Annie’s Restaurant (episode 269)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 269 Annie’s Restaurant. Hi, I’m Jake.
This week, I’m going to be talking about Annie Burton. Burton was an entrepreneur, and a restauranteur who moved to boston as a young woman after spending her childhood enslaved on a plantation in Alabama, and he spent decades as a domestic servant, first in the south and then in the north in Newton, the south end, Wellesley, Jamaica Plain and other neighborhoods in and around boston, for most black women in the years and decades after emancipation, cooking, cleaning, raising Children and washing and ironing for white families were among the only opportunities available for paid work, making Annie’s experience utterly typical.
Two things make her life unique. Her decision to bet on herself and open a series of restaurants, first in florida, then in Park Square in boston and then in a number of new England resort towns, and second her decision just after the turn of the 20th century to put pen to paper and write her story down and publish it, preserving the details of her life in a way that just wasn’t available to most of her peers.

[1:30] But before we talk about ANne Burton, I just want to pause and say thank you, to everyone who supports hub history on patreon.
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Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[2:59] Part of the reason that I wanted to share Annie Burton’s story this week is because of the parallels to joseph lee, who we met in our last episode.
Both joseph lee and Annie Burton were enslaved in the south as Children and freed when union troops liberated their hometowns, Lee was about 17 in South Carolina when he first experienced freedom, and Burton was about seven in Alabama.
So their experiences of emancipation were necessarily different.
Though she was about 10 years younger than Lee Burton also made her way to Massachusetts after she was freed at the end of the Civil War.
She also spent time in the Auburndale neighborhood in Newton, where joseph lee made his fortune as well as in boston proper, likely she was an accomplished cook and restaurateur.
Unlikely. However, she never rose to the highest echelons of wealth and social prominence.
Annie Burton’s experience of carving out a marginal living and reconstruction and post reconstruction.
America is probably more typical of the tens of thousands of formerly enslaved african american women, who are trying to find their place in the world in the decades after 18 65 and her existence was always more tenuous than joseph lees was.

[4:18] To tell. Annie’s story.
I’m going to read big chunks of the personal narrative she wrote, having to do with her life in Boston and how she got here.
I’ll intersperse that with commentary taken from the essay.
Her refusal to be recast by Yolanda Pierce, which was published in the Southern Literary Journal in 2004.
And of course, for local color, I’ll chime in with some of my own observations.
All that is my way of saying that there aren’t as many different primary sources this week as usual, but I think you’ll agree with me that Annie’s story is an, interesting counterpoint to our last episode about joseph lee.
Anne Burton did not create patented inventions that changed the way americans eat.
Like joseph lees, bread, kneading and bread crumb in machines.
But she did have a culinary claim to fame.
She was the first person to introduce boston baked beans to Jacksonville and perhaps to all of florida, boston baked beans and all the ways they are and are not typical boston fair, probably deserve their own episode one of these days, but for now I’ll let a paragraph from an article written by Alexandra Powell, for the paul Revere House describe them for us.

[5:32] The baked beans we enjoy today are a direct descendant from an english bean and bacon pottage dish.
Originally from the middle ages, 17th century puritans favored a dish that they could set to cook on saturday and consume on sunday, saving them from labor. On the sabbath.

[5:51] The ingredient that separates boston baked beans from all others molasses probably entered the mix in the mid 18th century as boston’s centrality to the triangular trade grew, molasses produced by the exploitation of enslaved persons on plantations in the caribbean was shipped to boston to make Rome, by the late 19th century, when Fannie Farmer included boston baked beans in a watershed cookbook, molasses was considered a canonical ingredient, along with ground mustard and salt pork.

[6:24] For more about Fannie Farmer and her cookbook check out episode 1 59 and for more on molasses in boston, listen to episode 73.

[6:35] By the time she introduced florida to our baked beans, specialty.
Annie Burton had already lived in the boston area for years before returning to the south temporarily.
In about 1880, for or perhaps 1888 as well here in a few minutes and he moved to Jacksonville Florida with her nephew. Lawrence, as she tells it.
My idea was to get a place as a chambermaid at green cove springs florida through the influence of the headwaiter at a hotel there, whom I knew.
After I got into Jacksonville, I changed my plans. I did not see how I could move my things any farther, and we went to a hotel for colored people, hired a room for $2 and boarded ourselves on the food which had been given to us in Macon.
This food lasted about two weeks, then I had to buy and my money was going every day and none coming in.
I did not know what to do.

