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Veterans' Heritage Grant: Digitizing Boston's Hero Squares

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In January of 2024, the City of Boston Archives was notified that the project proposal we had submitted to the Veterans' Heritage Grant program through the Massachusetts State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB) had been fully funded. Our project proposed to to digitize the Boston City Council official documentation on the naming of squares ("Hero Squares") honoring service members killed in action. In May of 2024, we hired a graduate student, Aurora Daniel, to complete the work that needed to be done to fulfill the goals of the grant. The article below was written by Aurora, describing her experience with the project.

Last year I had the opportunity to digitize records related to Boston's Hero Squares, which are historical markers located on squares throughout the city to recognize and remember veterans from Boston who died while on active duty. I was hired as a part of a project that the City of Boston Archives was undertaking with grant money from the Massachusetts State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB). They received a Veterans' Heritage Grant, a grant specifically designated for projects related to veterans' history. As a current Library and Information Science graduate student at Simmons University and U.S. Army veteran myself, it was rewarding to be able to help bring forth the history of my brothers and sisters in arms.

The Veterans Services Department of the City of Boston maintains a database of all of the squares, parks, monuments, and playgrounds that have been dedicated to these service members. However, every name in the database appears because an order was signed in the City Council to designate a public space for that person. The City of Boston Archives holds these historic City Council records as a part of its permanent collections.

Although I was not familiar with the records before I worked on this project, I had seen the squares around Boston. I moved here in 2018 after one contract in the Army as a Motor Transport Operator and took a job at the Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center while I figured out what my next career was going to be. One of the first Heroes Squares signs I spotted was for Thomas A. Gavagan, located near the VA sign at the junction of Heath Street and South Huntington Avenue. . Coincidentally, this is one of the earlier squares created in Boston. The practice of naming squares for service members killed in the line of duty, began in Boston in 1918, amidst the end of World War I. It was a way for Bostonians to remember those who had fallen in the service of their country. The practice continued on through World War II and the later twentieth century conflicts; squares are still being named in honor of veterans today. Although it is often difficult to tell why a particular location for the sign was selected, especially as the number of petitions to designate squares increased during wartime, it was usually chosen because the service member had a relationship to the area, oftentimes they grew up nearby or lived there at the time they joined the service.

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The locations of the squares also provide insight into the demographics of Boston neighborhoods over the course of the last century. The last names on the plaques reflect waves of European and Asian immigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and are indicators of where different ethnic groups primarily settled when they first arrived in Boston. The 1940s and 1950s saw an increase in Boston's Black population, particularly in the South End, Roxbury, and Dorchester, as a result of the Great Migration. This, in conjunction with increased access and protection for Black federal workers, led to more Black people choosing to enlist in the military in the 1960s. It is around this time that the first Hero Squares honoring Black soldiers were dedicated. The earliest example is the one dedicated to U.S. Marine Private First Class Seymour P. Sadberry Jr., and it points out, albeit in outdated language, that he was the first Black Marine from Boston to die during the Vietnam War.

In addition to showing demographic shifts in Boston, the squares also represent shifts within the armed forces themselves. While this is most often recognized as the increased racial and ethnic diversity, it is also with the incorporation of women within the ranks. Women began serving in an official capacity in 1901 when the U.S. Army Nurse Corps was established. Although rank and veteran status were tenuous for women until World War II, it was the first conflict in United States history where women enlisted and were commissioned in roles beyond nursing (although still in a reserve capacity). The first Hero Square honoring a woman was for U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Elsie Davis, who served during World War II and died during the Korean War. Hers is one of less than ten hero squares dedicated to women in Boston. This reflects the restrictions placed on women both in the settings they were allowed to serve in and what roles they could have, which were not lifted fully until 2016.

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I found this gap to be an interesting look into whose service is commemorated and memorialized, and those whose stories are often forgotten. In the case of the larger war monuments located around Boston, they include both men and women's names but appear to be names of combat veterans. We valorize combat roles but forget about other roles that are just as necessary to military operations.

I thought a lot about this while working on this project. Being able to digitize these documents allowed me to be able to ensure that the record could be more inclusive. Although the documents themselves often do not contain a lot of information, they do provide a great start for anyone with an interest in public history to do more in-depth research. The other aspect of being able to work with these records was that I was helping to bring attention to the purpose of these squares. For myself, when I saw Gavagan Square back in 2018, I saw the meaning behind it and it made me reflect on my own military service. Yet, I wonder how many people realize what these squares are for. Working with the documents directly, allowed me to connect more deeply with the hundreds of people whose names are visible for the public but whose stories are often concealed. Most of them enlisted or were drafted, meaning that they typically came from working class backgrounds. Some joined because of their own patriotism, some for a better life, and others because they did not have the choice. Most of them died young and in violent circumstances we cannot fully understand. These squares provide tangible reminders – an invitation to pause and consider the lives behind them. My hope is that now that the documentation behind them is more accessible, it will spark the public's appreciation for what they stand for. I am really excited that all of these documents are now available for everyone to browse.

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