Merit Not Race

William A. Hinton
(Courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

In all honesty, Canton does not have a rich history that includes stories about African-Americans. There are dark elements of stories that trace the ownership of slaves to Isaac Royal – for whom Royal Street is named at the foot of the Blue Hill. In fact, while there were blacks living in that part of Stoughton that is now Canton, many of them had married into the Ponkapoag Indian Tribe and their stories have mostly been lost to time.

Yet, Canton does celebrate the career and home of William Augustus “Gus” Hinton, the first African-American to hold the rank of professor at Harvard University in its 313-year history. Yet, what Gus Hinton is widely known for is the Hinton Test, one that became the most effective tests leading to the diagnosis of syphilis.

Born in 1883 in Chicago, Illinois, Hinton was the son of Augustus Hinton and Maria Clark, emancipated slaves from North Carolina. Little is known of Hinton’s parents. What we do know is after slavery, Augustus Hinton was freed following the Civil War and became a farmer and railroad porter. It is possible that the Hinton surname came from being a slave on one of the Hinton Plantations. The largest landowner in the early days of Wake County (then Johnston County), North Carolina was the Hinton family. One of their early grants was a 136-acre parcel located on the west bank of the Neuse River. This was followed shortly with multiple grants, which eventually led to their having some 22,000 acres, extending to Clayton. Hundreds of slaves all took the name Hinton as a result of being the property of the Hinton Family.

The historical records indicate that the Hinton family treated their slaves very well and had a small school building erected for their education. Yet, when you read the slave narratives conducted by the Federal Writer’s Project in 1938, education did not seem to be a part of the backstory.  Robert Hinton, an emancipated slave, when interviewed about education said, "De white folks, ole missus, teached us de catechism, but dey didn't want you to learn to read and write. I can read and write now; learned since de surrender.” As for Augustus and Maria Hinton they knew that for their son to be successful in America, he would need an education.

Shortly after William Hinton was born, the family moved to Kansas City, Kansas and they determined to give him the education they likely had not enjoyed. Hinton attended public schools and a private Catholic school and worked as a newsboy. Through perseverance, young Gus Hinton would propel himself into the upper echelons of medicine and earn a place in history and science.

Hinton’s career choice was medicine, sparked by a high school biology teacher. Graduating from high school as the youngest in its history at age 16, Hinton went on to attend the University of Kansas in 1900. Within two years he was forced to drop out, unable to pay the tuition. Taking a leave he was able to earn enough money to return, yet the program of studies changed such that instead he transferred to Harvard College in Cambridge on a scholarship. A recurring theme in Hinton’s education was the fact that he would be forced repeatedly to leave school to finance his education, returning each and every time to move forward. For three years after his graduation, Hinton worked teaching biology, chemistry and physics in colleges in Tennessee and Oklahoma. It was in Langston, Oklahoma that Hinton met fellow teacher, Ada Hawes, who was teaching Latin at the Agricultural and Mechanical College. In 1909, Ada and Gus married, and that same year, they moved to Boston and rented a small apartment at 52 Fenwood Road, Jamaica Plain.

Although several years had passed since Hinton had done his pre-medical studies, he was able to enter Harvard Medical School and skip the second year, thus graduating in three years. Remarkably, and also in character, Hinton won the Edward Wigglesworth Scholarship – recommended by the administrative board to a “needy and deserving student.” At the same time, Hinton refused to accept the Lewis and Harriet Hayden Scholarship for “colored” students. Hinton stated that he wanted to be rewarded on his merit, not compensated because of his race. Graduating with cum laude in 1912, Hinton initially desired to become a surgeon, yet hospitals in Boston denied blacks the opportunity to intern with patients.

After Hinton’s graduation, Dr. Richard C. Cabot, a close friend and eminent physician, remarked that “but for Hinton’s courage, determination, and perseverance, his contributions to humanity might have been lost.” A former student of Cabot’s, Hinton had worked in the Harvard Laboratories that would become the backdrop of his groundbreaking research. “He was determined to succeed without benefit of internship which is considered essential for every doctor,” observed Cabot.

