Bussey Woods Murders c.1865

With the proliferation of weapons in crowded American neighborhoods in our time, murders-even of innocent children-seem part of news reports all too often. Has our area ever seen anything so gruesome in the past? Since this column is a mirror of things past, violent crimes must be included in its impartial light.

Even without combing police reports, one double murder in Jamaica Plain during its seemingly bucolic days stands out chillingly. In the words of the 1865-66 West Roxbury Town Report, “The murders in the town in the month of June, which so shocked the community, have given us an unenviable notoriety.” The killings took place in what is now the Arboretum.

For those who despair about current news reports, the words of a local resident speaking in 1878 of the murders set a continuity, “Of the many dark deeds of blood which have disgraced this age few have been fraught with more harrowing details than the one enacted right here.”

Isabella and John Joyce were the children of a Lynn dressmaker recently widowed. On Monday, June 12, 1865, they left their aunt’s home in the South End with a picnic basket and carfare for a day in the famed Jamaica Plain countryside.

They called on their grandmother at Newland and West Concord Streets and, at 11 a.m., left her house (still standing in the South End) never to be seen again alive. Their announced destination was May’s Woods along the present Arborway. Night came, and the unescorted picnickers (an action not then considered dangerous) did not return. A vigorous search was immediately made but was fruitless due to all the June greenery. It was not until the next Sunday that the children were found accidentally by some hikers in the Bussey Woods.

A view of Bussey Brook in the Arnold Arboretum, taken in 1949 by Professor Karl Sax, who was the Arboretum’s Director at the time. Photograph from the Archives of the Arnold Arboretum. Used with permission from the website of the Institute for Cultural Landscape Studies of the Arnold Arboretum
©The President and Fellows of Harvard College.

The Bussey Woods were part of an old 400-acre farm on both sides of Bussey Street, given by Benjamin Bussey to Harvard College for the horticultural institute. After several gyrations, 120 acres of the farm and woods would become the Arnold Arboretum with the Bussey Institute (now the State Lab) on one side. Somehow the children had arrived at the far end of the South Street side of the present Arboretum and had sought higher ground for a good view and their picnic. But this was before the grounds were planted and groomed by the Arboretum after 1882.

Isabella, age 15, was found in the hollow of a rock atop a hill. She had been stabbed 28 times, and (by contemporary account) “the murderer attempted a deed upon the body of the little girl” despite her efforts to fend him of. Her brother, age 8, was found later a quarter mile away by Bussey Brook in a condition that sickened Civil War veterans who viewed the body. It was surmised that just before noon he had left his sister, fallen, and finally been attacked by his sister’s murderer.

The children were brought back to Lynn for burial. Much sorrow and many efforts to find the criminal were generated by the shocking event-just two months after the assassination of President Lincoln. Rewards were offered by all authorities. Seven suspects were interrogated but released. The many visitors to the girl’s murder site raised a memorial cairn. In the process, any further clues were obliterated, with forensics still in its infancy. For the protection of all, a police beat was established in the Bussey Woods.

In March 1866 the Boston Weekly Voice reported a possible break in the case. A man of violent disposition had been arrested in August 1865 for burglary. While being held for trial in Fitchburg, he plotted to murder his guard and to escape with others. Known as Scratch Gravel, he stated that any man who had done “the Roxbury job” would not hesitate to kill again. His bravado about the children’s murder revolted another prisoner, who foiled the escape by telling authorities about Gravel’s entire conversation.

Upon his removal to State Prison for the burglary conviction, officials there attempted to get Gravel to speak directly-but in vain. He was transferred to a light work detail in hopes that he might talk with a trusted prisoner-again in vain. Finally a detective of supposed Southern sympathy was placed in Gravel’s cell in February 1866. Gravel liked his cellmate, and soon they were hatching a plan for escape. Gravel referred to “the Roxbury children” but never confessed to their murders.

The oddly named prisoner turned out to be an adopted lad, born in Boston, who went to sea at age 15. He had entered the Confederate Army after being pardoned from the South Carolina State Prison. Then he joined the Union Naval Forces, deserting one ship after another. A man like him was seen at Taft’s hotel in Roslindale less than a mile from Bussey Woods. The knife taken from him at Fitchburg could have wounded the Joyce children.

An aerial view of Bussey Woods in early days of the Arnold Arboretum.Used with permission from the American Environmental Photographs Collection, [AEP Image Number, e.g., AEP-MIN73], Department of Special Collections, University of Chicago Library.

