachusetts to mark the 150th anniversary of his ancestor's ride and the start of the American Revolution. Among his stops as he followed the route of Dawes' 1775 ride was the Edward Devotion School (now the Florida Ruffin Ridley School) in Coolidge Corner.

Schoolchildren presented a pageant in honor Dawes' visit. Thirteen-year-old Margaret Stein, a student at the school portraying William Dawes' daughter Hannah, presented the vice president with a pair of gloves that had belonged to Hannah. She also read a poem in the voice of Hannah Dawes. (The poem inaccurately described Hannah as Charles Dawes' great-great grandmother.; a half-sister of Mehitabel, she was actually Dawes' great-great aunt.)

Vice President Charles Dawes and a poem read in his honor at the then Edward Devotion School (Click image for a larger view)

 

Dr. Cornelius Garland in Brookline

Dr. Cornelius N. Garland, a pioneering Black physician and the founder of the first and only Black hospital in Boston, spent the last 24 years of his life in Brookline, where he lived on Corey Hill from 1928 to 1952. 

Garland's story was featured earlier this month in a piece on Cognoscenti, WBUR's ideas and commentary site, and an interview aired on Radio Boston. The author of the Cognoscenti article, Lisa Gordon, was joined on Radio Boston by Garland's great grandson Dan Reppert.

Dr. Cornelius N. Garland, as shown in the 1912 book The Negro in Medicine, published by the Tuskegee University Press (left); 12 East Springfield Street in the South End, former site of Garland's Plymouth Hospital (center); and Garland's one-time residence on Mason Terrace in Brookline (right)

Gordon began digging into the story while living in an apartment in the South End building that had been Garland's hospital. She and Reppert told how the Alabama native founded Plymouth Hospital in 1908. The hospital employed Black doctors and included a training program for nurses at a time when city hospitals would neither employ Black physicians nor admit Black women to their nursing programs.

The Plymouth Hospital and Nurses Training School continued to operate until 1928. Garland hoped to expand his efforts with a second hospital and had support from the community. His plan was opposed, however, by influential Boston Guardian publisher William Monroe Trotter. Trotter, reported Gordon, "believed a second Black-only hospital would perpetuate existing racial problems" and, instead, "vehemently advocated to integrate city hospitals, starting with Boston City Hospital."

The debate over separate Black hospitals and their effect on the effort to integrate Boston city hospitals drew coverage in Black newspapers around the country, including these in the Pittsburgh Courier, left, and the New York Age, right.

Garland, added Gordon, "recognized that he and Trotter had a similar goal: equity for the Black community." He joined Trotter in lobbying for the integration of Boston City Hospital, "perhaps believing both plans could work in tandem." In 1928, he closed Plymouth Hospital. One year later, City Hospital admitted its first Black students, although it would be 20 years before the first Black physician was added to the staff.

Dr. Garland in Brookline

Cornelius and Margaret Garland lived on West Canton Street in the South End, on the edge of the Back Bay and a 15 minute walk from Plymouth Hospital. In December 1928, after the closing of the hospital, they purchased a newly-built home at 173 Mason Terrace in Brookline. (The deed was in Margaret's name.)

Their daughter, Thelma, then 26, was a French teacher in Baltimore at the time and did not live with her parents in Brookline. (Thelma married James Kelly Smith in August 1929.)

Garland continued to practice medicine in Boston out of an office at the West Canton Street brownstone, while renting the rest of their former home to tenants. He was also involved in many health, social, business, and political organizations and activities, both before and after moving to Brookline.

He was heavily involved in the work of the Boston Tuberculosis Association, promoting good home hygiene practices as a way of combating the disease. (The Boston Globe, in 1937, reported that one section of Roxbury "at one time had the highest mortality rate in the country for Negroes suffering from tuberculosis," but had seen a big improvement in recent years.)