[7:34] One night. The idea of keeping a restaurant came to me and I decided to get a little home for the three of us and then see what I could do in this line of business.
After a long and hard search, I found a little house of two rooms where you could live and the next day I found a place to start. My restaurant trade at.
The restaurant was very good and we got along nicely.
One day the cook from a shipwrecked vessel came to my restaurant, and in return for his board and a bed in the place agreed to do my cooking.
I introduced boston baked beans into my restaurant, much to the amusement of the people at first, but after they had once eaten them, it was hard to meet the demand for beans.
Lawrence, who was now about 11 years old, was a great help to me.
He took out dinners to the cigar makers in a factory nearby.
At the end of the season, about four months it had grown so hot that we could stay in Jacksonville no longer From my restaurant and my lodgers.
I cleared $175, which I put into the Jacksonville Bank.

[8:44] Anne’s life took her from boston to florida and back. But her story begins in Alabama.

[8:52] She was enslaved at birth on the Farren plantation near Clayton Alabama, which could also claim to be the birthplace of segregationist George, Wallace and Michael Jackson’s mother, and he was about seven years old when union soldiers arrived in Clayton, changing the trajectory of her life.
One note, as I read the sections of Anne’s narrative that took place while she was still enslaved, she often uses the hard inward interchangeably with the word slave.
Mostly in quoting or paraphrasing southern whites.
I’ll be replacing it with slave or slaves when I get to that word, but I left the rest of her language the same, Annie wrote.
I saw all the slaves, one x one disappearing from the plantation for night and day.
They kept going until there was not one to be seen all around the plantation was left barren day after day.
I could run down to the gate and see down the road troops and troops of garrisons, brigade and in the midst of them gangs and gangs of negro slaves who joined with the soldiers shouting, dancing and clapping their hands, and in the midst of them gangs and gangs of negro slaves who joined with the soldiers shouting, dancing and clapping their hands.
The war was ended and from mobile bay to Clayton Alabama all along the road on all the plantations, the slaves thought that if they joined the yankee soldiers, they’d be perfectly safe.

[10:21] I tried to figure out what unit and he was referring to, but I’m by no means a civil war expert and I couldn’t find a brigade commander named Garrison.
I got excited for a moment because the most prominent Union officer named Garrison that I could track down was bostonian George T Garrison, son of the famous abolitionist William Lloyd, Garrison and a captain in the first company of the 55th massachusetts Volunteer infantry regiment, Like the famous 54th, the 55th was made up of black enlisted soldiers and n.
C. o. s commanded by White Officers.
It would have been too perfect for this unit to have liberated the fair implantation, but from everything I could find, they were actually in coastal south Carolina at the same time.
Whoever the soldiers of this Garrison brigade were anne continues.
One morning in april 18 65 my master got the news that the Yankees had left mobile bay and crossed the confederate lines and that the emancipation proclamation had been signed by President Lincoln.
Mistress suggested that the slaves should not be told of their freedom, but master said that he would tell them because they would soon find it out, even if he did not tell them.
Mistress, however, said that she could keep my mother’s three Children from.
My mother had now been gone for so long.

[11:43] Annie’s mother had escaped from the plantation in about 1862 after she was whipped for the first time for talking back to her enslave er Sarah and Faron.
So when emancipation came in 1865, Anni had no guardian other than Sarah.
Sarah said that she now owned anne, her sister Caroline and their half brother, Henry, forcing them to continue working on the plantation in similar roles as when they were enslaved.
In fact, their work was worse than it had been before, because they were now old enough to do harder tasks, and they were the only able bodied black people left on the farm since everyone who had the physical capacity to leave had done so.

[12:28] Writing about this period. Yolanda Pierce argues that it was crucial in shaping Annie’s later desire never to feel like she was being re enslaved, despite the end of the civil war, Burton’s first experience of freedom was anything but liberating.
As three of the few remaining slaves on the plantation. The rest being elderly, Burton and her siblings had to help gather the crops, bring in fire logs and perform any other chore demanded of them.
Burton recalls being whipped for improperly turning butter and daring to fall asleep instead of performing her assigned tasks.
Her sister Caroline at the age of 12 was forced to take their mother’s place as household cook as an adult. Reflecting on our childhood experiences, Burton understands the true motives of her former slave mistress.
The desire to keep her and her siblings from being aware of their new status as freed people.
Instead forcing them to continue in their all too familiar roles of slaves.

[13:35] Annie, Salvation came from an unexpected source. Her mother and popular conceptions of slavery escapees survived by following the north start of freedom.
But Anne’s mother hadn’t gone that far.
She was able to return to the plantation within a few months of emancipation, implying that she had likely joined a maroon community in a nearby part of the south, staying free by staying hidden.
Returning to claim our Children, however, was not as easy as it sounds with any writing.
My mother came for us at the end of the year 1865 and demanded that her Children be given up to her.
This mistress refused to do and threatened to set the dogs on my mother if she did not at once leave the place.

