Firefighter unearths city history

By George P. Hassett

Bob Doherty, a local firefighter with an extensive knowledge of the city’s past, said it was like an electrocution. Everybody in the audience sat up straight and listened intently to his speech on local history the first time he shared his knowledge and audiences today act the same, he said.

“For every story I had about Somerville history, people in the audience had two more. It really sparked something, they wouldn’t let me go. It made people reflect on their own lives in the city,” he said more than 25 years after his first public oratory on Somerville’s long history.

Doherty said digging up bits of forgotten city history has become his passion. And Somerville, he said, is rich ground for a local historian.

“Somerville doesn’t have to tip its hat to anybody in the country as far as history goes,” he said. “We’re older than Boston, and our history dwarfs Cambridge. Somerville is a tiny city geographically but a big city when it comes to population. That adds up to a lot of stories.”

In 1979, Doherty was a firefighter at the Engine 1 fire station when Isobel Cheney and Doris Donovan, from the city’s historic society, walked in to ask if someone there could deliver a presentation on pre-1900 fires in the city. The other firemen had declined the offer, and Cheney and Donovan walked out disappointed, Doherty said. But Doherty pursued the two women and told them he wanted to help.

“I said, ‘if you point me towards the right books, I will talk to some of the older firefighters, and I can give it a shot,’” he said.

And ever since, Doherty has been a student of Somerville’s 165-year history, digging up the notable facts and people of the city’s 4.1 square miles. His discoveries highlight the city’s contribution to pivotal individuals and innovations in science, fashion, sports and the arts. They include:

• The first ever telephone connection was in Somerville when Charles Williams set up a line between his Boston office and his 1 Arlington St. home.

• The Revson brothers, who created and managed Revlon Cosmetics, were Somerville residents in the 1920s and 1930s.

• Academy Award-winning actress Bette Davis was born on College Avenue and lived there until the age of 4.

• Baseball icon Babe Ruth was discovered by Gilbert Cairns, a brother at St. Joseph’s Church in Union Square. Cairns went to Baltimore to study the orphanages in the city and witnessed a young man named George Herman Ruth “hitting the cover off the ball,” and he contacted the Red Sox about the prospect.

• Russell Conwell was a Somerville resident who encouraged a young student of his to mass market an herbal drink his mother concocted. That drink? Root beer.

Doherty said there is still more digging to be done in unearthing Somerville’s rich history, and he is up for the job.

“Somerville is my passion and it always will be” he said.