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The racially driven cartography to determine black neighborhoods has added much confusion to the location of neighborhood borders, but Boston's neighborhood boundaries have always been confusing, even to indigenous Bostonians.
Much of the confusion has to do with the manner in which the city's neighborhoods were assembled.
Directly south of Boston proper is the South End. East of the South End is South Boston. North of Boston's North End neighborhood is East Boston, the northernmost neighborhood in the city. Of course, the West End is not the westernmost part of Boston. That's Brighton, three miles to the west.
In many ways, Roxbury's history is a microcosm of Boston's convoluted geographical history.
State Rep. Byron Rushing, president of the Roxbury Historical Society, says the only reliable boundaries for Roxbury are the political boundaries of the town that date back to its incorporation in 1630 and its separation from West Roxbury in 1851.
"There are lots of confusing things that happened since 1630, but generally those boundaries can be found today," Rushing says.
In 1630, Roxbury was connected...