[14:25] My mother went away and remained with some of the neighbors until suppertime.
Then she got a boy to tell Caroline to come down to the fence.
When she came my mother told her to go back and get Henry and myself and bring us down to the gap in the fence as quick as she could.
Then my mother took Henry in her arms, and my sister carried me on her back.
We climbed fences and crossed fields, and after several hours came to a little hut, which my mother had secured on a plantation.
We have no more than reached the place and made a little fire.
When Masters two sons rode up and demanded that the Children be returned.
My mother refused to give us up upon her offering to go with them to the Yankee headquarters. To find out if it were really true that all negroes had been made free.
The young men left, and they troubled us no more.

[15:20] Anne and her mother were now free of the barons. But as Yolanda Pierce points out, the freedom available to black women had limits.
Despite the system of slavery being turned upside down in front of Annie Burton’s eyes, fundamental ideas about blackness, the proper role for black people in America and the functions and duties of black women were not changing.
While slavery may have ended during Burton’s early life, there was no challenge to the idea that african americans inherently belonged at the very bottom of the social hierarchy.
While african americans were technically emancipated from their positions as chattel, there was no freedom from the racist assumptions about the inferiority of black people and their rightful place as servants to whites.

[16:12] For the first year after a rescue, life was very hard for Anne and her mother, their family of six lived in a hut of rough hewn lumber with some straw for their beds and a fire burning directly on the dirt floor.
During this time, their food often ran short, and a good meal might consist of a little cornmeal boiled with peas and some pigskin.
Perhaps the more recent memories of these Postwar hardships explain why unlike most slave narratives, which tend to focus on the torments and hardships of slavery, Annie’s narrative starts out with a very different tone when remembering the time when she was enslaved, the opening paragraph, say.

[16:58] The memory of my happy, carefree childhood days on the plantation with my little white and black companions is often with me.

[17:06] Either master nor mistress nor neighbors had time to bestow a thought upon us, for the great civil war was raging.
That great event in american history was a matter of holy outside the realm of our childish interests.
Of course, we heard our elders discuss the various events of the great struggle, but it meant nothing to us.
Of course we heard our elders discuss the various events, the great struggle, but it meant nothing to us.
On the plantation. There were 10 white Children and 14 colored Children.
Our days were spent roaming about from plantation to plantation, not knowing or caring, not knowing or caring what things were going on in the great world.
Outside our little realm, planting time and harvest time were happy days for us.
How often at the harvest time the planters discovered cornstalks missing from the ends of the rose and blamed the crows.
We were called the little fairy devils, to the sweet potatoes and peanuts and sugar cane. We also helped ourselves.

[18:14] The tone shifts a bit in the following paragraphs, adding some darker details that even a child’s memory picked up on which I’ll let Yolanda pierce, summarize.

[18:26] These initial happy memories strike a dissonant chord, as generally the most painful aspects of bondage, or detailed at the beginning of a slave narrative, Burton simply and powerfully chooses to juxtapose these happier memories with the details of the hunger and nakedness she experiences as a child during slavery days, in contrast to our well kept and well fed white companions.

[18:51] She recalls being whipped for eating more than her allotment of food, and she remembers slave women sold for their failure to produce offspring.
Burton gives a detailed account of the lynching of a slave who was wrongly accused of the murder of his overseer.
She acknowledges that her own father was a white planter who never noticed or in any way acknowledged her as his child.
So while it’s initially discomforting that Burton writes about some of her happy memories of slavery, the reader is clear that Burton suffers no illusion as to the utter brutality of this peculiar institution.

[19:31] Annie’s reunion with her mother was a happy moment, but it didn’t mean an end to hardship for her family when she was enslaved.
And during the months after emancipation, when her enslave er refused to let her go, she worked in the white families home.
Now at seven years old, she had to learn to pick cotton for the first time, earning 40 cents for every £100 as her family took on a sharecropping relationship with a white landlord the next year.
However, the farm sold and they were forced to move into the town of Clayton.
At this point, Anne was hired to take care of a rich white music teachers.
Young daughter moving into the home of the woman that she would refer to as Miss Mary.
She was eight years old and Yolanda Pierce argues that she was taking the first steps, into the most common employment path for black women in both the north and south, in a country where they were no longer enslaved, but we’re allowed very few avenues to earn a living.
Pierce says that it was part of an unwritten three part training criteria for young black girls developed by newly freed african americans and rural areas of the south, in response to the economic dependence on the performance of domestic work.
First, each young girl was required to become proficient in childcare and housekeeping duties for extended family.