By 1915, Hinton moved his family to a modest house at 154 Dedham Street in Canton. It is likely that fellow classmate, Henry Lyman told Hinton of the four-acre parcel just a few miles from his own home on Elm Street. Lyman was a research chemist at Harvard, and by many accounts a close personal friend of the Hinton’s. Lyman was married into the Cabot family and kept homes on Commonwealth Avenue as well. The connection between Hinton and Lyman certainly shows the respect that the medical community of scholars held for this remarkable man.

The house in Canton was sold as an accessory to the land. The owner had told the Hinton’s that “the house isn’t worth anything, what you are getting is the land.” Yet, it was that house that Hinton turned into a home. Dr. Hinton loved both gardening and furniture making. A friend of Hinton said that “the pool was always filled with lilies of all colors, there was a tennis court, a rose garden, and an orchard and grape vines on the hill with every kind of fruit tree that grows in this part of the country.” His barbecues were legendary, and he worked to cut paths into the woods, lining the borders with irises and ladyslippers. “He loved the unusual and the beautiful.”

In 1919, Hinton received an appointment as instructor in preventative medicine and Hygiene at Harvard Medical School, commencing a more than three-decade teaching association at Harvard. In 1931, he started a school that would train women to become laboratory technicians. At the same time, Hinton was overseeing the expansion of state laboratory facilities and expanded ten facilities to more than a hundred in order to meet state regulations for marital blood tests. From 1946 -1949, Hinton worked as a consultant at the Massachusetts Hospital School here in Canton.

What Hinton was best known for, however, was his groundbreaking medical research in the field of sexually transmitted diseases, in particular, syphilis. During the period between 1930 and 1943, the rate of syphilis climbed by over 150%, and the treatment was a long series of painful injections or oral doses of mercury, bismuth and arsenic. As early as the mid 1920’s, Hinton insisted that treatment “not be guided by the persistence of positive tests, but by the physician’s diagnosis, since many patients react positively long after the disease has become inactive.” Hinton had come to recognize the problem of false positive tests, and set out to develop a more definitive test for syphilis.

False positive tests resulted in painful treatment, dangerous prognoses and the stigma of a shameful venereal disease.  By 1927, Hinton published the finding of a test that would become the widely known Hinton Test. Ten years later; the Hinton Test was the most sensitive and accurate test for syphilis ever created. False positives were almost eliminated, and as a result Hinton’s test became the gold standard. More importantly, in 1935 Hinton wrote the seminal text Syphilis and Its Treatment, devoting extensive sections to patient care. He made it clear that such diseases were “a by-product of poverty and ignorance and poor living conditions.” Race was not a factor in the spread of venereal diseases.

In fact, Hinton worked his whole life to ensure that race was not a factor in his work. So much so that he generally felt that widespread knowledge of the fact that he was black would delay the acceptance of his test. Robert C. Hayden, a biographer that wrote extensively on Hinton explains that “he was very realistic, and felt if his work got out there and they found out that he was black, his science would be devalued. In fact, some southern states stopped using the Hinton Test when they learned of his race.”  Hinton turned down the NAACP's 1938 Spingarn Medal award because he wanted his work to stand on its own merit. "Race should never get mixed up in the struggle for human welfare," he would later comment.

On February 10, 1941, Hinton left his home in Canton and was involved in accident on icy roads on Morton Street in Mattapan. His car skidded and a second car driving 15 mph crashed into him and caused such injury that Hinton’s leg was amputated above the knee. The next 18 years were filled with pain and acute diabetes, yet Hinton worked tirelessly at Harvard. In 1949, one year before academic retirement, Hinton was made Clinical Professor of Bacteriology, the first black to be named to a professorial rank in Harvard’s history. 

