Dorchester (US: DOR-chest-ər) is a 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.
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. When annexed to Boston in 1870, Dorchester was still a primarily rural town and had a population of 12,000. Construction of railroad and commuter 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.
Dorchester has a very diverse population, which includes a large concentration of African Americans and European Americans (particularly those of Irish, German, Italian, and Polish origin, reflecting late 19th and early 20th century immigration). More numerous immigrants and their descendants since the later 20th century have come from the Caribbean, Central and South America, and East and Southeast Asia.
Dorchester also has a significant LGBT population, with active political groups. It has the third largest concentration of same-sex couples in Boston after the neighborhoods of the South End and Jamaica Plain. Most of the people over the age of 25 have completed high school or obtained a GED.
Prior to European colonization, the region around Dorchester was inhabited by the indigenous Massachusett. They lived in settlements established alongside the Neponset River estuary, which was a plentiful source of fish, including trout; they also gathered shellfish from the riverbed and hunted beaver and deer. They established farms in nearby hills. During the initial period of colonization by Puritan settlers, the Massachusett suffered a rapid decline in population due to the introduction of foreign infectious diseases to which they had no acquired immunity, and violence related to settler colonialism.
The Massachusett sachem, Chickatawbut, negotiated land treaties with the Puritan settlers before dying of smallpox in 1633. His brother, Cutshamekin, who succeeded him, deeded further land to the settlers. The remaining Massachusett in the region, including Cutshamekin, accepted some Christianity as a form of survivance. They eventually resettled in the praying town of Natick.
European settlement in the 17th century
In 1623 a syndicate of Dorsetshire fishermen organized an outport of fishing stages and flakes at Dorchester. In 1626 David Thompson settled his family on Thompson Island in what is now Dorchester before Boston's Puritan migration wave began in 1630.
On May 30, 1630, Captain Squib of the ship Mary and John entered Boston Harbor. On June 17, 1630, he landed a boat with eight men on the Dorchester shore, at what was then a narrow peninsula known as Mattapan or Mattaponnock. Today it 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 more than 100 years ago into the city of Boston, residents still annually celebrate the founding on Dorchester Day. This 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 Rev. John White was chief proponent of a Puritan settlement in the Americas. The town developed around the First Parish Church of Dorchester. The building is now operated 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 what would become the United States was held in Dorchester. Today, October 8 is annually 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 the United States. In 1634 Israel Stoughton built one of the earliest grist mills in America on the Neponset River; Richard Callicott founded a trading post nearby. In 1641, Dorcas ye blackmore, an enslaved servant to Israel Stoughton, was the first recorded African American to join a church in New England. 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 the town. Eliot was given land by the town of Dorchester for his mission, where he established a church and school.
The James Blake House, oldest surviving home in the city of Boston, is located at Edward Everett Square. This 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. It lasted a half-century before being abandoned.
In 1765, Irish chocolate maker John Hannon (or alternatively spelled "Hannan" in some sources) imported beans from the West Indies and refined them in Dorchester. He thus introduced chocolate to the North American colonies, and was working with Dr. James Baker, an American physician and investor. They opened America's first chocolate mill and factory in the Lower Mills section of Dorchester on the Neponset River. The Walter Baker Chocolate Factory, part of Walter Baker & Company, operated until 1965.
Before the American Revolution, "The Sons of Liberty met in August 1769 at the Lemuel Robinson Tavern, which stood on the east side of the upper road (Washington St.) near the present Fuller Street. Lemuel Robinson was a representative of the town during the Revolution and was appointed a colonel in the Revolutionary army." Dorchester (in a part of what is now South Boston) was also the site of the Battle of Dorchester Heights in 1776. As a result, the British evacuated Boston, pulling back to a base in New York's Manhattan and Long Island.
Originally part of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, the town of Dorchester removed from Suffolk County to Norfolk County when it was created on March 26, 1793. Portions of Dorchester annexed in the 19th century by Hyde Park, Milton or Quincy remained within Norfolk County. Portions annexed by Boston (eventually including Hyde Park) became part of Suffolk County again.
In Victorian times, Dorchester became a popular country retreat for Boston elite. It developed into a bedroom community, easily accessible to the city by streetcar for commuters. The mother and grandparents of John F. Kennedy lived in the Ashmont Hill neighborhood during the period that his grandfather John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald was mayor of Boston.