is From Jamaica Pond to Commonwealth Avenue Arnold Arboretum. Oct. 8, 2017 10/29/2017 XFINITY Connect Inbox News from the Jamaica Plain Historical Society Jamaica Plain Historical Society 10/6/2017 8:01 AM To eppster2@comcast.net JAMAICA PLAIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY CLARK Co. GENTLEMEN'S Join us this Sunday! Ronald Epp Talk on George Buckham Dorr the "Father of Acadia" George Bucknam Dorr: CREATING from Jamaica Pond to Comm Ave. ACADIA Sunday, October 8 NATIONAL PARK 2:00 PM - 4:00 PM RONALD H. EPP Hunnewell Building The Biography of George Backmant Devi Arnold Arboretum George Bucknam Dorr is known as the "Father of Acadia" and was the founder of the oldest national park east of the Mississippi River. The roots of George B. Dorr's land conservation achievements are deeply embedded on the Jamaica Pond shoreline where he was born in 1853. Yet childhood exposure to other Massachusetts landscapes also shaped his later success on the mid-Maine coast. Throughout Dorr's life, notables with attachments to Jamaica Plain--Charles S. Sargent, Edith Wharton, Francis Parkman, Ellen Swallow Richards, Henry & Charles P. Bowditch, Margaret Fuller, and Charles Eliot-kept the Father of Acadia National Park tethered to the place where he spent the first decade of his life. This talk will be given by Ronald H. Epp, Ph.D., the author of Creating Acadia National Park: The Biography of George Bucknam Dorr. Epp is a historian and professor of philosophy who has spent the last two decades researching the Massachusetts families that influenced the development of conservation philanthropy. This program is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served and books will be available for purchase. Co-sponsored by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society and the Arnold Arboretum. Click here to go to the event website! The ARNOLD Hunnewell Building: ARBORETUM where you will be speaking 1872 of HARVARD UNIVERSITY HUNNEWELL ARBORWAY GATE VISITOR CENTER 125 Arborway 11 i r Boston, MA 02130-3500 Magnolias Dawn tel: 617-524-1718 Redwoods E fax: 617-524-1418 Tulip Trees www.arboretum.harvard.edu Lindens Dana Greenhouse Apartment, LARZ ANDERSON BONSAI COLLECTION Cork Trees 1050 Centre Street: EVENTRITT Dana Greenhouses SHRUB & VINE Willows GARDEN where you will be staying (No Public Access) Horsechestmuts FOREST HILLS Maples GATE CENTRE STREET GATE Busser BRADLEY ROSACEOUS Elms COLLECTION Birches Lilacs Cherries Faulkner Hospital Road Forest Hills Walnuts Hickories BUSSEY HILL N Ashes T Forest Hills WASHINGTON MBTA Station Oaks Ook Pair STREET Orange Line EXPLORERS GATE Azaleas GARDEN Dove Tree Stewartia path Conife Path Spruces Beech Pines Yews SOUTH STREET Junipers Beeches GATE Firs Hemlock Hill Road Larches Path MAP KEY Mountain Laurels Rhododendrons VFW Parkway WALTER STREET Weld Hill Research HEMLOCK HILL City Street (traffic) Hebrew GATE & Administration Building BUSSEY.STREET (No Public Access) Rehabilitation GATE Entrance Gate Center Bussey Street Access Road (paved) PETERS HILL GATE Walnuts Plant Collection Pears WELD HILL POPLAR GATE Walking Path (unpaved) Weld Street Main Road (paved) Crabapples PETERS HILL N I Public Restrooms Honey Locusts i Visitor Information r Drinking Fountain Hawthorns Hunnewell Building Hours Weekdays: 9:00am-5:00pm Weekends: 10:00am-5:00pm Oaks Closed holidays Visitor Center Hours 10:00am-5:00pm Closed Wednesdays Closed holidays MENDUM STREET GATE o 1/3 mi. 1/4 mii. 1/8 1/2 mi. 25km. 50km. .75 km. T.Lee J.Nickerson EXPerkins Winstow J.D.Gould navis W.&.M.Shortell Mary Smith R.Aller S.Smith G.S.Curtis House Heuse Stable H/Huchrock, G.S.Curtis P.Parkmis T Boylston H.Dorr 1.Guris Stable "JHart S.B.Spaulary G.S.Cuntis Curtis: amaica Pon A S.Goldsmith B.D.Emerson Beristen W.B.Bacon Pade F.Green AVILLI Staughter House E.Hubbard T.W.Converse Mrs E. Kelcott Williams H.Prahody REFERENCES E.Green. Burrage Extradiant unread PW.Case Cooper PAINS SOON Academy W. Mathews.,I: Dr. Bucon CH Miller Fessenden Fowle Chilinson T'auntington H.Hall J.D.Fowle M.M.Smith Stable C.B.Converse Dodge Lithield EKartsworld A.Direson MSmith HO Linwork A.Armstrong l' Blake T.Durne Woodsnip E.n.Buite R.Scott L.B. "walaften (Brower KH.Henchman Russell n Sanderson J.Dave "Plancobu mitz WH,Summer Pilliams SHARSH BikardRooms Jamakar Barr GIVENS R.Correnteal Tyre House L.Gilbert Gold Spring OVIR C/W.Bend W.R.Roberson Weld School G.M.Bend F.G.Ballard 1 yyers Store. front MissLx-SCreaton Goodman G.Collin REDwight W.R.Roberson BlEvens actured K Thick Dixwell W.H.Jordan GHICKAIN A.Childs Rincoln L.H.Cary KMAC Gas Works E Culter M.Kelley W.Herris B.Iyeld JAMAICA PLAIN It'Ersher Alloyt Norcross WEST ROXBURY Weld Vinal C.W.Dabney 10 20 In 120 rods common Burn Scale 11,000 F.Weld 1 From Jamaica Pond to Commonwealth Avenue: George B. Dorr, his family and friends on his Birthplace Ronald H. Epp, Ph.D. Delivered at Harvard University. Arnold Arboretum. Jamaica Plain, MA October 8, 2017 In the eighteen months since the publication of my biography of the Father of Acadia National Park, I have spoken throughout New England about its founder, George Bucknam Dorr, and his two partners: Harvard president Charles William Eliot, and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. It was my expectation that by now I would have left behind opportunities to speak- after all, wasn't the fifteen year project complete? Not so, for I am here to share new findings about the implications of Dorr's birthplace to his later achievements. This invitation from the Jamaica Plain Historical Society prompted re-thinking the significance of this geographical location for his personal development over a lengthy life of ninety years. Can we uncover evidence of specific ways that Jamaica Plain incubated the future conservationist? How was the man we celebrated during the 2016 park and National Park Service centennials entwined with his place of origin? Were there connections that I may have missed in my biography? This question has currency because new evidence provided by environmental psychologists demonstrates quantifiable links between childhood exposure to natural environments and later life preferences. Geographers refer to this special bond between adults and their childhood environments as "primal landscaping." Most biographers are not comfortable with a step in the historical process that I call compression. For after researching, comparing, and validating phenomenal amounts of data and interpretations, biographers must assign weight to each step in the life of one's subject. One cannot simply block out a ninety year life and proportionately assign ten percent of the biography to each decade. Proportionality and significance will be the guiding norms. Typically, one places the subject within the context of their ancestry, as I 2 did. But once the subject is born, many biographers move quickly through the early years of life by redirecting attention to developments of family and friends that impact the juvenile subject. After all, the subject rarely leaves behind autobiographical data and much hypothesizing substitutes for hard fact. On the other hand, there are historically rich documents like Almon Danforth Hodges and his Neighbors (1909; see also The Civil War Journal of Almon D. Hodges, Jr. ed. S.Z. Nonack, Boston Athenaeum, 2003) that provide loving detail about the family Roxbury property with its "spacious entry hall", the library "stocked with books overflowing into other rooms," and the "airy" kitchen which comprised the "fourteen rooms for nine persons besides the maids." For this talk I've chosen to expand the coverage I gave to the juvenile Dorr by drawing your attention to what we know about his first decade in Jamaica Plain.[Slides 1-17] To the west of the St. James Street home of the aforementioned Hodge family was Jamaica Plain, a place whose history is well documented thanks to the JPHS and other studies of local history, like the brilliant 1994 publication by Harvard School of Design scholar Alexander von Hoffman (Local Attachments). Even earlier, an 1878 Art Journal article affirmed that "of all the suburbs of Boston, Brookline and Jamaica Plain, lying side by side are preeminent in their attractive situations and aspect, and their display of the elegancies of wealth and of ripe taste in dwellings, parks, and gardens [And] the particular gem of Jamaica Plain is its lovely 'pond', set amid a circle of gentle hills, which are covered with fine residences, and with noble copses of long planted and cultivated trees." Between 1850 and the turn of the 20th-century, Jamaica Plain was a community in transition from an agricultural economy to a commuter suburb of greater Boston. In antebellum America, the residential suburb provided-- for some--a respite for the human congestion of the city and its summer heat, offering landscapes where the prosperous could plan gardens, harvest the fruits from their orchard, and ramble through the woods. The first suburbs were places where the Boston elite did not dominate as they had in the densely settled city; for Jamaica Plain offered no great works like the fill of the Back Bay to engage them, such were the so-called 'limits' of village life (see Henry C. Bickford, The First Suburbs, 1985). 3 The years have erased much of the local documentation about the residence that was constructed for Dorr's parents, Charles Hazen Dorr and Mary Gray Ward Dorr. [18] We know that an acre of shoreline land was purchased from Solomon Spaulding in March 1850, three months prior to the marriage of thirty year old Mary and her husband Charles, one year her junior.