Hinton died at his home here in Canton on August 8, 1959 and was celebrated at First Parish Church at Canton Corner. In his will he left $75,000 to be put into a special scholarship for Harvard graduate students. The fund, a memorial to his parents, “who although born into slavery and without formal education, nevertheless recognized and practiced not only the highest ideals of their personal conduct, but also the true democratic principle of equal opportunity for all, without regard to racial or religious origins or to political status.” Hinton named the fund the Dwight D. Eisenhower Scholarship Fund in honor of the president whom he had felt made great strides in providing equal opportunity employment during his administration.  President Eisenhower wrote, “I could not recall having been given a personal distinction that had touched me more deeply.”

In 2008, Governor Deval Patrick dedicated the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Laboratory Institute in honor of Dr. William A. Hinton.

Special thanks to members of the Hinton family and to Robert C. Hayden, Jr. historian, author, and educator.

A Cave to Remember

Fairbanks Ledge on Standish Way
 (photo by George T. Comeau)

I was intrigued the day I opened the email from my good friend and fellow historian Dave Lambert. Lambert is one of the town of Stoughton’s preeminent local historians, and since Canton was once part of Stoughton, he shares my passion for all things related to the history of our two sibling communities.

The email arrived in early January 2009. The body of the email was simple and read: “Here are the images of Fairbanks Cave in 1908, and the location in 2009. Want to go on an adventure; let me know!”

An adventure? “Yes” always was my answer. After all, I assume, dear reader, that you saw my last installment on the subject of trespassing. The very idea of a “cave” in Canton was more than I could hope for. The email contained the map illustrated with this story.

Old maps are not new to Canton. The “Histy” has dozens upon dozens. Nestled in banker’s boxes, on the shelf above the vault door, hanging on walls, in flat files, and just about everywhere throughout the building. In fact, several similar maps to the one that Lambert sent me are in a small metal drawer just inside the Historical Society vault. Some of the maps are so old and creased that great care must be taken with simply unrolling the vellum.

It turns out that actually finding this cave would be harder than it seemed. Canton has changed so much in a hundred years. The landscape has been bulldozed, filled, excavated, and man has dominated the natural form such that little unprotected and untouched open space remains. A cave might surely be lost to growth and expansion of subdivisions and modern construction.

That said, the accompanying map that came with Lambert’s email had a few tantalizing clues. It was amazingly detailed and accurate in measure and scale. The map was sketched en route to accompany an outing of the Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC). The trip of 44 persons came to Canton on April 11, 1908, and “hiked” from Canton Junction to the Wetherbee Pasture and onto the Fairbanks Cave. The total hike was 4.5 miles and took a few hours to complete.  Today, actually finding this cave would take me several days of research and driving around town.

The Wetherbee Pasture in 1918 Now the
Blue Hill Country Club
(courtesy of the Canton Historical Society)

The map was drawn by E.G. Chamberlain. Chamberlain had written the guide on the Blue Hills for Appalachia, the Journal of the AMC, in 1883 and likely led the club’s excursion to Canton and Milton in 1883. Chamberlain’s map of the Blue Hill Range is highly detailed and superbly drawn. By 1904, Chamberlain’s Blue Hill Panorama had been carelessly copied by so many people that he had an original copy lithographed, and it became standard issue for all day hikers from the AMC.

It was the practice of the AMC to bring along a mapmaker on outings to draw details of the trip and publish these as small “blue prints” to be distributed to members. The map that Lambert had emailed me was a small blueprint that captured small details in the paths and landscape perfectly. It should prove easy to find the cave’s location simply looking at old maps and overlaying Google Maps with the 1908 drawing.

The puzzle on the Fairbanks Cave Map is that I could find no local reference to Fairbanks. It was Chamberlain’s practice to name objects discovered by the club during their outings. For instance, Chamberlain writes of a trip to Amesbury, Massachusetts: “After visiting Powder House Hill we crossed a deep valley and ascended a higher hill, which diligent search shows has never appeared on any map. Even the recent state topographic map omits it. So I called it ‘Lost Hill’ on my outing map.” This was a clue that perhaps Chamberlain had simply named the cave on whim.

