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HECKMAN BINDERY, INC 033594 2 30 00
3/7/2006
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01810 9683
QUINCY
Duinry
asparhusetts
NINETEEN HUNDRED and FORTY-FIVE
GENEALOGY 974.402 Q43ED
1
430
MAYOR CHARLES A. ROSS
Historir Quinry Massachusetts
MOUNT WOLLASTON
1625
MERRY MOUNT
1627
BRAINTREE 1640
TOWN OF QUINCY
1792
CITY OF QUINCY
1888
By WILLIAM CHURCHILL EDWARDS
Published by the City of Quincy In Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Town House 1844 - 1944
Copyright - 1945 WILLIAM CHURCHILL EDWARDS Quincy, Massachusetts
Franklin Printing Service Quincy, Massachusetts
PRINTED SIND U.S.A
Acknowledgment
Grateful acknowledgment is made here to all persons who have furnished assistance directly or indirectly in the preparation of the manuscript.
Special appreciation is extended to Mrs. George Dares Hall of the faculty of the Woodward School for Girls, and Miss Mable Frances Pratt of the faculty of the North Quincy High School, for generous counsel, and to Mr. Galen W. Hill, Librarian of the Thomas Crane Public Library, who has read and criticized the manuscript at the request of Mayor Charles A. Ross and the City Council of Quincy.
The gracious assistance of the staff members of the Thomas Crane Public Library, the State Library of Massachusetts, the Boston Athenaeum, and the New England Historic Genealogical Society is also gratefully acknowledged.
Credit for the illustrations is indicated in the List of Illus- trations.
WILLIAM CHURCHILL EDWARDS.
December 31, 1944.
City Council of Quincy 1944-1945
EL 430
CHRISTIAN A. BURKARD Councillor-at-Large
MRS. EDNA B. AUSTIN Councillor-at-Large
JOSEPH J. KENDRICK President
WILLIAM W. JENNESS Councillor Ward 1
CARL W. ANDERSON Councillor Ward 2
AMELIO DELLA CHIESA Councillor Ward 3
GEORGE P. McDONALD Councillor Ward 4
CLIFTON H. BAKER Councillor Ward 5
FRANK N. ORCUTT Councillor Ward 6
CONTENTS
CHAPTER Page
I. £ Settlement: Seventeenth Century 13
II. Germantown 23
III. "Independence Forever": Eighteenth Century 25
IV. Town of Quincy: Colonel John Quincy . .
27
V. National Traditions: Nineteenth Century 31
VI. The Town House of the Town of Quincy, 1844 33
VII. The City of Quincy 38
VIII. The City and Town Seal of Quincy
49
IX. The Dates on the City Seal of Quincy
51
X. Quincy Granite .
52
. XI. Transportation 57
XII. Churches
. 67
XIII. Education 70 .
XIV. Public Health and Safety .
79
XV: Shipbuilding, Quincy's Largest Industry .
84
XVI. Quincy Today 95
XVII. Manet 104
APPENDIX
I. Points of Interest in Quincy . 105
II. Bibliography . .
.
.
. 108
ILLUSTRATIONS
Mayor Charles A. Ross.
City Council of Quincy - 1944.
Myles Standish Cairn, Squantum. Erected 1895. Courtesy of Mr. Basil Q. Emanuel.
Old Braintree 1640-1792. Collection of William C. Edwards.
Birthplace of President John Adams. Collection of William C. Edwards.
Birthplace of President John Quincy Adams. Collection of William C. Edwards.
Quincy Homestead or Dorothy Q. House - 1822. Sketch by Miss Eliza Susan Quincy, 1822.
Quincy Homestead or Dorothy Q. House - 1944. Courtesy of Mr. Basil Q. Emanuel.
Colonel Josiah Quincy Homestead - 1822. Sketch by Miss Eliza Susan Quincy, 1822.
Colonel Josiah Quincy Homestead - 1944. Courtesy of Mr. Basil Q. Emanuel.
Abigail Adains Cairn, Penn's Hill. Erected 1896. Courtesy of Mr. Basil Q. Emanuel.
Adams Mansion - 1787. Courtesy of Mr. Henry Adams.
Adams Mansion - 1944. Courtesy of Mr. Basil Q. Emanuel.
Quincy Center - 1822. Sketch by Miss Eliza Susan Quincy, 1822.
Town Hall; City Hall of Quincy. Collection of William C. Edwards.
Zoning Map. Courtesy of the City of Quincy.
City Seal and Town Seal. Collection of William C. Edwards.
Quincy Granite. Courtesy of Mr. Henry M. Faxon.
Bunker Hill Quarry. Courtesy of Mr. Henry M. Faxon.
page ten
Quincy Canal. Courtesy of Mr. Donald P. Crane.
Incline Plane of the Granite Railway Company. Courtesy of Mr. Henry M. Faxon.
Replica of the first car used on the First (commercial) Railway in America. Courtesy of Mr. Henry M. Faxon.
Early Transportation of Granite. Courtesy of Mr. Donald P. Crane.
