How Quincy's Pageant Field got its name. (It was quite dramatic)

This summer we take a look back at the playgrounds of yesteryear in our series THE SOUTH SHORE AS IT WAS.

QUINCY ‒ Next year, Quincy will celebrate the 400th anniversary of European settlement in the area with a yearlong program of events. If festivities are to live up to the last centennial in 1925, organizers have their work cut out for them.

A look back at the tricentennial reveals a theatrical extravaganza on a grand scale, including the event that gave Pageant Field its name.

In early June 1925, Quincy marked the tricentennial with a week's worth of parades, marching bands, large choruses, tours of historical houses, oratory, a "living flag" consisting of 870 children, and fireworks displays. But most spectacular were five performances of a grand pageant at what was then called Merrymount Park dramatizing the city's history from its settlement in 1625 through the Civil War.

The staging grounds near Blacks Creek have been called Pageant Field ever since.

The Patriot Ledger, which published a 30-page extra edition for the tricentennial on June 11, reported that more than 1,200 people participated in the historical scenes. The city hired professional pageant producer Virginia Tanner and her assistants to create the script, direct the action and execute special lighting effects.

If the idea of a historical pageant seems strange today, it wouldn't have to Quincy residents in 1925.

"These types of pageants were popular across the country, celebrating important anniversaries of towns and cities," said Quincy Historical Society Director Ed Fitzgerald.

Such dramas were in vogue during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Fitzgerald said, and continued as late as the 1950s.

Even the rehearsals, with their hundreds of local actors, grand props, live animals and floodlights, drew attention from media and onlookers alike. On June 5, The Patriot Ledger reported: “The picture of scores of women in costume ... was a pretty one.”

Six days later, a reporter wrote that a rehearsal drew a more boisterous kind of snoop, the young boys of Quincy:

"More than a hundred spectators, mostly boys, managed to squeeze by the entrance to the field and create enough of an uproar while running up and down the stands that the committee felt obliged to appeal to them to maintain quiet."

By all accounts, the spectacle was indeed a big hit among Quincy's boys, with one reportedly telling his mother, "Gee, Mom, y'orter see that pageant. It's a corker!"

A few scenes from the Pageant of Quincy

Capt. Wollaston and Thomas Morton: The pageant begins in 1626, the year after Capt. Richard Wollaston founded a settlement by what is now called Merrymount. Wollaston leaves with a train of indentured servants for Virginia, entrusting a deputy to maintain order.

However, the decidedly unpuritanical Thomas Morton has other plans. Gathering about him the disaffected and unfree laborers as well Native Americans, he revolts, setting up an egalitarian and libertine society that appalls the authorities.

Contrasting his joie de vivre with the godly self-denial of the Pilgrims, Morton dubbed his community "Merrymount," a pun on "Mare Mount," which means "hill by the sea."

Myles Standish was dispatched from Plymouth to confront Morton, who irreverently mocked Standish's short stature with the nickname "Captain Shrimp." In the pageant, Standish reviles Morton's community of workers and Native Americans thus:

"“Ye harbouring all ye scume of ye countie & discontents, which do flock to you from all places."

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The scene climaxes as Morton, crowning himself "Lord of Misrule," and his followers, fortified with strong liquor, dance around a pagan maypole they made. Standish ends the drunken revelry and arrests Morton.

The scene comes to a close with Gov. John Endicott's men hacking down "this idolatrous pole." Some would argue that Quincy's nightlife has not yet fully recovered from its felling.

John and Abigail Adams: In its second episode, the pageant depicts John Adams taking leave from Abigail and their children on his way to the Second Continental Congress, where he and Benjamin Franklin would help Thomas Jefferson draft the Declaration of Independence.

"You are really brave, my dear," John tells Abigail at his departure. "You are a heroine, and you have reason to be. In case of real danger ... fly to the woods with our children."

Later in the scene, Abigail and her son, future President John Quincy Adams, ascend Penn's Hill to watch smoke rising from Charlestown during the Battle of Bunker Hill.

"My anxious, foreboding heart fears every evil," Abigail says, words drawn directly from her famous letters to John.

Then a ragged procession of refugees fleeing Boston, under siege by the British, passes by, to whom Abigail and the children offer food for their "weary march."

The Masque of Quincy: The pageant ends by recognizing, though in a somewhat condescending fashion, Quincy's growing population of "foreign born," including Italians, Jews, Scandinavians, Finns, Scots and Syrians.

"They are dressed in the picturesque costume of their race," the script reads.

People of each ethnicity formed a marching section, their leaders dressed as mythohistorical figures representative of the group.

For instance, members of the Italian section dressed as Dante, Michelangelo and Giuseppe Verdi, while a leader of the Jewish section dressed as Moses and a Scandinavian representative marched forth costumed as "a Viking."

The pageant's representation of Native Americans

The pageant was a product of a time in American history when racism was widespread and openly expressed. It would cause many readers with modern sensibilities to cringe.

"It was patronizing in the way it presents different ethnicities, especially its treatment of the relationship with Native Americans," Fitzgerald said. "It's not what we might do today."

The Native Americans in the Pageant of Quincy, all played by white actors, alternatively appear as uncivilized, threatening heathens and meek children wholly dependent on European benefactors.

For instance, the first episode is followed by a "ballet pantomime" titled "The Menace of the Indians." The script describes the dance as follows:

"An Indian with a burning torch menaces the homestead. A great number of savages, following his signal, surround the terrified people, brandishing their firelocks. The imprisoned people seek aid. Great numbers gather for the conflict. They overpower the savages and achieve final victory."

A look forward to Quincy 400

While city officials and organizers are still working out the details for Quincy's quadricentennial in 2025, Mayor Thomas Koch outlined some plans in January.

One element would contrast with the pageant's insulting portrayal of Native Americans. Koch said the city plans to build a facility for the Ponkapoag Native American Tribe at the former Squaw Rock site in Squantum, now known as Nickerson Rock.

"Their heritage is a part of our story," he said. "We'll honor that heritage by providing a home at Squaw Rock."

Koch described the facility as a place for the tribe to meet, conduct business and celebrate its heritage. He called for a monument "to honor the tribe, its ancestors and its legacy."

Like the pageant, Koch said next year's celebration will tell Quincy's rich history, including that of revolutionary leaders; innovators in railroads, granite quarrying and shipbuilding; and its waves of immigrants, from Swedes, Germans, Italians and Irish to more recent arrivals from Asian countries.

Peter Blandino covers Quincy for The Patriot Ledger. Contact him at pblandino@patriotledger.com.

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This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: How Quincy's Pageant Field got its name. (It was quite dramatic)