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When we weren't so tolerant

Mass. Moments reminds us today is the anniversary of the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown by "an unruly, drunken mob of laborers, sailors, apprentices, and hoodlums." The convent burned to the ground because the local firefighters, all Protestant, refused to respond.

Earlier:
Riot on Broad Street.

Book:
Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834.

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Comments

The new Chuckie Harris Park is built on/near the site.

Somerville became a separate city (from Charlestown) in 1842.

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From the old map, it looks like it was located on what is now ~16 Michigan Ave, Somerville.

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north of Broadway in what today would be called East Somerville. The hill was mostly levelled in subsequent decades. The current pattern of streets, named mostly after states, came much later.

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Isn't Benedict the one where there's the teeniest bit of the hill left, because a developer had started doing his thing there before the cut-and-fill people started leveling? Looking at the Google satellite view, that would be the Austin St. end.

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and would like to hear more. But yes, Austin and Benedict streets are on what's left of the hill. (I wonder if more of it got taken down in the 1960s-70s for I-93 construction?)

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I do not see a map on, or linked from, the page that Adam referred to.

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I thought the convent was burned on the 11th, then rioters further damaged the grounds on the 12th?

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to this day will refuse to make a V.O. Presbyterian.

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How did I not know this history of Ursuline nuns in Boston? I went to Ursuline in Dedham for six years and never heard of this incident until right now.

Now I feel like jerk for going to a Presbyterian church once in a while.

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Remember kids, America was founded on the principle of religious freedom!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_martyrs

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I think much of the hill was removed to fill in the Back Bay...

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