[19 20] Dorr's father was born in 1821 in Boston's north end and by his third year the family moved to Tremont Street opposite the Commons and "not far from the foot of Park Street" where his future wife resided. His father Samuel Dorr, kept a cow on the Common to provide fresh milk for his son Charles and daughter Susan. [22] An import merchant then President of New England Bank, Sam served successive terms in the both houses of the Massachusetts legislature and at the time of his death (1844) left an estate valued at $400,000. [roughly ten million dollars today]. His son became a merchant owner of Dorr, Balch & Prince, a Boston dry goods firm. It was, however, Ward family funds that financed their homes. The property deed details Dorr land stretching 84 feet along the pond shore, radiating back 522 feet; this siting permitted abundant options in residential design and landscaping. The 1852 and 1859 maps of Jamaica Pond reveal that north along the shoreline from the Dorr Lakeville Place property, the Perkins family Pine Bank estate on the northeastern shore faced westward to the estate of historian Francis Parkman, whose publications Dorr would later reference repeatedly. Bear in mind that Dorr did not write a sustained memoir; instead, his recollections are scattered amid other later conceptual narratives. [Von Hoffman informs us that merchant Franklin Greene, Jr. moved into an Italian villa on Lakeville Place five years before the Dorr land purchase]. But why relocate to the country? Why this community? Its distance from the increasing pressures of industrialization was a draw as was the aesthetic attractiveness of life beside the pond. Moreover, Charles could hop aboard a coach called "the Hourlies" which ran reliably to Park Street, exiting only a short walk to his office and access to the State Street bank where his father was president. Yet we are still left in the dark regarding who picked the Jamaica Pond shoreline and for what reasons. Research has revealed that the new Dorr residence was constructed with funds given to Charles and Mary as a wedding gift from Mary's father, [22] 4 international banker Thomas Wren Ward (no connection to Ward's Pond just north of the Dorr property); TWW owned the property for the remainder of his life. Thomas and his wife Lydia lived at #3 Park Street, at several hundred feet south of the State Capital, in a townhouse designed by architect Charles Bulfinch [23]. Dorr's mother Mary was born here in 1920 and like her future husband would grow up with the pleasures of the Common available outside her front door. Charles and Mary were neighbors for he matured on adjacent Tremont Street, [24] yet little is known about their interactions prior to their engagement except her being betrothed a decade earlier to the brother of her dearest childhood friend, women's activist Julia Ward Howe. George's parents did not attend college though both families proudly identified their many Harvard College graduates. Of his parents, George wrote that they were "two people with a delightful gift of narrative. What they told of lived. My father was more reserved -he never spoke of his inner self-but he had a delightful sense of humor. [He] had no thought for self, full of the capacity for great enjoyment in all things beautiful and good an excellent and cool observer. "[25] Mother, he says, "was of a very different nature, not given as I to argument and reason not patient of them [yet] my mother had a remarkable gift of description and drew a wide circle of younger folks around her always [And] between them the time of their own childhood lived again for me But neither she nor any of my grandfather Ward's family had the gift of humor which [the Dorrs] had so strongly." Like his father, Dorr developed as one for whom ideas were more interesting than things; nonetheless, he was a man of action, deeply moved by his passion for the unique landscapes of Mount Desert. Both parents were avid readers and read aloud to the children, Charles favoring historical works while Dorr's mother he says "read with me the old books she cared for and the new books [in French and English literature] which she found interesting. So that those years that might have been barren were rich [indeed]." Grandfather Thomas Ward is a fascinating and influential historical figure, a Salem-born successful merchant of goods to the Far East, the American representative of the powerful Barings Bank, and Treasurer of Harvard College for twelve years. In July 1852 he and Lydia opened their home Nathaniel Hale, Edward Everett, Harvard president Jared Sparks, Daniel Webster, and their neighbor George Ticknor. Movers and shakers, to be sure. 5 Daughter Mary was one of eight children of Thomas and Lydia Gray Ward. At the turn of the century, Mary's parents relocated to Boston from Salem. They had been merchants since the Puritan days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Seven generations removed, like many of their generation they were experiencing a distancing from the strict Calvinist demands associated with human depravity that had so constrained their forbearers. Indeed, the Ward children were greatly influenced by Reverend William Ellery Channing, who sermonized in the Federal Street Church against Calvinist orthodoxy, celebrating instead a personal and loving relationship with God. Not the God celebrated by the Trinity, for the liberal-minded Channing was the Father of American Unitarianism- and the Ward family embraced this rapidly expanding new faith. Mary, however, was also attracted to the new spiritualism of antebellum New England; Dorr recalls that my mother "went to see a medium she had heard of, hoping possibly to get some word of [her] brother John who had lately died abroad." Grandfather Ward financed various enterprises undertaken by his four adult male children, most recently the pioneering project of his first born, Ralph Waldo Emerson's friend, the artist and intellectually-gifted Samuel Gray Ward. [26] Despite pressures to support his father's demanding business interests, family and friends had been surprised (in 1844) when the newly married Sam purchased distant property in Berkshire County.[27] There his growing family witness his five-year struggle to become a Lenox gentleman farmer while not turning his back on his artistic passions. Sam's sister Mary was similarly supported by her father; yet it is not known whether he or the newlyweds determined where they would reside. Marriages among Puritan descendants were arranged by parents who increasingly were challenged by rebellious children. Yet in the words of Samuel Gray Ward's biographer, the late professor David B. Baldwin-children usually gave in to the duty to find a mate suitable to parents and their social group. It took twenty-eight months to construct the Dorr residence. Until November 1852 when they moved in, the newlyweds lived with her parents where their first born son William was born in January 1851. While the inspirational view out the front door faced the eastern edge of the Commons, the rear entrance of the Bulfinch townhouse abutted the Old Granary Burial Ground. As Mary's second pregnancy in 1853 neared the anticipated birthdate, her 6 only sister Martha succumbed to consumption in November at 41 years of age. Two of Mary's brother also succumbed to the disease. Two male and three female cousins awaited the arrival of the newborn. As the Christmas holiday arrived, so did newborn Georgie four days later on December 29, 1853. In his diary, Mary's father noted that a 'violent snowstorm" commenced during the first minutes of December 29. Three hours later-with the temperature at six degrees-George Bucknam Dorr was born in the family's weather besieged residence on the eastern shore of Jamaica Pond. This twelve hour snowstorm did not deter Charles Dorr from walking the six miles to Park Street to convey the splendid news to his in- laws. This degree of commitment is consistent with the spirit of diary entries in the Ward Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society; they show an extended family that expressed deep affection among themselves within a larger context that celebrated learning. Grandfather Ward filled his home with a wide variety of books to satisfy his cosmopolitan reading habits; it was a place where the Wards were always in a hurry, not only by the drive to keep one's social position but also to satisfy expectations for self-improvement. Eldest daughter Martha at fourteen years of age read Oedipus as translated by Voltaire, brother Sam attended Cogswell's famous Round Hill School in Northampton, while Mary attended the highly regarded school of social reformer Dorothea Dix. Obviously, this was a privileged family and their offspring did not face many challenges of children of their day. George had the usual childhood health threats but nothing is reported of the visual problems that would beset him later and result in blindness. He reports that in the first years of life, he climbed on a chair in his grandfather Ward's study to look at the engravings on a translation of Arabian Nights [likely the Edward W. Lane 1840 three volume translation of One Thousand and One Nights]. "I carried the book [he says] back to Jamaica Pond and my kind old nurse who received me in her arms [sat me] up on a high chair in front of a glowing hard coal fire in the nursery where she read to me from the book [mandating] another trip to Boston to [secure] the other two, equally fascinating, volumes in the set." While Dorr's father is frequently praised for his intellectual interests, other than his education in the public schools Dorr reports that Charles "did not go to college [since state legislator and banker Samuel Dorr was] ill content with his experience in sending to college two older sons." His father 7 mentored him as a "commission merchant," empowering him with a significant inheritance after his death in 1844. During this era, roughly one in four children did not survive their first five years of life-- and many mothers died in childbirth. For Georgie, the year after his birth his mother's life was threatened by the ravages of consumption. In his words, her physician "gave little hope" for her survival but that did not dissuade his father from taking her to St. Augustine Florida; there during the winter months "the climate conquered and her life was saved." A devoted Welch nurse, Elizabeth Hind, cared for William and George. The extensive archives provide recurring evidence of family mortality concerns as when Mary writes to her aunt on the eve of Georgie's first birthday: "Our boys are fine promising lads. If they live I think they will be a pleasure and a comfort to us." Unfortunately, his memoirs offer no details on the Jamaica Plain architectural style of their home, the number of rooms and floors, or whether illuminating gas replaced the oil lamps in 1854 as they did at the nearby Hodge residence. Upper class new housing would have piped water, furnace heat on each floor, and a water closet connected to a main sewer line. The style and number of internal furnishings and how they were sited room by room, floor by floor are nowhere mentioned, unlike his home in Bar Harbor where we have an inventory.