Rainsford Island (Boston, Massachusetts)

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The purchase of Rainsford Island in 1636 by Edward Raynsford brought to the island its first European inhabitants. Early deeds and Massachusetts Bay Colony papers indicate that throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries Rainsford Island was used as a fishing station, a cattle pasture, and as a source for timber and slate. In 1736, the Province of Massachusetts purchased the island, and the following year the quarantine station for vessels wishing to enter the port of Boston moved to Rainsford Island from Spectacle Island. In the 1770s, small pox inoculations were first given on Rainsford Island. Dr. John Jeffries, the quarantine physician at the time, inoculated his own son in 1775 with calf pox, more than 20 years before Edward Jenner demonstrated the effectiveness of variolation in 1796. During the first half of the 19th century, the hospital facilities were expanded and improved. A massive Greek Revival-style building, called the Stone Hospital or Greek Temple, was built in 1832 by Josiah Rogers. The Stone Hospital was in all likelihood designed by his brother, the American architect Isaiah Rogers, renowned for his designs of the Boston and New York Merchants' Exchange, the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., and the Tremont Hotel in Boston. In the second half of the 19th century, the island continued as a place of quarantine, but the facilities increasingly doubled as an almshouse for Civil War veterans. A 3-story brick structure known as the House of Reformation was built during 1890s, which was meant to isolate Boston's unwanted young boys and keep them working industriously in the island's print, shoe and garment shops, and in farming and raising livestock. In the early 20th century, the House of Reformation was renamed the Suffolk School for Boys. It continued to serve as an almshouse into the 1920s, until the increasing financial woes of the Great Depression led to the school's demise and ultimately the island's abandonment. Rainsford Island is a great island to explore, but since there is no ferry, the only way those without a boat can get ashore is to join the Friends of the Boston Harbor Islands on their annual trip. www.fbhi.org/