Yet, the Boston police were not convinced by the prison warden’s reports that Gravel was their man. All his information could have come entirely from newspaper reports. If no stronger evidence came forth, Scratch Gravel (alias Charles Aaron Dodge) would be proved more of a braggart fool who embellished the basic information in the newspapers for his own reasons. Thus rested the matter of Jamaica Plain ‘s most heinous and unsolved murder until it took another bizarre turn.

The details of our area’s “terrible atrocity and barbarity,” fueled “a feeling of unprecedented horror” in the words of a book about the murders, published in Boston in 1878, some 13 years after the barbarity. “In a section as civilized, a community so guarded, a population so abundant, in the marginal outline of a great city” how could it have ever happen, asked the book.

The book’s author was Henry Johnson Brent (1811-80), who had founded and edited the New York City magazine, Knickerbocker, widely enjoyed from 1833 through the Civil War. In June 1865 he happened to be staying with friends within a few hundred yards of the murders. He wrote his book “Was It A Ghost” to focus attention again on the twin murders that had gone unsolved for more than a decade despite a vigilant police chief.

Brent himself had immediately become a suspect in the case because a boy told police that he had often seen a man of Brent’s description in the Bussey Woods with a knife and gun. Fortunately, Brent was also an artist, whose palette knife and gun practice was known in the neighborhood. He was also acquainted with the police force. For lack of any solid evidence, yet another suspect in the murders was free to go.

By the end of June 1865 the search for the murderer had worn itself out. A week or so later, in a bizarre personal twist, Brent saw a male apparition on the far side of his host’s property between Bussey and Motley Woods. This meeting, described in his book’s Chapter 10, will appear in the next column. Brent truly felt that the event was something beyond his ability to reconcile by the usual rules of explanation and that it deserved publication.

He had gone down to meet his host returning from Boston via Forest Hills, only to learn later that he had returned home via Centre Street at 10 p.m. Brent revisited the site of the apparition at 9 p.m., within half an hour of the event, but nothing more was seen nor found. Initially the apparition was definitely connected by Brent with his host, but during this second visit, which included a walk to the rock where Isabella Joyce had been murdered, Brent suddenly connected it with the murders.

He went with his story to a perplexed police chief, who urged him to publish it. The chief’s reaction was whether Brent recognized the male ghost. Was it a witness to the murders of the children’s recently deceased father?

Over time, Brent felt that he did know the face, as he was familiar with the police evidence. He never named a suspect but published his book.

He brought his book out so much later after the case had grown cold once he knew what clues the police had and after much thought. He hoped to stir up a renewed investigation and to goad the murderer, if still alive, into remorse and confession. The ghost story is the centerpiece of his book-rightly so, given the title. Yet “this book would never have been written if that misty figure had not confronted me on that night.”

Many Jamaica Plain residents must have had theories about the murders. Brent, believing the murderer still alive, did not state his complete details. The change from May’s Woods (as announced by the children) to the more secluded Bussey Woods prompted a suspicion that the children were accompanied by someone they knew. The streetcar fare was found near the girl; someone had paid their fare. There was little screaming, as men were mowing in the area and heard nothing.

In his latest chapter Brent notes the results of séances-so popular at the time-reported in the spiritualistic press. He notes a letter said to have been written by the murdered girl and another by her father. A communication from the boy also circulated. Though unacquainted with spiritualism, Brent felt in a sense of fair play that he had to include them with his ghostly account. He felt very bad that he had not been in the Bussey Woods at noontime of June 12, 1865, doing some target practice or painting.

Brent names his host only as Dan. Lot maps of the period show only two properties surrounded by the Motley-Bussey tracts: the Skinners and the Weatherbees by Centre and Walter Streets. Dan must have been a son in one of these families, which owned “a house that looked out on Centre Street with the rear giving view of a meadow watered by a tiny rivulet and on up to the Bussey Woods.”

Our author ends wondering about the ghost, “So strange an occurrence does not happen without an intention. What that intention was, I for one, if only one, shall patiently wait to see.” Two years later Henry J. Brent died in New York City with the murders yet unsolved. The writer in the Boston Sunday Times in November 1878 was incorrect in his reading of the book in his statement that Brent felt the children were murdered by something supernatural.

This brutal event, like so many others, has passed into legend. In April 1936 Boston Herald artist Jack Frost ran a sketch of 644 South Street in Roslindale. In his explanatory paragraph in his “Fancy This” column he states that a boarder at the house murdered two children in the nearby woods, then barricaded himself in his room and killed himself in remorse. So goes the last twist in Jamaica Plain’s most heinous crime.

