Roxbury, Massachusetts

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Roxbury is a neighborhood within Boston, Massachusetts. It was one of the first towns founded in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 and became a city in 1848. The City of Roxbury was annexed to Boston in 1868. The original town of Roxbury once included the current Boston neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury, Mission Hill, the South End and much of Back Bay. Roxbury now generally ends at Columbus Avenue to the north and Melnea Cass Boulevard to the east.

Contents 1 History 2 Notable residents 3 Points of interest 4 See also 5 External links

[edit] History

The early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established a series of seven villages in 1630. Originally called "Rocksbury" because of its hilly geography and the many large outcroppings of Roxbury puddingstone, the town was located about three miles south of Boston. At the time the latter was a peninsula, connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, "Roxbury Neck". This led to Roxbury becoming an important town as all land traffic to Boston had to pass through it. The town was home to a number of early leaders of the colony, including colonial governors Thomas Dudley, William Shirley, and Increase Sumner. The Shirley-Eustis House, located in Roxbury remains as one of only four remaining Royal Colonial Governor's mansions in the United States.

The settlers of Roxbury originally comprised the congregation of the First Church Roxbury, established in 1630. The congregation had no time to raise a meeting house the first winter and so met with the neighboring congregation in Dorchester, Mass. One of the early leaders of this church was Amos Adams. The first meeting house was built in 1632, and the building pictured here is the fifth meeting house, the oldest such wood-frame building in Boston. The Roxbury congregation, still in existence as a member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association, lays claim to several things of note in American history:

• Establishment of the first church school in the British colonies.
• The founding (along with five other local congregations, i.e. Boston, Cambridge, Watertown, Charlestown and Dorchester) of Harvard College.
• The first book published in the British Colonies (1640). Editors of the Bay Psalm Book most cited are John Eliot and Thomas Weld, ministerial colleagues at First Church Roxbury, and Richard Mather, minister in Dorchester (and perhaps 27 other ministers not often mentioned).
• The first Bible published in the British Colonies (1663). It was a translation into the Massachusett language by the congregation's minister and teaching elder, John Eliot (known as "The Apostle to the Indians").
• First Church Roxbury was the starting point for William Dawes' "Midnight Ride", April 18, 1775 (in a different direction than Paul Revere) to warn Lexington and Concord of the British raids.

As Roxbury developed in the 19th century, the northern part became an industrial town with a large community of English, Irish, and German immigrants and their descendants, while the majority of the town remained agricultural and saw the development of some of the first streetcar suburbs in the United States. This led to the incorporation of the old Roxbury village as one of Massachusetts's first cities, and the rest of the town was established as the town of West Roxbury.

In the early 20th century, Roxbury became more diverse with the establishment of a Jewish community in the Grove Hall area along Blue Hill Avenue. Following a massive migration from the South to northern cities in the 1940s and 1950s, Roxbury became the center of the African-American community in Boston. Social issues and the resulting urban renewal activities of the 1960s and 1970s contributed to a decline in the neighborhood. In particular, a riot in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. resulted in stores on Blue Hill Avenue being looted and eventually burned down, leaving a desloate and abandoned landscape. Rampant arson in the 1970s along the Dudley Street corridor also added to the neighborhoods decline, leaving a landscape of vacant, trash filled lots and burned out buildings. The arrival of the crack epidemic in the 1980s helped make Roxbury one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Boston. The violent crime would not be significantly reduced until the late 1990s. In early April of 1987, the original orange line MBTA route along Washington Street was closed and relocated to the Southwest Corridor (where the Southwest Expwy. was supposed to be built a couple decades before). More recently, grassroots efforts by residents have been the force behind revitalizing historic areas and creating Roxbury Heritage State Park. The Boston Transportation Planning Review stimulated relocation of the Orange Line, and development of the Southwest Corridor Park spurred major investment, including Roxbury Community College at Roxbury Crossing and Ruggles Center at Columbus Avenue and Ruggles Street. Commercial development now promises reinvestment in the form of shopping and related consumer services. The Fort Hill and Mission Hill sections experienced significant gentrification when college students (many from Northeastern University and Wentworth Institute of Technology), artists, and young professionals moved into the area in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In the present day, there is much commercial and residential redevlopment, but violent crime (especially gang violence) and drug abuse remain consistent problems in sections of Roxbury.

[edit] Notable residents

Among Roxbury's most notable inhabitants was famed clockmaker Simon Willard (1753-1848), whose prolific output included the invention of his patented banjo timepiece, or banjo-shaped wall clock. He is also honored for the tall-case clocks he made in the "Roxbury style," which he produced until about 1815.

Other notable residents include:

• Joseph Alexander Ames, portraitist and artist
• Bobby Brown, musician and TV performer
• Cid Corman, poet
• Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, orator, and author
• Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam
• Charles Dana Gibson, graphic artist (of Gibson Girl fame)
• Edward Everett Hale, editor, author, clergyman
• Roy Haynes, jazz drummer
• Jonathan Kozol, author, educator, and activist
• Malcolm X, minister, Black nationalist
• New Edition, R&B/Pop music group
• Samuel Pierpont Langley, astronomer, physicist, aviation pioneer
• John L. Sullivan, boxer
• Ella Trujillo, artist
• Simon Willard, renowned clockmaker
• Joseph Warren, doctor, soldier, and patriot
• John Wilson, artist

[edit] Points of interest

• Fort Hill
• Roxbury Heritage State Park

[edit] See also

• West Roxbury

[edit] External links

• History of Roxbury
• Roxbury.com -- community news and links
• Discover Roxbury -- tours and information
• Shirley-Eustis House -- Massachusetts' Royal Governor's Mansion website
• Roxbury Crossing Historical Trust -- historical society

Neighborhoods in Boston, Massachusetts
Allston/Brighton · Back Bay · Beacon Hill · Charlestown · Chinatown · Dorchester · Downtown Crossing · East Boston · Fenway-Kenmore · Government Center · Hyde Park · Jamaica Plain · Longwood · Mattapan · Mission Hill · North End · Roslindale · Roxbury · South Boston · South End · West End · West Roxbury

Coordinates: 42°19′30″N, 71°05′43″W