Allandale Woods-A Fragment of the First Families of Boston

Allandale Woods: A Fragment of the First Families of Boston Richard Heath and Richard B. Primack Weeds, wildflowers, and history come together in this little-known corner of the city. A turn down Allandale Street from the bus- of the present-day Arnold Arboretum, was the tle and traffic of Center Street in Jamaica Plain ancestral grounds of a number of old Boston is a turn down a country road, crowded with families, including the famous Weld family of trees and lined by sturdy stone walls. Boston’s Roxbury, once again prominent because of the last working farm, Allandale Farm, can be election of William Weld as present governor seen from the road. In the summer it sells of Massachusetts. fresh sweet corn; in the autumn it sells sweet Across Center Street from the Arnold cider mashed from its own apples. The road Arboretum (between Allandale Street and the straightens out past the farm, and on the left VFW Parkway), visitors can explore for them- is a deeply shaded, wooden gate that leads into selves the 31-acre Allandale Woods, a jigsaw Walnut Hill Cemetery, the resting place of puzzle of City of Boston parkland and private Professor C. S. Sargent, the first director of the land to which conservation restrictions have Arnold Arboretum, and his good friend, the been applied. The Boston Natural Areas Fund architect H. H. Richardson. (BNAF) has taken the lead in managing the Also located on the road is the very private, property, which has a special connection to early twentieth-century Brandegee estate with the Arnold Arboretum in that both were part its decaying Italianate gardens. The center- of the original land grant to Joseph Weld that piece of the estate is an enormous Georgian included much of modern-day Jamaica Plain. house set on a great hilltop terrace overlook- Superficially, the Allandale Woods looks like ing sweeping green meadows. Opposite the an ordinary oak and maple forest of the former stables and the carriage house of the metropolitan Boston area, most of it an Brandegee estate, now the stables of the undulating glacial landscape of ridges and val- Boston Police Department, is a seemingly leys, streams, and rocky outcroppings of Rox- nondescript clump of woods, the Allandale bury pudding stone, but records reveal it as a Woods, the subject of this article. It is typical place of considerable historical interest as of the secondary growth that invades old well. fields, once they are no longer used for graz- A careful observer can see remnants of old ing. This fragment of land, along with much farm walls, estate boundaries, abandoned The old spnnghouse on the grounds of the former Souther estate, which once tapped into Allandale spring. This structure is located on privately owned property adjacent to the publicly held portion of the Allandale Woods. Photo by P. Del Tredici. 34 apple orchards, and old foundations that The land remained in the Weld family until clearly indicate former uses nf the land Proh- 1806 During that year Coionpl Fleazer Weld/ ably the most exceptional structure in the great-great-grandson of Captain Joseph, sold Allandale Woods is a six-sided wooden spring- off a large portion of his estate to pay debts house with a conical cap tipped by a large he may have incurred while supporting the metal ball. This crumbling structure, built in Revolutionary Army. What was to become the the 1870s, sits over a pipe that taps the Allan- most famous hundred acres went to Benjamin dale Spring, a famous source of water in the Bussey, a wealthy silversmith and owner of a region. Surrounding the springhouse are woollen mill. Bussey’s estate is today part of several ancient, overgrown apple trees. the Arnold Arboretum. The rest of the land-along the future VFW Early History Parkway and what is now the Allandale The human story of the Allandale Woods Woods-became the estate of Thomas B. Wil- begins with the Indians who had camps and liams. On a site near the rear of the present- lodges in the Saw Mill Brook valley until 1000 day Church of the Annunciation, Williams B.C. This area was presumably hospitable, built a farm that operated for most of the with abundant running water and level nineteenth century. In 1864, Williams sold ground. When the first English settlers arrived twenty acres of his land facing Allandale in the region, Algonquin Indians lived not far Street to Henry W Wellington, and twenty away, near the Neponset River Valley in years later, the land was purchased by Maria Quincy, making it easy to imagine Indian hun- Souther, probably also a Wellington. The ters and fishermen moving through the Souther estate consisted of a grand two-and- primeval Allandale Woods. one-half-story house set on a curving terrace. The historical record begins on June 5, Below the