There was only a minuscule population of blacks in Boston in the late nineteenth century, but Ella and William managed to build a prosperous life for themselves. To assimilate into a white upper-middle-class community where they had once most likely served as domestics meant they had to have been resilient, focused, and faithful individuals. It also meant that Milton was a town that didn’t discriminate toward or oppress blacks—at least not in any institutional way, which would have forbidden the Powells from owning a home or William from working for the city’s fire department. Milton symbolized progress and autonomy—values ingrained in the people who had settled there more than two hundred years before Ella and William Powell would arrive.

Milton was founded in 1640 by the Puritans; there are multiple theories about the origin of the town name, but the most plausible one is that it was named in honor of Milton Abbey in Dorset, England.7 The town was ideally located bordering bustling Boston between the Neponset River and the Blue Hills Reservation—a stretch of seven thousand hillside acres ripe for logging—and so it attracted wealthy entrepreneurs and investors. Originally an agrarian community with farms, Milton transformed into an industrial mecca with railway access to Boston and numerous mills, including a gristmill, gunpowder mill, and paper mill. It also had a chocolate mill, Walter Baker & Company, which has been called one of the first manufacturers of chocolate in the United States.8

Milton’s place in history was cemented toward the end of the eighteenth century, leading right up to the Revolutionary War. The people of Massachusetts wanted independence and the ability to produce and move commerce without stringent taxes. They also wanted to choose their own governing council. England found these demands rebellious and instituted draconian laws in response. And the colony of Massachusetts responded in kind. In 1774 Milton became home to the Suffolk Resolves, a number of resolutions signed by leaders of Suffolk County that directly pushed back against the British government’s continued attempt to disenfranchise the people of Massachusetts. The aggressive wording signaled the growing animosity between the colonies and England and was considered a foundation for what would become the Declaration of Independence.9 From its inception, the DNA of Milton was progressive and independent, and the spirit of that autonomy carried on into the next century, when Ella and William, freed from their own bondage and oppression, respectively, moved to Milton to build a new life.

The Powells couldn’t have chosen a better town to raise a black family, although neighboring Boston wasn’t as welcoming. Boston, as a whole, lacked diversity. According to the 1880 census, 356,826 whites lived there. “Colored” people, as listed in the census, included blacks, Chinese, and Native Americans, and totaled just 6,013 residents.10