It’s not exactly clear who St. Valentine actually was. The Encyclopedia Britannica reports two competing versions. The most accepted theory is that he was a “Roman priest and physician” who was martyred under the rule of Emperor Claudius II. The other notion is that he was the Bishop of Terni, Italy, who was also martyred in Rome. Valentine the physician apparently cured his jailer’s daughter of blindness; writing to her before his execution, he signed his name “Valentine.” Thus traditions are born.
VALENTINE AS A NAME
“Valentine,” as both a masculine and feminine name, derives from the Latin “valens,” which means “strong and healthy” and was used by the Roman family of Valentinus. The female version as a first name is usually “Valentina.”
In 1850 four Cambridge men with the surname Valentine are listed in the City Directory. One was Charles Valentine (1797-1850), a wealthy Cantabrigian whose large estate was at the corner of Prospect and Harvard streets (now the site of Whole Foods).
Photograph: “Exterior view of front (east) wall, stable, and carriage house with Hon. and Mrs. Robert O. Fuller in background” ca. 1890 (Historic American Buildings Survey). Courtesy of Mrs. James A. Dunlap, Jr.
A player in Cambridge politics, Valentine was in the provisions trade and built a soap and candle- making factory in Cambridgeport at the corner of Pearl Street and–wait for it–Valentine Street, of course. The factory was subsequently bought by C. L. Jones.
Detail of H.F. Walling Map, 1854
Charles Valentine died shortly after his new mansion was finished; his obituary calls him as “a man of many eccentricities and peculiarities of character, but there are those who will have occasion long to remember his kindness and unostentatious charities” (Cambridge Chronicle, January 17, 1850). He left a wife and eight children. He is buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Lot #1319 Pine Avenue. His monument was made by a well-known monument sculptor, William Freedley.
VALENTINE CARDS
Hand-made valentines made their appearance in the early eighteenth century and were soon followed by commercially produced cards.
ROSES ARE RED, VIOLETS ARE BLUE…
This little poem, so associated with Valentine’s Day, started out as a nursery rhyme in a children’s book from in England in 1784:
“The rose is red, the violet’s blue The honey’s sweet, and so are you.”
SCHMALTZY VALENTINES
The Victorian Era takes the cake for a sentimental valentines.
In the mid to late 19th century, virtually all of the monument makers in Cambridge hailed from Scotland, Ireland, and England, as did virtually all of their employees. In 1855, 22% of Cambridge’s citizens were born in Ireland and by 1865 the number of Irish had increased by an additional 20%.[i] Of course it’s difficult to make assumptions about origins based on surnames, but some are pretty clear. In 1885 the City Directory listed approximately 1600 individuals with names beginning with “O’” or “Mc” or “Mac”. And that doesn’t even include all the other Irish and Scottish names that begin with other letters! 70 men identified themselves as working in the marble, granite and monument making businesses that year. One of the earliest, and the most nationally prominent, was Alexander McDonald(not to be confused with an earlier Alex McDonald, a stone worker on Western Ave in 1849.)
Alexander McDonald (1829-1906) was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, the major exporter of granite world-wide—including to the United States. Young Aberdonian granite laborers would frequently work summers overseas, returning to Scotland in the winter to prepare granite for the next year’s export. Beginning around 1865, the shortage of skilled workers in the U. S. led to more and more of these young men emigrating permanently.[ii]
The exact date of McDonald’s arrival in the U.S. is unclear. His obituary states he arrived in New York in 1852, and subsequently moved to Albany, where he met his future wife, Elizabeth Lyall. He appears to have arrived in Cambridge in 1856, apparently with enough capital, at age 27, to start his business.
McDonald proved to be an acute businessman. Given his almost immediate success in Cambridge, it is more than likely he worked as a stone cutter in Aberdeen. In 1867, ten years after starting his monument business, he purchased a granite quarry in Mason, N. H. This he ran “entirely by steam-power without the use of horses or oxen,” and where he put in action the “McDonald Stone Cutting Machine” which he had invented and patented.
From: The collection of building and ornamental stones in the United States National museum by Merrill, George P. (George Perkins), 1854-1929, p.328.
