Brighton is one of our westernmost neighborhoods, and it’s often associated with Boston’s large and sometimes unruly student population, but in the mid 19th century, Brighton was home to all the elements of a western movie. There were cattle drives, stockyards, saloons, and stampedes through the streets. Before it was tamed, unruly Brighton was our own wild west.
Boston’s Wild West
- The Brighton Market: Feeding 19th Century Boston, David C Smith & Anne E Bridges.
- 1841 report on agriculture in Massachusetts.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the Brighton market.
- A description of the Brighton Cattle Fair from a Louisville publication called The Dollar Farmer.
- A description of the Brighton Cattle Fair in an 1846 New England Farmer magazine.
- Our header image comes from this 1850 article in Gleason’s Pictorial.
- Turkey drives described by Paul Gilbert for VPR.
- Articles by William Marchione on the Brighton stockyards, the Cattle Fair Hotel, and the annexation debate. In that first article, he gathered several additional period sources that we quoted on the stockyard fires, stampedes, and lawsuits.
- For a broader discussion of Boston’s annexations of surrounding towns, check out our Episode 61.
Featured Historic Site
This week’s featured historic site is an unassuming building on a street corner in Brighton. Today, it is home to a custard shop, a barber, and a tailor. Only a small green historical marker on the corner of the building marks it as the former home of Brighton Agricultural Hall, which historian William Marchione describes as “one of the community’s oldest and most historic buildings.” It now stands at the corner of Washington Street and Chestnut Hill Avenue, but in 1818, the Agricultural Hall was built on top of the hill a few blocks away where Winship Elementary School is today. That hill was called Agricultural Hill, and the Hall was built for the third annual Fair and Cattle Show put on by the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture. Marchione describes how the hall was used during the annual fair:
Weeks before the October fair was due to open, display items would begin arriving at Agricultural Hall. The two-story structure, measuring seventy by thirty-six feet, stood on “beautiful and elevated grounds.” Its first floor was used to display the latest farm implements as well as prize-winning fruits and vegetables, while the upper story accommodated textile and handicraft exhibits. In addition, cattle pens were laid out on either side of the building where prize livestock were displayed and ploughing matches and other competitive activities were held on the nearby slopes of the hill.
The fair always began with a procession from Agricultural Hall to the First Church, where the minister invoked God’s blessings on the occasion.
Awards were then announced by the various committees.
In 1829 prizes and premiums were awarded in the following categories: fat cattle, bulls and bull calves, cows and heifers, sheep and swine, inventions, butter and cheese, cider, grain and vegetables, ploughing, and manufacturing. A 17-pound turnip, a 19-pound radish, and a bough on which pears hung like a cluster of grapes were among the outstanding exhibits of that year.
Later, the building was moved down the hill to Brighton Center, and it was used as the Eastern Market Hotel, used by the many drovers and cattle buyers who frequented the nearby Brighton Stockyards. Today, it’s located at the corner of Chestnut Hill Ave and Washington Street.
Upcoming Event
This week, we’re featuring a book signing by one of our favorite contemporary historians. Joanne B Freeman is a professor of American History at Yale and cohost of the podcast Backstory Radio. As a scholar of Alexander Hamilton, she has attained greater prominence since the musical came out, because she literally wrote the book on dueling that Lin Manuel Miranda used to inform the dueling scenes in his book, while also editing a volume of Hamilton’s papers that Miranda took some of the dialog in the show from. Plus, she has the distinction of having called Hamilton “an arrogant, irritating asshole” on PBS, which warms my Adams loving heart.
On October 4, she’ll be appearing at the Harvard Coop in Harvard Square to promote her latest book, The Field of Blood. How’s how the event page describes this most recent work:
Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress in The Field of Blood. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery.
These fights didn’t happen in a vacuum. Freeman’s dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities―the feel, sense, and sound of it―as well as its nation-shaping import. Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and other luminaries, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating men. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.
The event begins at 7pm on Thursday, October 4. It’s free, and tickets are not required. The Harvard Coop is located at 1256 Mass Ave in Cambridge.