Chelsea

Over the years I’ve heard many people poke fun at Chelsea, Massachusetts. Bring up the word Chelsea at a party and automatically people will have a negative thought or response. If you do a search on the word, Chelsea, on an Internet search engine you will find very little on Chelsea, Mass. A high percentage of information is for either Chelsea, England or New York.

This morning I was surprised to read that a famous author from the 1800’s, whose birthday is today, was born in Chelsea, Ma. His name is Horatio Alger, Jr. His name is synonymous with rags to riches stories. He wrote the book, Ragged Dick; or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks (1867), about a shoeshine boy who goes from rags to riches through a combination of hard work and good luck. He went on to write hundreds of novels with the same rags to riches theme. His books may no longer be as popular today as they once were, but the moral messages they relayed were an important factor in developing the American dream of the twentieth century.

Here are some tidbits of information on him:

Horatio Alger, Jr. was the oldest of five children of a debt-ridden New England, Unitarian minister. He was very frail. He was under weight and undersized, suffered from bronchial asthma, and near sightedness. Because of his poor health, the family deferred his introduction to the alphabet and reading until he was six years old. He started formal school at age 10 and achieved Phi Beta Kappa at Harvard. He was ranked eighth in a class of 89. He volunteered for the union army three times and was rejected three times because of his asthma and small size (just over five feet and about 120 pounds).

He took a tour of Europe where he finally made his decision to pursue the ministry and he enrolled at the Harvard Divinity School. In 1860, Reverend Alger took a position as minister of the First Parish Unitarian Church of Brewster on Cape Cod, but left for New York City rather suddenly in 1866, ostensibly to pursue a career in writing. Church records uncovered after Alger's death indicate that he was quietly dismissed for having sexual relations with several teenage boys in his parish. Despite his remarkable literary output, Alger never became rich from his writing. He gave most of his money to homeless boys and in some instances was actually conned from his earnings by the boys he tried to help. Nevertheless, by the time he died in 1899, his books could be found in virtually every home and library in America.

After reading a little about Horatio Alger, I now have something positive to think about whenever anyone mentions Chelsea, Ma. I noticed that some stories about him want to credit his place of birth to Revere and not Chelsea.