150 Years of History
In 1874, when apple orchards grew in Porter Square and horse-drawn vehicles lumbered through Cambridge, James Huntington opened an orphanage called the Avon Home for children who were living in poverty in Cambridge. The Avon Home could house 10 children and was located at the corner of Avon Street and Linnaean Street.
Porter Square, late nineteenth century.
Although he founded it, James Huntington left the operations and oversight of the Avon Home to a dedicated Board of Trustees, led by Reverend Doctor Andrew Preston Peabody. In its first year, the Avon Home cared for twenty children, the youngest of which was two weeks old, and the oldest was 13.
Our first annual report, summarizing the Avon Home’s first year in operation.
In 1877, the Avon Home facilitated its first ever adoption, placing a child with an adoptive mother in Cambridge. The Home would continue to facilitate adoptions, placing youth in homes throughout Greater Boston and even as far away as Worcester – wherever there were loving families to take them.
The Avon Home was a project sustained by the passion and generosity of the Cambridge community. The Home depended on the hard work of the Matrons, the women who were in charge of the Home’s day to day operations and the standard of care for the children. The Avon Home’s staff and Board were particularly proud of how clean and healthy the environment was for the children they housed, and were always recognizing the local doctors who provided medical treatment to the youth.
In its first 30 years, the Avon Home cared for 439 children. Early permanency and reunification work was already being done, as in 1904, “Sixteen children have left the Home during the year, of whom ten have returned to their parents”.
Meanwhile, in 1881, the Family Welfare Society of Cambridge was founded, first known as “The Associated Charities of Cambridge”. The purpose of the Family Welfare Society was “to secure a systematic registration of all cases receiving charitable aid in the city of Cambridge in order to prevent imposition and to give to the deserving poor the most discriminating help and also organize a system of friendly visiting among the poor with the aim of diminishing pauperism by raising them to self-help". Wow, what a mouthful!
The Family Welfare Society operated successfully throughout Cambridge for many years, collaborating with hospitals and clinics, legal aid societies, and children’s agencies. As we can see in their informational pamphlet from the 1930s, the Family Welfare Society had a lot in common with the Avon Home, including the spirit of their mission and the support of Andrew P. Peabody.
In 1945, the Avon home relocated to 53 Church Street in Harvard Square. This building consolidated many of the service agencies in Cambridge, bringing together ideas and resources to further expand the number of children and families who could be supported. At this new location, the Avon Home began to develop the types of programs that our agency would continue to focus on to this day: adoption and foster care programs; programs for children and adults with disabilities; and services to stabilize families.
In our own archives, we are lucky enough to have a taste of what our agency’s culture was like in the mid twentieth century. We hope you enjoy these original poems, which seem to have been composed by our agency social workers. We love to see our staff have always had a sense of humor and creativity!
In 1973, The Avon Home merged with the Family Welfare Society of Cambridge to form a new agency called Cambridge Family & Children’s Service. We would operate under that name for the next 49 years, continuing to serve youth and families who needed our support. Our area of operation would expand to Greater Boston and beyond.
In 2022, we changed our name from Cambridge Family & Children’s Service to Bridges Homeward. As you can see from our history, our agency owes much to the community of Cambridge. But for nearly all of our history, we have never constrained our services or collaborations to Cambridge’s city limits. We have always built bridges between the youth and families we serve and the wider world, connecting them to resources that help them stabilize, find love and safety, and pursue fulfilling lives. To that end, we changed our name to what we are now known as: Bridges Homeward.