Throwback Boston Thursday: The Boston Stone — Center of the Shawmut Peninsula, or Marketing Ploy?

If you’ve ever been over by the Bell in Hand Tavern or the Green Dragon Tavern, or walking the Freedom Trail past the Union Oyster House, you probably…haven’t looked down one of the small alleys there and sought out something stuck in a wall.

If you do go exploring, you’ll find what looks like a stone ball or fat millstone, maybe about two feet in diameter, with the words “Boston Stone 1737” carved into it, embedded into the side of a building just off Marshall Street on the Blackstone Block near Haymarket.

Photo by the author

I’ve always believed that the Boston Stone marks the very center of original Boston. But, like last week’s City Hall Plaza fountain assumptions, I did some research.

Shawmut Peninsula

If we’re going to talk about original Boston, we have to talk about the Shawmut Peninsula, which was the original land area that Boston was built upon. The Massachusett people named the area Mashauwomuk, or “canoe landing,” and it was no more than a few miles wide, with three hills and a spring. While the area was not one of the destinations of the early settlers, one guy, William Blackstone, left his landing party in Weymouth in 1623, and settled on the peninsula, living alone here for a while. After John Winthrop’s party settled in Charlestown in 1629, and struggled to find fresh water, Blackstone invited them over to “the Shawmut.”

Boston Public Library | Norman B. Leventhal Map Center

As you can see, it wasn’t much: there were three hills at the time, including Copp’s Hill in the North End (on the right, above, to orient you), Fort Hill, which was located in today’s Financial District, and the Trimount or Trimountain in Beacon Hill. That street coming in from the water just below Bendell’s Cove is modern day State Street, and that waterline would have been where the Samuel Adams statue in front of Faneuil Hall is today (they made some marks in the cement by Sam Adams where the original town cove was located — go take a look). The “Field Near Colbron’s” is the Common. And the only way to get to the mainland from the Shawmut Peninsula was through the Boston Neck, an isthmus that ran down today’s Washington Street and that would flood at high tide.

Here’s the Shawmut Peninsula in 1775, in British-occupied Boston:

Public domain

You can see the city was still pretty much the same size. Long Wharf now extends from King’s Street (State Street), there are many more streets, and the British wisely erected a check-point on the Neck. The area below Mill Pond would eventually become Scollay Square, which would eventually become City Hall Plaza (see how Hanover extends a lot further west than it does today). The North End has pretty much stayed the same, and the street I live on is on this map!

Filling in the City

In the 1800s, we started filling in the city, and grew the Shawmut Peninsula by filling in Mill Pond (which is present day North Station area), the Back Bay, the Fenway, the Waterfront…

Boston Public Library | Norman B. Leventhal Map Center

Actually, most of Boston today is landfill. (They — and by “They” I mean the Duck Tour folks — say that any streets that are meandering and curly are original Shawmut Peninsula; streets that are straight are landfill.) And actually, when you see our waterfront areas getting flooded because of climate change, they’re all the areas we filled in back in the 1800s — we didn’t fill in high enough. You can see the shadow of the original peninsula above.

The Boston Stone

So back to our strange Boston Stone. Does it indeed mark the center of the old Shawmut Peninsula, and was it used as a point of reference, like the London Stone? It sure looks like it, right?

It’s not. It never was.

Here’s the story.

There’s no record that the Boston Stone was ever used for measurement, and surveying from Colonial days still uses the Old State House, including Google Maps, Apple Maps, and all those signs on the Pike.

Maybe it was put there to historically commemorate the center of the Shawmut Peninsula?

It looks like that was the site of the first paint mill in America, founded by Thomas Child in 1700. And supposedly the stone was a pigment grinder that was shipped over from England in 1701. That would explain the hole in the center.

Then I found this in A Chronological History of the Boston Watch and Police, noted 1836:

"THE BOSTON STONE," was set in a building in progress of erection, corner of Marshall and Creek Lanes. It was used for grinding paint by an early settler in Boston, whose arms are to be seen in the front walls of a building on Marshall Street, at the present day. The stone was said to have laid useless in the yard many years, but was afterwards placed at the corner of the streets, to keep truck wheels from injuring the building, which was at that time occupied by Mr. Howe. About the year 1737, the suggestion of a Scotchman, who lived near, induced Joe Whiting, whose father then kept the shop, to paint the name of "Boston Stone, Marshall Lane," on the old paint mill, in imitation of "The London Stone," in London, that it might be a landmark and directory, which character it did eventually acquire. The pestle or ball was since found, and "The Boston Stone" has now “become the head of the comer.”

So it was a pigment grinder stone that was found in a yard, that someone painted “Boston Stone” on, to make it into a kind of London Stone, in hopes that it would become a landmark. So there was nothing deliberate about it’s placement.

Then I found this broadside from 1860:

So it corroborates the story from the police log, except this “Dr. Elliot” walked by one day to see Joe Whiting painting the name on the stone. (I love how mid-19th century writing broke all sorts of fourth walls. [Hawthorne, I’m looking at you.] I highly doubt there was a “Dr. Elliot,” and I very much believe these characters were created for this broadside.) Much later in life, this Dr. Elliot asks Mr. Whiting about it, and he tells him the story of the Scotsman, who ran a shop across the street and told Joe Whiting to make a Boston version of the London Stone. Therefore, “if I would let Joe write the words Boston Stone on this, people would notice it, and it would set them guessing what it meant, and would become a good landmark.”

In other words, call the stone something important, and people will come to see it, and then shop in my shop. (Was this the first instance of tourist economy in Boston?) And right across the street today in 1860 is the Marshall House, our business, and that Scotsman was one of our patriarchs. So come, flock to the center of Boston and see this wondrous landmark, THE BOSTON STONE, and…we have single rooms to lend, and great food.

So the Boston Stone is a landmark that’s not a landmark that was created to be a “landmark” to make us all travel to see this landmark/”landmark” — and to sell some rooms at the Marshall House.

What’s interesting is that the legend of it being the center of old Boston still exists today. Heck, see my first paragraph!

But in the end, I guess Joe Whiting and that Scotsman got the better of us.

PS. As a final note, Google does say that this “historic site” is “Good for kids.”