HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

Your humble host really misses travel, so this week’s episode is inspired by travel, both historic travel and my own. In the early 19th century, a Boston shipwright’s apprentice went to sea with a whaling voyage, and ended up being recruited into a crew that was assembled in the Hawaiian Islands, then captured by Spanish authorities on the California coast and accused of piracy. Escaping the gallows through hard work and Yankee ingenuity, Joseph Chapman would build a New England style mill for the San Gabriel mission, the first of its kind in Alta California. He would live through tumultuous times, witnessing the independence of Mexico, the downfall of the mission system he had become part of, and eventually the American annexation of California.

Please check out the full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/206/

And support the show on Patreon. Joseph Chapman, from Boston to L.A. The only known photo of Joseph and Guadalupe Chapman ca 1847

• Scott, Paul T. “Why Joseph Chapman Adopted California and ‘Why California Adopted Him.’” The Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3, 1956, pp. 239–246.
• Ward, Jean Bruce, and Gary Kurutz. “Some New Thoughts on an Old Mill.” California Historical Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 2, 1974, pp. 139–164
• Mason, Jesse D; Thompson & West, History of Santa Barbara county, California, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers
• Robinson, Alfred, Life in California: Being a Residence of Several Years in that Territory
• Transcription of Jedediah Smith’s Journal – First Expedition to California, 7 Aug 1826 – 3 Jul 1827
• Harrison Rogers’ journal in Dale, Harrison Clifford; Smith, Jedediah Strong; Rogers, Harrison G; Ashley, William Henry; The Ashley-Smith explorations and the discovery of a central route to the Pacific, 1822-1829: with the original journals
• Notes on the mission mills from the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation
• Photos and archaeological survey of the millrace prepared for the National Park Service in 2012
• The Pasadena Star News reports on the unveiling of the relocated millrace in 2013
• Additional details from the unveiling
• The mission church at San Gabriel suffers a devastating fire in July 2020. Ongoing updates.

The campanario, or wall of bells, at San Gabriel Chapman’s millrace The historic plaque that caught my attention Enormous grape vine Tiny grapes Diagram of Chapman’s Mill Millrace as excavated in 2009 A monument to the thousands of Tongvans buried at San Gabriel Boston Book Club

Sidney Perley was an attorney, who graduated from BU School of Law in 1886, and a self taught historian. He published a half dozen legal textbooks and another nine volumes of New England history, most of which focus on Cape Ann and the witch hysteria. However, whenever I need to research a weather anomaly that occurred in Boston between English colonization and 1891, Perley’s Historic Storms of New England is my first stop.

From the great hurricane of 1635, the English colonists’ first experiences with earthquakes, comets, eclipses, and dark days, to historic blizzards, gales, tornados, and droughts, Perley explains each one in detail. He uses period sources to show what the people who lived through these extreme events thought they were experiencing, and he uses the latest scientific knowledge to bring a late 19th century “modern” perspective to them. It’s a great resource for researching any extreme or unusual weather, atmospheric, or cosmic event.

Upcoming Event(s)

Wednesday, October 21 at 4pm: Revolutionary Spaces is hosting the next edition of Reflecting Attucks, their year long series of events commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre and its most famous victim, Crispus Attucks. Titled “Demanding Freedom: Attucks and the Abolition Movement,” this talk will examine how 19th century abolitionists revived the memory of Attucks, after he had been nearly forgotten as a man of African and Native descent in a country that was building historical myths of its white founders. The panelists will be Christopher Bonner, of the University of Maryland, author of Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American Citizenship; Kellie Carter Jackson of Wellesley College, author of Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence; and Stephen Kantrowitz of the University of Wisconsin, author of More than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889. Here’s how Revolutionary Spaces describes the talk:

“Demanding Freedom: Attucks and the Abolition Movement” reflects on how 19th century abolitionists revived Crispus Attucks’s memory in their fight to end slavery. Abolitionists of the era presented Attucks as the first martyr of the Revolution who died fighting for liberty, an image that resonated powerfully in a nation that placed millions of African Americans in bondage despite its stated ideal of freedom. In the conversation, we will place the work of abolitionists into a contemporary setting by reflecting on the obstacles that persist to today when Americans are asked to live up to the founding promises of freedom and liberty for all.

Wednesday, October 21 at 6pm: The Boston Public Library will be hosting a talk at 6pm with author Bill McEvoy about his book Rainsford Island: A Boston Harbor Case Study in Public Neglect and Private Activism. Self-published in January, his book delves deep into the decades when a small Island in Boston Harbor was transformed from a quarantine hospital into the site of public city institutions that weren’t wanted in other neighborhoods, including hospitals, asylums, and reformatories. Here’s what the BPL website says about the talk:

Author Bill McEvoy explores the history of Rainsford Island in Boston Harbor. Beginning with private ownership from 1636 to 1736, then the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and finally the City of Boston. The island’s complex history is best told by segmenting its various periods. Until 1854, it was occasionally a place of quarantine, as well as a summer resort for the wealthy. In 1854, while under the ownership of the Commonwealth, the island’s use took a turn beginning sixty-six years as an off-shore repository for Boston’s unwanted. Its inmates were victims of: poverty, lack of health care, mental illness, senility, addiction, lack of proper housing, poor sanitary conditions, inability to pay a small fine, men unable to find work, incarcerated as paupers, and unwed pregnant women.

We note 2 heroes: Alice Lincoln and Louis Brandeis. Their efforts resulted in the Cityending Rainsford Island as a warehouse for the poor, the unwanted, and the mentally ill. Rainsford entered its final 26 years as the Boys’ House of Reformation. Further examples of inept management, cruelty, neglect, and death, of “Unfortunate” boys ages eight to eighteen are documented. Sentences ranged from playing ball on Sundays to murder. Those boys were commingled on the 11 acre island.

His book is dedicated to the memory of all who were sent to Rainsford Island, especially those who remain buried there, still neglected but now not forgotten. This book dedicates a chapter to those that never left the island in unmarked graves, including a War of 1812 Sailor; 9 Civil War soldiers who died on active duty; and 108 Veterans of the Civil War who died between 1873 and 1893. 14 of those Veterans were African American, one was a member of the 54th Mass Regt.