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Pondering puddingstone

Michelle Geffken fills us in on our homegrown rock:

It's also known as the Church Stone, since at least thirty-five 19th century Boston area churches were built from Roxbury Puddingstone.

Also see The Dorchester Giant - Oliver Wendell Holmes's fable on how the rock came to be.

H/t George.

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Comments

I've heard, but have found only a few sites mentioning, that the same kind of rock is found in West Africa when the continents were kissing cousins. Wikipedia does not mention this and I could not find any scholarly site that confirms the same. So maybe just an urban myth?

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Twenty years ago I was walking Gettysburg with a much younger son, and from a quarter mile I pointed to a monument and said: "That's a Massachusetts regiment there." It was, and it's the only puddingstone monument on the battlefield:

http://www.gettysburg.stonesentinels.com/MA/20MA.php

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Most buildings in the area built pre WW1 have a puddingstone foundation.

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Thanks for the link to the poem. I'm working on a pocket park project that may use the Fireside Poets (Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, Bryant, and Whittier) as a theme. Puddingstone... hmmmmm......

Mark Jaquith,
Cambridge

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