house was a sixty-foot-long green- 1632, when the Reverend Thomas Weld and house and a meandering stream, with the his brother Joseph arrived in Boston and set- springhouse built at its source and with a tled in Roxbury. Joseph Weld became the cap- pond downstream. Maria Souther’s daughter, tain of the Roxbury militia, and fought in the Marguerite, lived here until 1968 when the first major Indian war in the New England set- house, greenhouse, and spring were sold to the tlements, the Pequot War of 1637. After Faulkner Hospital. defeating the Indians, Weld was one of the Numerous remnants of the Souther estate commissioners who negotiated the peace can still be seen in the Allandale Woods, such treaty; a grateful Governor Winthrop rewarded as the curving drive with its enormous oaks Captain Weld handsomely with a large estate and sugar maples. Unkempt crabapples, in the western end of Roxbury called Jamaica ornamental cherries, and butternut trees per- End. sist near the building site. The huge, over- There is evidence to suggest that this estate grown apple trees along the stream survive but covered all of the land from the present-day do not fruit under the shade of nearby trees. Arboretum to the VFW Parkway and north to The six-sided springhouse, with its conical the spring along Allandale Street. The roof, remains elegant even as it falls into ruin. property was used as a large farm for growing The meadow below the old estate is still beau- the crops of the day-rye, corn, squash, pump- tiful with black-eyed Susans, crown vetch, and kins, apples, beans, tobacco, and hay for feed- other wildflowers. Yet the vigorous growth of ing livestock. Much of the labor for the huge poplars, aspens, and other trees in the meadow farm apparently came from Indian and black suggests that the area will soon again become slaves until Massachusetts outlawed slavery a woodland. in 1783. The remnants of the field boundaries The remainder of the Williams farm was can still be seen in the low rock walls found purchased by the City of Boston in December throughout the Allandale Woods. 1894 to build a parkway that would connect 35 One of two enormous sugar maples that line what was once the drive leadmg to the Souther estate, now privately owned. Photo by P Del Jredici. the Arnold Arboretum and Franklin Park to Country Club and included a 79-room, neo- the Stony Brook Reservation. The landscape Georgian house and Italian gardens on the architectural firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and north side of the Allandale Woods. Broken Eliot furnished detailed plans in 1896, but the slabs of marble, pieces of Romanesque statu- Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Parkway was ary, and rusty mowing machines can still be not completed until 1936. A great stone and seen in the tumbledown garden sheds. Nearby cement wall was built at some point to are covered stalls that were once used for keep- separate these city lands from the private ing domestic animals. lands to the north. When this wall was built and who built it has yet to be discovered. It Vegetation is about eighteen inches wide and about three After three centuries of use both for farming feet high, and runs up and down the steep and for the cutting of firewood, the Allandale landscape. Woods today is a young forest with mostly Between 1891 and 1905, Allandale Woods small trees that have colonized the area. The became part of a second extensive Weld estate, dominant vegetation along the sides and tops that of Mary (Weld) Pratt who married Edward of the ridges consists of oak trees (including Brandegee, a wealthy clothing manufacturer, the white, black, red, chestnut, and scarlet in 1902. Her 195-acre estate extended as far species) with an understory of blueberry and as Newton Street opposite the Brookline huckleberry bushes. White pines are surpris- 36 pignut hickory, and shagbark hickory. In many nf t~,aea ara.,o p~ti!:1,l12rly ~.~hP., rl;ar,~,-l.o~ hm dumping, there isis a densedense understoryunderstory of alderalder buckthorn and common buckthorn, mul- tiflora rose, gooseberry, and a truly prolific growth of poison ivy that covers the ground and grows up tree trunks. On the edge of some of the most disturbed wet ground are large eastern cottonwoods, Asian cork trees, and castor aralias, the last two most likely started from seeds carried by birds from the nearby Arnold Arboretum. In the center of these disturbed areas of dumping and old quarrying, one finds a tan- gle of vines, such as wild grape, bindweed, Vir- ginia creeper, catbriars, oriental bittersweet, and brambles. The wildflowers found in the Allandale Woods are almost exclusively weedy species characteristic of disturbed ground (butter-and-eggs, Canada hawkweed, goldenrods, asters, yarrow, and garlic mustard).

Load more