Sources: H.J. Brent, “Was it a ghost;” Appleton’s Encyclopedia of National Biography; “Boston Herald,” April 2, 1936; “Boston Sunday Times,” Nov. 24, 1878, Boston Weekly Voice, March 15, 1856; Boston Sun Times, November 24, 1878; West Roxbury Town Report 1865-66, pg. 14.

By Walter H. Marx. Reprinted with permission from the November 5 and November 19, 1993 Jamaica Plain Gazette. Copyright © Gazette Publications, Inc.

Arboretum Ghost Story

The following event took place on a moonlit night at 8:30 p.m. some three weeks after the brutal murders of the Joyce children on June 12, 1865, in the Bussey Woods (now part of the Arnold Arboretum). It is described by JP visitor, H.J. Brent, in a book he wrote in 1878 entitled “Was It a Ghost?” in chapter 10, here abridged for the reader.

Upon a still and clear night I went out of the cottage, and, taking two dogs with me, strolled down through the stable yard and past the garden, until I came to the brow of the hill that formed the apex of my friend’s grasslands. The brow of the hill was flat all about me and at the base ran off into a meadow, the opposite side of which was overlooked by the Bussey Woods.

From where I stood, several pines rose out of the even surface of the forest, marking (as with an uplifted hand spread out) the place where the girl’s murder had been done. On my left was Motley’s Woods, drawing up with its intense shadows close to the dividing wall. From the wall to where I stood all was clear and distinct, save where the shadows fell over the ground.

The wall and the wood on my left ran down to that corner at Bussey Creek, which was only a short distance (about 50 feet) from the spot where the boy had fallen. Some 250 yards away and close to the corner just mentioned was a clump of trees, and then straight before me without an intervening object, the dark wood gloomed over the rock of the girl’s death. My purpose was simply to take the cooling air from the winnowing trees.

It was the habit of my host, who did business in Boston, of leaving the train at Forest Hills Station at 9 o ‘clock as a general thing and keeping to South Street until he got to the bottom of the hill near to where the brook crosses the road. He would then enter the lowlands at the outskirts of Bussey Woods and thence follow the path and up the hillside covered by Motley’s Woods, keeping close to the wall until he reached the point of the wall near which I was standing, pass over it and be home.

Knowing that my host was irregular as to his hours of return home at night, I was not surprised when I saw a figure lean over the wall for an instant within about 20 feet of me, pause a moment, and then cross over to the side on which I was. Seeing that he stopped, I spoke aloud these words, “Hello, Dan, is that you?”

Though I could discover the figure and recognize its movements, there was too great a shade thrown over the wall to enable me to distinguish a face so familiar to me. To my appeal there was no reply, and then in an instant the impression came upon me that if it really was my friend, he was testing my nerves. Up to this moment I never had a thought apart from him.

While I stood perfectly motionless, waiting for some recognition of my appeal, the figure advanced slowly in a direct line from the wall, leaving the shadow, and stopped before me and not 20 feet away from me. I saw at once that it was somebody I had never seen before. When in the light without even a weed to obstruct my vision, as soon as he stopped, I called, “Speak or I will fire!”

It was at this period that I observed especially the behavior of the dogs. Up to this time they had been quiet, lying on the grass, but now they both got up, and I felt on each side of me the pressure of their bodies. They were evidently frightened, and I saw that they were looking with every symptom of terror at the figure that stood so near us without a motion.

The figure never once turned its head directly toward me but seemed to fix its look eastward over where the pine-trees broke the clear horizon on the murder-hill. This inert pose was preserved but for a moment, for as quick as the flash of gunpowder it wheeled as upon a pivot and, making one movement as of a man commencing to step out toward the wall, was gone!

To my vision it never crossed the space between where it had stood and the outline of the shade thrown by the trees upon the ground. One step after turning was all I saw, and then it vanished. What I saw I relate exactly as it happened. Can I describe this figure you will ask?

It looked like painted air. There was no elaborate appearance, indeed I could not make out the fashion of the garment. I was more occupied in the effort to recognize a human being in the figure that was before me. He looked dark grey from head to foot. Body he had, legs, arms, and a head, but the face I could not distinctly see, as he turned it from me.

***

This story about murders and ghosts on and around the Bussey estate is the most interesting thing I’ve read about Jamaica Plain/Roslindale so far!

Reblogged from The Gazette:

Harvest Co-op plans new JP store

By John Ruch April 29, 2011

FOREST HILLS—Harvest Co-op Markets is planning a new grocery store as part of a retail/office development on Washington Street south of the Forest Hills T Station.

