By Peter F. Stevens

(The first article in a two part series)

Annexation to Boston &emdash; the prospect split Dorchester in 1867 into two politically warring camps. A two-year struggle loomed, pitting the annexationists &emdash; "the Friends of Annexation" &emdash; against the "Old Guard", Dorchester residents who treasured the community's independent status. One of the latter mused: "Nor is it difficult to conceive that if there had been a few feet more depth of water along the ten miles of shore which formed her sea boundary, we should not now be discussing the question of annexing Dorchester to Boston, but rather the propriety of admitting the peninsula of Boston to the metropolitan city of Dorchester."

Watching parcels of local acreage parceled out to steadily expanding Boston was nothing new to Dorchester's populace. In 1804, locals had been unable to prevent Boston's appropriation of one of the smaller town's most revered tracts: "That part of Dorchester's territory lying upon her nothern border, which constituted her entire water frontage upon the inner harbor, including Dorchester Heights &emdash; a portion of the town that was especially dear to the inhabitants on account of the historical associations which have ever been connected with the spot."

Some fifty years later, Boston "swallowed up" another piece of Dorchester, Washington Village. The proverbial handwriting was on the wall for residents from Savin Hill to Neponset, and in January 1868, when the union of Roxbury and Boston took shape, the residents of Dorchester knew that annexation of their entire town would soon be on the state's political docket. Not everyone in the town welcomed the prospect, as many volatile meetings from 1867 to 1869 at the Lyceum, where locals argued everything from annexation's possible commercial benefits to the possible loss of Dorchester's unique sense of history and community, attested.

Historian William Dana Orcutt writes, "It was natural that, as soon as the question was agitated, the town should divide itself into two strong parties opposed to each other." From the very start of the debate, however, the pro-annexation force proved far better organized than did the locals opposed to the loss, as they viewed it, of Dorchester's status as the "mother of [the region's] towns."

For both factions, the imminent annexation question, always present, had accelerated in the years immediately following the Civil War. "They had long seen that the city [Boston] was outgrowing its limits," notes Orcutt, "and must soon reach out in some direction or other to meet the ever-increasing demands. These had been partially met by the artificial construction of the Back Bay, and later by the annexation of Roxbury. With the latter event, Dorchester people saw that it was the question of only a few years, at most, when the subject must be proposed to them....the annexation of Roxbury made it almost imperative that a part of Dorchester be surrendered, in order to perfect a system of drainage for the newly acquired suburb."

The Friends of Annexation did not view the scenario as "surrender," but as an opportunity to increase the town's prosperity and importance on the local landscape. They elected a "Committee of Annexation" that included some of Dorchester's most prominent citizens. Affixing their signatures on September 20, 1867, to a pro-annexation petition to the Massachusetts legislature were local luminaries Marshall P. Wilder, Samuel Downer, E.P. Tileston, William Pope, Franklin King, and William E. Coffin. Their view was clear: "The undersigned, citizens of Dorchester...respectfully petition your honorable body to pass an act for annexing to the city of Boston all of said town of Dorchester."

The Boston City Council, likely buoyed by the cadre of Dorchester notables staunchly advocating complete annexation of the town, passed a December 10, 1868, resolution to dispatch "various commissioners" to best devise how "to assume a portion or a whole of the town of Dorchester."

Although not as well-organized, opponents of the move fought back at the Dorchester Town Meetings and in the chambers of the Boston City Council and the state legislature. Spearheaded by the Norfolk County Commissioners and attorney B.W. Harris, the foes of annexation fired their own verbal salvos asserting that the move "would be of no commercial advantage to Boston, and of no benefit to Dorchester."

With both sides acutely aware that, at some point, the issue would be put to the local vote, the Friends of Annexation savvily responded to all the opposition's challenges with a publicity campaign preaching the "virtues" of linking the town to Boston. N.W. Coffin penned a pamphlet entitled "A Few Reasons in Favor of the Annexation of a Part of the Town of Dorchester to the City of Boston," which was soon "freely circulated throughout the town." Pitching his case, Coffin offered more than a "few" reasons for "advantages...to be gained by annexation." "Pocketbook issues" pealed in his missive: "Most of our citizens are now practically identified with every interest of the city [Boston]. The occupations by which they live and accumulate wealth are centered there, and they have as large a stake in whatever concerns her prosperity..."

Coffin urged his neighbors to take a hard look at their tax situation by relating that "the greater part of the tax raised in Dorchester is assessed upon property which has been accumulated [by local businessmen] in the city of Boston." The key point about Dorchester's taxes, Coffin argued, was that "it would be difficult to estimate the amount of property upon which residents of Dorchester are taxed in [Boston]; but it cannot fall much short, if it does not exceed, the amount in the town." In short, the annexationists argued, the people of Dorchester were paying Boston taxes without reaping the full benefit of money allocated to schools and other civic concerns. "[Annexation] will benefit those who pay large taxes, in their more consistent assessment and equal equalization."

The annexationists extended their arguments to crucial transportation issues that included "the extensions of railroad tracks," storage areas for "heavy freights," and improved roads.

If Dorchester were to remain a town "disconnected from Boston," townspeople would be denied the benefits of being "embraced in the comprehensive plans of the city," the Friends of Annexation contended. Those plans would provide the town with "a larger and more efficient police, which we very much need....a better arrangement of highways....the valuable educational institutions of the city....an active stimulant to labor of all kinds, and...the establishment of mills, foundries, and industries of various sorts."

A real estate boom, Coffin speculated, would accompany annexation: "We have an abundance of cheap land, which will be sought after by householders of moderate means."

Notwithstanding the compelling financial arguments offered by Dorchester's Friends of Annexation, the sizable opposition countered that the town's very history and traditions would be engulfed by those of Boston. They anguished, as even ardent annexationist Coffin writes, over what would happen to "the sacred places where the fathers lie buried....of the relics and memorials illustrating the rise and progress of the town, which their descendants, with so much patient industry, have gathered together."

Coffin and company knew that they were battling town traditions stretching back to the arrival of the Mary and John's "founding families." To mollify the "old guard," the annexationists tried to temper their argument that "it is the future only that we possess; the past is lost to us." Coffin writes, "It may seem hard to the descendants of the first settlers, large numbers of whom still continue their residence amongst us, to 'be obliged' to surrender the name of Dorchester, about which so many treasured recollections cluster; to merge the recorded history of the generations that have lived and died upon her soil, in that of a neighboring people, distinct and separate from her....But the territory would always be known as the precinct of Dorchester, and continue to be remembered as the seat of one of the earliest and most distinguished settlements of our Puritan ancestors."

While many residents signed on wholeheartedly to such arguments, the many opponents of annexation refused to give up their fight. They would carry it from the Lyceum and the Town Meeting to the Massachusetts legislature. As the spring of 1869 approached, both sides braced for a climactic showdown, one that would decide the future of Dorchester.

(Journalist Peter F. Stevens is the author of The Rogue's March: John Riley and the St. Patrick's Battalion, 1846-1848, Brassey's, and Notorious and Notable New Englanders, Down East Books.)