Burning of the Ursuline Convent
A town inspected the rumor, found nothing, and watched the fire anyway.
Listen to this place’s story in Peplos.
How the story begins
The woman they said was imprisoned in the convent on the hill nearby carried the key to the tomb herself. Elizabeth Harrison taught music at the Ursuline school for girls on Mount Benedict. She gave fourteen lessons a day. In the summer of 1834 she walked out, and by her later account she was out of her mind. She came back after about a day. Rumor said she was being held, or had been killed.
The rest is in the app. Peplos plays the full story when you reach the place. You can also listen ahead of time.
Visiting
Corner of Broadway and Illinois Avenue, East Somerville. A marker to the convent has been recorded near this corner, and Chuckie Harris Park is close by. The convent and its hill are gone.
Sources
- Trial of John R. Buzzell (1834), Internet Archive
- Mass Moments, Charlestown Convent Lies in Ruins
- New England Historical Society, Anti-Irish Know Nothing Mob Burns a Charlestown Convent
- Boston Evening Transcript, 12 August 1834, Yale Gilder Lehrman Center
- Irish Boston, Charlestown's Ursuline Convent Burned (2023)
- John Francis Maguire, The Irish in America (1868), Library Ireland
- Wikipedia, Ursuline Convent riots
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