Sarah Baker

No. 21546 title page of Christian Effort

Author of Christian Effort: or, Facts and Incidents Designed to Enforce and Illustrate the Duty of Individual Labour for the Salvation of Souls. (New York, Lane & Scott, 1850)

The preface is signed: The Author, Dorchester, Mass., 1850.

Sarah Baker was a member of the First Methodist Episcopal Church near Lower Mills from early years until her death in 1866.  She lived next to that church for a long time, finally moving to her early home at Savin Hill.  Miss Baker conducted a band-box business for forty years, and when she had gathered $5,000, she invested the money.  She left this investment in her will so that at the end of twenty years, the money would be given to the Methodist Church to build a new house of worship within three-fourths of a mile from her Savin Hill home.  The money became available in 1886, at which time no church existed within the required limit.

In March, 1876, Rev. W. G. Leonard was employed by the Boston Sunday School and City Missionary Society to organize a Sunday School in the part of the city called Mount Pleasant.  For that purpose he leased the old Governor Eustis House on Shirley Street.  In August 1876 a lot on Howard Avenue was leased and a Chapel building was begun.  On October 30th Rev. David Sherman, Presiding Elder of the Boston District, organized a Methodist Episcopal Church.  The chapel was finished and dedicated in November.

In 1899 the Trustees of the New England Conference asked the Mount Pleasant Methodist Episcopal Church on Howard Avenue, Roxbury, to disband and add the proceeds of the sale of its property to the Baker estate.  The church was reorganized at Upham’s Corner, and its first meetings were held in Winthrop Hall opposite the site of the proposed church.  The Baker Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church was located at the corner of Columbia Road and Cushing Avenue.  The site chosen was found to be nineteen feet outside the required limit, and special permission was obtained from the Court to use the Baker bequest.  The money had grown to $22,642, and it contributed substantially to the construction of the Baker Memorial Church, which opened in June, 1891.    The site is now a vacant lot at the corner of Columbia Road and Cushing Avenue next to the former bank building.

For more information, consult:

Chaffee, John R. The History of the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Dorchester, Massachusetts. Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1917.

Dorchester Old and New, 1630-1930. Dorchester: Chapple Publishing Company for the Dorchester, Massachusetts, Tercentenary Committee, 1930.

Our Golden Jubilee, 1891-1941. Dorchester: Baker Memorial Methodist Church, 1941.

Historical Matters in Dorchester:

It is fifty-one years ago to-day, April 24th, since the Dorchester Anti-slavery Society was organized in the old Town Hall.  Of the twelve official members chosen at that time, only one is now living, Mr. John A. Tucker of the Lower Mills village. Since the last anniversary, several persons who were prominent in the early anti slavery movement have perused away.  Mr. John P. Clapp, Abijah W. Withington and Miss Eliza Pope. Miss Pope was an active worker in the cause, with the late Miss Sarah Baker, of Savin Hill. These, with many other women of Dorchester, signed a petition to the legislature, to abolish all laws in Massachusetts that made a distinction on account of color; for so doing, they were treated with contempt. One man — a well known town official and member of out of our largest churches—got a printed copy of the names of the signers of the petition and carried it about town in order to have the finger of scorn pointed to the female signers.  But in a few years after, the assembled wisdom of this State repealed the old laws as requested. Miss Baker was a Christian philanthropist; she wrote a hook, “Christian Effort,” having reference to the welfare of seamen, the temperance cause, and other things; but the New York publisher omitted what was, at that time, the most important, the chapter on “Negro Slavery.”  Miss; Baker, in her will, left a fund now amounting to about twelve thousand dollars, to build a Methodist Church, with free seats, within three, quartets of a mile of the old homestead at Savin Hill.

  1. W. H.

The Dorchester Beacon, April 24, 1886

Skills

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December 24, 2021

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