[28,29,30] Massachusetts Census Data from 1855 established that three domestics resided with the Dorrs. No site photographs or illustrations have been uncovered. George has no doubt, he says, that the roots "of my interest in public reservations had its ancestry far back in Old Salem and Medford gardens and the England from which they came." The Lakeview Place gardens and landscaping were a family priority. Yet if we judge the Dorr family negatively for these omissions, each of us might first ask what we can document about the site of our own beginnings. Fortunately, there is documentation of Dorr and Ward families stretching back nine generations. At the end of life, Dorr's Will declared his intention to conserve in great detail the ancestry of both sides of his family, continuing a multi-generational family tradition. The Ward family is preserved at the MHS-- and hundreds of manuscript pages at the NEHGS track the Dorr family to the mid-17th-century. Three years after Dorr's death, author Cleveland Amory published The Proper Bostonians wherein he coined an apt 8 expression for many 19th- and 20th century Bostonians whose prosperity dates "from the days when the grandfather-merchant was the key figure of the whole Boston Society system." Impressed by their forbearers, their descendants composed exhaustive family narratives celebrating their accomplishments-- and expected their offspring to continue the "Grandfather on the Brain" biographical task. Though neither a grandfather or a merchant, bachelor George B. Dorr rose to the family tradition and provided a sustained chronological narrative of both sides of his family. Eighty years after the restorative effects of Florida helped save Mary Dorr's life, her son documented his childhood recollections of the pond property, "flashing across the screen of memory like the pictures in an old-time Magic Lantern show." The "beautiful" Lakeview Place fronted "through tall trees the sunset view across the lake from the top of a steep bank." He further recalls images of "his mother and father on horse-back" and "driving with them on a mellow Indian Summer afternoon sitting beside my father and on being told that snow was coming, asked what snow was I see our lake in summer [and] great white swans with arching necks come sailing by kept by our neighbor Edward Perkins, at his estate, Pine Bank. I see our delightful little lake frozen in winter, with people skating-my mother with me and my father on his skates close by." [31] Elsewhere Dorr recalls "gay sleighing scenes upon the snowy Boston road, with friendly racing and the sound of bells." Three decades later the Jamaica Parkway would reshape the landscape and sacrifice this relatively short-lived Lakeville Place residence. Dorr speaks of this event in his memoirs, noting that the metropolitan park system roads now "pass directly across the house's site and through the garden ground where I remember my father pruning his pear trees as my brother and I played together." Dorr's "slide shows" are the earliest expression of an abiding sensitivity to the natural world that is always contextualized to a specific place; these recollections are always rooted geographically. Dorr employs a frequently-used catchphrase for this behavior: "historical associations." And while living beside Jamaica Pond was very satisfying, Dorr tells us that "in the summer, when the dog-days came, we would pack up and go off, sometimes to Lenox, more often to Newport," sometimes to Nahant. 9 Grandfather Ward usually rented for the extended family a house for the season. In addition, Uncle Sam Ward had built at Lenox a home called Highwood a decade before Dorr's birth; [32] close by, the sister and step brothers of Charles Dorr had built the year after Georgie's birth an estate they named Highlawn. In later correspondence with John D. Rockefeller Jr. about landscape design, Dorr made the aesthetic point-in a letter preserved at the RAC--that "open grassy spaces like wild sheep pastures are often better in contrast to continuous woods. I used to be familiar with them-Dorr continues-wandering over the Berkshire country when I was a boy." Highlawn would eventually be absorbed into the Tanglewood Music Center but only after Dorr inherited it and had benefitted from this grand house and grounds for five decades (See Cornelia Gilder's The Tanglewood Circle, 2008). On his mother's side, Canton was the location of an eighty acre Ward family compound called Pequitside which was acquired at the same time (1853). The Canton Historical Society website displayed maps and historical data on this site; it was archival research, however, which changed our historical understanding of the importance of this place to the conservation history of New England. In 2007 I located at the MHS an intriguing unattributed manuscript in the Endicott Family Papers. After repeated readings of "Country Home at Canton," I provided stylistic evidence to MHS archivists confirming Dorr's authorship. Here Grandfather Ward-- in concert with his son Sam and son-in-law Charles-- expanded the former Ingersoll Bowditch estate during the first five years of George Dorr's life. Shortly before his eightieth birthday, Dorr revisited the property with Louise and William C. Endicott Jr. and was sufficiently moved to draft this ten- page-two thousand word--essay on the properties there of his grandparents, uncle, and parents. He emphasizes the impact of lessons learned from nature along the Neponset River "during the critical embryonic period, and the happy springtime hours spent in search and observation...a greater influence [on me] than any schooling in the development of mind and character." For nearly a quarter century, Canton provided, in Dorr's own words, "a great education" in how to love the country and the wilderness about us without the need of company It was there that my brother and I spent our springs and autumns until we grew up." Coming full circle, Dorr's final years increasingly resonated with longing for the solitariness of his youthful summers in Canton. Here Dorr's passion for understanding Nature 10 was cultivated as well as his awareness of the desire to protect the treasures of Nature. This remarkable "lost in the archives" essay contains more contextual detail and emotional fabric about the importance of place to one's later life than any other Dorr narrative. My research into the Dorr family engagement in Jamaica Plain social life continues. To date I have not examined surviving histories of local churches, fraternal organizations, political groups, and other cultural agencies for evidence of Dorr family participation. Whether Dorr and his brother were educated in "the little school" taught by Miss Williams in the Old Village Hall or one of the other private schools documented by Ellen Morse in Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain, 1845-1875, I cannot substantiate. While there are interesting developments within the Dorr and Ward family life during the juvenile years of Georgie, with one exception; the historical record is silent for the years leading to the outbreak of the Civil War. After grandfather Ward's death in 1858, the Dorr's attended to the needs of Mary's mother Lydia, shuttling back and forth between the two homes. "Then the whole scene changed suddenly in April, 1861," Dorr reports in his memoir of his father. On April 12th that "fateful news [came] to our sunlit and peaceful home at Jamaica Pond. The firing on Fort Sumter and the outbreak of the Civil War My father deeply stirred, at once enlisted as a major in a Massachusetts infantry regiment commanded by his friend and neighbor at Jamaica Plain, Colonel Francis Lee." The family was spared his deployment, for Charles caught typhoid fever, then recovered and resumed training only to suffer a relapse which George described as "all but fatal and left him an invalid for years thereafter." In the fall of 1862 they left Jamaica Plain and moved to Boston to occupy the unoccupied Park Street home. [The Dorr Jamaica Plain residence had been sold by Lydia to daughter Mary on December 30, 1859; four years later (February 12, 1864) Mary sold the property to her mother who sold it in October of 1865 to G.K. Fisher of Brookline, concluding fifteen years of family ownership.] In Boston, the Ward residence on Park Street provided a distant vantage point across the Common to the massive Back Bay public works project that began in 1859. [33] By early 1861 the first four- and five-story townhouse residences on the Parisian-style Commonwealth Avenue were occupied. As Dorr's uncle Sam and aunt Anna had pioneered cottage development in 11 Lenox two decades earlier, here they were literally the first family to occupy a residence on the reclaimed Back Bay. They purchased several properties near the Public Garden on Arlington