Give Them Their Due

Jane and Ann in the garden of their house in Canton, Mass. 

The modest white house at 154 Dedham Street is most unassuming, yet it is one of our most important unmarked national historic sites owing to the family that moved there in the early 1900’s. And, while much has been written about Augustus Hinton, little has been written about his daughters and wife. Augustus (Gus) Hinton was the first African-American to hold the rank of professor at Harvard University in its 313-year history – and in fact that what Hinton is most widely known for is as the creator of the Hinton Test, the most effective tests leading to the diagnosis of syphilis. Wife Ada was director and vice president of the Home for Aged and Colored Women in Boston and headed up the Canton Community Club and the local Nursing Association. And, Jane Hinton, one of his daughter’s, is equally important to the development of microbiology and at the same time veterinary medicine. This was a power family.

Gus’ story has been shared before in this very column, but Ada - his wife, and his two children have always been behind the scenes in much of the telling of the history. Ada was born in Macon, Georgia in 1888. She had a fabulous education at a time when women of color were rarely afforded such opportunities. Attending Atlanta University, she graduated in 1901and then in 1906 received a master’s degree in mathematics from Chicago University. After her studies, Ada went on to become a teacher and a social worker.

Ada and Gus met in Oklahoma while she was teaching Latin and by 1909 they married and that same year moved to Boston and rented a small apartment at 52 Fenwood Road, Jamaica Plain. Later they lived at 1516 Cambridge Street in Cambridge near Harvard, and Gus took at least one trip to London in the spring of 1914. By 1916 they moved to Canton with their newborn daughter Ann. “We bought a nice big dining room table, and needed a house appropriate for a dining room.” And they hunted every town in a twenty-mile radius and landed in Canton. In 1919, Jane was born and the family prospered. The Hintons would spend the rest of their life - over forty five years in Canton.

Last year, a beautiful package arrived at the Historical Society postmarked from Burbank, California. Inside, there were five photographs and several transcripts of letters that give us a glimpse into the life of this prominent African American family living in Canton and raising their children. The archival material came from the great-niece of the artist and civil rights activist Edwin Augustus “Teddy” Harleston and his wife, photographer Elise Forrest Harleston of Charleston, South Carolina. The original letters are now in the collection at Emory University, but the donor was kind enough to share the transcripts and the original snapshots because of the Canton connections.

The Hintons and the Harlestons were great friends with a friendship that grew close over time. Ada had been friends with Teddy and the friendship carried them through the years. The letters are poignant, personal and reflective look at this prominent black family in Canton. Ada writes to Teddy in December 1919 from Dedham Street, “The Farrar family (the children next door) have moved so that Ann has no playmates but she is growing up and has adopted a whole tribe of imaginary children who seem to be just as much fun… her chief interest now is growing to be big enough to have a pony.” Ada continues to share great joy in sharing country living, “Gus was so pleased that you like our little home…We love it and are very happy here and we like to have our friends enjoy it also.”

And, friends did enjoy the hospitality here in Canton. Writing to his fiancé as she was shopping for her trousseau in New York City, Teddy Harleston describes the Hintons as “most likeable people with two children, living in the country on a little farm which she assists in working with pigs and all that. Plain, methodical living; no society connections; a dear and cozy little home in which they take much pride, doing much of the alterations themselves.” This is the same letter in which Teddy tells his bride to be that they have been invited to “honeymoon” in Canton. “They are not spry and beautiful young folks like you – they are slightly my seniors- her sisters took all the beauty, but they are absolutely sincere and we shall be at home, which is what we want.”

After the wedding, the Hintons met the Harlestons at the dock in Boston and personally escorted them to Canton. Most likely these are the photos from that trip that we now have in our local collection. The children are about the right age, and the newly planted trees in the yard are as a result of the labors written about the same time. Both of the Hinton girls attended Canton Public Schools and had great opportunities. In 1923, Gus bought eight year old Ann a Steinway piano, and little sister Jane was given “the most wonderful big doll with an elaborate trousseau.”

