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Home > Boston's Neighborhoods
> Jamaica Plain
Learn more
about your ancestor's neighborhood through the timeline, find more information
in the Further Reading section, or use the links to experience life in
that community today.
Timeline
- Pre-1630:
Area around Jamaica Pond was a summer camp for Wampanoags who wintered
near the Neponset River in Mattapan. Some feel that the name for "Jamaica"
is the corruption of an Indian Chief's name from the 1640s.
- 1640: The Road to Dedham (today Centre Street) and the Dedham
Turnpike (today Washington Street) are the main streets in town. Originally
part of the Town of Roxbury (1631) the area that is now known as Jamaica
Plain was settled slowly for its first forty years.
- 1683: Although not officially chartered as a town, Jamaica Plain
is mentioned in the Roxbury town records.
- 1689: Roxbury Reverend John Eliot (1604-1690),
"Apostle to the Indians," donates seventy-five acres for a
school. Eliot stipulates that the school admit children of all races:
white, African American, and Native American. The school is not officially
incorporated until 1804. It is remodeled in 1889.
- 1755: Linden Hall is built on Centre and Pond Streets for Reverend
John Troutbeck, assistant rector of King's Chapel, distiller, and loyalist.
It is named for the linden trees that used to flank the walkway.
- 1760: The Third Parish is organized under William Gordon (1730-1807),
a minister who advocates freedom and equality for all men and the eradication
of slavery. Nearby, the Loring-Greenough House is constructed. The house
is owned by Commodore Joshua Loring, a privateer, British Navy veteran,
and agent of the English Crown. He is forced to flee in 1774 by patriots.
The house is used as a hospital for General George Washington's troops
during the Revolution.
- 1769: The Congregational Society of the Third Parish Church is
built using funds donated by Benjamin and Suzanna Pemberton. It is later
renamed the First Congregational Society of Jamaica Plain.
- 1777: John Hancock moves to Jamaica Plain after resigning from
presidency of the Congress of the United States.
- 1794: Former Governor Samuel Adams moves to the 40 acre Peacock
estate.
- 1815: Benjamin Bussey (1757-1842), Revolutionary War veteran
and goldsmith, builds the Woodland Hills estate where he had an 18,000
volume personal library. It is later the home of Thomas Lothrop Motley,
a president of the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture.
- 1826: Omnibuses, "The Hourlies," run hourly to Boston
carrying passengers for 25 cents.
- 1834: The Boston and Providence Railroad runs through town bringing
new settlers.
- 1840s:
Factories built along Stoney Brook. Poorer immigrants begin to move
into housing built next to the factories.
- 1848: Forest Hills Cemetery is constructed. It is created out
of the John Seaverns Farm by Henry A.S. Dearborn (1783-1851), Mayor
of Roxbury and president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society.
The cemetery is a mixture of graves, monuments, and natural landscape.
The Crematory in the cemetery is the first in the country. The first
person cremated is Lucy Stone (1818-1893), the first female from Massachusetts
to graduate from college (Oberlin), as well as the first woman editor
(The Women's Journal). She keeps her maiden name when she marries, which
also may have been a first.
- 1850s
to 1880s: Breweries built in the part of Jamaica Plain near the
Roxbury town line (now Jackson Sq.). German immigrants settle near there,
and around Hyde Square.
- 1851: West Roxbury, including Roslindale and Jamaica Plain, secedes
from Roxbury.
- 1852: William Hyslop Sumner (1780-1861), the developer of East
Boston, has a mansion on Sumner Hill, Roanoke Street.
- 1853: The First Parish Church is built on South and Centre Streets
by Nathaniel J. Bradlee. It now stands next to the Civil War Monument
erected in 1871.
- 1858: H.R. Hunt paints Skating on Jamaica Pond, a representation
of the popular outdoor activities on the frozen kettle pond. The pond
is also used as a reservoir by the Jamaica Pond Aqueduct Company and
for ice harvesting.
- 1868:
Curtis Hall is built as the own Hall at Monument Square. Jamaica Plain
is the town center for the Town West Roxbury with the town hall and
the police station on Seaverns Avenue.
