When The Port Was a Port

By Michael Kenney, 2014 An early 20th century photograph of the schooner Henry Endicott heading up the Charles River towards the Broad Canal stands as evidence that there was a time when the “port” in Cambridgeport had any real meaning. The Henry Endicott was a 192-foot, three-masted schooner built in Bath, Maine, in 1908, for…

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Self-Guided Tour: The History of Candy Making in Cambridge

By Natalie Moravek, Intern In 1946, sixty-six candy manufacturing companies were listed in the phone book. The candy industry in the area began in 1765, on the banks of the Neponset River in Dorchester, when an Irish immigrant named John Hannon established a chocolate mill. The large and populated city made an ideal setting for…

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Minimum Wages for Women in Early 20th Century Cambridge

By Sarah Huggins, Intern, Lesley UniversityMarch 2020 What image enters your mind when thinking about Cambridge? For many, it’s the Corinthian columns of our prestigious institutions of higher education. But less than a hundred years ago the city was a major industrial center:- a manufacturing mecca of brick buildings and smokestacks. The Boston Daily Globe…

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Some Aspects of the East Cambridge Story

By John W. Wood, 1956 “This paper gives a totally inadequate account of an appealingly picturesque and colorful neighborhood, the area that might have been a slum and isn’t, the step-child of the University City. “ For some reason, the local history of East Cambridge has been almost completely neglected. It is a little hard…

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Cambridgeport: Its People and Their Stories

By Michael Kenney, Winter 2011  Cambridgeport stands, geographically and socially, midway between East Cambridge and Old Cambridge, neither a traditional southern European enclave nor the remnants of Puritan New England. This issue of the Newetowne Chronicle focuses on Cambridgeport and its vibrant past through a collection of articles and a report on the celebration of…

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