The new market would be 9,000 square feet and could open in late 2012, Harvest General Manager Mike St. Clair told the Gazette. The existing Harvest at 57 South St. would remain open, though its offerings might change, St. Clair said. Harvest, a member-owned co-op based in Cambridge, recently announced the new store on its web site. Also announced is a new Harvest Co-op for the Fenway as part of the Yawkey Station redevelopment.

The new JP store “will offer a full variety of fresh and organic produce, meat, seafood, deli, grocery and health/wellness products,” St. Clair said in an e-mail to the Gazette.

“We have been looking to grow in Jamaica Plain for years to better serve our members and customers with a bigger store, larger product offering and dedicated parking,” said St. Clair, when asked whether the expansion has anything to do with Whole Foods Market coming to JP.

The South Street store is in a good location, but “it is quite small and a challenge to offer a complete grocery shopping experience,” he said. That shop is in a storefront attached to a house with no parking lot.

“We hope to be in this location for a long time,” St. Clair said of the existing JP store. “Our plans are to refine the product variety to best suit the needs of the neighbors in such a challenging facility.”

Last year, Harvest attempted to open a Milton store as part of a development including a CVS Pharmacy. The town meeting rejected that plan due to noise, traffic and property-value concerns, as the Quincy Patriot Ledger reported at the time.

While St. Clair would not name the development team for the new JP store, he confirmed that it is planned for a vacant MBTA parcel on Washington Street at Ukraine Way. Jamaica Plain-based WCI Corp. has a longstanding plan to build a retail/office building there featuring a grocery store.

WCI spokesperson Brian McGinley declined to comment on Harvest’s new store announcement and not confirm or deny its involvement in the WCI plan. He referred questions to Harvest.

The announcement at www.harvest.coop says that the grocer has signed letters of intent with developers on the JP and Fenway projects, and that “neither [project] is certain” to happen.

“The developers selected Harvest because of our excellent reputation in the Metro Boston area for our high-quality and healthy foods, our many years of community involvement and our commitment to environmental stewardship,” the announcement said.

A city-led community planning process for several vacant MBTA parcels around the Forest Hills T Station, which last years and wrapped up in 2009, pegged a grocery store as a top local desire, as the Gazette previously reported.

WCI Corp. won development rights to two of the MBTA lots flanking Washington Street at Ukraine Way.

Its plans for the western parcel, known as “Arboretum Place,” included a 32,000-square-foot building, including a grocery store, with a plaza in front. The plan for the eastern parcel, on the T station side of Washington, involved a 12,000-square-foot office building with ground-floor retail.

The plan includes about 50 on-site parking spaces on the two parcels, as well as on-street parking. Nearly half of the parcels’ area would remain open space.

In community meetings last year, the WCI plan was favorably received, but traffic was a local concern.

“There’s a lot of stuff up in the air,” McGinley said when asked about the status of WCI’s redevelopment of the parcels.

WCI is a developer and contractor whose work includes various residential and commercial buildings around JP, including the company’s headquarters at 500 Amory St.

***

I for one am all for Harvest and pretty much any of the improvements outlined for Forest Hills.

I’ve been following the online conversations about Casey Overpass and speaking to a few locals. It seems the overpass is a crucial design problem for local authorities. In my opinion, it’s a make it or break it challenge for the future of Forest Hills. An outstanding design that is welcoming and solves the unbearable traffic issues in the area would transform the area and produce revenue and strengthen property values and the tax base for decades. On the flip side, get it wrong and Forest Hills could easily go down the drain.

There are so many design challenges in this city that go unmet. Instead of holding out for the long ball, impatience and short-sighted frugality tend to ruin the process. I’ve seen it many times right here in Jamaica Plain. I sincerely hope the Forest Hills residents are vocal and get some say in how they want their neighborhood to look and function. I’m reblogging an article from Patch here for your convenience:

I spent Halloween Day walking around Forest Hills Cemetery reading the headstones and enjoying the beautiful leaves. Taking a break from open houses and market valuations is necessary from time to time. It was a super afternoon. The light, smells and colors were very refreshing. A perfect autumn afternoon.

I had a pint with my friend Matt McGlinn last night. He just got a new iPhone and was proudly showing me a photo he snapped of a brand spankin’ new bike lane that had been painted on Washington between Jamaica Plain and Roslindale.