First Parish Church and Hancock Cemetery. Collection of William C. Edwards.
Presidents Adams Crypt in the First Parish Church. Collection of William C. Edwards.
Saint Mary's Church. Courtesy of the Franklin Printing Service.
Ahavath Achim Synagogue. Courtesy of Mr. Reuben Grossman.
Thomas Crane Public Library. Courtesy of Mr. Galen W. Hill, Librarian.
Eastern Nazarene College Administration Building. Courtesy of Eastern Nazarene College.
Quincy City Hospital Administration Building. Courtesy of Joseph P. Leone, M.D., Superintendent.
Launching of the U.S.S. Canberra - 1943. Courtesy of the Quincy Yard of the Bethlehem Steel Company.
Launching of the U.S.S. Hancock - 1944. Courtesy of the Quincy Yard of the Bethlehem Steel Company.
U.S.S. Quincy II. Courtesy of the Quincy Yard of the Bethlehem Steel Company.
U.S.S. Massachusetts passing through the Quincy Point Bridge on leaving the Quincy Yard of the Bethlehem Steel Company for its commissioning at Boston --- 1942. Courtesy of the Quincy Yard of the Bethlehem Steel Company.
Submarine Chasers (SC Boats). Courtesy of the Quincy Adams Yacht Yard, Incorporated.
United States Army Tug. Courtesy of the Northeast Shipbuilding Company, Incorporated.
Quincy - 1944. Courtesy of Mr. Basil Q. Emanuel.
page eleven
CHAPTER I SETTLEMENT; SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
THE CITY OF QUINCY, now in its fourth century of existence, retains memories of former years in place-names which are in every day use throughout the city and the world today. Massachusetts, Squantum, Mount Wollaston, Merrymount, Braintree, Quincy, and the Monatiquot or Fore River - these are names living today which recall the struggles and triumphs of our pioneers in settlement and industry. The lands bordering Quincy Bay, from the Neponset to the present Fore River, were the central gathering places of the Massa- chusetts Tribe of Indians, from which the Colony, Province, and Com- monwealth of Massachusetts derived their common name.
September 30, 1621, marked the first recorded visit of the white men to this locality. An expedition led by Captain Myles Standish from the Plymouth Colony established only eight months before, was guided across the bay by 'Tisquantum or Squanto, the greatest bene- factor of the whites in those early days, to that bold promontory which bears his name.
The Squantum area, a member of the Devonian or Carboniferous system, is, according to geologists, more than 250,000,000 years old. It consists mainly of a peculiar kind of rock now regarded as tillite or glacial conglomerate, interbedded with a few thin layers that are regarded as water-laid drift. The tillite contains striated and faceted pebbles and other indications of its glacial origin, including angular boulders of granite and other rocks three to four feet long. The thick- ness of the tillite appears to range from fifty to six hundred feet or more, but as its base is nowhere fully exposed, its actual thickness is uncertain.
The party soon found itself in the district now known as Massa- chusetts Fields near Moswetuset Hummock, which is located at the junction of East Squantum Street and the Quincy Shore Boulevard adjacent to the United States Naval Air Station. This was Sachem's Knoll, the chief seat of Chickatabot, meaning "House-a-fire," the Sachem of the Moswetuset, or Massachusetts Tribe of Indians.
Reverend John Cotton, teacher of the First Church of Boston, 1633-1652, one of the leading authorities for the origin of the deriva- tion of the word Massachusetts, defines Massachusetts as "a hill in the form of an arrow-head." Neal, in his History of New England, pub- lished in 1721, gives the origin of Massachusetts as follows: "The Sachem or Sagamore who governed the Indians in this part of the country when the English first came hither, had his seat on a small hill, or hummock, containing perhaps an acre and a half, about two leagues to the southward of Boston, which hill or hummock lies in the shape of an Indian's arrow-head, which arrow-heads are called in
page thirteen
Myles Standish Cairn, Squantum. Erected 1895
their language Mos, or Mons, with the O nasal, and hill in their language is Wetuset; hence, this great Sachem's seat was called Mos- wetuset, which signifies a hill in the shape of an arrow's head, and his subjects, the Moswetuset Indians, from whence with a small varia- tion of the word, the Province received the name Massachusetts."
In 1925, tercentenary year of the settlement of Mount Wollaston, the site was marked with a granite memorial by the City of Quincy; in 1931, Moswetuset Hummock was added by the Commonwealth to the Quincy Shore Reservation to commemorate the origin of the name Massachusetts.
The Pilgrims were particularly impressed with the beauty and advantages of Quincy Bay and Boston Harbor. Bradford (who may have been one of the party) entered in his diary: "They returned in saftie, and brought home a quantity of beaver, and made reporte of ye place, wishing they had been there seated."
Captain Wollaston, who in 1625 established a trading post on these shores, was no homeseeker, but an economic adventurer. Of the worthy Captain Wollaston, nothing, not even his Christian name is known. His stay at the Mount was brief, yet his name for fifteen years served to identify the entire region as Mount Wollaston and survives today as the name of a large and important section of the city.