It turns out that in the Canton Historical Society a small map drawn to accompany the 1887 Fast Day Walk to the same spot described the topography, 21 years earlier, as Fairbanks Ledge. The historian Daniel Huntoon walked with the society members that day and told the story: “A huge mass of cold gray granite rises abruptly in the midst of the woods and underbrush. On the westerly side is an opening where six or eight men might easily find shelter. Here tradition asserts that one Fairbanks, ages ago, was obliged to secrete himself for a long time in order to avoid the officers of justice. It would appear that an Indian made some offensive gesture, accompanied with an insulting remark to Fairbanks; whereupon the latter, upon the impulse of the moment, fired a charge of buckshot into the Indian, from the effects of which he died.”

The AMC Outing to Fairbanks Cave
(courtesy of David Lambert)
Click to enlarge details

The map is very technically drawn and is very similar to several other hand-drawn maps of the same period. Canton had plenty of connections in the AMC. Frederic Endicott, a prominent Canton resident and superb surveyor and cartographer, served as a councilor to the AMC. Many of Endicott’s maps survive in the Canton Historical Society and are superbly drawn and highly accurate. Endicott drew the 1887 Fast Day Walk map that identifies this site as Fairbanks Ledge.

The overlays of historic maps, the AMC Map, and our new age Google Maps – complete with satellite imagery – do not solve the question. After unsuccessfully locating the cave using our modern technology, it was time to talk to people in the area.

I called Mrs. Meadow, who lives on the west side of Elm Street and whose property I guessed the cave would be located on. Meadow came to Canton in 1956 and had purchased the Draper property on Elm Street. The original tract of land totaled almost 75 acres, and when Route 95 cut through the property it was reduced to the present 40 acres. This large property is largely intact and could be a breakthrough in this research. Mrs. Meadow, however, did not think the cave was on her property, but a return call from her son, Richard, confirmed both the existence and the location.

Richard Meadow, a prominent archeologist at Harvard University, had indeed recalled what he described as the “Indian Cave.” In reality, it was a large rocky outcropping with a deep hole that he would explore with other friends while hiking his own property and the neighboring Fish property. A small opening in the fence gave access to the area where the “cave” was situated.

And so the mystery is solved; you too can visit the Indian Cave. It turns out that the “cave” was never really lost and never really a cave in the truest sense. Fairbanks Ledge is readily accessible if you drive to the very end of Standish Way. The rock is, as Huntoon described it, “immense,” and well worth the drive by. Finding an old map and discovering our rich local history is as impressive as the journey itself.

This story originally appeared in the Canton Citizen on February 3, 2011.

Trespassing: A Bridge to the Past

Stone Bridge over Ponkapoag Brook

 (photo by George T. Comeau)

You really should not trespass. And yet, while it is indeed risky to admit to this fact, sometimes the prize is worth the risk. Let me place by way of disclaimer the fact that you should in no way follow in my footsteps; let this be fair warning. You should leave the trespassing to well qualified Canton historians who are happy to tramp through backyards, fields and swamps in search of historic sites and long lost cellar holes. In fact, that is what we will do this week. Let’s take a virtual tramp through Canton and discover a hidden artifact that is still intact and pretty much inaccessible to all but the trespasser.

There are some wonderfully hidden sites in Canton that have been lost to both time and memories. I have always been fascinated with the old stonewalls that crisscross throughout the town. Many of these walls served as both boundary lines and pens for livestock. As you ride the train to Boston from Canton Junction you will see plenty of old stonewalls in the swamps heading toward the Fowl Meadows. As you drive down York Street or meander down Chapman Street, look between the old house lots and see the ancient walls that are reminders of an agricultural Canton when the stonewall was a staple of a small farm and garden.