In 1927, W.E.B. Dubois wrote to Teddy and asked for a portrait of Hinton. “I have tried to get a photograph directly from him, but he has not had one taken for years and is very modest. I want to spread his name and fame… I hope you can help me.” That is a testament of both the stature and modesty of Gus Hinton, and a character element that ran throughout the Hinton family.

One of the letters suggests that the girls travelled to Europe, “the fact that Ann and Jane are going to France has made us so sentimental; so, sort of tense. I cannot bear them out of my sight etc.… and I am checking the days before the Fourth of July, when they sail from New York. Beyond that I simply cannot look except that I shall want to rest.” The year was 1925, Jane was six years old and Ann was ten years old, the mother writes, “we get such wonderfully encouraging letters from and about the children. They write in French altogether now.” This must have been a wonderful time in the lives of these small children from Canton.

The family was one of love and enrichment. And, the education paid off. It was Jane that took after her father. And, one can argue that Jane was equally the pioneer in the shadow of Gus. Jane Hinton was one of the first African-American women to become a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. But, prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, she was a laboratory technician at Harvard. While there, she worked on cultivating gonococcus, the causative agent of gonorrhea. The biological medium she devised is still saving lives today. The medium that bears her name, Mueller-Hinton agar is used in laboratories around the world to cultivate pathogenic microbes, determine treatment plans and prevent food borne illness.

In 1942, Jane travelled to Halifax, Nova Scotia with a medical team to help combat three epidemics that raged through the city. During World War II, she worked as a lab technician in Arizona. After the War, Jane studied veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, gaining her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree in 1949. She and Alfreda Johnson Webb, who graduated with a VMD from the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) that year, were the first African-American women veterinarians in the United States. Hinton and Webb were also the first African-American members of the Women's Veterinary Medicine Association. Returning to Canton Jane opened her practice as a small animal veterinarian and eventually became a federal government inspector in Framingham, Massachusetts. It was a remarkable career.

One observer of Jane’s life wrote that her “work has become central to basic microbiology and points to the importance of methodical, logical science. And she succeeded in this field in an age when her ability to pursue it to the utmost was severely limited. It is important that we celebrate her achievements so that we finally see the edifice of scientific knowledge being built by all of the peoples who contributed. So that when future generations of scientists are trained, they will know that whether they are brown or black, male, female or neither, they too, will be given their due.” For Canton, the Hinton Family lives on as nationally recognized scientists, doctors and through it all, our neighbors.

Flowers at a Grave

The leaves crunch underfoot, just as they did exactly three hundred years ago in the same spot. There is a mossy bed that surrounds the head and footstone and the October light dapples through the leaves of beautiful poplar. Much has changed beyond the walls of this place, but the reelections on life and sanctity are part of a continuum that defines our small town. There is perhaps no more sacred a place to our history and memories than Canton Corner Cemetery. And, the starting point is the final resting place of Gilburt Indicott. 

The gravestone still reads “Indicott” but the name came down through history as Endicott. And the family tree in America begins right here in this cemetery. The gravestone states that Endicott died on October 18, 1716, age 58. A later descendent from Canton named George Munroe Endicott conducted extensive research and found that “Gilbert Endicott son of John, born October 22, 1648.” It has been accepted that this reference in the parish records of Marldon, Devonshire, England would make our man out to have been 67 years old instead of the 58 on his gravestone. And, who doesn't want to be thought of as ten years younger – even in pre-colonial Dorchester.  

Interestingly, even if Endicott was 58 years old when he died, he packed a terrific amount of activity in his life, which ended here in Stoughton and what is now Canton. In 1676, Endicott was serving as a soldier in King Phillip’s War under Captain John Jacob of Hingham. It was bloody and vicious campaign. In Medfield – less than twelve miles away, “the Indians had burnt about forty houses, near half the town, and killed and wounded about twenty people.” Military patrols guarded the towns between Milton to the Plymouth Colony, and Endicott was likely a foot soldier in this war.  

