James Barton

James Barton was the owner of a rope walk in the West End, on the land of descendants of Sir John Leverett.

Barton owned a ropewalk running along the bank of the Old Mill Pond, roughly one block from the site of the West End Museum. A ropewalk is a narrow, long building where ropes were made with hemp, cotton, and melted tar; working in close quarters, ropemakers operated in highly flammable environments. The walk was constructed on Leverett Street, on eleven acres of land rented from the Leverett family (descendants of Sir John Leverett — hyperlink here) on what became known as Barton’s Point. The land also contained an orchard and a tenement. The name “Barton’s Point” appeared on the map of Boston designed by Captain John Bonner in 1722; the ropewalk was in operation as early as 1686, when ropemaker Edward Gray appeared in records as an apprentice at Barton’s Point.

Ropewalks were a significant part of the ship-building industry in Barton’s day. Barton’s rope walk was held on a lease, so it did not survive forever, but Barton’s Point retained its name for a century. The Point had also been a geographic reference point for the West End: according to historian John Reps, “The area of Boston in which the greatest growth had taken place [in the early eighteenth century]…was the West End, lying between the Mill Pond and Barton’s point on the north and the common on the south.” The relatively undeveloped, yet growing, West Boston made an ideal site for industrial structures such as ropewalks.

James and his wife, Margaret Barton, had a son, John Barton, in 1686. He also owned a ropewalk in the South End, and lived until his death in 1729 at a house on Ann Street, in today’s North End. When the Leverett estate was again divided up in 1725, Barton was listed as a commercial tenant of the land known as Barton’s Point.

Barton Street, constructed sometime before 1824, was named for James Barton by the Barton Point Association. The street was removed during the urban renewal programs of the 1950’s, but markers remain on Martha Road to designate it’s historic location.