Take Elm Street for instance — a perfect example of one of our most beautiful streets in Canton. Go slow, not only for the curves, but to take in the splendor of this colonial roadway. As for trespassing, that is just what I did recently when I parked my truck along the intersection of Greenlodge and Elm and took off on foot after the recent snowstorm. I was looking for a very old bridge that crosses Ponkapoag Brook on what was originally Back Street — the “back” road to Dedham Street.

 On my right, climbing a gentle hill, were the remnants of the old country road disappearing even deeper into private property. This road dates to 1738 and follows the layout of an earlier road called the Packeen Path. If you bought your Christmas tree at the Pakeen Farm on Elm Street, this is the same property that was part of the original 12 Divisions shown on the 1696 map of what would become Stoughton and Canton.

Situated well above the marshes of the Fowl Meadow, this path was used extensively as a native trail and later became a colonial cart path. By 1798, the old road was discontinued and in the process created a time capsule of sorts as it has been largely untouched for over 200 years. The pathway is bordered by stonewalls that measure one rod wide (16 ½ feet) and a deep upland of white pine. I decided it would not be proper to travel further than necessary onto private property and instead sought after the stone bridge spanning the Ponkapoag Brook.

I had been to this bridge a few times before, but only in the summer when it was hardly possible to see the structure due to the overgrowth. As I tramped further and the snow got a bit deeper, and the afternoon light got dimmer, I was almost forced to give up for the day. The fresh snow was only marked by the occasional rabbit track and now my footfalls. The only sound was the running of the stream — pure, clean and cold — a layer of ice running up the side of the banks. This trespass was made easier by the fact that the path I was on was the new interceptor project for the Greenlodge Street sewer project.

Ancient Stoughton Record of 1744 in the collection of
the Canton Historical Society (photo by George T. Comeau)

About half a mile up on the left was the old stone bridge — hidden in the woods in an improbable place, since any use for this structure ended in 1798 when the old Country Road was abandoned. The bridge was as wonderful as I recalled. Dating to between 1738 and 1744, this is a quintessential cart bridge over a babbling brook. It is hard to imagine, but this bridge was the highway between the iron forge, built in 1717 on Walpole Street, and the Blue Hills. There is a series of huge volumes of Ancient Stoughton Records in the Canton Historical Society and within a dusty tome is an obscure reference to the bridge in 1744. The brittle paper details the laying out of the road by the selectmen of Stoughton and has a single line that reads in part “from thence to Puncapogg Brook where ye Bridge now is & over ye Brook Marked a large Maple tree by ye Brook.” Our bridge is more than 266 years old and may in fact be approaching 275 years old.

Dropping down the icy bank of “ye Brook” to take a photo for our non-trespassing readers, it was a joy to see this relic in such wonderful condition. The deck is a series of four stone slabs of Dedham granite, each measuring three feet in width and eight feet in length. Although covered in snow, I recall that there are no quarrying marks and they are likely natural in form. The abutments built on the north and south banks of the brook are dry fieldstone. This is a superbly crafted bridge and would have had to support the weight of animals and carts loaded with iron destined for Boston. The abutments are built up of five courses of rough stone and were likely completed by skilled masons in the “traditional English form.”

In 1875, the Canton Historical Society organized its annual Fast Day Walk (Patriots Day) and described their “trespass” to this site thus: “turned abruptly down a neglected lane, along the line that once divided Lot No. 5 of the Twelve Divisions from the Indian land. We examined with care an old stone bridge, which has stood, where it now stands, long anterior to the memory of those now living. It is remarkable for the size of the top stones, the largest measuring eight feet by seven and nine inches. These stones were selected in the adjoining fields and have never been touched by chisel, wedge or hammer.”

So little is written about this bridge that it is hard to even know if there was an earlier bridge at this spot. What we do know is that this is one of the few remaining examples of a mid-18^th century slab stone Colonial period bridge in eastern Massachusetts. Dr. Arthur Krim, who has researched Canton for the Historical Commission, believes that this bridge is worthy of inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places; it is just that important.


This story ran in the Canton Citizen on January 6, 2011.