An annual contest sponsored by the Boston Tuberculosis Association gave prizes as a way of encouraging clean yards, attractive gardens, and general sanitary conditions. The first place winner in the 1936 contest, on which Dr. Garland was a judge, just happened to live across the street from his office on West Canton Street. (Boston Globe, October 3, 1936) 

Garland served on boards of many Boston civic associations during his time in Brookline, including the Urban League of Greater Boston and the Boston Chapter of the NAACP.  Locally, he was involved in the medical division of Brookline's civil defense organization during World War II. He continued in medical practice after the war. (A 1948 photograph of him with his granddaughter in Ebony magazine referred to him as "Boston's richest physician.")

His wife, Margaret, was vice president of the League of Women for Community Service in Boston, an organization that grew out of an earlier group that advocated on behalf of Black soldiers returning from service in World War I. (Florida Ruffin Ridley, who moved from Brookline not long before the Garlands arrived, had been on the board of the League with Margaret several years earlier.)

Margaret Garland died in 1945, at the age of 69. Cornelius Garland died in 1952. He was 75.

You can learn much more about Cornelius Garland, his family, and Plymouth Hospital from the following sources:

• "Boston's Only Black Hospital Was Founded in 1908." Lisa Gordon, Cognoscenti, February 9, 2023 
• "The Hidden History of Boston's First and Only Black Hospital." (Interview with Lisa Gordon and Dan Reppert). Radio Boston, February 13, 2023
• "Dr. Garland and Plymouth Hospital." Alison Barnet,  Aceso: The Journal of the Boston University School of Medicine Historical Society. (The article begins on page 50 of the issue.)

Douglass Day: Frederick Douglass in Brookline

February 14th is Douglass Day, an annual celebration of the life of Frederick Douglass. This year the Public Library of Brookline is participating by hosting a public transcribe-a-thon, where community members can help bring different aspects of Black history to light.

This year's project is working on the papers of Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823-1893), an activist, journalist, publisher, teacher, and lawyer, and one of the earliest Black women to edit a newspaper. Volunteers can join the project anytime between 12 and 3 pm on February 14th, in person at the library or online. For details, see the library website.

Frederick Douglass in 1879. (National Archives)

Frederick Douglass spoke in Brookline in December 1874, as part of a lecture series at the then new Town Hall, which had been dedicated one year earlier. The series was organized by James Redpath, a journalist and, before the Civil War, an anti-slavery activist. Redpath formed a well-known, Boston-based speaker's bureau that was active across the U.S. for many years after the war.

This advertisement for James Redpath's lecture series at Brookline Town Hall appeared in the Boston Journal on August 22, 1874. 

Local cotton merchant Zenas Brett, whose 1874 diary was transcribed by students at the then Edward Devotion School (now the Florida Ruffin Ridley School) in 2005, attended Douglass' lecture and made this note in the diary:

"Wife + I went to hear Frederick Douglass lecture this eve in our Town Hall subject. 'John Brown' "

Though Brett's description is brief (and typical of his diary entries), there is a lengthy description of the same speech as given by Douglass three months earlier in Rochester, NY, where he lived for many years. Douglass, according to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, said he came to vindicate Brown

"....a great historic character of our own time and country--one with whom it had been his fortune to be well acquainted and whose friendship it had been his pleasure to share. And in so doing he would  endeavor to throw a more favorable light on the great event of the Harpers Ferry raid ... [and its role in] the thirty years struggle between slavery and liberty...."

Douglass had taken to the lecture circuit to help with what historian John R. McKivigan has described as an existential and vocational post-war crisis brought on by "a pressing need for revenue, not just to support himself, but to assist his four adult children and their growing families financially." ¹

At the same time, Douglass was concerned that audiences came to see him as almost what we would describe today as a novelty act. "I shall never get beyond Fred Douglass the self educated fugitive slave," he wrote to Redpath in 1871, adding that

"I shall endeavor not to forget that people do not attend lectures to hear statesmanlike addresses, which are usually rather heavy for the stomachs of young and old who listen. People want to be amused as well as instructed. They come as often for the former as the latter, and perhaps as often to see the man as for either."

 

Sketch of Brookline's 1873 Town Hall, where Frederick Douglass spoke as part of James Redpath's Brookline Lyceum lecture series.