Street at the head of the new grand boulevard, [34] relocating the family of six from fashionable Louisburg Square on Beacon Hill to a house designed for them at #1 Commonwealth Avenue; four years later, the family would permanently relocate to New York City where Sam would run the Barings Brothers investments. In 1860 Grandmother Lydia followed the lead of her son and purchased a lot on the other side of Commonwealth Avenue where a home was built for her. Beside it she had another residence built that became in 1863 the Dorr family residence [#3 Park Street having been sold to Augustine Heard of Ipswich that year]. Charles Dorr's step-sister, Martha Ann Edwards, lived seven residences west of the Dorr home at #18, [35] affording young George close proximity to both sides of his family [Martha had four brothers]. After being shuttled back and forth for five years between Lakeview Place in Jamaica Plain and Boston's Park Street, at nearly ten years of age George finds himself in his third home [two others being seasonal]. Dorr recalls the move to Commonwealth Avenue where "we later joined [Grandmother Ward], building our own house alongside of hers. There in Boston, a new life began. "[36] For the next fifty three years George would reside-in his words--in a "house, roomy and spacious, and opening directly on my brother's and my playground on the Common, with its broad malls and arching elms." Our conventional belief that the environment of one youth profoundly affects our later preferences and values is fortified by Dorr's life story. He was reared in surroundings that were perfectly suited to his development. Hardly a surprise there. Dorr's commitment to devote the last half of his life to conservation extends the pioneering spirit of his parents. No, they did not travel across American. But like those aboard the Conestoga Wagons, the Dorr and Ward families overcame a riveting behavior of earlier generations of Americans, as Von Hoffman discloses in the aforementioned historical study of Jamaica Plain. He argues that in 19th century New England "loyalty to place was a basic human emotion." Prior to his parent's generation, Dorr's ancestors found comfort and stability in a geographically limited sphere. But his parents peers disengaged themselves, especially the Ward family and the documented western and southern journeys of Sam Ward after his year in Europe. His biographer reports that Sam entered into the spirit of the 12 places he visited with youthful gusto and great adaptability." Mary and Charles exposed their children to the landscaped beauty adjacent to their residences in Nahant, Canton, Newport, Lenox, and Jamaica Plain; my book also details their later fruitful five years living in Europe and still later their months in Greece and the Near East-not to ignore the beginning of another new life in Bar Harbor that began in 1880. Wealth may have enabled this travel but passion for self-improvement on the margins of social convention made them less loyal to place than their predecessors. These transitions are rooted in how the Dorrs utilized Jamaica Plain as a place they moved to and lkived in but were not emotionally bound by. And so, to conclude this talk, I'd like to profile a handful of individuals whose experiences in Jamaica Plain intersect Dorr's orbit. For some the frequency is slight while others will bring back historical associations with Jamaica Plain--again and again. Bowditch Family Dorr's mother's family and that of the Bowditch's shared a common Pickering family ancestor. Grandfather Ward's friendship with mathematician and seafarer Nathaniel Bowditch extended forward two generations to grandsons: the Harvard anthropologist Charles (1842-1921) and his brother [38] Henry (1840- 1911), a physiologist and Dean of the Harvard Medical School. These men- roughly ten years older than Dorr-interacted with his family in the 1850's at Lakeview Place from their Pond Street estate, Moss Hill. Charles later became the sole executor of the Will of Dorr's father, an indicator of attachment. Much later In May 1903, they traveled by carriage with Dorr on a seventeen day vacation through the Shenandoah Valley and Blue Ridge mountains visiting natural springs, which greatly interested Dorr [explain Sawtelle travel budget]. Another grandson of "The Navigator" was Vincent Bowditch (1852-1929), a classmate of Dorr at Harvard (c.1875) who became a physician and summered in Islesford south of Mount Desert where he recorded for thirty-four years his seasonal life in Frenchman Bay. Another indication of continuing "historical associations" is that MIT-educated civil engineer and landscape architect of much renown, Ernest Bowditch (1850-1918)--worked with Dorr on MDI projects. Under Bowditch's leadership, by the end of the 19th-century a "masculine outpost of proper Bostonians" was developed on vast tracts of land at Point Lookout on Isle au Haut, off the southern coast of Mount Desert Island. Shortly after the attack on 13 Pearl Harbor, the Bowditch family donated nearly half the 12 square mile island to the National Park Service to be incorporated into Acadia National Park a decision that aroused the ire of year round residents. Edith Wharton & Beatrix Farrand Three months ago, Berkshire historian Cornelia Gilder published a new work on Lenox, discussing Pulitzer-prize winning author [39] Edith Wharton's home and marriage to the psychologically troubled Teddy.[40] Born in 1850 in Brookline and a Harvard classmate of Dorr, Teddy "certainly" visited relatives in adjacent Jamaica Plain at the turn of the century; moreover, "she and Teddy rescued a fireplace out of Pine Bank to install at Land's End in Newport." Dorr's connections to Edith began when her brother (Frederick Jones) purchased in 1883 a two acre Bar Harbor bayside estate called Reef Point, just a mile north of Dorr's shoreline Oldfarm property. Edith vacationed there and developed an enduring relationship with her niece, Beatrix, [41] a frequent guest at the Dorr estate. Of course, as you may have supposed, this young woman was the eminent landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, to whom Dorr offered her first gardening commission. She also links with Dorr's cousin, Charles Sprague Sargent, being invited in 1893 to join his family in their journey to the famed Columbian World Exposition in Chicago. In the first decade of the 20th century she would aid Edith in landscaping The Mount, and as I explained in a talk delivered in 2009 at a Lenox Conference on Mrs. Wharton's Gardens, she credited Dorr with the design of the sole named path on her estate. Charles Eliot & Family While no correspondence survives between the landscape architect [42] and Dorr, the Eliot family connections between Jamaica Plain and Mount Desert Island are strong, the most pronounced being the five decades of annual summering at the Northeast Harbor residence of Harvard president Charles W. Eliot.[43] Dorr would publically laud his eldest son Charles for publishing in 1890 a call to establish nature sanctuaries on the Maine coast. Before this goal was realized in 1901 under his father's leadership, [44] his son established the first private 14 organization in the world devoted solely to the preservation of open space, the Trustees of Reservations. In Dorr's memoirs, he refers to Boston's Metropolitan Park System roads "that pass directly across the house site and through the garden where I remember my father pruning his pear trees as my brother and I played together." Margaret Fuller Seven years ago, the Rev. Jenny Rankin gave a talk to the JPHS on Transcendentalist author Margaret Fuller.[45] I recently spoke with her to determine whether she had new insights into Fuller's activities at 81 Morton Street and her relationship with Dorr's mother. This tracks back to 1835 when Fuller first met the poised and intellectually sophisticated eighteen year old Samuel G. Ward on a trip to upstate New York-and in the words of her biographer, Charles Capper, they became "fast friends." The following year, Sam strongly motivated his sixteen year old sister Mary to take Fuller's college-level classes in German, Italian and French literature which Capper calls "more comprehensive instruction in modern European literature than offered anywhere in America." Ralph Waldo Emerson [46] also cultivated Sam and Margaret as friends, though at that time his relationship with Sam Ward matured into a model of modern friendship. The complexities of the Fuller-Ward-Barker-Emerson relationships spurred a literary sub-genre that to this day deconstructs the complexities of the romantic attraction of Fuller toward Ward and the near rupturing of that relationship as Sam directed his passion toward his future wife-and Fuller's close confidant-- Anna Hazard Barker. In February 1839 Fuller arrived at her new home in Jamaica Plain -- Willow Brook, which she shared with her mother and brother and where she completed her book on the poet Goethe. After July 1840, Ward, Emerson, and other Transcendentalists wrote for a new literary journal created in Jamaica Plain i.e., The Dial, edited by Margaret Fuller). An indication of her affection for Sam is expressed in a August 1842 letter: "I shall never pay off even the interest of this large debt I owe you, of fine thoughts, of noble deeds, now running on so many years." Jamaica Plain was the locale of tumultuous affection and discord 15 between the Fuller, Ward, and Emerson families. This family tension predates Dorr's birth but colors the canvas of their family interactions in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Lenox, and Canton in the years leading up to the Civil War. Following Fuller's death by drowning, in late 1850 Emerson, Channing, and Sam Gray began collecting for publication the letters and manuscripts she left behind enroute to Europe. Ellen Swallow Richards [47] Much historic significance is