[20:59] Second, she learned to perform household duties under the direct supervision of adult family members in the homes of whites in the surrounding communities.

[21:09] Finally, following this period of tutelage, he undertook housekeeping tasks alone, usually as a live in servant in the homes of local southern white employers.
This entire training program was usually accomplished by the time a young girl was 10 years of age Burton’s narrative details her experience of this three pronged training process.
Her mother teaches her to perform essential household tasks as she helps to care for her younger siblings.
She and her brother sell blueberries and plums and contribute to the collective family income.
Eventually, she is adopted by a local white family in order to care for their infant daughter and receive extended training under her mother’s watchful eye.

[21:55] During the years when she worked for Miss Mary Anne learned to read at a methodist sunday school.
She fell in love got engaged and then her fiance died just before their wedding day.

[22:08] Not long after that loss, she left Miss Mary’s employ, working in similar roles in the households of other white alabamians. For the next decade.
Her mother died, leaving her to raise three younger siblings and half siblings, and then her little brother also died.

[22:27] For most black women in this era, emancipation meant a lifetime of cooking, cleaning and raising someone else’s Children, but at about 21 years old and he made a decision that would eventually change her life.
Without it, she probably wouldn’t have ever moved to florida and she certainly wouldn’t have gone there with the recipe for boston baked beans in her head.
One day I chance to pick up a newspaper and read the advertisement of a northern family for a cook to go to boston.
I went at once to the address given and made agreement to take the place.
The northern family whose service I was to enter had returned to boston before I left and it made arrangements with a friend, Mr Bullock to see me safely started north.

[23:13] She made arrangements for a teenage sisters and then boarded a train to boston.
Writing About 15 June 1879.
I arrived at the old colony station in Boston and had my first glimpse of the country that I had heard so much about at the time, boston’s railroad network was more complicated than just North and South station, The terminals for the boston and Lowell and boston and Fitchburg.
We’re both near today’s North Station with the boston and Maine.
A few blocks further into the Bulfinch Triangle, near Fort Point Channel were the depots for the new york and New England Railway, the old Colony Line and the boston and Albany Railway, And all on its own.
In Park Square, just across Boylston from the public garden was the Boston and Providence railroads terminal.
I’ll include an 1871 map that neatly illustrates where Boston’s passenger terminals were in the show notes this week.
So when Anne says that she arrived at the old Colony station, don’t picture South station, but something more like the parking lot across from the South street diner.

[24:24] At first, she was only in boston long enough to change trains.
Writing from boston, I went to Newton ville, where I was to work.
The gentleman whose service I was to enter. Mr E N. Kemble was waiting at the station for me and drove me to his home on Water Street for a few days until I got somewhat adjusted to my new circumstances.
I had no work to do On June 17. The family took me with them to Auburndale, but in spite of the kindness of mrs Campbell and the coloured nurse.
I grew very homesick for the south, and I would often look in the direction of my old home and cry.
The washing. A kind of work I knew nothing about was given to me, but I could not do it, and it was finally given over to a hired woman.
I had to do the ironing of the fancy clothing for mrs kimball and the Children.

[25:20] About five or six weeks after my arrival, Mrs kimball and the Children went to the White Mountains for the summer, and I had more leisure.
Mr kimball went up to the Mountains every saturday night to stay with his family over sunday, but he and his father in law were home the other nights, and I had to have dinner for them.

[25:39] Annie’s arrangement with the Kimbell’s of Newtonville lasted for a few months.
The deal she made before leaving Alabama was this.
The Campbells would pay for a train fare and lodging as she made her way north to Boston, and then Annie would work for the family and receive a wage of $4 a week Until her initial fare and lodging were paid off.
She was supposed to receive $3.50 a week with 50 cents a week, basically a day’s wages being applied toward her travel expenses.

[26:12] There was a slight problem with the arrangement, and he wasn’t getting paid by agreement.
Mrs Kimball was to give me $3 and a half a week instead of four, until the difference amounted to my fare from the south.
After that I was to have $4.
I had, however, received but little money in the fall after the family came home we had a little difficulty about my wages, and I left and came into boston.
Mrs Kimball had refused to give me a recommendation because she wanted me to stay with her, and thought the lack of recommendation would be an inducement.

