HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

This week’s show revisits two classic HUB History episodes that are all about the boundaries of the city of Boston. First, we’ll go back to a show that originally aired last January to learn why independent towns like Roxbury, Dorchester, and Charlestown were eager to be annexed into the city of Boston in the mid- to late-19th century, and we’ll examine why Boston hasn’t annexed any other municipalities since Hyde Park in 1912. Of course, once you make the boundaries of the city bigger by annexing your neighbors, you have to keep track of those new boundaries. So our second clip will be from a show that aired way back in September of 2017, about the ancient practice of perambulating the bounds. Since the 1650s, Massachusetts law has required towns to clearly mark their boundaries with other towns, and to send somebody out to walk the line and examine the markers every five years.

Please support us on Patreon and check out the full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/141/

Annexation

• Eden on the Charles: the Making of Boston, by Michael Rawson
• Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston Since 1630, by Lawrence Kennedy
• Crabgrass Frontier: the Suburbanization of the United States, by Kenneth T Jackson
• Arguments against annexing Roxbury.
• Arguments for and against the annexation of Dorchester.
• Arguments for and against annexing Brookline.
• An 1873 map of proposed annexations, and an 1874 map of actual annexations.
• In 1912, state rep Daniel Kiley made one of the most ambitious annexation proposals.
• In 1991, Boston considered annexing troubled Chelsea, before the state put them into receivership.
• A 2007 proposal by a real estate developer to annex 100 acres from Dedham and add it to Hyde Park.
• An aggressive 2013 proposal to annex all towns within the 617 area code.

Perambulation

• Big thanks this week to Marta Crilly, Reference and Outreach Archivist at Boston City Archives, for finding a trove of documentation on modern perambulations of the bounds.
• Thanks also to Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub, whose 2012 post was our first exposure to the concept of perambulating the bounds.
• The 1651 Act Respecting Bounds of Town Lands that requires Massachusetts towns to periodically perambulate their bounds.
• The current version of that law that is still in effect.
• From the City Archives, a gallery of officials perambulating Boston’s bounds in 1896.
• John Hancock and Samuel Sewall perambulate the bounds in 1765 (after meeting in a tavern, of course).
• Some New England towns still perambulate their bounds, but they’re not all happy about it.

The southernmost point in Boston, where four towns meet. Boston, Dedham, Canton, and Milton meet in the woods along the Neponset. A boundary stone along Center Street in West Roxbury The boundary between Boston and Brookline near Fenway station. This boundary stone now stands entirely within the bounds of Boston… Because it marks our former boundary with Hyde Park. Boston Book Club

Last summer Adam Gaffin of the local news site Universal Hub published an article titled “Stony Brook: Boston’s Stygian River,” an in depth description of how an 1886 flood inspired the city to bury the Stony Brook. The midsized river originates in the high ground where West Roxbury, Hyde Park, and Roslindale all come together, and it once wound its way through Roxbury until it drained into the Muddy River near its confluence with the Charles. The brook was so clean and clear that a series of breweries were founded in Roxbury to make beer with its delicious water. Eventually, however, too many factories discharged their waste into the river, and it became polluted. As the watershed became heavily populated and industrialized, the Stony Brook’s annual floods could no longer be tolerated.

Using many wonderful historic maps and photos, Gaffin’s article describes “a decades-long project to create Boston’s underground river – a 7 1/2-mile waterway on which the sun never shines. Throw in all the marshes that were filled and the tributaries that were also covered and you end up with a project to rival the creation of the Back Bay, one that affected hundreds of acres of land from Hyde Park to the Charles River.” He follows the historic route of the Brook, describes the construction techniques used to build the massive scale tunnels that now carry it, and takes the reader on a virtual tour showing how to trace the route of the current underground river.

The article hits the sweet spot between urban infrastructure and Boston history, and it sits well with this week’s theme of 19th century development and expansion.

Upcoming Event

And for our upcoming event this week, we’re featuring a special 30th anniversary screening of the movie Glory. When it was released in the summer of 1989, Glory became an instant hit and critical darling, winning three Oscars and a host of other awards. The movie is a Civil War epic, which focuses on the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which we’ve mentioned on the podcast many times. Starring Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, and Matthew Broderick, the film follows the all-black regiment and their white officers from their training in Readville, the neighborhood where I live, to the battlefield at Fort Wagner, South Carolina. Roger Ebert’s 1990 review summarizes the plot, and one of the film’s major criticisms, quite nicely:

“Glory” tells the story of the 54th Regiment largely through the eyes of Robert Gould Shaw, who in an early scene in the film is seen horrified and disoriented by the violence of the battlefield.

Returned home to recover from wounds, he is recruited to lead a newly formed black regiment and takes the job even though his own enlightened abolitionist opinions still leave room for doubts about the capability of black troops.

It is up to the troops themselves to convince him they can fight – and along the way they also gently provide him with some insights into race and into human nature, a century before the flowering of the civil rights movement. Among the men who turn into the natural leaders of the 54th are Trip, an escaped slave, and John Rawlins, first seen in the film as a gravedigger who encounters the wounded Shaw on the field of battle.

These men are proud to be soldiers, proud to wear the uniform and also too proud to accept the racism they see all around them, as when a decision is made to pay black troops less than white. Blacks march as far, bleed as much and die as soon, they argue. Why should they be paid less for the same work? Shaw and his second in command, Cabot Forbes, eventually see the logic in this argument and join their men in refusing their paychecks. That action is a turning point for the 54th, fusing the officers and men together into a unit with mutual trust. And everything in the film leads up to the final bloody battle scene, a suicidal march up a hill that accomplishes little in concrete military terms but is of incalculable symbolic importance.

Watching “Glory,” I had one reccuring problem. I didn’t understand why it had to be told so often from the point of view of the 54th’s white commanding officer. Why did we see the black troops through his eyes – instead of seeing him through theirs? To put it another way, why does the top billing in this movie go to a white actor? I ask, not to be perverse, but because I consider this primarily a story about a black experience and do not know why it has to be seen largely through white eyes.

On July 21 and 24th, which are a Sunday and a Wednesday, the film will be screened at a handful of area theaters. It will be shown in the Fenway, and in Framingham, Revere, and Somerville. There are only two days of screenings, and there is only single showtime in some towns, so you probably want to try reserving tickets in advance.