rightfully given to the native Jamaica Plain woman who broke the gender barrier as the first female faculty member at MIT. Ellen is better known for creating the discipline of home economics. While her husband Robert was a MIT faculty member, here I wish to draw attention to the brother- in-law of Ellen, architect Henry Richards [48] about whom I suspect little is locally known. Yes, he was the husband of Pulitzer Prize winner Laura Richards, a daughter of [49] Julia Ward Howe-a close friend of the Dorr family. When the Dorrs returned in 1878 from four years in Europe, Henry Richards designed their large Queen Anne shingle-style residence in Bar Harbor--which I described at length in the Dorr biography. While the Richard family of Gardiner Maine visited their relatives in Jamaica Plain, neither autobiography written by the Richard men reveal much deep feeling. That sort of feeling, however, is directed by architect Richards against the intrusive behavior of Dorr's mother while her Oldfarm home was under construction; his wife Laura also composed the fullest surviving account of what she calls "remarkable" Mary, a lengthy unpublished essay about this domineering woman of "unbounded social ambition"- intended only for family eyes. It remains neglected in the Maine Historical Society archives. Charles Sprague Sargent [50] It is with great caution that I speak of the first director of the Arnold Arboretum. The JPHS web pages detail the 1847 relocation of Boston merchant Ignatius Sargent to a Brookline-Jamaica Plain property near his Perkins family friends. His second son, Charles, summered here as well and most likely had social interactions during the 1850's with the Dorr family to whom he was related; 16 George Dorr was a cousin to Charles. Mary Dorr's half-sister-Charlotte Gray- married Ignatius Sargent. As many of you know, Sargent published Garden and Forest, an indispensable professional resource for more than a decade to horticulturists, arborists, and gardeners-and the dissemination vehicle for Charles Eliot's proposal of a Maine public coastal preserve. Dorr was engaged with Arnold Arboretum developments, respected its professional stature, and described Garden & Forest as the most "inspiring of all" publications. In 1908 while traveling in the U.K., Sargent hired Scotsman Arthur E. Thatcher. After four years as arboretum expert in hardy plants, he was hired by Dorr as manager of the Mount Desert Nurseries. Not only did the two become close friends but Thatcher took horticultural research there in new directions, resulting in success at wining prizes at New England horticultural events. Francis Parkman [51] The Francis Parkman Jamaica Pond estate was established the year after the arrival of the neighboring Dorr family. Their children were surely playmates, the daughter Grace two years older than Dorr while Francis III was a year younger, and as they matured they roamed over the country landscapes and into the Bussey Institution Woodland Hills parklands. There a planned environment elevated the public through a determined effort of its designers to raise the moral faculties of the citizenry (Hoffman, 65). Parkman's pioneering work on the French colonization of North America dominated the scholarship of the day and informed Dorr's education. We know that Dorr published many essays wherein the only historian cited was that of his childhood neighbor, which is not to suggest blind acceptance. Dorr's own historicism was based on wide-reading and thoughtful analysis. Nonetheless, the spirit of Samuel de Champlain and his representation by Francis Parkman infused Dorr's writing over the last four decades of his life. A highlight of his Parkman advocacy was his 1919 recommendation to the U.S. Geographic Board that one of the thirteen mountains on the island be renamed Parkman Mountain. His justification for this approved memorializing act was that Parkman use "to cruise these waters [with relative Horace Gray], studying the coast with reference to his writings about ancient French dominion in America and of these Indian life and ways." 17 Merritt Lyndon Fernald [52] The famous Harvard botanist of the Gray Herbarium has more than an incidental connection with the Arnold Arboretum. Though the two botanical facilities were administratively separate, they interacted at the investigative level on a daily basis. Dorr's research inquiries were almost exclusively with the herbarium in Cambridge. In 1905 he invited Herbarium Curator Benjamin Lincoln Robinson to a Herbert W. Gleason slideshow of Colorado wildflowers at the Tavern Club. A decade later as Dorr assembled the 5,000 acres of donated land to present to the U.S., the National Geographic Magazine published a collaborative article titled "The Unique Island of Mount Desert." Dorr, Fernald, and Massachusetts State ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush collaborated, relying on Francis Parkman's historical studies to argue for saving "the wild primeval beauty" of the island. In 1916 Dorr republished Fernald's essay as "An Acadian Plant Sanctuary" [SMP #5], advocating the conservation of reserved tracts of land to be retained in their natural state. Based upon his three-decades of active exploration of New England and the Maritime Provinces, Fernald proposed that "Mount Desert Island offered the greatest [geographic] natural diversity." [53] After land was set aside for a national monument, Fernald submitted testimony in May 1918 to elevate the new national monument to national park status. Thomas Wren Ward III The strongest link to Jamaica Plain is the fact that the son of Dorr's uncle Sam, Thomas Wren Ward III (1844-1940), resided here on Chestnut Street. He lived in Emerson's home while he prepared for Harvard College. Disabled early in life by a profound hearing loss, he nonetheless accompanied his friend William James in 1865 on the famous Agassiz exploration of Brazil's river systems. Like his father, Tom struggled against family expectations that he too would pursue a career in the banking sector. He had a lifelong friendship with his cousin Dorr, revealing in his correspondence his belief that he had failed to be sufficiently creative, entering the family business with regrets as had his father. His daughter, Elizabeth Howard Ward Perkins cared for her father at her Jamaica Plain 'Nutwood' home; she is buried nearby at Forest Lawn. In recent years, the library at the University 18 of California campus at Santa Barbara has received thousands of pages of correspondence and diary entries from the Ward and Perkins families. [54] In conclusion, I hope that I have expanded your appreciation of the importance of Jamaica Plain to the eventual establishment of the first national park East of the Mississippi River, a conservation achievement made possible through Dorr's lifelong interaction with men and women who were similarly affected by this special place. Powerpoint Slide Show Identifiers [in brackets] 1. Bar Harbor Lithograph. 1886. 2. Bar Harbor photo. Circa 1890. 3. Rusticator picnic. 4. Sieur de Monts gathering. C.1890. 5. Sieur de Monts visited by children. C. 1890. 6. Early 20th century hiking group on Champlain Mt. 7. Oldfarm 8. Outdoor Greek play performed at Oldfarm 9. GBD and CWE at Jesuit Point. 10. Path Committee on Jordan Pond. 11. Iconic GBD image. 12. Leure B. Deasy, first attorney in BH 13. JDR Jr. 14. Rockefeller's cobblestone bridge 19 15. Carriage road gatehouse 16. Steve Mather on trail overlooking Porcupine Islands 17. GBD and ANP staff. C. 1938. 18. Jamaica Plain and Dorr residence. 1858. 19. Eastern shoreline, Jamaica Pond. Bromley Map. 1874. 20. Joseph E. Baker image of Jamaica Pond skaters and residences. 21. Samuel Dorr. Boston Athenaeum donation from GBD. 22. Thomas Wren Ward. Harvard University Museums. 23. Park Street from State House steps. 24. Tremont Street, looking north to Park Street Church. 25. Mary Dorr. 1894. 26. Samuel Gray Ward. C. 1850's. 27. Anna Hazard Barker Ward bust. 28. Oldfarm foyer. C. 1905. 29. Oldfarm stairway & dining room. 30. Oldfarm living room. 31. Pine Bank II. 32. Highwood Cottage of Samuel & Anna Ward. 2016. Tanglewood. 33. Back Bay. C. 1850. 34. 1 Commonwealth Avenue. SGW family residence. 35. 16 & 18 Commonwealth Avenue. Dorr family at #18. 36. Back Bay expansion. Commonwealth & Public Gardens. C. 1870. 37. Charles Pickering Bowditch. 38. Henry Pickering Bowditch 20 39. Edith Wharton 40. Teddy Wharton 41. Beatrix Farrand 42. Charles Eliot 43. Charles William Eliot 44. HCTPR Historical Sketch. 2nd ed. 2016. 45. Margaret Fuller 46. Ralph Waldo Emerson 47. Ellen Swallow Richards 48. Henry Richards, brother in law of Ellen, Oldfarm architect. 49. Julia Ward Howe 50. Charles Sprague Sargent 51. Francis Parkman 52. Merritt Lyndon Fernald 53. Otter Cliffs 54. Ronald H. Epp, Creating Acadia National Park, (Friends of Acadia, 2016). Note: Images secured from the archival copyprint collection at Acadia National Park and diverse online sources. page I of 7. Research Notes for Jameica Plain talk at Andlo Arbanatum Summer 2017. 1. Dorr was reared in surroundings that were perfectly suited to his development. 2. Dorr was a descendant of Charles Dorr of Boston and one generation earlier Samuel Dorr of Boston 3. Mary Dorr continued her Boston-based active social life after the move to J.P. She maintained close relationships with whom Julia Ward Howe, Annie Fields, Catherine Parkman, etc. 4. Describe #18 Commonwealth, especially loss of landscape. 5, Development of Dorr's visual sense later aspirations of becoming a painter. His eyes would later prove limiting though we don't know if visual difficulties first expressed themselves in his J.P. years. Finding external stimulation was not enough in the long run; Dorr remained an internal man for whom ideas were more interesting than things. Not a spectator, he became a man of action, deeply moved by his passion for the unique landscapes of Mount Desert. 