HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

In September 1851, Boston threw an enormous party, a party big enough to span three days. After 15 years of development, the railroad network centered on Boston stretched out in every direction, linking the port of Boston to the American Midwest and the interior of Canada, with the Cunard line’s steamers giving access to markets in England. To celebrate the new era of railroading, the city threw a grand Railroad Jubilee and invited President Millard Fillmore, the Governor General of Canada, and dignitaries from all over the country. Besides commerce and steam locomotives, this episode will highlight a growing split within the Whigs old political party; Boston’s ever-present competition with New York City; and the seemingly unavoidable rush toward a civil war over the question of slavery.

Please check out the transcript and full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/203/

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Boston’s Railroad Jubilee

• The Boston City Council’s report on the Grand Railroad Jubilee
• Connolly, Michael J. “The Correction of Our Political Philosophy: New England Whigs and the 1851 Boston Railroad Jubilee.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 2, 2006
• Jacobs, Warren. “Dates of Some of the Principal Events in the History of 100 Years of the Railroad in New England. 1826-1926.” The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, no. 17, 1928
• King, T. Starr. (1851). The railroad jubilee: two discourses delivered in Hollis-Street Meeting-House, Sunday, Sept. 21, 1851.
• Haskell, D. N. (Daniel Noyes). (1851). The Boston Committee in Canada: a series of eight letters reprinted from the Boston atlas.
• Robert C Winthrop on the friendly reception of the “redcoats” in Boston in 1851
• Free tickets for the Jubilee led to a decline in railroad revenues
• President Fillmore’s February 1851 address to the Senate denouncing Boston after the rescue of Shadrach Minkins
• Gamst, Frederick C. “The Context and Significance of America’s First Railroad, on Boston’s Beacon Hill.” Technology and Culture, vol. 33, no. 1, 1992
• A recollection of Lord Elgin’s visit to Boston by George H Mills, president of the Wentworth (Ontario) historical society in 1892, who attended the Jubilee and owned the Victoria Fire Insurance Co.

A panorama of the Grand Procession Tremont St (top) and inside the tent on Boston Common (bottom) State St and the Old State House (bottom) The tent on Boston Common Boston City Hall decorated for the Railroad Jubilee Dover Street during the Railroad Jubilee

• An 1842 map of Boston emphasizing the new rail lines into the city
• A map of the Grand Junction Railroad connecting Cunard Line steamers to the Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railway
• Our header image shows President Millard Fillmore reviewing the troops on Boston Common

Boston Book Club

Published in 2011, A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis, Boston 1850-1900, by Stephen Puleo is one of my favorite books about Boston, and the first place I read about Boston’s railroad jubilee. This book helped me turn an interest in Boston history into a tour company, and eventually into the podcast you’re listening to right now. The book traces the development of Boston in the second half of the 19th century in broad strokes, from the rescue of accused fugitive Shadrach Minkins to the sudden influx of Irish immigrants to the construction of America’s first subway. Here’s how the author’s website describes the book:

The second half of the nineteenth century is, quite simply, a breathtaking period in Boston’s history. Unlike the frustrations of our modern era, in which the notion of accomplishing great things often appears overwhelming or even impossible, Boston distinguished itself between 1850 and 1900 by proving it could tackle and overcome the most arduous of challenges and obstacles with repeated, and often resounding, success.

A City So Grand chronicles this breathtaking period in Boston’s history for the first time. Readers will experience the abolitionist movement of the 1850s, the 35-year engineering and city-planning feat of the Back Bay project, the arrival of the Irish that transformed Boston demographically, the Great Fire of 1872 and the subsequent rebuilding of downtown, Alexander Graham Bell’s invention of the telephone in Boston, and the many contributions Boston made to shaping transportation, including the Great Railroad Jubilee of 1851 and the grand opening of America’s first subway. These stories and many more paint an extraordinary portrait of a half-century of progress, leadership, and influence that redefined Boston as a world-class city.

Upcoming Events

September 23: Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford is hosting an online discussion titled “Acts of Rebellion and Envisioning a New Society.” The talk will feature Dr. Vincent Brown, who teaches American and African American History at Harvard, and Dr. Timothy McCarthy, who is a human rights activist on the faculty of the Kennedy School. Together, they’ll talk “about the role of protests and revolts in shaping Black resistance and freedom movements from slave rebellions in the 18th-century Atlantic world, to the Black Lives Matter Movement today.” Registration for the interactive Zoom event is limited to the first 100 people, though it will also be livestreamed on Facebook in case of an overflow crowd.

September 29: Throughout the 250th anniversary year of the Boston Massacre, Revolutionary Spaces is hosting events in a series called Reflecting Attucks, as they explore the life and world of Boston Massacre victim Crispus Attucks. The next event in the series is titled “Imagining Attucks,” and it will focus on how Attucks has been portrayed in visual media like paintings and engravings. As an African American man, Crispus Attucks didn’t fit the narrative that artists of the time like Henry Pelham and Paul Revere tried to portray with their engravings of the massacre, so he was left out of the picture in the 18th century. When Attucks was “rediscovered” in the 19th century, artists painted him back into the picture, with each successive generation projecting their own values onto the canvas. The panelists for this talk will include a playwright who is writing a show about Crispus Attucks, the living history interpreter who plays him in the Boston Massacre reenactment each year, and the author of a book about Crispus Attucks in American Memory.

September 30: Our friends at the Partnership of Historic Bostons are presenting another event in their Charter Day series. The Partnership is dedicated to telling the stories of Boston, Massachusetts and Boston, Lincolnshire, which usually means that they focus very heavily on the lived experiences of the 17th century Puritans who came from the town in Lincolnshire to found the town in Massachusetts. This time, they will be taking a very different approach to the history of 17th century Boston, by highlighting the experiences of the indigenous peoples who lived along the shores of the Massachusetts Bay before the Puritans arrived. Their guest speaker will be Dr. Larry Fisher, PhD and Council Chief Sachem, who bears the traditional name Chief Sachem Wompimeequin Wampatuck. Dr. Fisher is a direct descendent of the Grand Sachem Chickatawbut, who we have discussed on the show, and “the Presiding Council Chief Sâchem for the Mattakeeset Tribe of the Massachuset Indian Nation and Ambassador Delegate to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on behalf of the Mattakeeset Massachuset.”

Dr. Fisher will “interpret the human experiences of the Indian Nations of the Massachusetts Bay Colony” and “their relations with Massachusetts Bay Colony.” Here’s how the Partnership and the Massachuset Nation describe the event:

The land, from the Merrimack and beyond, south to the Taunton river was shared among the Massachuset Nation which includes todays known surviving tribes: the Mattakeeset, Natick, Ponkapoag and Nemasket. Chief Sachem Larry Fisher and other spokespersons will examine the partially-interpreted history of 16th and 17th century Massachusetts, up to the present. We believe all aspects of our common history shall be preserved and remembered together. We recognize that only with inclusion, honesty and honoring our individual and distinctive tribal histories, will we truly achieve our mission: to bring harmony and education to the whole organization receiving this message.