Culture

A flyer for the second annual Father Cummins' Barbecue in 1895. Pilot photo/courtesy Archdiocesan Archives

From the Archdiocesan Archives

Father Cummins' monster barbeque

Friday, September 5, 2025Culture

For many of us today, the end of summer means a return to routines: back to school, the end of vacation season, and the familiar rhythms of earlier mornings and busier schedules. But, 125 years ago, the end of summer meant something else to residents of Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and Roslindale: it meant that it was time for Father Cummins' Annual Monster Barbeque.
"Once again the day is here
Day the best of all the year
Day of joyous zest and cheer
Can ye find a day more dear?
Men and maidens, young and gay,
Laughing haste them on their way;
Old and young, the great and least
Haste them to the merry feast.
Hear them hail the Barbeque!
(Father Cummins, all to you
Is the praise and honor due
For the feast of Barbeque!)
-- "The Barbeque Festival" by John Lewis, 1903

In 1893, Sacred Heart Parish was established in Roslindale to serve the neighborhood's Catholics, who previously had to travel for Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas in Jamaica Plain. Father John F. Cummins was named the parish's first pastor, and his first task was to raise funds for the construction of a church building. An innovative and energetic priest, Father Cummins eschewed traditional fundraising tactics and instead decided to put on a full-scale festival to secure monies for his new parish. He called the event, which would run annually during the last week of August or first week of September from 1894 to 1903, "Father Cummins' Monster Barbeque."
The ambitious event was held at the Apollo Gardens on Amory Street in Roxbury, and it proved to be an enormous success. About 10,000 people attended the first barbeque; by 1898, it regularly drew crowds of 15,000. Parishioners of Sacred Heart were tasked with selling tickets. Their enthusiastic efforts were, in part, fueled by the prospect of earning substantial prizes. In 1895, The Pilot noted, "Father Cummins has offered a first-class cabin passage to Europe and return to the person selling the largest number of tickets." The same year, the boy or girl selling the most children's tickets would earn an upright piano. The extravagance of the prizes appear to have been justified, since after the barbeque expenses were tallied, the 1895 barbeque brought in $5,200 for the parish building fund -- somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 today.
As the name indicates, the centerpiece of the festivities was a barbeque. Each year, local businesses or benefactors would donate a 1,400 pound ox to cook over an open gridiron. In 1894, the beast was gifted by Boston's Alderman John H. Lee. The following year, the popular local clothier, Boyle Bros., presented the ox to Father Cummins in gratitude for his ministry "at a fever-stricken camp at Montauk (New York), where one of our leading salesmen, Edward R. Gray, who served in the gallant ninth Massachusetts regiment, was one of the sufferers."
To oversee the feast, prominent barbeque chefs were brought up from the South. In various years, the chefs were from Baltimore, Kentucky, and Virginia. Since, at the time, most Northerners had never seen a Southern barbeque, the firepit itself was something of a spectacle. In 1902, The Boston Globe reported that "for hours a big bronzed man, in immaculate white, with a score of attendants, superintends the roasting of the ox, and then when their work is completed, the people gather round and in true southern style eat of the appetizing vlands (sic.), hot from the gridiron."
Beyond the food, the barbeques offered a variety of entertainment. Each year featured a children's carnival, fireworks, music, games, and dancing. The 1902 event featured donkey rides, swings, and "rides on the hobby horses" for children. In other years, there were "Punch and Judy" puppet shows, kite-flying exhibitions, and even a demonstration by the "Pikes Peak Climbers, a pack train of burros from Colorado."
Speeches by local and national orators in the barbeque's "public forum" were always a significant draw; local politicians were a given, and most years, a whole contingent of officials from New York's Tammany Hall made the trip to Roxbury to address the crowds. In the grand pavilion, music for dancing was furnished by various parish and school bands and, at least in one year, by the National Guard Band.
But undoubtedly, for the entirety of its existence, the barbeque's most popular attractions were its vaudeville and minstrel shows, which were exclusively put on by large companies of Black performers from the South. In 1895, "Rogers' Mississippi colored troubadours," performed at the barbeque. In 1901 and 1902, the performers were "Professor Harry Church's Virginia Colored Troubadours."
The legacy of Black Vaudeville is complicated. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, performing vaudeville provided many southern Black people with economic opportunities otherwise unavailable to them. But the shows, with roots in the minstrel shows of the mid-19th century, often included racist stereotypes of Black people, incorporating blackface (even for black performers), and so-called "coon songs," which usually depicted Black people as ignorant buffoons, lacking in personal morality. Despite the form's constraints, some performers were able to challenge the racial stereotypes depicted in vaudeville through irony and humor.
Whatever the intent of the troubadours who travelled to Roxbury for the Monster Barbeque, it is clear that the predominantly white audiences who came to see them were drawn largely to the exoticism of their performances. In 1895, The Pilot advertised their program by stating, "A high class vaudeville show will be given by several first class artists... Fifty Baltimore darkies will give a continuous entertainment and will also participate in a Champion Prize Cake Walk." In 1898, the Globe reported, "The open air theater drew a crowd around it in the afternoon and evening, when the minstrel troupe, composed of genuine negroes, gave an entertainment, including a cake walk."
The popularity of the vaudeville and minstrel acts (however problematic their content) was instrumental in elevating the Monster Barbeque into a major social and fundraising event. With thousands flocking to Roxbury each summer, drawn in part by these performances, the barbeque was able to generate impressive financial support for its cause.
By the end of its 10-year run, Father Cummins' Monster Barbeque raised nearly $1 million for the construction of Sacred Heart Church, which still stands today on a street now named after its pioneering first pastor at 169 Cummins Highway.

VIOLET HURST IS AN ARCHIVIST FOR THE ARCHDIOCESE OF BOSTON.

- Violet Hurst is an archivist for the Archdiocese of Boston.