Jacob Fottler
No. 7212 Jacob Fottler
From: One of a Thousand. A Series of Biographical Sketches of One Thousand Representative Men Resident in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, A.D. 1888-89. Compiled under the editorial supervision of John C. Rand. Boston: First National Publishing Company, 1890.
Fottler, Jacob, son of John and Mary (Donald) Fottler, was born in Dorchester, Norfolk County, August 19, 1839.
He obtained his school training in the common schools of Belmont and Brighton, and at the Eliot High School, Jamaica Plain.
He worked at home on his father’s farm—a tract of land now included within the boundaries of Franklin Park—also for a time at Hingham; at the age of nineteen he left home for California, and for some time was employed on a ranch in that state; coming back to Boston, he secured a situation in Faneuil Hall market. In 1872 he was admitted as a partner in the firm of Sands, Furber & Co., which business relation still continues.
Mr. Fottler was married in Sanbornton, N.H., March 12, 1865, to Lucy Ann, daughter of Captain Edward and Phebe (Morrison) Evans. Of this union are two children: Frances Bell and Milton Evans Fottler.
Mr. Fottler was a member of the Boston Common Council in 1885, ’86 and ’87, and served on the following committees: public parks, public institutions, markets, elections, and sale of reservoir lot. He was a member of the House of Representatives, 1888 and ’89, and served on the committee on the state-house. He is a member of the Boston Chamber of Commerce—elected to serve on the board of directors for a term of three years; a member of the Boston Fruit and Produce Exchange, and also of the Bay State Agricultural Society.
He is member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts—receiving a lieutenant’s commission June 6, 1887. Mr. Fottler visited England in July, 1887, as one of the delegation of the “Ancients,” who were invited by the Honourable Artillery Company of London to be present and assist in the three hundred and fiftieth anniversary celebration of that company.
From:A Healing Landscape: Environmental and Social history of the Site of Mass Audubon’s Boston Nature Centure. Second edition. (Lincoln, MA, 2016), 54.
Who were the Fottlers? In 1830, Jacob and Barbara Fottler emigrated from Germany to America with their teenage sons John and Jacob Jr. and four other children. Passing through Boston, they originally intended to settle in the Midwest, but tragedy struck: In a much-publicized incident, a steamer sank in the Ohio River at Cincinnati, with Jacob Sr. and two sisters among the dead. Returning back east, the remaining family settled in Dorchester, where John, the eldest son, soon became breadwinner for the family with a job in Quincy Market.
In 1838, John married Mary Donald, an English immigrant, and the couple began their own family. Making a career in the growing and selling of plants for the needs of the expanding city, John worked in a number of places around Boston; he helped to deliver and plant some of the first shrubs and flowers used in the new landscaping on Boston Common, worked in a nursery in Cambridge, farmed on Savin Hill in Dorchester, and worked his way up to serving as landscaping and agricultural supervisor for various large estates in the area.
Meanwhile, John’s younger brother Jacob Jr. had married a Hannah Williams of Roxbury—probably from a different branch of the family than that of Isaac—and settled on a farm just north of the future BNC, on land now occupied by Franklin Park. Not long after, John and Mary settled with their family on another farm nearby. In the 1870 agricultural census, the Fottlers were the only farmers in the area who sold more garden produce, vegetables and flowers, than did their competitor on Walk Hill Street, Joseph Lambert; and, since John Fottler maintained strong ties to the marketing side of the business, they established a sort of family empire combining both production and distribution in one operation.
On the basis of their parents’ success, the second generation branched out in various ways, some of them taking the family business in new directions. John’s sons Jacob II and John Jr. were most interested in the marketing side, Jacob working in general produce at Quincy Market (and eventually holding positions in city and state government) and John Jr. building a prominent seed company downtown in partnership with one Schlegel, presumably another German immigrant. Interestingly, both brothers became Masons, thereby increasing their influence in business and social circles both in Boston and farther afield. Of Jacob Junior’s sons, George and Stedman stuck to their father’s occupation of fanner, both on the family’s lands and on other properties such as the Walk Hill farm, and another son, Edward, worked for a while as a clerk in a hardware store.