6 Within months of Dorr's birth, grandfather Ward began purchasing property and compound residences in Canton which would amount to more than eighty acres prior to his death in 1858; these properties would continue to be used by family members until they were sold in 1876. Dorr wrote more about this property than others where he resided. More than fifty years after last visiting Canton, where days spent there "were a great education, teaching us to love the country and the wilderness about us without need of company." Again, his memoirs show that in J.P., Canton, and Lenox, which he calls "real country, with woods and a lake for neighbors, dogs and horses for companions, my brother and I grew up till college days." If Jamaica Plain, Canton, and Lenox aroused his passion for Nature, the Park Street residence of his garndparents is the nursery for his lifelong commitment to reading and the building a wide-ranging library. Travel throughout New England set the stage for European travel during his years at Harvard and after. Combine 10 #14 8 There are no surviving Dorr diaries. No photographs. No sustained memoir. Yet there is the Dorr Collection at the NEHGS which contains well over a hundred manuscript pages comprising seventeen essays and transcripts of letters-all but one by GBD-tracking his ancestry to the mid-17th -century. 9. Dorr's parents were closest to Mary's brother Samuel Gray ward and his wife Anna. They had three children (Anna, Lilly, and Tom) who were all a decade older than George; playmates they were not. The last born was Elizabeth (b. 1850) who would have played with the Dorr brothers. A few other cousins were scattered across the family (correct?). Expand ri ( Faler 10 Three years before Dorr's birth Rev. Russell Cook of NYC built a Lenox estate called Highlawn. In December 1853 he sold the place to the half-brothers of Charles Dorr, bachelor Francis and widower George (1806-76) who shared a bachelor domicile on Washington Place in NYC. The sister of Charles, Susan Dorr, also resided at Highlawn and inherited the landscaped garden estate developed by "uncle" George. In a letter to John D. Rockefeller Jr., the Father of Acadia would remark that "open grassy spaces, like sheep pastures, are often better in contrast to continuous woods used to be familiar with them, wandering over the Berkshire country when I was a boy." 11 The "beautiful" location of his Jamaica Pond home Dorr described as "fronting through tall trees the sunset view across the lake from the top of a steep bank." He states that he and his brother were "brought up in J.P. until 1861," when "we moved to Boston, occupying grandfather Ward's house "for a time, then building our own house on Back Bay, on Commonwealth Avenue close to the public garden which was our winter home thereafter. "(July 17, 1938 memoir) 12 While Mary was attracted to the spiritualism of antebellum America, earlier she had been attracted to Emersonian Transcendentalism. Unitarianism was rapidly moving from a foothold status to dominance in Boston, attracting the Dorr's whose son would describe himself as an Episcopalian on graduation from Harvard in 1874. Dorr frequently wrote of the disappearance of the Calvinist religion and the reshaping of the culture associated with it during mid-century. He remarks in his memoirs that "my mother when she was living in Jamaica Plain, and I was but a young child went to see a medium she had heard of, hoping possibly to get some word of a brother [John, 1822-1856, or T.W. 1831-1859] who had lately died abroad." 13. On Dorr's health as a child. Any suggestion of visual issues in J.P.? 14 "To understand the fashion of any life," it has been said, "one must know the land it is lived in and the procession of the year." The land in which George Bucknam Dorr spent the formative years of his long life was neither the deeply historical Boston-where his parents had been reared-o the Insert less permanently marked western territories of the still emerging frontier. As you know, his birth on #18 December 29, 1853 took place in a newly built home on the shore of Jamaica Pond. Here reference the diary of grandfather Ward and Dorr's own memoirs. If the whole point of a marriage was to provide the emotional security implicit in statis, in not moving into unsettling waters then marriage as it had been practiced in England before the immigrations that brought Dorr and Ward families to America was about contentment in the place where one was. The peripatetic behavior of Dorr's 3 parents-of at least seasonal relocation-suggests a new marriage paradigm that is fairly typical in our own day. combone e #6 15. Characterize year of 1853. 16 References to brother are slim and largely confined to their adolescent and college age years. Insert in #6 17 Dorr's father was born in the north end of Boston, relocating in his third year to Tremont St., opposite the Common and "not far from the foot of Park Street" residence of his future wife, Mary Gray Ward. Prior to the move, Dorr reports that "my father recalled distinctly raising himself by his hands to look out the nursery window and see the ships-in an era before the age of steam-- sailing in and out of the harbor-a remarkable instance of early memory." And later, he "played with his comrades around the wharves where vessels belonging to their fathers unloaded cargoes 11/16/21 # from distant ports, and there were sailors to talk with and glorious opportunity for climbing." 18 Dorr's paternal grandfather, Samuel Dorr (1774-1844), exercised his right to pasture and kept a cow on the Common to provide fresh milk for juvenile Charles and his sister Susan. He retired from active business and became president of New England Bank and a proprietor and Trustee of the new Boston Athenaeum. Both the Dorr and Ward children experienced the Common as a "great playground with its broad, shady malls, ideal in spring for marbles and all kinds of running games; its rolling grasslands, frog Pond and good winter coasting; its Election Days band concerts and parades; and the broad Back Bay beyond for skating." Preface to #14 19. Grandfather Sam-according to an 1887 archived essay by his son Charles-was born in Mendon MA in the house built by his grandfather, the Rev. Joseph Dorr. When Sam was twelve (1786), his father moved to Auburn where Sam started working two years later in the Westborough import house of Parkman and Brigham who distributed goods from the West Indies and elsewhere. He relocated to Boston in 1797 with a nest egg of $700 to set himself up as a commission merchant at #30 India Street. He also served three terms in the Massachusetts House and two terms in the Senate. Earlier than this public service period of his life, he was threatened with consumption he retired from business "with a fortune of $160,000," reports his son Charles; at the time of his death in 1844 his estate was worth $400,000. 20. Dorr's heritage follows from the second marriage of Samuel Dorr, not the five males and one daughter that were the fruits of Sam's first marriage to Lucy Tuttle Fox. After her death in 1814 Sam 4 married Susan Brown (1779-1841) the following year, she being the eldest daughter of Joseph Lazinby Brown and Susannah Adams, a goldsmith who passed along "a strong mechanical bent in the family coming from both sides and showing itself later in his grandson, Charles Hazen Insert Dorr, who had a rare gift with his hands and loved to work with them. Joseph L. Brown lived in Concord from 1785-1795, where there is constant evidence of his presence, especially with members of the Social Circle. And the connections later to Emerson and the Transcendentalists. 21 In an archived NEHGS essay on the "Children of Samuel Dorr by his First Marriage," GBD contrasts the children of his grandfather's first marriage with those of his second, his father and aunt Susan. He writes that Susan "had qualities of humor, quick sympathy and warm affection the older children [by the first marriage] did not share [He then adds a most revealing personal claim that] "from ancient usage we trace descent from [males] almost exclusively, but it is from the wife and mother that character is inherited and the ways of life derived, and of these wives very little as a rule Iarect remains to be told." This point is emphasized in a May 28, 1940 entry where he mentions his 17 father's death and the historical details "he would have filled in for me had he lived, for he loved to search out and reconstruct the olden times, which really came to life as he worked them over. But in talk his thoughts never of their own accord turned back to things gone by, but dwelt in the present always." This is true of GBD as well. Both parents were avid readers; Charles was drawn to history while Mary read "the poetry of her time, of its religion and new thought, and of the fiction that portrayed [her era]." Dorr remarks that he "had the good fortune of having in my father and mother two people with a delightful gift of narrative, What they told of, lived. My father was more reserved but he had a delightful sense of humor [but] of his inner self I never heard him talk. My mother had a wonderful gift of description so that between them the time of their own childhood lived again for me." In his memoirs, Dorr in his eighties describes his father as someone with "broad human interests, and no thought for self, full of the capacity for great enjoyment in all things beautiful and good an excellent and cool observer" [whereas his] mother was "of a very different nature, not given as I to argument and reason not patient of them intuition [was part of strong] artistic strain [and] [people came to her always for sympathy for she was strong to lean upon." 22. Until forty years of age Dorr did little to distinguish himself from respectable mediocrity. