Temperance Hall was an assembly hall in Dedham, Massachusetts associated with the temperance movement. It previously served as the Norfolk County Courthouse.
Temperance Hall was an assembly hall in Dedham, Massachusetts associated with the temperance movement. It previously served as the Norfolk County Courthouse.
After the creation of Norfolk County in 1793, a new courthouse was ordered to be constructed. [1] It was completed in 1795. [2] [3] It was found to be too small, however, and the ceilings were so low as to stifle people in the courtrooms. [4]
After a new Norfolk County Courthouse was constructed in 1827, the old building was sold at public auction to Harris Monroe and Erastus Worthington. [5] [3] [6] The pair speculated that the Town may want to use it as a town hall, and so they dragged it south down Court Street to a new lot. [5] The Town decided to build an entirely new structure, however, on Bullard Street. [5]
Worthington and Monroe then rented out the first floor, which had been used as county offices, as a retail space and apartment. [3] [7] It was used for a long time after that as a millinery shop. [3] [7] [8] [lower-alpha 1] The second floor, which had the old courtroom, was converted into an assembly hall. [3] [7] In 1845, it was sold again to the Temperance Hall Association. [3] [7]
The Temperance Hall Association, which was part of the temperance movement that opposed alcohol, extended the second floor by building an addition propped up by stilts that extended into the back yard. [9] The hall was rented out to a great number of organizations. [9] Among the groups using the hall were ventriloquists, magicians, a painted panorama entitled "The Burning of Moscow," a glassblowing exhibition, a demonstration of a model volcano called "The Eruption of Vesuvius," plays, concerts, including one by the Mendelssohn String Quartet, lectures, fundraisers, debates, bell ringers, and marching sessions by a para-military drill club. [9] Among the speakers who took the podium there were Theodore Parker, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Frederick Douglass, Horace Mann, Father Matthew, and Abraham Lincoln. [9]
By 1846, the Catholic community in Dedham was well established enough that the town became part of the mission of St. Joseph's Church in Roxbury. [10] [11] [12] [13] The flood of Irish immigrants escaping the Great Famine necessitated celebrating Mass in Temperance Hall, often by Father Patrick O'Beirne. [12] [14] [15] [16] [10] [11] [17] [18] [19] [20] At the outset of the American Civil War, a meeting in the hall was held to recruit men to fight. [21]
It was later owned by George Alden [9] who also ran a grocery store on the first floor. [8] [lower-alpha 2] The building burned down on April 28, 1891. [3]
On September 20, 1848, then-Congressman Abe Lincoln arrived by train at Dedham station. [22] He was met by a brass band and they accompanied him down the street to the Haven House where he had lunch. [22] Lincoln then walked to Temperance Hall where he gave a speech promoting Zachary Taylor's bid for the White House. [22]
Lincoln's hour long speech was praised by Whig newspapers but criticized by Democratic ones. [22] The Roxbury Gazette, for example, called it "a melancholy display" while journalist George Moore said Lincoln was "all the time gaining on his audience. He soon had us under his spell." [22] The crowd asked him to stay longer, but Lincoln left when he heard the nearby train whistle as he had other engagements that evening. [22]
Following the Civil War, the local chapter of the Fenian Brotherhood, which had offices in the nearby Norfolk House, hosted a meeting in which a Fenian raid into Canada was organized. [9] John R. Bullard, a recent Harvard Law School graduate, was elected moderator of the meeting and, having been swept up in his own sudden importance and fever of the meeting, ended his animated speech by asking "Who would be the first man to come forward and pledge himself to go to Canada and help free Ireland?" [21] The first of the roughly dozen men to sign the "enlistment papers" were Patrick Donohoe and Thomas Golden. [21] Thomas Brennan said he could not participate, but donated $50 to the cause. [21] The meeting ended with the group singing "The Wearing of the Green." [21]
The raid was a failure. [21] Some of the men got as far as St. Albans, Vermont, but none made it to Canada. [21] A few were arrested and some had to send home for money. [21] Around the same time, Patrick Ford, the treasurer of the Brotherhood, absconded to South America with the organization's money. [21]
Norfolk County is located in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. At the 2020 census, the population was 725,981. Its county seat is Dedham. It is the fourth most populous county in the United States whose county seat is neither a city nor a borough, and it is the second most populous county that has a county seat at a town. The county was named after the English county of the same name. Two towns, Cohasset and Brookline, are exclaves. Norfolk County is included in the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area. Norfolk County is the 24th highest-income county in the United States with a median household income of $107,361. It is the wealthiest county in Massachusetts.
