This month we finished re-processing and writing an updated finding aid for the McCarthy Family Collection. You can now read the new finding aid here! To get an overview of what is available, read on!
Lowell Police vs. Cambridge Police baseball club game at Lake View, Lowell. Aug 13, 1895. Cambridge won 12 to 8
This collection documents a longstanding and active family in Cambridge and various local organizations spanning a period of nearly 150 years. The members of the McCarthy family were longtime residents of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first generation to live in Cambridge was Maurice McCarthy. An Irish immigrant born in County Cork, Ireland, Maurice became a U.S. citizen in 1860. A year later, in 1861 he purchased land in East Cambridge at 6 Lechmere Place. He and his wife, Mary Hurley McCarthy, had two children, Ellen McCarthy and Jeremiah H. McCarthy.
Invitation to Jeremiah and Julia’s 25th anniversary celebration. 1934.
Jeremiah was born in 1857 and married Julia Theresa Lane on November 24, 1900. Julia was also an Irish immigrant, but she moved to 29 Warren Street in East Cambridge when she was just 8 months old. As a child, Julia attended the Thorndike Grammar School where she learned the Duntonian System of penmanship created by Alvin R. Dunton, an overseer of penmanship studies in Boston schools. Many of her penmanship books are available for viewing in this collection. There are also many of her personal papers, including correspondence, memorabilia, and vital records, as well as photographs.
Julia Theresa Lane’s penmanship book. She graduated from the Thorndike Grammar School at the age of 13 in 1880.
Between 1900 and 1905 Jeremiah and Julia moved into a house at 134 Otis Street, where the McCarthy family resided until 1993. Jeremiah, sometimes known as “Jerry,” worked for 39 years as a patrolman out of the East Cambridge police station and he retired a year before his death in 1926. Julia lived until 1963 and she was noted for being the oldest East Cambridge resident and oldest graduate of the Thorndike School.
Julia Theresa (Lane) McCarthy, 1928. Likely in her yard at 134 Otis Street.
The couple had three sons, Gerald F., John L., and Justin H. McCarthy. They and their children were active members in the Catholic community in Cambridge. This collection has many of their papers relating to the East Cambridge Catholic Club and the Sacred Heart Church.
Page 30 from Justin McCarthy’s photo album containing a clipping about Gerald “Jerry” becoming a Cambridge cop. Ca. 1930s
Gerald F. McCarthy was born on January 25, 1902 and sometimes referred to as “Jerry” like his father. He worked for the Cambridge Police Department, the Metropolitan Police Department, and finally for the Massachusetts State Police as a lieutenant. He also served in WWII from October 30, 1942 to May 10, 1946. Content accumulated about the Cambridge Police force offer some insight into what he and his family deemed important about that subject.
Front page of The Elm¸ a publication of Cambridge Council, Knights of Columbus. 1933.
John Lane McCarthy was born on February 15, 1904 and attended Harvard Dental School. He had an office in Central Square and was also employed as one of Cambridge’s school system dentists. In 1934 he married Margaret Loretta Roche in Woburn. He then served in WWII as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve in 1939 and he began his active duty as a lieutenant commander of the Dental Corps in June 1943. He was also affiliated with the Bainbridge Naval Hospital Training Center in Maryland and the U.S.S. War Hawk that participated in the Pacific Theater. John was also a member of the Cambridge Elks Lodge, the Knights of Columbus, the Guild of St. Apollonia, and the Agnes Holy Name Society. Our collection has printed materials and other records relating to these groups and other subject matter.
Front cover and page 25 from Justin McCarthy’s photo album. Shown: 134 Otis Street, Justin, Jeremiah, John Lane, Gerald, and Julia McCarthy. Ca. 1920s
Justin H. McCarthy was born in 1906 and worked as a marine electrician at the Boston Navy Yard as well as Western Electric. While serving for the Navy, he embarked on trips to Bermuda. There are many photographs taken during his trips to Bermuda as well as his experiences in the Navy. He retained many of his holiday cards, which provide additional information about his extended family and friends. He also compiled a photo album that we digitized for preservation purposes. It is available for viewing on our Flickr page, here:
Beyond these central family members, the collection includes nearly 300 photographs of McCarthy family members and friends (1890s-1980s), over 250 photographs of unidentified people and places, 10 tintypes, and 1 drawing.
As part of Women’s History Month, we are featuring the poet, novelist, and memoirist May Sarton.
