Where to Go From Here: Additional Trails, Tours, and Texts…

Other Trails and Tours of Interest

a) Ben Franklin’s Boston. Contact Mrs. Wm. Meikel, Arlington, MA. Award-winning actor Bill Meikel presents Benjamin Franklin in a walking tour that ends with an elegant dinner at Maison Robert.

b) Black Heritage Trail. The Museum of African American History is at 46 Joy Street (617) 742-5415. Information is available here, and elsewhere, on a walking tour that explores African American life in 19th-century Boston. See Robert C. Hayden, African-Americans in Boston: More than 350 Years (Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1991).

c) Boston Women's Heritage Trail. Information is available at the Boston Common Visitor Center, the National Park Service Visitor Center at 15 State Street and elsewhere. This tour takes you through 5 neighborhoods illustrating four centuries of Boston's women's history. See Boston Women's Heritage Trail: Four Centuries of Boston Women. A Guide to Five Walks (Boston: The Curious Traveler Press, for the Boston Women's Heritage Trail, 1999). Call (617) 536-4100 for further information.

d) Boston By Foot. This tour offers a sampling of the heart of the Freedom Trail, Victorian Back Bay, The Waterfront, Beacon Hill and other areas of the center city. For further information call (617) 367-2345, at 77 Washington Street.

e) Boston By Sea: The Maritime Trail. This tour offers a self-guided walking tour of Boston's historic waterfront, from Long Wharf to the Charlestown Navy Yard. Call for maps and information (617) 536-4100, also at 175 Berkeley Street, and see www.bostonbysea.org.

f) Boston Parks and Recreation. Many of the parks and recreational areas in the Greater Boston area were laid out by some of America's renowned landscape architects like Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903). Although Olmsted did not design Boston's first three parks - Boston Common, the Public Gardens and Commonwealth Avenue Mall - he did work with these and other areas to design what has come to be called Boston's "Emerald Necklace." See A Guide to the Parks of Boston's Emerald Necklace (Boston: City of Boston, n.d.).

g) The Charles River. For many people Boston and Cambridge are envisioned synonymously with the Charles River. Named for Charles I, "no friend of Puritans," King of England, the river has become a part of America's lore of independence. The country's first college - Harvard - was founded near the river; Paul Revere rowed across the Charles before he took to horse; General Washington commanded the new American army from a Cambridge mansion (now called the Longfellow House) with a fine view of the Charles; Old Ironsides was built at the river's mouth and is moored there now; the first telephone conversation took place over the Charles; and some of the earliest work on modern computers was done at M. I. T. on the former tidal flats of the river. See Max Hall, The Charles. The People's River (Boston: David Godine, 1986).

h) The Freedom Trail. Boston is commonly referred to as "the cradle of Liberty... the birthplace of American Independence..." and rightly so. The Freedom Trail is a red line marked on the sidewalk that takes you through the course of many of the places and events that shaped our sense of freedom. It begins at Boston Common and ends at Bunker Hill in Charlestown. See Charles Bahne, The Complete Guide to Boston's Freedom Trail (Cambridge: Newtone Publishing, 1990). Call (617) 242-5642 for further information, or see www.thefreedomtrail.org.

i) Literary Trail of Greater Boston. There are times when it seems that almost every writer in America has either lived or spent significant time here. Boston and Cambridge not only nurtured the American Revolution but also American literature. The following guides take you on a fascinating journey into the history of the American imagination: Noelle Blackmer Beatty, Literary Byways of Boston & Cambridge (Washington, D. C.: Starrhill Press, 1991), and Susan Wilson, Literary Trail of Greater Boston. A Tour of Sites in Boston, Cambridge, and Concord (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000). For further information, call (617) 574-5950 or see www.lit-trail.org.

j) Mount Auburn Cemetery. Located at 580 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge/Watertown, this is the most famous of the "rural cemeteries" replacing the old village burying grounds. Established in 1831 by Dr. Jacob Bigelow, whose intent was to create the first garden cemetery in the United States, this became the archetype for suburban garden cemeteries throughout the U. S. Interred in the cemetery are such renowned figures as Charles Bulfinch, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Winslow Homer, Dorthea Dix, Margaret Fuller, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and Mary Baker Eddy. A Guide to the Cemetery is available.

k) Shawmut Peninsula Walk. This walk traces Boston's original shoreline., beginning at the intersection of Charles Street and Boylston Streets, close to the narrow Boston Neck that connected the peninsula to the mainland and old Roxbury, now the location of the South End. See Shawmut Peninsula Walk, by Walk Boston, 156 Milk Street, Boston. For further information, call (617) 451-1570.

l) Walking Tour of Boston's Church History. A series of booklets exist by Donna La Rue on period churches throughout the city of Boston. Volumes include the following: I.: The Colonial Churches of the Shawmut Peninsula; II.: The Federalist Churches of the South End; III.: The Victorian Churches of the Back Bay; IV.: The Contemporary Churches of Boston; V.: Neighboring Churches: Colonial to Contemporary, and VI.: Boston’s Early Burying Grounds. For further information, contact the author at 7 Sherborn Court, Somerville (781) 306-0724.

Themes, People, And Suggestions For Extra Reading

a) Churches and education in Boston: The State Board of Education established in 1837 with Horace Mann, a liberal educator who championed free public schools at its head

b) William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), born in Newburyport, turned in a Newburyport slave trader in 1829, and shortly thereafter, in 1831, founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society in Boston. Garrison published The Liberator. His associate, Wendell Phillips, supported not only the Abolitionist cause but also the rights of Indians, women, and laborers.

c) Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), born on Nantucket, helped Garrison found the NEASS. She later convened the first conference on women's rights in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.

d) Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880), born in Medford, was an abolitionist and author. She wrote for children and, from 1826-1834, she edited the nation's first children's magazine, Juvenile Miscellany. Her ballad, "Over the River and Through the Woods," is still sung today.

e) Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876) began teaching blind students in his father's house in Boston and eventually founded the Perkins School for the Blind with the generous assistance of Thomas Handasyd Perkins of China Trade fame. He spoke for abolition and prison reform, and in 1843 married Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) of New York, later the author of "Battle Hymn of the Republic." She worked not only for women's rights but was also an early world peace advocate, and one of the founders of Mother’s Day, originally intended as a peace commemorative for mothers who had lost sons and husbands in the Civil War.

f) Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) of Maine also worked in Boston. She championed the rights of the mentally ill. Her work led to legislation establishing state mental hospitals and ending the practice of incarcerating the mentally ill in prisons.

g) Dwight L. Moody, evangelist, social reformer and institution builder was born in Northfield, Massachusetts, but began his work in Boston before carrying it to Chicago and the world. Moody was founder or instrumental in the founding and further establishment of Northfield-Mount Hermon Preparatory School, Howard University, the Moody Bible Institute, and the YMCA, to name but a few of the more prominent institutions associated with his name. A plaque commemorating his presence in Boston and his conversion to Christianity in the small shoe shop where he worked is in downtown Boston near the plaque for James Franklin’s press on Court (née Queen) Street, near Tremont.