Eagle Feathers #300 – Boynton Yards

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

Somerville broke away from Charlestown in 1842. This was the same year that the Bunker Hill Monument was capped off and completed. It was also the year that the John P. Squire Company was founded. It was the first packing company established in the city.

Through the coming years along with the North Packing and Provision Company, the New England Dressed Meat and Wool Company and the Boynton Packing Company these became “the big four.” Their presence caused many spinoff companies to be born in the Union Square area which made Somerville the meat packing capital of New England. They specialized in beef, pork and lamb products. She was known as the Chicago of the east.

Of these, the name Boynton still reminds us of Somerville’s early industries. The livestock arrived by rail at the Boynton Yards, was processed and the resulting product was marketed worldwide.

John Boynton was a humble and little-known man who until he was thirty worked on his father’s farm in Mason, New Hampshire. He then set up his own small business in Templeton, Massachusetts. His product was tin and his tinware carts became popular throughout Worcester County and New England. It is said that he was thoroughly devoted to his business affairs and gave less thought to other matters.

Who was John Boynton? Despite his quiet manner, he left a memorable footprint.

• John Boynton was a prominent Worcester industrialist.
• He served a short time in the Massachusetts Legislature.
• He was the first president of the Millers River Bank in Athol, Massachusetts.
• In his quiet manner, he gave $10,000 to the public schools in Mason, New Hampshire where he was born.
• In 1868, Templeton’s Boynton Free Public Library was donated in his name by David Whitcomb, his cousin and former partner in the tinware business.
• Boynton was Templeton’s Postmaster for five years from 1843 to 1848.
• The Templeton Museum at One Boynton Road in Templeton,

Massachusetts houses one of his tinware carts and many of his tin artifacts.

• In 1989, Salem, New Hampshire, with monies from the Boynton Fund, named a new middle school after him.
• Since 1865, Worcester Polytechnic Institute owes its origination to John Boynton’s $100,000 donation. This gift was used to create a free school wherein young men would learn useful mechanical arts in addition to the standard subjects of study. Today, WPI students can celebrate their founder with visits to Boynton Hall, Street, Park, or the nearby Boynton Restaurant & Spirits nicknamed “The Boynton.”
• John passed away on March 25, 1867 in Templeton.

Today, his Boynton Yards in Somerville can be described as a future state of the art innovative campus for bio technology. John would be pleased!