[26:52] Pearce’s essay frames this as an important moment of resistance on Annie’s part, despite being a stranger in a strange land without the all important reference letter from a white family Burton defiantly sets out for boston.
This act of resistance was one small but important blow to being recast into the position of slave, a role in which there was no financial or legal protection against the exploitation of one’s labor, with her dignity clothed around her, Burton soon finds gainful employment.
Finding gainful employment probably sounded like a daunting task to Annie.
She had lost her housing when she quit her job, so she stayed briefly at a segregated boardinghouse on Kindle Street, which today is behind Bill Russell’s Slade’s Bar and Grill on Tremont.

[27:42] She would have to pay per night, and the whole reason she left the kimball home in the first place was because she wasn’t getting her wages.
So she was motivated to find a new job fast.
Someone she met in the boarding house offered to take Annie to what she called, an intelligence office, which sounds kind of like an employment agency.
To me any rights, The man at the Desk said that he would give me a card to take to 24 Springfield Street on receipt of 50 cents basically in return for a day’s wages.
He gave her a card with the address written on it of a family looking for a servant.
If she got the job, her new employer would keep the card. If she didn’t get it, she could bring the card back to the employment office and get her 50 cents back.

[28:31] She did not get the job at 24 Springfield Street in the South End, but when she stopped to ask for directions, likely because there’s an east and West Springfield Street, her narrative wasn’t clear on which one she was going to.
She ended up getting hired by another family on the same street.
She went and got her 50 cents back, fetched her steamer trunk and went to work in the south end for about 18 months when her employers moved to Dorchester.
She didn’t go along with them, instead, bouncing between temp jobs for a few months until she met the Reid family of Jamaica Plain writing.
With this family, I remained seven years. They were very kind to me, gave me two or three weeks vacation without loss of pay.
In June 1884, I went with them to their summer home in the isles of shoals, as housekeeper for some guests who were coming from Paris On six July, I received word that my sister Caroline had died in June.

[29:35] The chronology in Annie’s narrative doesn’t quite line up.
If she started with the reeds in early 1881 and worked there for seven years, she would have left in 1888.
But her account says that she left their employment when her sister died in 1884.
She also writes that she got married in 1888, but I don’t see how that fits with either part of the narrative.
Either way, she writes In 1888, I was married at 27 Pemberton Street to Samuel H. Burton by Dr. O. P. Gifford.
After my marriage, Mr Burton got a place in Braintree as a valet to an old gentleman who was slightly demented and he could not be satisfied until I joined him.
So I put our things into storage and went to braintree. I remained there 10 months and then came back to Boston.
I’m not sure whether that’s something she did after working for the reeds or if there’s 10 months or a leave of absence or what exactly, what I did notice upon rereading her narrative is that her last name is never mentioned anywhere until after she married Samuel Burton.

[30:49] Her marriage may have been short or unhappy or may have ended for another reason, but it only gets mentioned in a single paragraph out of chronological order, at the very end of her story.

[31:04] What is mentioned in great detail is her sister’s death, Caroline left behind.
A son named Lawrence, who was about 10 or 11 years old and his brother had died long before and she’d been forced to say goodbye to her little half siblings when she moved north.
Now her older sister was dead and she had to decide what to do with her young nephew.
Mrs Reed offered to support the boy financially as long as he stayed in Georgia.
And she sweetened the pot by offering to employ Annie for as long as she could work and then provide for her future days as long as she should live.
But only if Lawrence stayed in Georgia, saying that ANne couldn’t expect to find a good job as a domestic worker, if she had a little boy with her.
And he wrote, it did not take me long to decide what I should do.
The last time I had seen my sister a little over a year before she died.
She had said when I was leaving, I don’t expect ever to see you again.
But if I die I shall rest peacefully in my grave because I know that you will take care of my child.

[32:16] Annie made arrangements to meet Lawrence in Georgia in october of the same year, where she expected to take custody of her nephew and settle her sister’s estate.
Instead, she found that a white man whom she didn’t know had taken all her sister’s money and assigned guardianship of Lawrence to a stranger.
Yolanda Pearce’s article notes back in the south, Burton once again has to challenge a racist and sexist system that attempts to cheat her and her nephew out of their rightful inheritance.
A self appointed executor of Burton’s sister’s estate. Mr Rubin Bennett refuses to allow Burton access to money in a small bank account that her sister is set aside for the care of her son.
Instead of relinquishing the account and giving into almost inevitable failure of a legal challenge by a black woman.
Burton successfully sues to have her sister’s estate awarded to her along with the guardianship of her nephew.