1 - John K. McKivigan, "“A New Vocation before Me”: Frederick Douglass’s Post-Civil War Lyceum Career." Howard Journal of Communication, 29 (3), 2018 

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."

Introducing "This Week in Brookline History"

This Week in Brookline History (TWIBH) is a new blog and email feed being introduced for 2023.

Once a week, TWIBH will present brief summaries of four events that occurred in the past on that week's dates.

The summaries will be accompanied by photos, maps, sketches, news headlines, or other illustrations. Links to further information, where available will also be included.

An example, covering the week of January 1st to January 7th, is previewed below, but new weeks' entries will be on a separate site beginning January 1st. 

To receive these weekly TWIBH posts by email, go to https://bit.ly/brooklinehistory and submit your name and email address via the form. (You can use the same form to subscribe to the more sporadic posts from this Muddy River Musings blog, if you are not already subscribed.)

Harvard Street, Coolidge Corner: 1912 & 1937

Two of the busiest periods of commercial development in Coolidge Corner took place in the 1910s and 1920s. Perhaps no two photographs demonstrates this change better than these two images of the same stretch of Harvard Street, one from c1912 and the other from 1937.

West side of Harvard Street
between Beacon Street and Babcock Street (offscreen to the left), c 1912
Postcard view (Click on this and all images for larger views)

Same view, 1937
Photo courtesy of Brookline Preservation Department

The tower of the S.S. Pierce Building at the northwest corner of Harvard and Beacon Streets, constructed in 1898, anchors both images at the far left. (The open-deck tower was damaged in a storm in 1944 and replaced with the current closed tower.) But everything else in the picture has changed by the time of the later photo.

The building immediately to the north of S.S. Pierce is the same in both photos, but has undergone a change of design and of use by 1937.  Built as the Beacon Universalist Church in 1906, it was converted to the Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline's first movie house, just four years before the later photo was taken.

S.S. Pierce Building and Beacon Universalist Church, c1906

  

S.S. Pierce Building and Coolidge Corner Theatre, 1937 and 1970s

But the biggest change is north of the church/theater building, where four wood-frame houses have been replaced with commercial buildings.The difference can be seen in the segments of the two photos below and in the maps from the 1913 and 1927 town atlases. (The purple rectangles indicate the location of the buildings in the photos.)

Closer view of this stretch of Harvard Street

1913 atlas view
(Yellow buildings are wood-frame structures; pink buildings are brick.)

1927 atlas view

The Coolidge Corner retail district was expanding in all directions in this period; on both sides of Harvard Street north and south of Beacon Street and on Beacon east and west of Harvard.

All four houses in the c1912 photo had been replaced by commercial buildings by the mid-1920s. Houses north of these were also replaced by commercial buildings, including the Coolidge Corner Arcade, just visible at the far right of the 1937 photo. (The house it replaced is just outside the frame of the earlier photo.)

Even before being replaced, some of these and other houses on Harvard Street were put to new uses. The house at 302 Harvard, for example, became a boarding house, lunchroom, and cooking school run by a German immigrant named Martha Albinsky. Her daughter, Gertrude (Albinsky) Millett, wrote about it in the Brookline Chronicle half a century later and included a photo of her mother in her kitchen. (1976 article, at bottom of linked page.)

Ad from 1918 and 1920 photo from 1976 article both from the digitized newspaper collection of the Public LIbrary of Brookline

"The house my mother rented [wrote Millett in 1976] was very suitable to our purpose. It had been used as a party house by Rose Gordon and the large front room was ideal for a public dining room while the rest of the house could be used for boarders...But my mother's desire was to have a real dining room with homecooked meals for it was easy enough for her to cook for five or 20..."

"The homecooked dinner consisting of soup, main course, dessert, tea or coffee was 50 cents, and everyone enjoyed it, particularly the fresh-baked Parker House rolls which were my mother's specialty."

"The dining room was a success from the start, serving anywhere from 10-15 customers every night."