McDonald’s first place of business was on Rice Place (later renamed Maynard Place). He built a wharf on the Charles River directly across from Rice Place—one of only two wharves this far upriver. McDonald’s advertisements first appeared in the Cambridge newspapers in 1857:
Cambridge Chronicle July 25, 1857
Detail: G. M. Hopkins Cambridge Atlas, 1873. McDonald’s Wharf across from Rice Place (later Maynard Place) can be seen bottom right
McDonald’s Wharf. Image: Historic New England
A team of 18 oxen moving a piece of marble for Alexander McDonald, date unknown. Image: Cambridge Historical Commission
Detail: the sign reads “Alexander McDonald Mount Auburn Marble & Granite Works Cambridge Mass.”
McDonald lived for a while further west, in the Jonas Wyeth homestead, and in 1868 purchased land from the Wyeth estate for $4,000.[iii] The land was strategically located across from the front gate to the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and became the permanent location for his business at #583 Mt. Auburn Street, at the corner on what is now Aberdeen Avenue. On the atlas detail below you can see the Reception House belonging to the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, just across from their main gate. In 1896 when the cemetery closed the reception house (in favor of one inside the cemetery gates), McDonald moved his office and “wareroom” into the building. It still bears the sign stating the date his business was established, “1856”.
Detail: G. M. Hopkins Cambridge Atlas, 1873
In 1873, a dead-end street called McDonald Street had been constructed through his property. In 1895, McDonald sold land to the town to enable extending it through to Huron Ave, thereby providing electric street cars a “turn around.” Thereafter it was renamed Aberdeen St, after the County in Scotland that McDonald was from.
An amusing notice appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle highlighting the use of his marble yard for target practice:
Cambridge Chronicle November 13, 1875
McDonald’s own house was at #643 Mt. Auburn Street. He had permission to raise cows on the premises and, it appears, advertised the services of his bull:
Cambridge Chronicle June 11, 1870
The house can be seen below, second building from the right. Also visible is the rectangular entrance sign for his marble yard along with a couple of monuments on display. The large building on the right is the Mt. Auburn Cemetery Reception House. The image is presumably of a ceremony at the cemetery. The building is now owned by W. C. Caniff and Sons, monument makers, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Parade on Mount Auburn St, ca. 1890 (Cambridge Historical Commission)
The Reception House yoday:
Image via Google Street View
Alexander McDonald also provided a shed on his property to house sculptor Martin Milmore’s mammoth Sphinx monument for the Cemetery:
Boston Evening Transcript August 16, 1872
And now we get to the mayor…
WILLIAM FRANCIS BROOKS, LATER MAYOR OF CAMBRIDGE
Cambridge Chronicle December 8, 1900
The May 10, 1899 edition of Trenton Evening Times stated that McDonald had “some 40 artists in his employ.” Many of McDonald’s workers lived on McDonald Street, in the area called The Upper Marsh and across the street from the McDonald Wharf, or further west on Holworthy and Cushing Streets.
Granite workers went out on strike in 1892, but McDonald’s operation seems relatively immune to its effects:
Cambridge Chronicle May 21,1892
William F. Brooks, future Mayor of Cambridge, was one of those workers, who, like his father, had a long association with the company. His father, Patrick Brooks, had emigrated from Ireland in 1851 at the age of 17, ending up in Cambridge 1852[iv]. The family lived at #35 McDonald Street. Patrick worked for McDonald’s Marble and Granite Works for 40 years, purchasing the business after McDonald’s death and passing it on to his son William. William Brooks worked at McDonald’s from 1885 to 1900 before leaving to found a real estate company (Brooks & Conley) and to dedicate more time to his political career. Active in Democratic politics, Brooks had been elected a City Councilman in 1896, President of the Common Council in 1899, Alderman, and Principal Assessor in 1902. In 1909, he was elected Mayor. Brooks held the position for two terms through 1911. William F. Brooks owned the Marble and Granite Works from 1916 until his death in 1925, after which his son, also William F. Brooks, was at the helm until sometime between 1938 and 1940.