[33:14] As far as I can tell. After this time, Anne Burton never again worked as a domestic servant for a white family.
Instead, this is when she and Lawrence moved to Jacksonville and opened their restaurant, where they serve boston baked beans to confuse Floridians.
When the pre air conditioning Summers made Jacksonville basically uninhabitable, Anne and Lawrence moved north again.
They stopped in Brooklyn for a while, then moved on to new ports and briefly tried running a boarding house and then finally came back to boston, They spent about 10 weeks on a farm in Wellesley, where Anne Cooked and Lawrence helped with the livestock and had a chance to go to school.
After those 10 weeks though, the farm sold and Annie and Lawrence had to move on with any writing, I came into boston to look about for a restaurant, leaving Lawrence at the farm.
When the home was broken up, the owners came to the revere house in boston barrels of apples, potatoes and other provisions were given to me.
I found a little restaurant near the providence depot for sale.
I made arrangements at once to buy the place for $35 and the next day I brought Lawrence and my things from Wellesley Hills.
I paid $2 a week rent for my little restaurant and did very well.

[34:42] She sold the restaurant in Park square at the end of the season, but over the next few years she followed the sun and demand moving back and forth between florida and the winter and various new England seashore resorts in the summer.
Through her entrepreneurship, she was able to achieve at least one aspect of the american dream.
Lawrence was able to attend Hampton College, which was pretty new at the time, but today Hampton University is one of America’s oldest H. B. C. U. S.
Lawrence would go on to enlist in the navy and fight in the spanish american war.

[35:19] Sometimes just after the turn of the 20th century, Anne Burton enrolled in the Franklin Evening School in Boston.
I tried to turn up some information about this school and maybe somebody who knows more about the history of boston schools can write in and tell us more about it.
The one thing I know about evening schools is that in the 18th century apprentices would attend evening schools to learn literacy and the hours after their work was done for the day.
The one thing I know about the franklin evening school in particular is that, Arthur Crumpler also went there.
If you haven’t caught our 200th episode, Arthur Crumpler escaped from slavery during the civil war, came to Boston and married Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler, who went on to be the first black woman to be a physician in America.
Arthur was profiled in the globe in 1898 as Boston’s oldest pupil.
While he was learning literacy at the Franklin Evening School, Maybe in the late 19th century evening schools staged a comeback as a way for black people who had been enslaved to catch up on the education that had been deliberately denied to them as Children.

[36:27] When she was still in Alabama. Being taught by the Methodists.
Anne Burton got as far as MMA guthrie’s third reader, I couldn’t find much about this book, but I think it indicates that she had gotten about 1/6 grade education, at the franklin evening school, Her teachers helped her advance her studies, and one of her assignments.
There became the kernel of her book.

[36:51] Five years ago. I began to go to the franklin evening school.
Mr guild was the master at one time. You requested all the pupils to write the story of their lives.
And he considered my composition so interesting. He said he thought if I could work it up and enlarge upon it, I could write a book.
He promised to help me.
My teacher was Miss Emerson and she was interested in me.
But the next year MS Emerson gave up teaching and mr Gil died Despite these temporary setbacks. Her book was published in 1909 and here’s the thing about a life like Annie Burton’s.
Her experience was very typical of a black woman of her era.
And the book shined a spotlight on it because she wrote it.
We remember her and we know more about life as a black domestic worker during and after reconstruction than we would without it.
But after the book was published, the trail goes cold. Her life retreats into the shadows.
I don’t know how business went for her in her restaurants. I don’t even know when she died or where she’s buried.

[38:01] To learn more about Annie Burton. Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 269.
I’ll have a link to an online edition of her narrative, memories of childhood slavery days and Yolanda Pearce’s essay about Anne’s narrative.
I’ll include the only known photograph of Annie Burton and an 1871 map of Boston.
So you can see where the railroad terminals were at the time and where her restaurant in Park Square would have been located.
I’ll also link to Alexandra Powell’s article about boston baked beans and some past episodes that had more context to Annie Burton’s story.
Before I let you go, I have a listener feedback to share.
I got a number of notes from listeners commiserating with me after I had to pay a hefty penalty for copyright infringement due to a 40 year old news photo that I used in the show notes a while back.
One of those notes came from J who wrote thanks for sharing the details of your recent legal problem.
I’m sure I was with many other listeners in bewilderment at how hub history could have landed you in one lousy story.
Such a drag that you’d be targeted like that while performing what I see as a purely admirable and beneficial educational and cultural service to the boston community and beyond.

[39:24] If my income stream were what it was a while back, I’d chip in to help defray that.
But I’m unable to at the moment.
I’m hoping said stream changes air long and when it does, I’ll gladly do my part and here’s a sidebar from jake.
Never feel bad if you’re not able to support the show financially if you want to and you’re in a position to do so that’s great.
Go to hub history dot com, click on the support link that’ll show you how.

