No. 5370 Advertisement for Huebener Hospital for Furniture in Dorchester Day Program, June 5, 1915
Edward A. Huebener, was born in 1854 and spent part of his life in a home that already had a long history—the John Danforth House. Danforth, a minister of Dorchester’s First Church, served from the last years of the seventeenth century through the first quarter of the eighteenth. The house was later used as the Turk’s Head Tavern, then re-converted to residential use as a home for Judge Cummins and his novelist daughter Maria Cummins, author of The Lamplighter, a best-selling novel of the 1850s.
Huebener became an antiques collector, and he operated a furniture repair shop. One of his obituary notices stated that “Mr. Huebener was famous through New England as a collector of relics and antiques. His house is filled with them, and the aged man spent much of this time adding to his amazing collection of historical interest and importance. The varied treasures reflected the art and craftsmanship of earlier days. The old objects with which he literally surrounded himself he regarded with reverence, seeing in them a greater beauty and better workmanship than in modern reproductions. … Many of [the objects] contribute to the knowledge of Dorchester’s history, in which Mr. Huebener took great interest …”
Huebener collected photographs and other Dorchester historical material. Huebener collected bricks from Dorchester buildings and had portraits of the buildings painted on the face of the bricks. The brick collection and other material is now at the Dorchester Historical Society. Huebener was a board member of the Society.