- 1872: The 265-acre Benjamin Bussey (1757-1842) estate, a gift
to the town, is developed into the Arnold Arboretum and
named after New Bedford benefactor John Arnold. The Arboretum, part
of which is in Roslindale, features some of the finest tree and plant
specimens in the world. The first president of the Arboretum is Charles
Sprague Sargent, Harvard professor and cousin of painter John Singer
Sargent.
- 1874: Jamaica Plain is annexed to Boston after being part of
Roxbury and West Roxbury.
- 1876: The Allandale Mineral Spring Water Pavilion opens. Renowned
as a healing spring, it attracts many visitors with its advertisements
claiming it can cure "dyspepsia, kidney problems, diabetes, gravel,
canker, dropsy, catarrh, nervousness, bladder diseases, constipation,
eczema, and all skin diseases."
- 1877: Led by Caroline H. Morse, The Footlights Drama Club is
founded as a social and drama club. The first production is a comedy
entitled A Scrap of Paper.
- 1880: The Adams Nervine Hospital is founded. The hospital is
funded by sugar merchant Seth Adams. It caters to patients with nervous
disorders and is located in the J. Gardiner House.
- 1881: Charles Fletcher Dole becomes the pastor of the First Church.
His son James Drummond Dole (1877-1958),
with less than $2,000, makes $40,000,000 in the pineapple business in
Hawaii and the Sandwich Islands.
- 1882: Saint John's Episcopal Church is built on land given by
William H. Sumner using a design by Harris M. Stephenson (1845-1909).
- 1890: The Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant (1833-1890) House is built
on Revere Street. Now a historic landmark, the house is occupied by
Sturtevant's son-in-law, Eugene Noble Foss (1858-1939), Massachusetts
Governor from 1911-1913.
- 1891: The first Blessed Sacrament Church is built at Centre and
Creighton.
- 1894: The first Parkman House is constructed for Francis Parkman
(1823-1893), a historian, Harvard horticulture professor, and creator
of the hybrid red speckled lily. The house is rebuilt in 1906. The Francis
Parkman School in Forest Hills is named after him in 1899.
- 1903: The construction of the Elevated Line (Orange Line) above
Washington Street causes controversy in town.
- 1913: The first Children's Museum in the area is located in the
old Perkins family estate called Pinebank. It is later moved in 1936
to Burroughs Street and finally to Boston in 1979.
- 1915: Architect Joseph McGinnis designs colorful politician James
Michael Curley's House on 350 Jamaicaway. The Boston landmark is recognizable
by the shamrocks cut into its shutters.
- 1918: Saint Andrew the Apostle Parish is founded on 40 Walk Hill
Street.
- 1924: Dance instructor Marguerite Souther puts up $16,000 of
her own money to help the Tuesday Club buy the Loring-Greenough House
for preservation and to prevent it from being torn down to make room
for stores. The Tuesday Club (1897) is a women's literary society that
used the mansion as a clubhouse as well as a place for Red Cross activities,
classes, and teas.
- 1931: Edward Graham designs Our Lady of Lourdes on Montebello
Road.
- 1933: The second Agassiz School (the first is built 1849) is
built at Burroughs and Brewer Streets and named after Swiss naturalist
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) whose wife Ida Higginson Agassiz founded Radcliffe
College.
- 1935: Central Congregational Church built at 85 Seaverns Avenue.
A second Congregational church, the Covenant Congregational Church,
is built at 455 Morton Street the same year.
- 1958: The Saint Andrew Ukranian Orthodox Church is built on Orchard
Hill Road in Forest Hills.
- 1968: Neighborhood resistance blocks highway I-95 from running
through Jamaica Plain.
Further Reading
- Jamaica Plain. The Boston 200 Neighborhood History Series. Boston:
Boston 200 Corporation, 1976.
- Sammarco, Anthony Mitchell. Jamaica Plain. Images of America.
Dover, NH: Arcadia, 1997.
- Von Hoffman,
Alexander. Local Attachments: The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood,
1850-1920. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
- Whitcomb, Harriet Manning. Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain.
Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1897.
Links
- Events
- Neighborhood News
- Jamaica
Plain Historical Society
- Restaurants
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