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson more than fifty years earlier, he graduated in the middle of his Harvard class of 5. 1874. Yet during the last century of his life he would become the Father of the first national park east of the Mississippi and through his philanthropy one of the most influential figures in the land trust movement begun by Charles Eliot in 1891. But as one esteemed community-minded editor [Earl Brechlin] reminds us, the true debt owed to Dorr is his "involvement in creating nearly every [island-wide] institution we hold dear to this day." 23 With the death of his father three years earlier, Dorr now had the capital to realize the potential of the delicate native plant vistas embedded in the rugged landscapes of Mount Desert Island. He saw the potential in propagating and hybridizing the fragile flora in controlled greenhouse environments, much of his skill based on years of travel to--and study of--European landscapes. The outcome was a new island business targeted at the seasonal elites, the Mount Desert Nurseries. In 1912 he replaced his nurseries manager with Arthur E. Thatcher, whom he hired away from the Arnold Arboretum after four years as a hardy plants specialist. An Enlgish horticulturist, his first project was to improve the plantings and design at Sieur de Mont Spring. His research at MDN he was the face of MDN at exhibitions, perhaps best known for his 1915 essay before the MHS on "The Culture of Hardy Plants." 24. Regarding the Ward-Dorr property at what is now known as Pequitside Farm was adjacent to the 250 acre Punkapoag Pond in the western Blue Hills. 25 Parents were part of the abolitionist movements against slavery though there is no evidence that insert they participated in public expressions of their stance, nor in the lawlessness and riots associated with it In the years immediately before Dorr's birth. We cannot say with certainty that they supported the Free Soil Party of the 1848 and 1852 elections, but they likely were dismayed by the Dred Scot decision and supportive of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Whether the worldwide financial Panic of 1857-with recovery occurring only after the Civil War-damaged the Dorr economic status is unlikely (because of their relocation to Boston and Commonwealth Avenue). 26 A famous daughter of Julia Ward Howe, Pulitzer Prize winner Laura Richards-the wife of Oldfarm architect Henry Richards-composes in 1924 the fullest surviving account of what she calls the "remarkable" Mary. Julia and Mary were intimate teenage friends, Mary becoming engaged to Julia's brother, despite a voice "like a quacking duck." Henry's death from typhoid bonded the two of them through this "crushing sorrow." Laura described Charles Dorr as "one of the gentlest, sweetest, most admirable of men," likening him to "Joe Gargery in Great Expectations. Laura's sister would visit the Dorr's, stay for long visits, and attend "Miss Ireland's School," about which I can find no confirmation. She was of an unbounded social ambition [believing that she occupied the highest position in Boston or wherever she came and went. Arrogance is the word," states Laura, [yet] brilliant, kindly, hospitable, all these in a high degree and everybody wanted to go to her house [where] was sure of meeting there always the best and most delightful and most brilliant people, native and foreign." 27 Despite recent advances in early childhood development, the biographical tradition has attached little character development significance to the place or places where one spends the first decade INSERT of life. Yet I wondered in recent months whether Dorr's was-or was not-deeply tethered to his birthplace by family, friends, professional relationships, and memory. We might Intuitively respond in the affirmative. Are we not all so invested? Do we not all respond to a re-discovered childhood toy or trinket? But is such an experience isolated or related to our larger hopes and aspirations? Do such ties weaken and dissolve with the passage of time? More boldly, did Acadia hold special meaning for Dorr because of past and lifelong connection rooted in Jamaica Plain? In recent years environmental psychologists have for the first time "quantified links between exposure to natural environments in childhood and environmental preferences later in life" (T.G. Measham, Carol Brandt). This afternoon, I will draw attention to these persistent attachments to both place and era, offering brief profiles of key individuals who through intent or accident brought Dorr emotionally back to his roots. As juvenile Dorr physically left J.P., never to return as far as I can determine. Yet the concept of place looms large in Dorr's behavior, conservation thinking, park planning, and publications. I will show you my post-publication charting of place-based influences that reconnected Dorr to the shores of Jamaica Pond. Bar Harbor and Boston dominated his life as places where his days were spent. Jamaica Plain was a touchstone-a primal landscape-- that nourished the key passions of his life. I hope this will awaken in you an interest in reading the Dorr biography and situating these profiles within Dorr's life achievements. 28. Dorr repeatedly asserts that his earliest recollections are of gardens, those in Jamaica Plain, 7. Canton, and then Mount Desert. In fact, before Oldfarm was built Mary Dorr set to work "to make a garden, bringing to it shrubs and flowering plants from our former country home near Boston." Yet from his parents he has no doubt that the roots "of my interest in public reservations had its ancestry. far back in old Salem [Ward] and Medford {Dorr] gardens and the England from which they came. "He lavishes praise on grandmothers and great-grandmothers back to colonial times." 29. The author of a biography unlike many other literary forms is drawn to the outdoors to find the locations--the places-where one's subject matured. Yet the passage of time erases and modifies the external environment. Yet I needed to walk Jamaica Plain, amble around the Pond where his place of birth had been transformed, saunter through Pine Bank, wonder where he may have first met the Parkman children. August 11, 2017 JamaicaPlain80117 10/24/2017 XFINITY Connect Inbox RE: Creating Acadia Adult Education 10/12/2017 12:35 PM To Ronald Epp Ron: Thank you for following up on the book, and especially, thank you for speaking. It was fascinating to learn of all the interconnections among neighbors, business acquaintances, etc. It seems that vision and connections are what make something like Acadia or the Blue Hills Reservation (Eliot's project) possible and lasting treasures for generations. Dorr must also have been passionate about the endeavor in order to sell the idea to so many! Thanks for presenting on a topic which is clearly dear to your heart. With appreciation, Pam Pamela J. Thompson Manager of Adult Education Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University 617-384-5277 From: Ronald Epp [mailto:eppster2@comcast.net] Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 3:15 PM To: Adult Education Subject: RE: Creating Acadia Pam, I followed through with the inquiry you sent me. Thanks again for hosting the event. You run a class act ! Best, Ron Epp Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone Original message From: Adult Education Date: 2017/10/11 12:33 PM (GMT-05:00) To: Pam Chamberlain and Nicki Croghan Cc: Ronald Epp Subject: RE: Creating Acadia help with that directly? Or can you suggest where they might purchase a copy in the Boston area? Thank you, Pam Pamela J. Thompson Manager of Adult Education Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University 617-384-5277 From: Pam Chamberlain and Nicki Croghan [pamnicki@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2017 12:19 PM To: Adult Education Subject: Re: Creating Acadia Thanks for the suggestion. I called the Olmsted National Historic Site and they do not carry it. Does Mr Epp live in the area? If he is around here, perhaps I could pick it up from him. Do you know how I might be able to contact him? Thanks, Nicki On Oct 10, 2017, at 3:54 PM, Adult Education > Arnold Arboretum Pam Thompson Manager of Adult Education 125 Arborway Boston, MA 02130 Phone: 617.384.5277 Fax: 617.524.1418 Email Education MS Communications Management, Simmons College BA French Studies, Mount Holyoke College As manager of adult education, I develop a range of programs to encourage interest in and exploration of horticulture, gardening, natural sciences, and landscape. Our programs reach a range of community members, from professional horticulturists to avid home gardeners and novices. No matter what level of knowledge and experience you may bring to one of our classes, you are guaranteed to leave with some new nugget of understanding, and typically, a load of practical information. I strive to identify instructors and topics that will deliver "aha" moments and expand curiosity about the natural world, about the interactions between plants and animals, about the human propensity to plant seeds and make gardens. I have taken numerous art and landscape design classes since graduating from Mount Holyoke College. In May 2010, I received a master's degree in communications management from Simmons College. Outside of work, I garden with my cats and play ice hockey year-round with several women's teams. In June of 2013 I climbed Mount Shasta (14,179-ft.) in northern California with the Breast Cancer Fund to raise awareness of the environmental links to breast cancer. Read a Harvard Gazette article about my motivation for signing on to this enormous physical challenge. Recent adventures have included helping Mahoosuc Guide Service on canoe expeditions in Maine. Publications: Thompson, P.J. 2015. Pterostyrax hispidus, the Fragrant Epaulette Tree. Arnoldia 72(4):36-37. [pdf] Thompson, P.J. 2009. Cultivating Plant Careers. Silva Fall/Winter 