Quick History Stops: Milton, MA, Part 1

After I visited Forbes House Museum during my trip to Milton, MA in June, I made several quick history stops around the town. In the first of two posts about these stops, I discuss the usual rounds of local churches, short hikes, informational signage, and a cemetery. My surprise bonus stops for this portion of the trip was a pair of memorial parks. In the second post, I will cover the many buildings at the center of town.

East Congregational Church of Milton began as Second Evangelical Congregational in the Railway Village portion of the town in 1843 and updated its name in 1898. The current red brick Colonial Revival style building was built in 1951. Earlier this year, this church reunited with First Congregational Church at the center of town, to be discussed in my next post, and formed appropriately named United Congregational Church of Milton. Nearby, Crane Field was established as a park in 1913, although it had been an open space for several years prior. Among the earliest European colonists in that area was Henry Crane who built his family home around 1654. A memorial in the field was dedicated to Detective Sherman Chester Griffiths of the Boston Police Drug Control Unit who was shot and killed while on duty in 1988 at age thirty-six. On the opposite end of the field was a sign for Railway Village Historic District, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 2000. The village was formed in 1829 when the tracks for Granite Railway were laid to bring stones into Boston to build the Bunker Hill Monument, now part of Boston National Historical Park.

Saint Agatha Parish & School was established in 1922 and covers the Milton and Quincy area. Catholic churches had been in the area since St. Mary’s of West Quincy in 1826, although members were persecuted by the Protestant-majority population. The church received its name from a martyred saint who died in 251 AD. Church property has greatly expanded in size since initial construction over a hundred years ago. The adjoining school opened in 1951 and now teaches two-year-old preschool through eighth grade. A sign erected by the Town of Milton for its 350^th anniversary noted that these buildings are located on Adams Street, once known as Country Highway or “heighweye”, which was established by the British colonial General Court in 1639 as the road connecting Plymouth or Plimoth Colony with Massachusetts Bay Colony. Many portions of the road were widenings of trails used by Native Americans, as was the case for this road widened by Henry Crane and family in 1654.

Governor Hutchinson’s Field and adjacent Pierce Reservation are operated by the Trustees and stand between Adams Street and the Neponset River. The land was owned by the last royal governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, Thomas Hutchinson, for forty years from 1734 to 1774 when the Boston Tea Party prompted him to flee back to England. He was the great-grandson of Anne Marbury Hutchinson who was expelled from the colony for her religious beliefs, but he evidently lacked her rebellious spirit. Across Adams Street is Forbes House Museum and privately owned Dr. Amos Holbrook House built around 1800. The groundbreaking doctor had inoculated the Continental Army against smallpox during the American Revolutionary War. The house has been on the National Register since 1975.

Milton Cemetery was established in 1672 and is active to this day. Naturally, this has earned it a spot on the National Register since 2004. The cemetery is currently 102 acres in size and provides a restful place to take a walk, eat lunch, and put your hubcap back on after hitting a curb. A similarly interesting but not quite as quiet stop is Camp Meigs Memorial Park, which is technically in Readville, Hyde Park, Boston, MA, or just over the Neponset River from Milton. An outdoor exhibit with a metal sculpture and informational signage recently installed by the Department of Conservation & Recreation (DCR) in Massachusetts detailed the lives of Black soldiers who served in the Massachusetts 54^th regiment during the American Civil War. The signs provided concise information and photographs from the time period, by far the best exhibit I have seen on the subject.

The Suffolk Resolves House is owned by Milton Historical Society and appears to never open to the public. In 1774, the house was owned by Daniel Vose. The historical society claims this was the site where American patriots from Suffolk County created the Suffolk Resolves outlining how the American colonies could gain independence from Great Britain. Paul Revere was legendarily recruited by Resolves writer Dr. Joseph Warren to ride down to Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia, PA to deliver the important message to John Adams and the Continental Congress. The document later influenced the Declaration of Independence in 1776. If you want to get a look at this house, park in the lot behind the house and not on the narrow, unpaved road leading up to it, as is warned against on the society website.

My final stop for this post is Neponset River Reservation, another park managed by DCR. I started at the Burma Trail parking area and took a quick detour north to look at Paul’s Bridge. The beautiful granite multiarch bridge spans the Neponset River and connects Milton to Readville. The bridge dates from 1849, although it was reconstructed mostly from the original material in 1935, and has been on the National Register since 1972. As for the name of the bridge, the came from the older bridge it had replaced, which in turn was named for Samuel Paul of Dedham, the town that the village of Readville belonged to before it was annexed by Boston.