May Sarton was born Eleanore Marie Sarton in Belgium in 1912. Her parents were George Sarton, a science historian, and Eleanor Mabel Elwes, an artist. Her family fled the country at the beginning of WWI, and after a few years of moving around, May’s father accepted a position at Harvard University. The family settled in Cambridge initially on Channing Place and later moved to 103 Raymond Street. May attended Shady Hill School where she began writing poetry. When her family moved back to Belgium for a few years, May attended the Institute Belge de Culture Française in Brussels. On returning to Cambridge with her parents, she attended Cambridge High and Latin School where she graduated in 1929. May went on to study theater in New York at the Civic Repertory Theatre. After several years, she returned to the Boston area and started writing, teaching creative writing, and directing plays at the Stuart School on the Fenway.
Her first book, Encounter in April, was published in 1937. A year later she published The Single Hound, followed by a collection of poems, Inner Landscape, in 1939. During World War II, she worked for the Office of War Information in the film department. In 1945, she won the Gold Rose for Poetry and the Edward Bland Memorial prize. After the war, with the publication of the novel, The Bridge of Years, and a poetry collection, The Lion and the Rose in 1948, Sarton’s reputation expanded. Her short stories were published in The New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar, and she wrote several articles for the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The Kenyan Review, The Reporter, and others. She lived at 14 Wright Street in Cambridge and taught at several universities from 1950 to 1955 and served as Briggs-Copeland instructor in composition at Harvard from 1950 to 1952. In 1954 she wrote a biography of her father, I Knew a Phoenix, depicting Cambridge and the academic world in which she grew up.
After her father passed away in 1956 (her mother had died in 1950), May moved to Nelson, New Hampshire where she bought an old house (the subject of her memoir Plant Dreaming Deep). She wrote two novels, The Small Room and Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing. Because this second book depicted a lesbian affair, she was required to excise some passages before her publisher would agree to accept it. This book is considered the author’s most intense study of the feminine artist as a misunderstood and solitary individual. Sarton lectured at Harvard, Radcliffe, and Wellesley colleges, among other institutions. She was also a Guggenheim fellow in poetry. She held the Golden Rose Award for poetry, the Edward Bland Memorial Prize from Poetry Magazine, the Reynolds Lyric Award of the Poetry Society of America, the Alexandrine Medal of the College of St. Catherine, and the Perkins Memorial Award of Eastern Connecticut’s Thoreau School of Holistic Education.
She published two autobiographies, Plant Dreaming Deep in 1968, and A World of Light, in 1976. In the 1980s, she suffered a stroke, which left her unable to write for over nine months; later she published, After the Stroke in 1988. A year before her death, May published a last volume of poems, Coming into Eighty in 1994. She died of breast cancer in 1995, in Maine.
In 1996, a plaque commemorating her life and work, was installed on the grounds of the main branch of the Cambridge Public Library.
The following is one of her poems published in December 1992,
Massachusetts State Senator Zebina Lee Raymond (1804-1872), State Library of Massachusetts
Happy Torn Down Tuesday! Today we are featuring the two-story home that once stood at 8 Dana Street on the corner of Centre Street. Built in 1848, this elaborately ornate Italiante-style home was commissioned by the Honorable Zebina L. Raymond, a Senator and Mayor of Cambridge.
Clipping describing Raymond’s house, Cambridge Chronicle (1 June 1848)
The house and land was purchased by Henry B. Ward in 1856 who in turn sold the house to merchant John S. Paine two years later. Paine’s Furniture Company was once the largest business of its kind in New England.
Advertisement for Paine’s, Cambridge Chronicle (7 June 1884)
Paine executed many renovations in the home including new window treatments, gas fixtures, chandeliers, and carpets. The house was again renovated in 1891 when Paine contracted Wellington Fillmore to build a one-story addition.
Photograph of 8 Dana St taken by Denys Peter Myers, Jr. or Richard Ruggles (1937)
The home was described in Survey of Architectural History in Cambridge Vol. 2: Mid Cambridge as follows:
Although the gable ends of 8 Dana Street have cornices carried across to form pediments in the Greek Revival manner, the rest of the detail is Italiante. The house is pictorial in effect, with much of its quality depending on the play of light and shadow across the wall surfaces and under the arcaded porches. (p. 53)
Window details photographed by B. Orr (winter, 1965-66)
In 1911, owner Sterling F. Hayward contracted the well-known Cambridge architect John A. Hasty to complete alterations in the sum of $3,000–nearly $80,000 in today’s money. Hasty is also responsible for designing the Cambridge Mutual Fire Insurance building and “The University” apartments–both on Massachusetts Avenue.
8 Dana St, photographed by Ed James (ca. 1947)
In the 1920s, the building was purchased by Mary M. Collins and converted into multi-occupant housing catering to students and short-term tenants. The building was named Vernon Hall and offered dining options in addition to accommodation.
