Magic Markers

Spotting Benjamin Franklin's marking stones

Photo: Cynthia Brennan

 
 
 
By Cynthia Brennan

ucked away in park walls and building facades all over town are crumbling stones with worn markings. They were the highway signs of the 18th century. These 18th-century “parting stones” (so called because they were often placed at forks in roads) were an innovation of, among others, Boston-born Benjamin Franklin, who invented a device to measure the distances along major routes of travel.

Boston being a major hub of culture and commerce, stones were laid along the spoke-like roads that led to the city: Commonwealth Avenue, the old Boston and Worcester Turnpike, the Lower Road to Dorchester. And there many remain.

Whether in a coach or on foot, travelers would look to the markers as navigational guides. The mile markers were placed by state officials or other prominent citizens, who would often inscribe their initials or names on them. Many of Boston’s (including the one above) bear the initials of Paul Dudley, attorney general and chief justice, whose prolific stone-carving earned him a rhyme:

“His name on every side you see;
The very stones are marked P.D.”

Today, we move quickly by these markers on faster modes of transportation, relying on different sorts of signs to find our way. The mile markers seem unassuming, nothing more than misshapen stones beside brick walls or in parks. My morning run used to take me right by one in the Highland Park area of Roxbury, but I never would have noticed; this 1744 stone leans flush against the brick facade of an auto body shop. Another, laid in 1729, is embedded in a brick wall along Huntington Avenue. An interesting stone in Cambridge was twice moved because of threats of destruction: once from the center of Harvard Square and, later, from near Harvard Law School. It measures two different distances to Boston, one on each side. In 1734, the distance was eight miles, but the 1792 construction of the New Bridge (now the Longfellow Bridge) shortened it to two and a half.

More of these markers exist. As with so much of our most interesting history, you just have to look.