In 1941, the ‘Dearos’ fought the ‘Foundry Fielders’ over where the borders of East Cambridge ended
By Beth Folsom, 2025
A headline in a 1941 Cambridge Sentinel asked: “What is East Cambridge?” The article recounts the “fracas” between local funeral home director Daniel F. O’Brien and police Capt. John Canney over who could claim to be a resident of the neighborhood.
O’Brien planned a reunion of current and former East Cambridge residents, and had sent out hundreds of cards to his neighbors to “inquire in what part of East Cambridge they first saw the day they sniffed that peculiarly penetrating and invigorating aroma of ‘Squire’s.’” This gathering, taking place April 18, 1941, to commemorate the night in 1775 when the British troops landed in East Cambridge to begin their march to Lexington and Concord, had also been held in 1940, but O’Brien was curating the guest list for 1941 carefully “to quell the ‘ringer’ element from over the railroad who usurped so much space at the great event last year, to the exclusion of bonafide ‘dearos.’”
O’Brien’s contention was that to be a true East Cantabrigian one must live east of the train tracks – an opinion fiercely opposed by Canney and the other “Foundry Fielders” who had grown up across the train tracks but considered East Cambridge their home. According to Canney, his fellow “Fielders … were imbued with the Dearo spirit through sharing church and school with those on the other side of the crossing. He argues most cogently for the spiritual and educational values, which are more vital than a railroad built to carry hogs to slaughter.”
TheSentinel echoed these sentiments in an editorial addressed to O’Brien:
Is [Canney] not convincing when he argues that, inasmuch as his people went to church and school, also blended into the social life of East Cambridge, no mere railroad should bar them from the pleasure of meeting old associates? Are you not too rigid in your interpretation of what a “Dearo” should be? Are you not lacking in imagination, perspicuity, not to say fraternalism, in holding to a dirty, odorous railroad crossing as a boundary when these Canneyites shared with you the blessings of church, school and sociality, of the quality that made East Cambridge so distinctive in an elder day?
In response to the Fielders’ demands for inclusion in the April 18 event, a group of Dearos argued that the Fielders had joined forces with the street gangs of Cambridgeport in the neighborhood scuffles of the 1890s, when many of the older generation hoping to attend the 1941 reunion were boys and young men. Canney denied these allegations vigorously, arguing that “the Cambridge St. Foundry Fielders always fought with the Easters in these historic frays.” To Canney and his associates, the neighborhood had always been united in spirit, despite the presence of the train tracks.
By the time the event rolled around, the contest over neighborhood boundaries had put enough pressure on O’Brien and the other Dearo “purists” that they reluctantly allowed the Fielders to attend the reunion, resulting in a crowd of more than 4,000 current and former residents gathering – without incident.
Canney even received a formal welcome from the event stage, with the Sentinel reporting that his speech “fairly bubbled with gratitude. He has all the attributes of a Dearo, but the birthmark.” In the end, a spirit of magnanimity prevailed in what the Sentinel called a “big tent affair.”
As History Cambridge explores the East Cambridge neighborhood this year, we are curious about current opinions of where the neighborhood’s borders lie. Are you from East Cambridge, or did you grow up there? What do you consider part of the neighborhood, and why? Are the train tracks a hard-and-fast boundary for you, or do you base your idea of East Cambridge on school, parish or other affiliations? Let us know how you define East Cambridge and how you’ve seen the neighborhood shift over time.
This article originally appeared in Cambridge Day.