In 1677, Endicott received a grant of land in Wells, Maine. The condition of the grant was such that “he should build a house within one year, and should not desert the place unless he leaves an occupant upon it.” The small rural community on the seacoast was begun by the enterprise of Edmund Littlefield in 1641. Many of the people who came to Wells and took grants of land, did not continue long enough to fulfill the conditions attached to them, but moved to other places within a few years of their arrival. Endicott, however, seemed to thrive.  In 1681 he received a second grant on the eastern side of Branch River and also purchased fifty acres of land from Major William Phillips.  

The property that Endicott had bought from Phillips was upland on a little river at Cape Porpus. He erected a small sawmill and prospered enough to sell the property in 1683. Endicott married Hannah Gooch (spelled Gowge) in 1686. And they were still in Wells in 1691 when he purchased 30 acres of land in York, Maine. There is also a record of him being in Dorchester for a time in 1690.  

Yet, living in Maine was quite difficult for these were hostile and dangerous times for the Endicotts and their neighbors. In June of 1691, the Abenaki Tribe attacked the village of Wells and the residents had successfully taken shelter and fought off the attackers in a garrison house.  Things really went from bad to worse when on January 24 1692, the morning after Candlemas Day, the town of York, Maine was burned to the ground by a band of 150 Abenaki Indians.  The warrior Indians began systematically breaking into every home, killing the inhabitants inside, and then setting fire to the house. At some point, the killing stopped, and, as one observer wrote, “it would seem as if the savages themselves grew weary of the bloodshed.” With the exception of four garrison houses where some managed to take shelter, all of the 18 or 19 houses on the north side of the York River were burned. Between 40 and 48 people were killed in the massacre, with an estimated 100 others taken captive and forced to march with their captors to Quebec. Indian hostilities continued even after the horrific attack in nearby York, Maine and many families started an exodus from the region. 

By 1696, after almost twenty years in rural Maine, the Endicotts moved to Reading, Massachusetts. It was there that James Endicott was born and where Hannah was baptized. Many of the early settlers in Maine had left and came to Massachusetts for safety. Interestingly, several of Gilbert Endicott’s neighbors from York, Maine escaped after the Candlemas Day Massacre and settled in what is now Canton and Stoughton. Our local historian, Huntoon, wrote “It is a touching incident in our local history that the emigrants driven from the place of their first settlement in the Province of Maine, should have named the new place of their residence “York” and that this name should have been applied to a part of our town from that time to the present.” 

It is also ironic that when Gilbert Endicott came to Ponkapoag in the “wilds of Dorchester,” that he should again engage closely with the Indians. In 1700, Endicott built a house here and had a second child named Sarah who was baptized in the church in Milton. A lease from the Ponkapoag Praying Indians is dated February 27, 1704-5. In exchange for a yearly payment of “£4 in pepper-corn” Endicott received an illegal lease that would supposedly run for two hundred years. Endicott also owned land in what is now Sharon and was bounded by Massapoag Brook. 

In Canton, he settled at what is now the intersection of Chapman and Washington Streets and kept an unlicensed tavern. In 1702 he was obliged to appear before the court for permission to continue his enterprise – which was allowed. Yet he had many simultaneous occupations.  

It would appear from all the real estate transactions that Endicott was fairly prosperous. In 1708 he purchased a half-acre of land in Orange (now Washington Street) in Boston. Quite the enterprising man, he built a dwelling house “of 30 foot long 20 wide & 22 studd with a flatt roof on his land scituate at ye South end of Boston.” This too was to become an inn, but Endicott found it difficult to license and so he ended that venture in 1711. 

Gilbert Endicott died in 1716, and was buried in a new burying ground to the rear of where the new meetinghouse was being built. Today at Canton Corner, this gravesite is the most ancient of the early settlers. On this past Tuesday night, three hundred year to the day of his death, this author – accompanied by a handful of residents walked quietly through the leaves to the grave. Kneeling in the damp grass, we took a moment to reflect. In the flickering light from colonial-era lanterns we paid homage to the legacy and memory of Gilbert Endicott. It was an emotional and touching scene as we left flowers at the grave – perhaps for the first time in hundreds of years. Rest in peace Gilburt Indicott 1648 – 1716. 

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.