Dorchester, Massachusetts

Dorchester (colloquially referred to as Dot) is a Boston neighborhood comprising more than in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Originally, Dorchester was a separate town, founded by Puritans who emigrated in 1630 from Dorchester, Dorset, England, to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This dissolved municipality, Boston's largest neighborhood by far, is often divided by city planners in order to create two planning areas roughly equivalent in size and population to other Boston neighborhoods.

The neighborhood is named after the town of Dorchester in the English county of Dorset, from which Puritans emigrated on the ship ''Mary and John'', among others.

Founded in 1630, just a few months before the founding of the city of Boston, Dorchester now covers a geographic area approximately equivalent to nearby Cambridge.History of Dorchester, Massachusetts
It was still a primarily rural town and had a population of 12,000 when it was annexed to Boston in 1870. Railroad and streetcar lines brought rapid growth, increasing the population to 150,000 by 1920. In the 2010 United States Census, the neighborhood's population was 92,115.

The Dorchester neighborhood has a very diverse population, which includes a large concentration of African Americans, European Americans (particularly those of Irish, German, Italian, and Polish origin), Caribbean Americans, Latinos, and East and Southeast Asian Americans. Dorchester also has a significant LGBT population, with active political groups and the largest concentration of same-sex couples in Boston after the neighborhoods of South End and Jamaica Plain. Most of the people over the age of 25 have completed high school or obtained a GED.

History

Indigenous peoples

Prior to European colonization, the region around Dorchester was inhabited by the indigenous Massachusett.Alden T. Vaughan, ''New England Encounters: Indians and Euroamericans Ca. 1600-1850'' (1999), pg 209 https://books.google.com/books?isbn=155553404X They lived in settlements established alongside the Neponset River estuary, which was a plentiful source of fish, including trout; they also gathered shellfish from the riverbed, and hunted beaver and deer. They established farms in nearby hills.Alden T. Vaughan, ''New England Encounters: Indians and Euroamericans Ca. 1600-1850'' (1999) pg 209 https://books.google.com/books?isbn=155553404X During the initial period of colonization of the region by Puritan settlers, the Massachusett suffered a rapid decline in population due to the introduction of foreign infectious diseases to which they had no immunity and violence related to settler colonialism.

The Massachusett ''sachem'', Chickatawbut, negotiated land treaties with the Puritan settlers before dying of smallpox in 1633. His brother, Cutshamekin, who succeeded him, deeded further land to the settlers. The remaining Massachusett in the region, including Cutshamekin, accepted some Christianity as a form of survivance and eventually resettled in the Praying Town of Natick.

European settlement in the 17th century

In 1626 David Thompson settled his family on Thompson Island in what is now Dorchester before Boston's Puritan migration wave began in 1630. May 30, 1630, Captain Squib of the ship ''Mary and John'' entered Boston Harbor and on June 17, 1630, landed a boat with eight men on the Dorchester shore, at what was then a narrow peninsula known as Mattapan or Mattaponnock. Today it is known as Columbia Point (more popularly since 1984 as Harbor Point)., Dorchester Atheneum Those aboard the ship who founded the town included William Phelps, Roger Ludlowe, John Mason, John Maverick, Nicholas Upsall, Capt. Roger Fyler, William Gaylord, Henry Wolcott, and other men who would become prominent in the founding of a new nation. The original settlement founded in 1630 was at what is now the intersection of Columbia Road and Massachusetts Avenue. (Even though Dorchester was annexed over 100 years ago into the city of Boston, residents still annually celebrate the founding on Dorchester Day, which includes festivities and a parade down