[39:53] But if you can’t for any reason, that’s also totally fine. I’m just glad you’re listening.
If you want to do something nice for me, just tell a friend how much you like the show, jay’s letter continues the hard won life lesson that I also took away from this lawsuit.
Your account is yet another example of a pretty egregious inequity in our society.
Namely that equal protection under the law to a great extent comes with a giant dollar sign shaped asterisk.
People have even fairly above average means are financially compromised greatly by the dawning costs of legal representation and so often can’t even pursue it regardless of the rightness of their case.
But I’m sure you’ve done plenty of thinking along these lines in these months and don’t need me to expand on it. I’ll just leave it at that.
I commiserate with you from a distance and wish it were better.
I’m grateful that you’re nonetheless pressing on with the pod for us and future listeners signed J.

[40:57] P. S having another go at police brutality in the recent episode. I see I dig those asides.
Thanks jay. You’re right that I have given a lot of thought to how expensive legal counsel is recently dan wrote in with a similarly sympathetic note and some suggestions for protecting myself in the future, saying, sorry to hear about the legal issues. What a jerk.
One thing that was recommended to me when setting up is business, which I’m not sure I should name on the air.
LLC aside is an umbrella insurance policy. So a guy like that can’t get it.
Your personal life makes me sad that someone would be such an hope you recover quickly.

[41:43] Greg’s note was along the same lines. Hi Jake.
I listened to your bonus lawsuit episode on my way to work yesterday morning, and I was so appalled about that copyright troll that I had to donate.
Sorry, it wasn’t much, but we have two kids in college right now.
I’ll try to donate more when I’m able, I feel terrible about you having to dip into your retirement savings.
Thanks for all the terrific, well researched and fascinating episodes.
Best Greg thanks so much for writing in Gregg with two G’s.
Again. Never apologize for not supporting the show with cash.
Listening to the show is great on its own. Writing in is even better because it boosts my morale and sharing the show with a friend is the best support of all and it helps me grow the show, if you can throw some cash my way.
That’s appreciated. Of course, one of our recent sponsors is guy who included this note on Paypal.
I only came across your podcast this year and I’ve really appreciated listening to the interesting and wild stories of boston’s past that you bring to light.

[42:55] Thanks Guy. I do my best to dig up stories that aren’t the same boston history that you’ve heard since grade school.
Glad you appreciate it as much as you do.
I also received a message on patreon from longtime supporter Michele with one, L who doubled her monthly support.

[43:13] OMG Jake. My listening has been a bit sporadic the last couple of months.
So I only now listen to your bonus episode about the copyright issue.
I am so sorry that happened to you.
My spouse is also a creative, I’ll share this hard won lesson with him as a warning to be vigilant.

[43:31] I’ve just upped my support tier to William Monroe trotter. Your work is really valuable to me, Michele with one L.
I appreciate all the support you’ve given me over the years between sharing the show on social media writing in from time to time and of course for being one of our longest standing patreon sponsors. Thank you.
I mean it on an entirely different topic. I got an email from Peter that contained recommendations for both thinner and a future podcast topic.
Hello! Thanks for the great show. I recently ate at boston chops downtown location at 52 Temple place and our waiter gave us some interesting history about the bank vaults downstairs that were preserved in the remodel, supposedly they were used as a makeshift morgue after the coconut grove fire.
And the smaller vault within the larger vault held a copy of the Declaration of Independence.
They’re easily accessible to patrons and there’s a cool mosaic of the original bank’s logo, the Old Colony Trust Bank preserved in the floor at the bottom of the staircase.
It’s definitely worth a visit for a very special occasion as it ain’t cheap.
I was able to try bone marrow for the first time and as gross as it sounds, it was phenomenal.
Just a suggestion for a future episode.

[44:55] I’ve also never tried bone marrow, but I’d be willing to give it a shot.
As I told peter, most of the spaces that were used as temporary morgues after the coconut grove fire tended to be a little closer to the site of the fire.
But I’m not going to rule anything out.
Dinner and a show Why not Dinner in some history and boston chops.
If you’re listening, you owe me big for this free advertisement.

[45:23] Horace did something that few of you listeners ever do. He commented on the website post about a recent episode.
If you go to hub history dot com to check out our show notes for the episode, maybe so you can see my sources or you want to look at the historical maps and photos or something else I included in the post.
Feel free to also leave a comment.
We rarely get feedback that way, but I always read them and I usually respond Anyway.
Horace left a comment about episode 2 66, about Boston’s first ever streetlights.