Houses across the street were also put to new uses before being replaced by retail buildings. The house at 299 Harvard became the Coolidge Corner Branch of the Brookline Library, while the house next to it at 303 became a funeral home. Both of these can be seen in the full version of the c1912 photo below. (Streetcar tracks are also gone, while cars are parked at the curb in front of the 1937 stores.)

Full postcard view of Harvard Street looking south from near Babcock Street, c1912
(Click for larger view)

Today, only two former houses (not counting the colonial Edward Devotion House) remain on Harvard Street north of Beacon; one, at the corner of Williams Street, is used for dental and other offices, and the other, at the corner of Kenwood Street, is now the Chabad Center. The buildings that replaced other houses on Harvard Street north of Beacon continue to thrive as part of the Coolidge Corner and JFK Crossing retail districts.

Booksmith Makes History in Coolidge Corner

On Friday, Brookline Booksmith will mark a new stage in its 61-year tenure in Brookline with a ribbon-cutting and other festivities to celebrate the latest expansion of the venerable bookstore.
https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/event/brookline-booksmith-ribbon-cutting-celebration

Like the Coolidge Corner Theatre (also expanding), its neighbor across Harvard Street, Booksmith is an icon and an anchor -- socially, culturally, and economically -- of its neighborhood, serving the local community and drawing visitors and customers from throughout the region.

The new addition to the store, incorporating the space formerly occupied by Dependable Cleaners, gives Booksmith an unbroken streetscape between Starbucks and the recently opened Mecha Noodle Bar at the corner of Green Street.  

Top: A 1960s photo-montage from the Brookline Preservation Department showing the original Paperback Booksmith store on the far right and a series of storefronts that have since been incorporated into the expanded bookstore. Bottom: A view of the same streetscape in October 2022 (Click on the image for a much larger view)

In honor of the occasion, I've taken a look at the long history of the row of storefronts now occupied by Booksmith, going back more than 110 years to a brick commercial building erected at 279 Harvard Street in 1910. That building was the first occupied by Paperback Booksmith in 1963 after two years at 271 Harvard (now game Stop).. 

Among the previous occupants of that space and the other storefronts now part of Booksmith have been:

• The Racheotes Brothers' Faneuil Hall Fruit Store at 279 Harvard Street  in 1911 and later at 281 and 283 Harvard
• A.J. Landy & Co., the first kosher delicatessen in Brookline, which opened at 279 Harvard in 1914.
• A pair of grocery stores that competed, side by side in the 1940s: Finast, or First National Stores, at 279; and Stop & Shop, extending south from Green Street at 285.

The Racheotes Brothers' Faneuil Hall Fruit Store, opened at 279 Harvard Street in 1911 and moved next door to 281 and 283 shortly after. The fruit store moved across Beacon Street to 253 Harvard Street (now Breugger's Bagel's) in 1940. (Their sign can still be seen on the back of the Breugger's building, as shown below.)

This First National Stores, or Finast, supermarket, seen here in an ad for a 1947 remodeling, was in business at Booksmith's original location from the 1920s through the 1950s.

Stop & Shop, which had been at 289 Harvard Street, moved across Green Street to a new space extending south from the corner, as seen in this 1942 ad. It remained there until 1950. (Part of that space is now Mecha Noodle Bar and part Booksmith.)

There have been many others, too, including a florist, a hairdresser, an upholsterer, a rug dealer, a bakery, a drug store, a milliner, a women's clothing store, and several more over the years, all in spaces now occupied by Booksmith.

A few more ads and images from the pre-Booksmith days are below. I'll have more, including more recent occupants, in a later post.

Fine the Florist, 279 Harvard Street, 1922 ad

Baker Apothercary, 281 Harvard Street, 1948 ad

Schrafft's, 283 Harvard Street, 1940 ad

Adeles Hats of Distinction, 283 Harvard Street, 1936 ad

Schulte-United Junior Department Store, 285 Harvard Street, 1929 ad. (The company, which made a big splash with full page ads like this, went bankrupt two years later.)

NOTE: Advertisements are from town directories and Brookline newspapers digitized by the Public Library of Brookline and other sources.