Live! From the Boston Public Library!

Research is going....so-so.

Must come back soon.

But meanwhile, a fantastic anecdote:

" 'The Jamaica Plain News in 1908 told of a minister in Grand Central Station who couldn't remember the name of the Boston suburb where he was expected. 'Whiskey Straight,' he told the ticket agent. 'No such place near Boston,' the agent said. 'Maybe near Cheyenne or Tombstone, or Medicine Hat, but not Boston.' Then after a minute, the agent said again, "Oh, you want Jamaica Plain.' And sure enough, the minister did."

From the Jamaica Plain edition of the Boston 200 Neighborhood History Series, put together in 1976 to commemorate the bicentennial.

Amazing, I think. This refers to the apocryphal origin story of the town's name--that when officials were asked how they liked their rum, they replied, "Jamaica, plain". It is considered more likely that it's an Americanization of an Algonquin name, or that rum was being imported in great quantities from Jamaica and the land in what was the "Jamaica end" of Roxbury is very flat....but of course I join most historians on the subject in being rather tickled by the former.