Washington St. bike lane

Matt is one of those guys that bikes to work rain or shine all year round for the most part. A real die hard. Matt, his wife Rachel moved to Roslindale from Jamaica Plain a couple years ago when it was clear that they needed more room for a growing family. I was their buyer’s agent and helped them buy a cute single family home. They’re very happy there but miss the convenience and community of Jamaica Plain. However, being a stand-up guy, “Matty” insists on cycling to work and doing his part to save the planet.

Matt "Matty" McGlinn

Living in Jamaica Plain right on the Southwest Corridor for the last 15+ years I’ve definitely noticed the increase in two-wheeled activity over the years. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the brave and noble souls who take their lives in their own hands every day and pedal their way to work. While they are working every day to take part in the economy, they are reducing carbon emissions and all the bad stuff that goes along with the petroleum and auto industry, as well as staying healthy, which must play some role at least in not exacerbating the health care situation.

I was pleased to hear that the city was taking some action finally – making a stand for the righteous cause of cyclists. Protecting a noble breed. In the past, the Pacific Northwest has led the way with bicycle friendly streets. To a lesser degree, even our neighbor, Cambridge has done their share to improve bicycle safety and convenience. I started doing a little poking around and it seems that until recently there were no bike lanes on Boston streets. studies have shown that regular cyclists use main thoroughfares as opposed to “bike paths” which are usually fraught with bumps and curves and obstacles that slow down the commute. This is why it’s so important to have designated bike lanes to protect these folks.

The first two lanes in Boston apparently were from Comm Ave to the BU Bridge , one on the American Legion Hwy (things that make you go hmmmmm) and now it seems there is one that was just finished last night from Forest Hills Station to Roslindale Village. Matty reports the city just painted the new lines last night. In addition, the city has added new bike cages at Forest Hills and Alewife stations.

photo by Doug Mink of rozziebikes.com (click  for more info)

A huge round of applause to the city for these efforts. However, I’m a little confused by the choice of American Legion Highway as the second bike lane in Boston. It seems rather odd doesn’t it? If you haven’t ever traveled this stretch of road you probably wouldn’t think much of this decision. Another blogger (and biker) was equally vexed – Harrumph! also notes in a recent post that the decision to spend 67K painting bike lanes on this stretch of road seemed ill-timed. I’m not sure how these decisions are made, or by whom, but it seems that the right way to go about choosing bike routes would be based on use, or congestion, or consensus, or anything that resembled community process. Understand, I know very little about this process or about the process that precipitated painting lines on American Legion – and I welcome any comments in explanation. As you know if you have read any of my previous posts, I am a Realtor and dare I say a bit of a cynic. What some of you may not know is that there are two large developments that this newly paved road passes through – namely, Harvard Commons (Cruz Development) and Olmsted Green (Lena Park & New Boston Fund). As Flaherty recently said of Menino’s email debacle, “a fish rots from the head down”, and I have to admit, I smell something fishy. Not only did the city spend 67K putting in a bike lane, but according to Harrumph!, they didn’t do a very good job.

• There are no markings or signs of any type indicating what the bike lanes are.
• Drivers don’t get it and many encroach into the lanes.
• Neither side has NO PARKING signs, and many cars use the Blue Hill end by Franklin Park as a parking lane, endangering both cars and bikes.
• The newish 30 MPH limit is, shall we say, not fully in the public consciousness. Biking the route today, I estimate that the average speed was 45, with many going faster.
• Cyclists don’t yet know it is there.
• It’s not the best example of where people live to where they want to travel.
• The bike lanes are broad, as in the picture at Walk Hill (click for a larger view) where they piggyback on a bus zone, but narrow in the Northern region to perhaps 3 or 3.5 feet, not really adequate.
• The travel lanes are quite broad and should have each given another foot to the bike lane to make it safe.

It seems rather ill-planned, no? Was this just a developer pulling strings so they could say they had a bike lane from their new “green” development? Listen, don’t get me wrong, but wouldn’t that money have been better spent on Huntington Ave, on Centre St in Jamaica Plain, in the South End, anywhere other than American Legion Highway? I would like to know how many cyclists are using that path on a daily basis right now – as compared to some of the more congested parts of the city? I sincerely welcome comments here. I am ignorant as to the overall plan and would very much like to understand it.

I am really excited about the prospect of Boston becoming really bike friendly. Not only would it be good for the environment and traffic reduction, but it would be nice to sit with front-runners Seattle and Portland in the progressive movement toward sustainability. As Boston becomes a more pleasant place to live, more people will move here and more jobs will be created. Everybody wins.