2009-2010: 4-5. [pdf] 3/31/2017 XFINITY Connect XFINITY Connect eppster2@comcast.net + Font Size - October 8th is confirmed From : Gretchen Grozier Fri, Mar 31, 2017 10:16 AM Subject : October 8th is confirmed To : Ronald Epp Hi Ronald, the Arnold Arboretum has confirmed that Sunday, October 8th has been booked for your talk. We usually have events at 2pm. The location is Hunnewell Visitor Center - which has a lovely lecture hall. https://www.arboretum.harvard.edu/visit/directions/ I am going to reach out to the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site to see if they want to co-sponsor the event as well. Please put us officially in your calendar and we will figure out all the details later - at the end of the summer! G. 3/1/2017 XFINITY Connect XFINITY Connect eppster2@comcast.net + Font Size Re: Thanks for contacting the JPHS From : Gretchen Grozier Wed, Mar 01, 2017 03:15 PM Subject : Re: Thanks for contacting the JPHS To : Ronald Epp D'oh Charles Eliot studied with Olmsted at Fairstead and was a partner with his son in the firm. The NPS site says an article his son wrote set his father on his path with GBD to create Acadia. That's a good connection for Olmsted NHS! G. On Wed, Mar 1, 2017 at 2:58 PM, Gretchen Grozier wrote: Hi Ronald, Pam at the Arboretum is super excited about hosting your talk this fall - here are the Sundays they have open: October 1, 8, 22, 29, November 5, 19 Would any of those work for you? Selfishly, I would ask you not choose October 1st if possible since I'm out of the country but I certainly don't need to be there (I just want to be!) if that is your best date. The other thing that Pam suggested was maybe looping in "our local" National Parks site (the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site). We (JPHS and the Arnold Arboretum) often collaborate among our organizations. I guess it depends on how much NPS you plan to cover! I think FLO and the Boston Parks would definitely help publicize the event regardless. I'm so excited this is all coming together so easily. I was emailing with Aimee (Friends of Acadia) to order books for our JP Libraries and was telling her sometimes the stars just align on an event. ) looking forward to hearing which date you want to do! G. On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 11:08 AM, Gretchen Grozier wrote: Hi Ronald, This is all great! I was already signed up for the Dorr talk at MHS in April and had asked our newsletter editor to include it in the early April addition, so our members/those interested in JP history will know about it. I just didn't connect your name with that talk (sorry)! I will reach out to Pam at the Arboretum now and see about available dates in October or November in Hunnewell Hall. We generally go with Sunday at 2pm for JPHS talks since it seems to work for most folks. Thanks for sending that check and as you will be about, we hope you will join us on one of our tours this summer. I will let you know what I hear from Pam, G. On Fri, Feb 24, 2017, 13:39 Ronald Epp wrote: Hi Gretchen, Thank you for your informative response. First, my apologies for failing to include a membership check. It was posted yesterday. I am delighted you are familiar with the Dorr name. Not only am I aware that he was featured in Harvard Magazine last year, but the author of the article contacted me beforehand because he based content on my biography and wanted to give credit to it when published. Regarding a JPHS talk this fall, I would certainly be honored to give it; and if the Arnold Arboretum was the host site, all the better. Regarding the Massachusetts Historical Society involvement, they are sponsoring my April 10th talk on the Dorr biography. Perhaps you or other members might want to attend since the focus will be quite different from what would be the case for your community. I am leasing an apartment near Hartford CT this year and will be traveling extensively throughout New England. More to the point, I will also be visiting retired educator Barbara Meyer who lives on Rockview Place, not too distant from where the Dorr family resided. So I am sure we can reach agreement about the timing of my talk--and any particular aspects of Dorr's life that you wish me to highlight. Looking forward to hearing more from you, Most cordially, Ronald H. Epp 124 Sawyers Path Simsbury, CT 06070 603-491-1760 From: "Gretchen Grozier" To: eppster2@comcast.net Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2017 7:49:35 PM Subject: Thanks for contacting the JPHS Hi Ronald, Thanks for contacting the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. I wanted to follow up with you on 2 things. First, we did not receive the membership check that you mention in your letter. Not a problem, just wanted you to know. Second, yes we are aware of George Buckham Dorr a fine JP lad's - connection to the founding of Acadia. He was featured in Harvard magazine last year (article attached). In fact, we've been talking of organizing a 'field trip' up to Acadia this summer to pursue the Dorr trail (and several other JP/Acadia connections*). And we would absolutely love for you to give a talk here in Jamaica Plain to let more people know of this amazing JPer's work. We generally sponsor one talk per month from October to April (because we give tours weekly from May-September). Would you be in Boston anytime this coming fall? I am already thinking that the Arnold 3/1/2017 XFINITY Connect I do have to tell you we don't have any sort of budget to pay for your trip or talk (maybe if we loop in the Arboretum we could ask them?) As a local, all volunteer non- profit our budget is pretty slim. But we were actually saying GBD is a person we need to highlight much, much more. I can also reach out to the Massachusetts Historical Society to see if they would be interested (their coffers are much bigger). Thanks again for being in touch with us -- I'm emailing Aimee now to get some books! Sincerely, Gretchen Grozier for the Jamaica Plain Historical Society -- Support the all-volunteer Jamaica Plain Historical Society with your membership of $15; Visit http://www.jphs.org/membership/ *JP/Acadia connections: Gov. Francis Bernard (a JP resident) got a royal land grant on Mount Desert Island in 1760 (lost to him after the Revolutionary War); G. B. Dorr founder and first superintendent (you know this one well!); Charles Fletcher Dole (minister of the First Church of JP) gave land to park (his summer house was on Fernald Pt Road). I think there may be more JP families who lived with the Doles and Dorrs in summer homes there - who thanks to George gave their land to the park. 2/16/2021 Xfinity Connect RE_Arnold Arboretum membership Printout eppster2@comcast.net 2/16/2021 7:53 PM RE: Arnold Arboretum membership To Wendy Krauss Dear Wendy, As a fellow academic library director (retired), I am delighted to hear of Ms. Pearson's interest in receiving a copy of my biography. I will inscribe it and post it Wednesday. During his life, George Bucknam Dorr had many interactions with the arboretum and the herbarium. Distant cousin Charles Sprague Sargent accepted the Arnold Arboretum position as Dorr completed his sophomore year at Harvard. Two decades later Dorr established the Mount Desert Nurseries and the fruits of his research brought him horticultural recognition throughout New England. I think that a persistent graduate student could further elevate Dorr's horticultural standing than what I was able to achieve. Looking forward to the day when we all can move about more freely and I can return to the arboretum. All the Best, Ronald Ronald H. Epp, Ph.D. 7 Peachtree Terrace Farmington, CT 06032 717-272-0801 eppster2@comcast.net On 02/16/2021 3:06 PM Krauss, Wendy wrote: Dear Ronald, Lisa Pearson was delighted to hear of your kind offer to share a copy of your book for the library, and she wondered if you would be willing to inscribe it for us? The mailing address is as follows: Mr Lisa Pearson Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University 125 Arborway Boston, MA 01230-3500 Vi Thank you again and best wishes, https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite/v=7.10.3-14.20201117.063933/print.html?print_161352326329 1/5 2/16/2021 Xfinity Connect Arnold Arboretum membership Printout Wendy From: eppster2@comcast.net Sent: Monday, February 8, 2021 2:42 PM To: Krauss, Wendy Subject: Re: Arnold Arboretum membership Dear Wendy, Thank you for your kind welcoming note. It may interest you to know that on October 8, 2017 I delivered a paper in Hunnewell Hall sponsored by the Arboretum and the Jamaica Plain Historical Society.: "From Jamaica Plain to Commonwealth Avenue: George B. Dorr, his family and friends on his Birthplace." It derived from the Dorr biography I published the year before: Creating Acadia National Park. My talk was well received and it was a delight to walk the grounds once again. I look forward to returning when travel becomes safer. Until then, would you check to see whether the arboretum library contains a copy of my book? If not, I will gladly provide. Stay safe and well. Ronald Ronald H. Epp, Ph.D. 7 Peachtree Terrace Farmington, CT 06032 717-272-0801 eppster2@comcast.net On 02/05/2021 11:55 AM Krauss, Wendy wrote: Hello Dr. Epp, My apologies for the delayed reply. Thank you very much for renewing your Contributing level membership, including a print subscription to Arnoldia. We appreciate your contribution and your participation in our community of plant enthusiasts. A membership card is attached, along with a digital copy of Arnoldia, and other details. The upcoming issue of Arnoldia will be mailed to members this month. Many thanks for your thoughtful generosity and for supporting the care and stewardship of our landscape and living collections. https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite/v=7.10.3-14.20201117.063933/print.html?print_1613523263290 2/5