Boston, Joseph
Joseph Boston (1824-1874) came to Monterey from New York City in 1849, employed by a sutler who sold goods to the occupying U. S. Army. The "Boston Store" is now part of the Monterey Old Town Historic District.
Several family members followed Joseph to Monterey, and in 1855 he moved to Santa Cruz to partner with Richard Kirby in a leather tannery, which occupied the same land as the Mission Santa Cruz tannery. Joseph married Eliza Bull (1832-1920), sister of Thomas Bull, in 1862. The couple established Calvary Episcopal Church, whose 1865 main building survives today. Eliza subdivided the tannery property after it shut down in ~1875.
The 1866 Santa Cruz map shows Joseph's mother, Alice C. Boston (1798-1882), as owner of a residential property on Church Street. That property passed to daughter Alice Anna Boston Donzel (1827-1912) after her mother's death, and later was home to the James B. Moulton and William E. Miller families. The early-1850s house which, according to Leon Rowland, was built/lived in by John Pinkham, was razed in 1953 to make room for today's parking lot behind the Fire Dept. building on Walnut Ave. The Church Street side of the parcel now contains offices of the city Parks and Rec. Dept., which also got part of the parking lot (the parking lots are adjacent to, but not connected to the Civic Auditorium parking lot).
- "The Bostons: A Pioneer Family of Santa Cruz County", by Dana Bagshaw in Category:Santa Cruz County Online History Journal
- The Sidewalk Companion to Santa Cruz Architecture (4th ed. 2023), Chapter Four, page 111 (tannery)
- Leon Rowland, "Circuit Rider: Bret Harte Cottage Is Sold", Santa Cruz Sentinel, June 11, 1944, 4:4-6.
Eliza Clark Bull Boston was a Society of Pioneers member, and has a bio there.