Mayor William Francis Brooks Square: Brooks was a friend of MIT President Robert C. Maclaurin, and instrumental in bringing MIT from Boston to Cambridge. In honor of this (and his other achievements), in 2012 the Cambridge City Council dedicated the corner of Vassar St. and Massachusetts Avenue as Mayor William Francis Brooks Square.
MCDONALD’S MONUMENTS: FROM COAST TO COAST
Alexander McDonald & Sons, and his son Norman McDonald’s separate company, were responsible for approximately 850 monuments in the Mt. Auburn Cemetery between 1856 and 1900. The two monuments below to slain Civil War soldiers are good examples of his work:
Lieut. Edgar Newcomb, Battle of Fredricksburg. Image: Stone and Dust
Through his intricate work, McDonald gained a national reputation. At the end of the 19th century, McDonald’s business occupied an office at the gates of Riverview Cemetery in Trenton, New Jersey, and one in Paterson, North Carolina next to the Cedar Lawn Cemetery.
Many of his monuments were of truly monumental proportions. The 70 ft tall obelisk in commemoration of dentist H. D. Cogswell of San Francisco (designed by Cogswell himself) cost $100,000, weighed 400 tons and cost $5,000 to ship. The Oakland Tribune (July 15, 1887) declared it was “the largest shipment ever made across the continent.” A month later, the San Francisco Examiner ran an article (August 11, 1887) describing the monument:
“The mammoth monument of Dr. Cogswell recently arrived overland…laden upon twenty-one freight cars…The base block of stone, weighing twenty-five tons, was loaded upon a truck specially sent from the East to transport the heavy pieces. Eighteen horses were required to haul the base block. In loading it the streetcar rails were bent and the cross walks were broken by the great weight, and a tire ten inches wide came off one of the truck- wheels….the heaviest piece of stone is the shaft, thirty-three feet long and weighing over thirty tons. Thirty six horses will be required to pull the truck….In addition to the twenty-one carloads of stone (granite and marble) of the monument, ten more carloads of coping for the lot are on their way higher across the continent.”
The Mercer County Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Trenton, N. J., completed after McDonald’s death, was “the largest obelisk at that time ever manufactured in the United States” at 50 feet high.[v]
In Cambridge, McDonald and his then partner Jonathan Mann were the contractors for the Cambridge Soldier’s monument on the Cambridge Common. (Augustus Saint-Gaudens, sculptor.)
Civil War Monument on the Cambridge Common photographed by Richard Heath (April 17, 2014)
A side note: McDonald and Mann shared a patent on a thoroughly unlikely product: an improved hoop for ladies’ hoop skirts:
Annual Report of the Commission of Patents, Part I, Vol. I., 1866
In 1872, the partnership between McDonald and Mann was dissolved, although Mann continued to be active in the stone business with McDonald, remaining on the board of the McDonald Stone Cutting Machine Company.
PRIVATE LIFE and DEATH
Alexander McDonald married Elizabeth Lyall (of Albany, N. Y.) in 1859. They had two daughters and five sons.
Two of his sons followed in his footsteps. Frank, who was taken into partnership with his father in 1887, died in 1905 after complications from surgery. His father died Just a month later. Norman McDonald went out on his own the same year (1887) establishing his own company at 212-214 Brattle Street (the current location of Lowell Park on Fresh Pond Parkway). Just three years later, in 1890, his business failed.
Cambridge Press January 15, 1887
Cambridge Chronicle December 6, 1890
After over half a century in business, Alexander McDonald died of pneumonia on January 11, 1906. By now his name had become a brand. Patrick Brooks took over the company, continuing to list it as Alexander McDonald & Sons. when his son William F. Brooks took over in 1916 the name was changed to the Mount Auburn Monumental Marble and Granite Works. Brooks’ son, also William F. Brooks, took over after his death. sold the business at some point between 1938 and 1940 to Nino P. Zapponi. In the late 1950’s the business was bought by William Canniff, whose family still owns the property at #583 Mt. Auburn St.
Alexander McDonald is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery on Angelica Path, Lot #3471.
Image via Mount Auburn Historical Collections
Today’s post was written by CHC volunteer Kathleen Fox.
