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Photo Collection
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Harry Humphrey Baker (11 Apr 1869-10 Apr 1915)
He grew up in the house at 209 Newton St, still standing. He graduated from Harvard University in 1891, got a degree from Harvard Law School, and joined the law firm of Hayes & Williams in Boston. He later became a judge in Boston’s juvenile court system. He died of pneumonia one day before his 46th birthday and is buried in the Walnut Street Cemetery. Both he and his only sibling remained single, living with their widowed mother, and remaining in the Newton Street house for the rest of their lives, just as their mother had done with her parents.
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Harriet (“Hattie”) Maria Humphrey (18 Oct 1835-16 Jan 1909)
She was the only child of Willard Amherst Humphrey and Harriet Curtis who lived at 209 Newton St., a house that is still standing. She graduated from the Oread Institute in 1854; married James Baker, a Boston ship chandler, in her home in 1859; and raised two children there. She raised her sons in the Newton St. house while living with her parents and both sons, who remained single, also lived in the same house their entire lives.
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William Dean Philbrick, 1855
William Dean Philbrick (1834-1902) was the younger son of well-known Brookline abolitionist Samuel Philbrick whose house still stands at 182 Walnut St. The photo is for his graduation from Harvard College. He attended the early high school at the top of Walnut Hill and is mentioned in the diary of classmate Adeline Faxon when he walked to her house on Linden St. and asked her to go skating.
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Cora Lyman (1862 - 1873)
The Lymans lived in a mansion at the end of a long driveway at 105 Heath St. Cora, their daughter, died at age eleven while overseas in The Hague. She had been adored by the Codman children who lived nearby and when the Codmans' new baby sister arrived a year after Cora’s death, they asked that she be named after Cora.
From "Random Recollections, Vol. 2" by Cora Codman
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Alice Amory, circa 1882
Alice Amory dated her tintype album February 18, 1882. This photo, the first in the album, is unsigned and it is likely she. Born 1865, Brookline. Her father was Robert Amory, a well-known physician who later quit medicine to spend ten years as president of the Brookline Gas and Electric Light Company. Her mother was Marianne Appleton Lawrence, daughter of Amos Adams Lawrence, a prominent Brookline resident. The family lived at 7 Colchester St. from approximately 1868 to 1884, the house still stands. Her mother died in 1881; her father remarried in 1884; and the family moved to 279 Beacon St., Boston. In 1892, Alice married Augustus Thorndike.
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Eleanor Hardy, circa 1882
1869 - 1953; married, Oct 2, 1890, Dennis Miller Bunker; married, 1893, Charles Adams Platt; parents: Alpheus Holmes Hardy and Mary Caroline Sumner; lived on Linden Place, circa 1877; lived on Walnut St. by Cypress St., circa 1879. Her father was Alpheus Holmes Hardy, a merchant involved in the India trade via a business he took over from his father, and her mother was Mary Caroline Sumner. In 1889 at a reception, Eleanor met Dennis Miller Bunker, a rising star and ultimately major figure in American painting. They married October 2, 1890 and moved to New York City where he would teach. During a Christmas visit to her family back in Boston that year he got meningitis and died. He painted a portrait of Eleanor of Eleanor that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1893, she married Charles Platt, a close friend of her husband whose wife had also died. Platt was an artist, landscape designer, and architect. Among his works were the gardens at the Larz and Isabel Anderson estate and the Brandegee estate, both in Brookline, and the Freer Gallery of Art building in Washington.
A friend of the Platts, the muralist Henry O. Walker, used Eleanor as the model for the mural "Wisdom of the Law" in the appellate court building in Madison Square in New York (1898-99). In 1968, her son Geoffrey, as the first chairman of the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission, was in the courthouse facing a challenge to the preservation law when he looked around (reported the New York Times) "to find a very familiar face staring at him from the courtroom wall. He said ‘My God, there was mother, and I knew everything would be all right.’" In 2000, the courthouse building was restored by the architectural firm Platt Byard Dovell White led by Geoffrey’s nephew, Eleanor’s grandson, Charles Platt.
