Frank Thayer Merrill

No. 12786 Frank T. Merrill self-portrait from Living New England Artists by Frank Torrey Robinson. (Boston, 1888)

A book illustrator, Frank T. Merrill is listed in The Who’s Who of Artists as a native of Dorchester, born in 1848. He lived at at 16 Tremlett Street. He illustrated many, many books from the 1890s through 1920s. Known for illustrating Little Women in 1880, among many other books.

Reader’s Comment:

From: “Andy Hardacker” October 9, 2005
Re: Overview: Frank T. Merrill

Frank Thayer Merrill did indeed live at 16 Tremlett Street.

He was born in Boston on 14 December 1848, the son of George William Merrill and Sarah Rose Alden. He studied at Boston Latin, the Lowell Institute and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. After travel and study in Europe, he began a career as a book illustrator. He illustrated standard editions of English classics, such as Thackeray and Scott, and original works by many American authors, including Hawthorn and Twain. In 2002, the Concord (MA) Museum mounted an exhibition of Merrill’s original sketches for the 1880 edition of Little Women and his correspondence with Louisa May Alcott.

No. 12755 Merrill illustration for Lass of Dorchester

Merrill’s wife, Jessie S. Aldrich Merrill, purchased the land on Tremlett Street on 13 May 1886 for “One dollar and other valuable considerations”. The quitclaim deed specifies that “no dwelling house shall be erected on said land to cost less than Five Thousand Dollars, and shall be set back on the line of the house recently built and occupied by said Mansfield on the lot next easterly of the granted premises” Suffolk Registry of Deeds Book 1723 page 347 May 13, 1886. [number 18, destroyed by fire in the early 1970s]. The third floor of the house contains large studio lit by a Palladian-windowed dormer. The house backed up to the Colonial Club on Washington Street.

References:
Samuel Merrill, A Merrill Memorial, (Cambridge, MA: 1917-1928)

John Alden Merrill, Jr., “Frank Thayer Merrill’s Boston Sketches”, Old-Time New England, (Boston: SPNEA, Summer 1966):15-20

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Posted on

December 25, 2021