[45:59] Dark streets may have confounded those about at night, but dark skies made city dwellers more aware of the stars and moon than they’re likely to be today.
In 1719, the people of Boston and surrounding areas were astonished and frightened by the first bright appearance of the Aurora Borealis. In many years, Auroras were rare during the maunder minimum when solar activity was low.
When I looked into this event a few years ago, prior to writing a small article, I found the Cotton Mather, an astronomy enthusiast thomas roby wrote dueling pamphlets on the display, the older mother and younger roby having different opinions on what it pretended.

[46:40] I’ve been thinking about something similar recently. But when I picture the darkness of Boston streets before electric lighting, I try to picture the 1833 Leonid meteor shower.
I’ll probably end up writing an episode about it sometime in the next year.
But people who witnessed it say that the shooting stars fell as thickly as snowflakes in a boston blizzard and lit up the streets like daytime.
That was justice boston was transitioning from oil to gas, street lighting and there’s no indication that the faint light of these lamps did anything to hinder the views of these dramatic skies.

[47:17] Speaking of boston’s first street lamps, JL bell shared a show about them on mastodon and he added an important detail to the story that I didn’t run across in my research, As the latest hub history podcast recounts, Boston installed its first street lamps in 1770 for after overcoming such obstacles as town meeting debates, shipwrecks and the Boston Tea Party.
And just a few months later, the town stopped lighting those lamps.
That was said to be a response to the boston ports bill.
But the sources don’t explain who made the decision or precisely why, Belvin wrote a two part article on his Boston 1775 blog explaining exactly how the city stopped lighting their fancy lamps that June and kept them off until the start of the war.
I was flattered to have inspired a two part article in his august blog and I’ll include a link in the show notes this week.
So you can read as well researched articles with so many episodes focused on the 18th century, the past couple of months revolution to 50 gave us a little shout out on twitter to, rev 2 50 resource of the day, the hub history podcast has had recent episodes on the fire in boston’s jail 17 69, the town’s new streetlights 17 74, And a red coat executed on Boston Common, also 1774.

[48:45] Finally, I got a very unexpected email a few months back about Lydia Maria child.
Her story first aired as episode 1 60 when I got the email, I had just replayed it as part of episode 2 62 for thanksgiving week in 2022, I recently became aware of your podcast and was excited to write and pitch what I thought would be a wonderful episode for you. Given a book that I’ve just published.
Imagine my surprise when I checked your website and found that just last week you discussed the very person I was going to suggest Lydia Maria child.
I regret that we didn’t find each other earlier. I would have loved to contribute to the episode in whatever way would have been helpful.
I found what you said about Child to be insightful and thorough and really appreciate the careful attention you gave her story.
My biography of Child just came out november 15th. It’s called Lydia Maria Child.
A radical american life.
With more details available at lydia Mullan dot com.
If you would consider adding it to your bookshop, I’d be honored.
She is such a great boston story.
Either way, I’m sending thanks for your work to bring her more attention and hope you’ll be in touch If there’s any way I can help in the future.
Best wishes. Lydia Moland.

[50:08] I wish Lydia’s book had existed when I first decided to profile child.
She’s such a fascinating character and with my focus on the poem and song over the river and through the wood, the podcast just barely scratched the surface.
If you’d like to check out the book for yourself, you can get it from lydia mullens website or visit hub history dot com And click on the bookshop link, in my little storefront.
Your purchase will help support the show, the author and local bookstores.

[50:40] I don’t get that many reviews for the show on apple podcasts, so I was excited to see a new one appear a few weeks ago.
My last reviews came in last summer. So after about seven months without any feedback, what did the listeners share on apple podcasts To help potential listeners decide whether to subscribe to the show.
This podcast could be great if the narrator would just speak normally, like he’s having a conversation with friends, I’m not sure what he’s going for, but it is awful.
Thanks anonymous listener. That’s really helpful.
I love getting listener feedback. As long as it’s about something that I have control over.
Let’s talk about what I got wrong in the show or a topic you’d like to see me cover in the future.
But if you want to criticize my speaking voice may be best to keep that to yourself, because that’s the one thing about the show that I have no power to change.

[51:37] You can start the conversation by emailing us at podcast at history dot com.
We’re hub history on twitter facebook and instagram and I tend to be most active on twitter.
If you’re on mastodon now, you can find me as at hub history at better dot boston, or just go to hub history dot com and click on the contact us link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review.
I love a little help in burying that nasty one star review that I just got.
So it’s not the first thing potential listeners see for the next several months.
If you do write a review, send me an email with your address.
I’d love to send you a hub history sticker as a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake:
[52:30] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.