By Peter F. Stevens

On Dorchester's historical stage, there's always been a "show," sometimes dramatic, sometimes tragic, and sometimes just plain strange. What follows is a random sampling of people and incidents from a city whose past takes a backseat to no other community in these parts, not even Boston.

•Student Unrest - In 1657, William Brimstead, of Dorchester, was in his third - and what he thought was his final - year of study at Harvard College. Then, the school's overseers decided that a fourth year would be required for students to get their hands on the proverbial sheepskin.

Brimstead and several of his classmates rebelled to no avail.Rather than give in to the new curriculum, Brimstead walked off the Cambridge campus and headed home to Dorchester.

Even without his divinity degree from Harvard, he went on to make a mark in local religious circles as a "frontier preacher" in Marlboro, where he once had to cut his sermon short to dash with his parishioners for their lives to the nearby fort when Indians swooped down on the village.

His Dorchester neighbors would remember him as a spiritual man, but one with more than a few eccentricities, one of which was his refusal to baptize any child born on a Sunday.

•Experimental Medicine - In 1721, smallpox struck Boston and Dorchester, and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston introduced an inoculation to try and stem the disease, which had quickly killed 13 people and was spreading. No other colony had tried the procedure, and, locally, most physicians and clergymen railed against it as an evil practice.

Surprisingly, the quintessential Puritan Cotton Mather backed the inoculations, and, in so doing, may well have helped save lives in Dorchester, Boston, and other local towns. Two hundred and eighty-six people received the inoculations, with six deaths from the disease among the test patients.

•"For Whom the Bell Tolls" - This one's not as ominous as it sounds. In Dorchester in 1734, the bell tolled for everyone - every night at nine o'clock. When the "town bell" pealed at that hour, residents were supposed to return home and turn out their lights. Of course, night owls stayed up in their own homes, "but when the bell was heard, the people quietly and obediently turned their steps homeward, and the streets were practically deserted."

•Turnpike Tolls -Now there's a term that everyone in these parts is all too familiar with -especially when the words "a hike in the toll" rise from Beacon Hill. These words prove the adage that "the more things change, the more they stay the same," for in Dorchester at the turn of the 1800s, turnpike tolls were the talk of the town.

Shortly after the old South Bridge was built between Dorchester Neck and Boston, several entrepreneurs realized that a turnpike between Lower Mills and the eastern end of the bridge would shorten the distance. Of course, people would have to pay a toll to ride their horses or drive their carriages on the "pike." With backing from several "gentlemen of means," the turnpike was built, but the construction costs soared way over budget. Sound familiar?

Predictably, the turnpike's operators raised the toll, and furious locals chose to take other routes - longer routes - rather than cover the turnpike owners' costs. The consortium's stock plummeted and was followed by a sell-off.

Several shareholders hung on to their stock, biding their time. In 1854, the patient investors made a proverbial killing when private subscriptions made the turnpike free and the stock soared.

A track for horse-drawn cars was eventually laid along the turnpike, and, in time, the route became Dorchester Avenue of the later 1800s.

•"The Cradle Will Rock" - It arrived aboard the "Mary and John" and long after everyone in that venerable contingent had passed away, it remained. "It" was the "Minot Cradle." In the mid-1800s, Mrs. Bernard Whitman wrote about the cradle in an article on early Dorchester: "It was only an oaken cradle….from that day [1630] to this, the babies of the Minot family have been rocked to sleep in the old cradle…. Those worn knobs, the solid rockers, the paneled sides, and the ancient hood rouse thrilling memories of the infancy of our country, of the men who came and settled in the wilds of New England… that we should reap the harvest where they sowed the seed."

•"Words To Live By"- When the Reverend Nathaniel Hall, Jr., spoke from the pulpit of the First Parish Church on Sundays from 1835 to 1875, his parishioners listened - really listened. His sermons were "remarkable for the wonderful hold" they had upon his flock.

In 1891, some sixteen years after Reverend Hall died, a Dorchester resident wrote that the cleric's oratory still resonated with locals: "Many of those living today who listened to his sermons can testify to the influence he had on all with whom he came into contact."