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Elizabeth ("Lizzie") Lincoln Fuller, circa 1882
She was born 21-Sep-1865 in Brookline. Her parents were Edward Little Fuller, a wholesaler of boots and shoes in Boston at Colburn, Fuller & Co., and Mary Cushing Doane. She is the older sister of Maybell Doane Fuller who is also pictured in the album of Alice Amory. From approximately 1879 - 1884, the family lived on Carlton St. near the intersection with Colchester St. In 1894, she married Rev. Henry North George Hall.
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Maybell Doane Fuller, circa 1882
She was born 3-May-1868 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were Edward Little Fuller, a wholesaler of boots and shoes in Boston at Colburn, Fuller & Co., and Mary Cushing Doane. She is the younger sister of Elizabeth Fuller who is also pictured in the album of Alice Amory. From approximately 1879 - 1884, the family lived on Carlton St. near the intersection with Colchester St. She died 8-Apr-1893 of scarlet fever, at the age of 24, and was never married.
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Sarah Bigelow Howe, circa 1882
She was born 20-Apr-1869 in Bristol, Rhode Island. In 1877, her father, Rev. Reginald Heber Howe, became rector of the Church of Our Saviour on Monmouth St. Her mother was Susan Adams. The family initially lived at 6 Monmouth Ct. before moving to the church grounds at 23 Monmouth St., circa 1886. In 1896, she married George Stanley Parker. The couple initially lived around the corner from her parents, on Colchester St., before living back at the church with her parents and later moving to other locations in Brookline.
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Alice Putnam Bacon, circa 1882
She was born in Brookline in 1869 to parents Francis Edward Bacon, a cotton broker, and Louisa Crowninshield. The family lived on a large Clyde St. estate that is the current location of The Country Club. The estate appears to have remained in the family for some time while Boston became their official residence along with a summer residence in Mattapoisett.
In 1891, Alice married William Sturgis Hooper Lothrop. Her portrait was painted at the time by well-known artist Frank Weston Benson and it currently hangs in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Her husband was a businessman involved in the sugar trade and he died suddenly of appendicitis in 1905 while in Puerto Rico.
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Elizabeth ("Bessie") Fiske, circa 1882
1869 - 1935. Her parents were Francis Skinner Fiske, a lawyer, and Lucy Ann Farnsworth. The family lived on Monmouth St., approximately opposite Monmouth Court, from 1872-1891. In 1901, she married George Collier Hitchcock and moved to Milton, then to St. Louis, the home town of her husband. The MFA has a portrait of her in its collection.
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Alice Cotting, circa 1882
1868 - 1947. Lived at 56 Hawes St. (formerly 1097 Beacon St.), the house is still standing. Parents were Charles Uriah Cotting and Susan Cordelia Delano. In 1879, the family moved to 249 Commonwealth Ave., Boston. In 1914, she married Edward Lawrence Kent, a banker, and they lived at the same address.
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Ethel Amory, circa 1882
1873 - 1940. Her parents were Arthur Amory, a dry goods merchant, and Elizabeth Wilcocks Ingersoll. The family lived in Brookline on Prescott St. from approximately 1877-1880 and then moved to Marlborough St., Boston. She never married.
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Mary ("Mollie") Blaisdell Gardner, circa 1882
Lived at 119 (formerly #115) Colchester St. which is still standing. Her parents were Harrison Gardner and Laura Perkins. In 1893, she married Philip Murray Reynolds, a manufacturer of knitting machines, and they lived in Boston and Milton.
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Elizabeth ("Lizzie") Lincoln Fuller, circa 1882
She was born 21-Sep-1865 in Brookline. Her parents were Edward Little Fuller, a wholesaler of boots and shoes in Boston at Colburn, Fuller & Co., and Mary Cushing Doane. She is the older sister of Maybell Doane Fuller who is also pictured in the album of Alice Amory. From approximately 1879 - 1884, the family lived on Carlton St. near the intersection with Colchester St. In 1894, she married Rev. Henry North George Hall.