Ad for Vernon Hall, Cambridge Tribune (19 December 1925)
By the mid 1940s, the building was in use as a convalescent home and later classified as nursing/rest home. The house at 8 Dana St was demolished in 1975 to make way for an addition of that complex, now known as the Cambridge Rehabilitation and Nursing Center.
Detail of Hopkins Atlas showing location of 8 Dana St (1886)
Hello faithful social media followers! We here at the CHC want to provide you with the latest updates on the City’s response to COVID-19. City of Cambridge City offices will be closed to the public beginning at 5:00pm today, Monday March 16th, until further notice.
For the foreseeable future, CHC staff will be working remotely from our homes. We are committed to providing service to the public to the best of our ability during this time. For more information, please visit the City’s designated COVID-19 website via this link.
Many of our resources are available online, so please do check out the websites below for digitized historic photographs, building histories, archival collection information, GIS and map information, and much more. Finally, please do not hesitate to e-mail us at histcomm@cambridgema.gov with inquiries.
CHC Archives’ online resources:
Instagram: We will still be updating this throughout the week!
Cambridge Historical Society: Many great online resources, including the Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, which features interesting articles on Cambridge history; their Flickr page with great images of Cambridge people, industry, and correspondence, including Cambridge architect Lois Lilley Howe; and project sites from former CHS interns, highlighting facets of Cambridge history like folk music, candy, and innovation.
Cambridge Women’s Heritage Project: recognizing and celebrating the contributions of women from the early days of Cambridge to the present. The project welcomes nominations, corrections, and time to help research or edit the entries. A great project to help with from home!
Cambridge Black Trailblazers: Biographical information on several Black Trailblazers yet to be recognized by the City of Cambridge’s marker project, including dancer Gus Solomons Jr.; Henry Owens, Inc., the oldest minority-owned company in New England; and psychiatrist Dr. June Jackson Christmas.
Links from other departments and separate websites that we find useful and/or interesting:
The Commission has recently finished processing a small image collection titled the Lewis Family Collection. This collection chronicles a portion of the longstanding and prolific Lewis family of Cambridge, Mass. and it is part of a much larger set of subject records available concerning the Lewis family. Other records include the Lewis family and Lewisville segments of African American files in CHC people files. However, these other textual files mainly pertain to the family’s 19th century contributions and its efforts in various African American movements, including the Cambridge Liberian Emigrant Association. We highly recommend you visit us to see these incredibly rich records!
The Lewis Family Collection is unique because it is solely visual documentation and it covers a period of about 20 years (1900-1920) that is not often represented in historical accounts of the Lewis family. It also is a product of a larger effort conducted by the CHC primarily in 1980-1982 called the Cambridge Photo History Project. The Project was intended to bring together photographs of Cambridge taken before 1945. For this collection, the donor brought in five scrapbooks, which were photographed page-by-page and then returned to her. The CHC retained the surrogates and transformed them into negatives and copy prints so that the content of the scrapbook would be available to you.
“Dad.” George W. Lewis Jr. ca. 1900-1920s
Within the collection are three generations of the Lewis family, immediate relatives, and close friends. The first generation shown is Nancy and George Washington Lewis (Jr.) George Washington Lewis (Jr.) was born in Cambridge in 1848 and he worked as a steward for the Harvard Porcellian Club for over 45 years and he replaced his father’s position in 1876.
“Ma.” Nancy E. Lewis, ca. 1900-1920s
On October 11, 1872 George married Nancy E. Poole who was born ca. 1852 in Columbia, South Carolina. They had five children, Elizabeth E. Lewis, Jerome Theodore Lewis, Walter E. Lewis, George Colman Lewis, and Ethel A. Lewis. By 1897 the family purchased 47 Parker Street and were noted for hosting amateur theatrical productions and housing black Harvard undergraduates.
“A.M. Harvard. 1917”
“[top left] Julia Harris, [Gordon David] Dave Houston, [top right] Bob Morris, [bottom left] Ida Morris, [bottom right] Tony Harris”, ca. 1900-1920sThese images exemplify some of the African American youth that would congregate at the Parker Street residence. Gordon David (Dave) Houston is the resident of “Houston’s Den” mentioned in this collection. He was born in Cambridge on May 6, 1880 and attended the Cambridge High and Latin School. In 1900 he graduated from the high school, the same year as Anthony Harris– it is possible that they knew each other through sports. In 1904 he graduated from Harvard College cum laude and pursued an academic career as an English professor. He led English departments at Tuskegee Institute, Howard University, Dunbar High school, and Douglas High School. On August 20, 1907 he married Dora Mayo Lawrence and they had two daughters, Dorothy Maude and Ethel Augusta.