The history of Dedham, Massachusetts, from 1800 to 1899 saw growth and change come to the town. In fact, the town changed as much during the first few decades of the 19th century as it did in all of its previous history.
The Norfolk County Courthouse, also known as the William D. Delahunt Courthouse, is a National Historic Landmark at 650 High Street in Dedham, Massachusetts. It currently houses the Norfolk County Superior Court. It is significant as a well-preserved Greek Revival courthouse of the 1820s, and as the site a century later of the famous Sacco-Vanzetti trial. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It replaced an earlier courthouse, built in 1795.
St. Mary of the Assumption Church is a parish of the Roman Catholic Church in Dedham, Massachusetts, in the Archdiocese of Boston.
The history of St. Mary's Church in Dedham, Massachusetts begins with the first mass said in Dedham, Massachusetts in 1843 and runs to the present day.
The Norfolk House also known as the Norfolk Hotel, was a tavern in Dedham, Massachusetts originally built in 1801 and located at 19 Court Street. It hosted John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and the Marquis de Lafayette.
Isaac Bullard represented Dedham, Massachusetts in the Great and General Court. He was also town clerk for a total of three years, having first been elected in 1784. He was also elected five times as selectman, beginning in 1773. Bullard was the first treasurer of Norfolk County, serving from 1793 to 1808.
Brookdale Cemetery is an historic cemetery in Dedham, Massachusetts, United States. More than 28,000 people are buried there. Mother Brook runs behind it.
Patrick O'Beirne was an Irish-born priest who ministered in the Archdiocese of Boston.
The history of Dedham, Massachusetts from 1700 to 1799 saw the town become one of the largest and most influential country towns in Massachusetts. As the population grew and residents moved to outlying areas of the town, battles for political power took place. Similar battles were taking place within the churches, as liberal and conservative factions bristled at paying for ministers with whom they had differences of theological opinion. New parishes and preciencts were formed, and eventually several new towns broke away.
William Montague was an Anglican cleric at Old North Church in Boston and St. Paul's in Dedham, Massachusetts.
The Norfolk County Jail was a wooden jail located on Highland Street in Dedham, Massachusetts. Following the creation of Norfolk County in 1792, Timothy Gay deeded land to the county for the creation of the jail in October 1794. Construction began that year but it was not complete until 1795. The donated land, next to Gay's tavern on Highland Street, was on the corner of Court Street next to the present day St. Paul's Church.
St. Paul's Church is an Episcopal Church in Dedham, Massachusetts
The Dedham Bank was a bank in Dedham, Massachusetts. It was located on the corner of High and Pearl Streets.
The Phoenix Hotel was one of the most popular social spots in Dedham during the 19th century. It was located on the northwest corner of the High Street-Washington Street intersection in modern-day Dedham Square. Among the distinguished guests of this hotel were Andrew Jackson and James Monroe.
St. Mary's School and Asylum was a Catholic girls' school and orphanage in Dedham, Massachusetts.
This is a timeline of the history of the town of Dedham, Massachusetts.
Memorial Hall served as both the town hall of Dedham, Massachusetts from 1868 until 1962 and as the Town's monument to the soldiers from the town who died in the Civil War.
The town of Dedham, Massachusetts, participated in the American Civil War primarily through the 630 men who served in the United States Armed Forces during the war. A total of 46 men would die in the war, including in battle, from disease, from wounds sustained in battle, and in prisoner of war camps. The Town of Dedham supported the soldiers and their families both through appropriations raised by taxes, and through donations of supplies sent to the front lines.
The town of Dedham, Massachusetts, participated in the American Revolutionary War and the protests and actions that led up to it in a number of ways. The town protested the Stamp Act and then celebrated its repeal by erecting the Pillar of Liberty. Townsmen joined in the boycott of British goods following the Townshend Acts, and they supported the Boston Tea Party. Dedham's Woodward Tavern was the site where the Suffolk Resolves gathering was first convened.
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