Kitchen Cabinet Refinishing
Dorchester MA

Dorchester, Boston
Neighborhood of Boston
Neponset River at Lower Mills (2009). Dorchester on the left, Milton on the right (south) side of the river.
Seal
Nickname(s):  Dot
Motto(s):  Pietate, Literis, Industria (Latin) “Piety, Learning, Industry”
Coordinates: 42°19′N 71°3′W / 42.317°N 71.050°W / 42.317; -71.050Coordinates: 42°19′N 71°3′W / 42.317°N 71.050°W / 42.317; -71.050
Country	United States
State	Massachusetts
County	Suffolk
Neighborhood of	Boston
Settled	May 1630
Incorporated	June 1, 1630
Annexed by Boston	January 4, 1870
Population  (2010)
• Total	91,982 to 134,000
Time zone	UTC-5 (Eastern)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-4 (Eastern)
ZIP Codes	02121, 02122, 02124, 02125
Area code(s)	617 and 857

Dorchester (colloquially referred to as Dot) is a Boston neighborhood comprising more than 6 square miles (16 km²) in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Originally, Dorchester was a separate town, founded by Puritans who emigrated in 1630 from Dorchester, Dorset, England, to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This dissolved municipality, Boston’s largest neighborhood by far, is often divided by city planners in order to create two planning areas roughly equivalent in size and population to other Boston neighborhoods.

The neighborhood is named after the town of Dorchester in the English county of Dorset, from which Puritans emigrated on the ship Mary and John, among others.

Founded in 1630, just a few months before the founding of the city of Boston, Dorchester now covers a geographic area approximately equivalent to nearby Cambridge. It was still a primarily rural town and had a population of 12,000 when it was annexed to Boston in 1870. Railroad and streetcar lines brought rapid growth, increasing the population to 150,000 by 1920. In the 2010 United States Census, the neighborhood’s population was 92,115.

The Dorchester neighborhood has a very diverse population, which includes a large concentration of African Americans, European Americans (particularly those of Irish, German, and Polish origin), Caribbean Americans, Latinos, and East and Southeast Asian Americans. Dorchester also has a significant LGBT population, with active political groups and the largest concentration of same-sex couples in Boston after the South End and Jamaica Plain. Most of the people over the age of 25 have completed high school or obtained a GED.

History

Indigenous peoples

Prior to European colonization, the region around Dorchester was originally inhabited by the indigenous Massachusett. They lived in settlements established alongside the Neponset River estuary, which proved to be a plentiful source of fish for the Massachusett; they also gathered shellfish from the riverbed, hunted beavers, deers and trouts and established farms in nearby hills. During the initial period of colonization of the region by Puritan settlers, the Massachusett experienced a rapid decline in population due to the introduction of foreign diseases to which they had no immunity. The Massachusett sachem, Chickatawbut, negotiated land treaties with the Puritan settlers before dying of smallpox in 1633, and his brother, Cutshamekin deeded further land to the settlers. The remaining Massachusett in the region, including Cutshamekin, became Praying Indians and settled in the town of Natick, likely as a means of survival.

European settlement in the 17th century

In 1626 David Thompson settled his family on Thompson Island in what is now Dorchester before Boston’s Puritan migration wave began in 1630. May 30, 1630, Captain Squib of the ship Mary and John entered Boston Harbor and on June 17, 1630, landed a boat with eight men on the Dorchester shore, at what was then a narrow peninsula known as Mattapan or Mattaponnock, and today is known as Columbia Point (more popularly since 1984 as Harbor Point). Those aboard the ship who founded the town included William Phelps, Roger Ludlowe, John Mason, John Maverick, Nicholas Upsall, Capt. Roger Fyler, William Gaylord, Henry Wolcott and other men who would become prominent in the founding of a new nation. The original settlement founded in 1630 was at what is now the intersection of Columbia Road and Massachusetts Avenue. (Even though Dorchester was annexed over 100 years ago into the city of Boston, this founding is still celebrated every year on Dorchester Day, which includes festivities and a parade down Dorchester Avenue).

Most of the early Dorchester settlers came from the English West Country, and some from Dorchester, Dorset, where the Rev. John White was chief proponent of a Puritan settlement in the Americas. The town that was founded was centered on the First Parish Church of Dorchester, which still exists as the Unitarian-Universalist church on Meeting House Hill and is the oldest religious organization in present-day Boston.

On October 8, 1633, the first Town Meeting in America was held in Dorchester. Today, each October 8 is celebrated as Town Meeting Day in Massachusetts. Dorchester is the birthplace of the first public elementary school in America, the Mather School, established in 1639. The school still stands as the oldest elementary school in America. In 1634 Israel Stoughton built one of the earliest grist mills in America on the Neponset River, and Richard Callicott founded a trading post nearby. In 1641, Dorcas ye blackmore, a servant to Israel Stoughton, was the first recorded African American to join a church in New England, and she served as an evangelist to Stoughton’s Native American servants, and the First Parish Church of Dorchester attempted to help Dorcas gain her freedom.

In 1649, Puritan missionaries, including John Eliot, began a campaign to convert the Indigenous people in Dorchester to Christianity with the help of Cockenoe and John Sassamon, two Indian servants in Dorchester. Eliot was given land by the town of Dorchester for his mission, where he established a church and school.

The oldest surviving home in the city of Boston, the James Blake House, is located at Edward Everett Square, which is the historic intersection of Columbia Road, Boston Street, and Massachusetts Avenue, a few blocks from the Dorchester Historical Society. The Blake House was constructed in 1661, as was confirmed by dendrochronology in 2007.

In 1695, a party was dispatched to found the town of Dorchester, South Carolina, which lasted barely a half-century before being abandoned.