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Page 1
1873 - ; parents: Edward Stanwood and Eliza Maxwell Topliff; lived on High St.; Wellesley College, 1894; married, 1897, Charles Knowles Bolton ( Harvard College, 1890), author of Brookline, The History of a Favored Town.
The photos in this album are gem tintypes, relatively inexpensive postage stamp-sized plates that were very popular in the 19th century. They were taken with a multi-lens camera that made several images simultaneously on a single sheet that could then be cut up and shared. Children (and others) would collect photos of their friends and mount them in albums like this one.
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Grace H. Dana, 1886
1863 - 1929; parents: Henry Fuller Dana and Mary Heath Howe; never married; lived on Warren St. by Clyde St.
Her father died when she was nine years old and is buried in the Walnut St. Cemetery. The family lived with her maternal grandmother on a large estate on Warren St. by Clyde St. Her younger sister, Katherine, and her older sister, Mary, are also featured in our tintype collection.
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Roger Edmund Tileston, 1886
1869 - 1922; married, 1897, Maria Regina Gordon; parents: John Boies Tileston and Mary Wilder Foote; May 1885 to January 1889 lived on Harvey St., corner of Walnut. 1898: lived at 173 Walnut; 1900-1903: lived at 33 Edge Hill Rd. He was a principle in Tileston and Hollingsworth, a paper manufacturer located in Hyde Park, and continued in that industry among several other firms. He graduated from Harvard in 1891 by which time the family had moved to Milton, which also would have been reasonably close to the main paper mill on the Neponset River. His father died in 1898 and his mother moved to 71 Marlborough St. in the Back Bay. The settlement of Roger’s 1915 divorce went to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. By 1916, Mary Wilder Foote Tileston had moved back to Brookline at 43 Appleton St. Roger’s sister, Amelia, also appears in this album. The exact location of the family’s 1885 house is currently unresolved. The city directories list the address as Upland Ave. (then Harvey St.), corner of Walnut St. yet the 1888 Atlas shows no structures at that location. It is our speculation that they lived in one the houses on Walnut owned by Edward Philbrick. John Boies Tileston was in the Harvard class of 1855 with Edward's younger brother, William Dean Philbrick and Roger later lived at 173 Walnut, a Philbrick house.
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Amelia Peabody Tileston, 1886
1872 - 1920; never married; parents: John Boies Tileston and Mary Wilder Foote; May 1885 to January 1889 lived on Harvey St., corner of Walnut.
Born in Dorchester, she later moved to Brookline and attended "Miss Baker’s" school. She studied nursing and worked in her life, apparently tirelessly, to aid people who were suffering. She traveled the world to this end and, in 1916, she returned from Europe to her mother’s house at 45 Allerton St., consumed by wanting to aid the beleaguered Serbian refugees from WWI. She went to Serbia and worked for the Red Cross but died there, of pneumonia. Her work is detailed in the book " Amelia Peabody Tileston and her canteens for the Serbs". Her older brother, Roger, also appears in this album.
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Gertrude Steese, 1886
1875 - 1963; parents: Edward Steese and Ellen Bradley Sturtevant; married, 1896, Norman Hill White; lived at 105 Gardner Rd.; buried Mt. Auburn Cemetery.
Her father was a physician turned wool merchant. In 1896, she married Norman Hill White. The wedding was held in the house of her parents at 105 Gardner Rd. and was considered to be a major event on the social calendar. The couple lived at several nearby locations until the death of Gertrude’s father, in 1902, when they moved in with her mother at the Gardner Road house. They continued to live there unit his imprisonment for larceny in 1927.
Her husband owned a bookbinding firm and a publishing company and served as state representative from Brookline for five years. He was an ally of Louis Brandeis, later the first Jewish justice of the United Supreme Court, in several policy battles and was a vigorous defender of Brandeis when the latter faced opposition to his appointment to the high court. Oddly, just four years after Brandeis’ accession to the court, White’s company published the first American edition of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It is unclear what role White had in its publication; he worked in military intelligence during the First World War and may have been exposed to anti-Bolshevik, anti-Jewish propaganda. He later ran into financial difficulties and served two-and-a-half years in prison for larceny for securing bank loans based on false statements. He died in 1951.
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