or girls is in the district. Among
the landmarks are the Barnard Capen house, built in the fourth decade of
the 17th century and now probably the second oldest house in New
England; and the James Blake house (1648), now the home of the
Dorchester Historical Society, which has a library and a museum.
Opposite the Blake house formerly stood the house in which Edward
Everett was born. Not far away is the old Dorchester burying ground,
which dates from 1634; it has many curious epitaphs, and contains the
graves of Barnard Capen, who died in 1638 (probably the oldest marked
grave in the United States); of William Stoughton (1631-1701), chief
justice of the court which tried the Salem "witches" in 1692,
lieutenant-governor of the colony from 1692, acting governor in
1694-1699 and 1700-1701, and founder of the original Stoughton Hall,
Harvard; and of Richard Mather, pastor of the First Parish church here
from 1636 until his death. In Dorchester Maria Susana Cummins
(1827-1866) wrote _The Lamplighter_ (1854), one of the most popular
novels of its time, and William T. Adams ("Oliver Optic") and Charles
Follen Adams ("Yawcob Strauss") did much of their writing; it was long
the home of Mrs Lucy Stone (Blackwell). Among the manufactures are
cocoa, chocolate, &c. (of the long-established Walter Baker & Co.),
paper, crushing and grinding machinery (Sturtevant Mill Co.), chemicals,
horseshoe nails, valves, organs and pianos, lumber, automobiles and shoe
machinery.

Dorchester was founded by about 140 colonists from Dorsetshire, England,
with whom the movement for planting the colony in Massachusetts Bay was
begun under the leadership of Rev. John White. They organized as a
church while at Plymouth, England, in March 1630, then embarked in the
ship "Mary and John," arrived in Boston Bay two weeks before Governor
Winthrop with the rest of the fleet, and in June selected Savin Hill (E.
of what is now Dorchester Avenue and between Crescent Avenue and
Dorchester Bay) as the site for their settlement. At the time the place
was known as Mattapanock, but they named it Dorchester. Town affairs
were at first managed by the church, but in October 1633 a town
government was organized, and the example was followed by the
neighbouring settlements; this seems to have been the beginning of the
town-meeting form of government in America. Up to this time Dorchester
was the largest town in the colony, but dissatisfaction arose with the
location (Boston