Anthony (Tony) Harris went to Sunday School at Christ Church in 1900– likely connecting him to Ethel Lewis. That same year he graduated from the Cambridge Manual Training School for Boys (CMTS) after attending and graduating from the Washington grammar school in 1895. During his time at CMTS, Anthony– or more popularly addressed as Tony– was known for his skills at football. He later coached football at CMTS until ca. 1906. The 1908 City Directory cites Anthony as a waiter boarding at 73 Howard Street.
The others in this image have speculative biographical histories available in the collection’s finding aid.
Along with hosting social gatherings for friends, Nancy and George had five children. The image on the left shows “Bessie” Lewis with her probable bridesmaids in 1910, the year she married Maurice Jefferson Brooks, who is in the right-side image. Bessie’s given name was Elizabeth Estelle Lewis but she went by various nicknames including Bessie, Birdie, Bess, and Aunt Lizzie. She was born in November 1880. After her family moved to Cambridge, she worked as a bookkeeper. She married Maurice (1879-1913), a porter from Washington D.C. living in Boston, on October 20, 1910. They had one son, Jerome Theodore Lewis, named after Elizabeth’s brother. When Maurice died in 1913, she moved back in with her parents.
“E.A. Lewis”
George and Nancy’s other daughter was Ethel A. Lewis who was born in October 1878. According to articles in the Cambridge Chronicle, she attended Sunday School at Christ Church and partook in the Girls’ Friendly Society in Cambridge– two organizations that connect her to other individuals in this collection. In the 1900 Census she is cited as working as a stenographer. She has been cited as graduating from Bryant & Stratton Commercial College ca. 1903 and by 1905 as working as a teacher for Simmons College, although no records of confirmation have been found. Nonetheless, a book was published by the Colored Citizens of Greater Boston and the Garrison Centenary Committee of the Suffrage League of Boston and Vicinity due to her efforts as stenographer. The book, The Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of William Lloyd Garrison was published in 1906 and it is available free as an online Google Book! Ethel moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1906 to become a schoolteacher. She boarded at various residents including 1409 McCulloh St in 1920 and 1935 Druid Hill Ave in 1930 while being employed as a teacher and stenographer.
“G.C. Lewis”, ca. 1900-1920s
One of their sons, George Colman Lewis, was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1875. By the 1890s he was a member of the Cambridge Social Union Debating Club and in 1892 he graduated from the Manual Training School. He also partook in the Riverside Cycle Club, an exclusively black club in Cambridge. At various points throughout his life George C. worked as a railroad worker but he attempted a career change ca. 1900 when he embarked on becoming a tailor at 29 Boylston Street. He soon returned to the railroad industry and became a porter. He died on August 19, 1906 at the Mt. Auburn Hospital of heart disease when he was 31 years old. He is here depicted at 4 Wellington Ave (now Somerville).
“Ma Lewis, Pa Lewis, Nellie Sorrell, Anthony Harris, Benzina Reese, Henry Robbins, Ethel Lewis, Jerome Lewis”, ca. 1900-1920s
The Lewis’s eldest son, Jerome Theodore Lewis, was born on November 21, 1872. When the family moved to Cambridge, he worked as a laborer for Ford Motors at 400 Brookline Street. He also married Margaret A. Lewis. Another son, Walter E. Lewis was born in November 1876 and died August 23, 1880. Little is known about him.
Benzina Reese was Nancy Lewis’s niece. Born in October 1873 in South Carolina, Benzina came to Cambridge by 1900. The 1900 Census lists her as working as an office girl. In 1902 she married Frederick Sandford Gray– making her also the Mrs. Gray of this collection. At some point they moved to 10 Chestnut Street in Plymouth, MA, where Frederick worked as a chef. They had three children: Herman F., Helen E. and Leslie R. Gray. Herman is also present in this collection as a baby.
Anthony (Tony) Harris went to Sunday School at Christ Church in 1900– likely connecting him to Ethel Lewis. That same year he graduated from the Cambridge Manual Training School for Boys (CMTS) after attending and graduating from the Washington grammar school in 1895. During his time at CMTS, Anthony– or more popularly addressed as Tony– was known for his skills at football. He later coached football at CMTS until ca. 1906. The 1908 City Directory cites Anthony as a waiter boarding at 73 Howard Street. The biographies of Nellie Sorrell and Henry Robbins are currently unknown.
“(upper left) Pa Lewis, (upper middle) Kate, Sue [Harris], (bottom middle) Washington Elm, (bottom right): Andrew”, ca. 1900-1920sThere are so many others present in this collection we could only give a quick taste of what you can come see. We’ve also digitized a sampling of images for our Flickr page. Check them out here
To learn more about what is available in the Lewis Family Collection, our newly edited finding aid will be available here soon!