Departing early in the spring of 1626, Captain Wollaston left behind a portion of his company including "Thomas Morton of Clif- ford's Inn, Gent." Morton, an adventurer in both the ancient and modern sense of the word and a jovial sort of a roisterer too, soon won control and crowned himself the "Lord of Misrule." Under his short rule the natives flocked here to be tutored in the strange but pleasant ways of the white men. The Mount became in name and fact Merry Mount - spelled more innocently Ma-re Mount (mountain bv the sea) as a sop to the solemn Pilgrims to the southward. On this Ma-re Mount was set up on May Day 1627, the Maypole which was to be immortalized in history and fiction. The Plymouth men were not to be mollified by a play upon words: they recognized and opposed this plague-spot of worldliness encroaching upon their Eden. Captain Myles Standish with his "invincible army" of eight men finally in- vaded the Mount in 1628, arrested Morton, and roughly dragged him to Plymouth. The company was dispersed. Morton was banished from his Merry Mount to Merrie England.
Within three months Governor Endicott landed at Salem with the patent of the Company of Massachusetts Bay, which included Mount Wollaston. One of his first acts was to cross the bay to the Mount, where he sternly admonished those who still lingered about the place, caused the Maypole to be felled to the ground and changed the name to Mount Dagon. Endicott left Morton's Maypole and his
page fifteen
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followers equally down-fallen. Some remained in the locality and were later to be recorded as residents of Braintree. Thus Quincy has had a continuous existence since 1625.
The name Braintree dates from 1632, when the so called Braintree Company recruited by the Reverend Thomas Hooker in Braintree, England, attempted to "sit down" at the Mount and provide for the coming of their pastor and other brethren. This second effort at colonizing was frustrated when the General Court in Boston refused to confirm these settlers in their title to the land, allotted to them instead territory in New Towne (Cambridge). Here Hooker joined his company. Subsequently with a division of the company, he jour- neyed to the Connecticut River and laid the foundation of Hartford. There he was influential in developing the principles of self-govern- ment and broad religious toleration.
The third and final settlement here was made from Boston. That narrow peninsula had proved inadequate to satisfy the desire of the pioneers for large estates. Across the Neponset, at Mount Wollaston, they saw open and undeveloped country. At the session of the General Court in May, 1634, the necessity of "enlargement" was considered. Accordingly, in September of the same year, the General Court ordered "Boston shall have convenient enlargement at Mount Wollaston." Thus Mount Wollaston, comprising fifty square miles of territory, was annexed to Boston. Grants in the new territory were immediately solicited from the General Court by people for different reasons: first, English gentry who desired to be large land owners; second, those who wished to establish their homes; third, those who, chafing under the rigidity of the church doctrines enforced in Boston, sought a place to worship according to the dictates of their own consciences.
The Boston Records, 1634-1660, state that on the 8th day of the 10th moneth called, December, 1634, at a general meeting upon public notice, "it was ordered that Mr. Willson the Pastor of the Boston Church, should have so much land at Mount Wooleston at his elec- tion, and after so much shalbe his portion of other lands belonging to the towne to be layd him out so neere his other lands at Mount Woolaston as may be for his must conveniency." Thus Pastor Wilson became the first land-owner in (now) Quincy. A year later on the 14th of December, 1635, "a committee of five was appointed to goe and take viewe at Mount Woolistone, and bound out there what may bee sufficient for Mr. William Coddington and Edmund Quinsey to have for their particular farmes there." On the 4th of the 11th moneth, called January, 1635, it was agreed that "Mr. Atherton Haulgh shall have six hundred acres layd him out beyond Mount Woollystone, between Monottycott Ryver and the bounds that part our bounds from Wamoth." Therefore the water-front of (now) Quincy from Stande or Sachem Brook to the Fore River on the south and Town River on the west, was assigned to three men, Coddington, Quincy, and Hough.
page seventeen
Birthplace of President John Adams
-
Birthplace of President John Quincy Adams
Many grantees, although they retained their allotments here, con- tinued to live in Boston or settled elsewhere.
Another group, who were characterized by religious liberalism, built homes here for occasional occupancy. Among those were William Coddington, treasurer of the Colony and Quincy's earliest benefactor, whose name is perpetuated by the Coddington School and Coddington Street; Atherton Hough, a magistrate, whose grant included the neck of land which now bears his name; and William Hutchinson with his famous wife, Mistress Anne Hutchinson, a woman of remarkable force of character, intellectual power and acquirements, and unaffected religious devotion.
The inhabitants of Mount Wollaston at such a distance from Boston, now found themselves practically cut off from church and town privileges. Under date of September 3, 1636, those inhabitants of Boston who had taken their farms and lots at Mount Wollaston, finding it very burdensome to have their business so far off, expressed their desire to gather a church here. Acting upon this petition on "the 30th of the 8th month," October 10 (O S), the Boston church voted "Our brother, Mr. John Wheelwright, was granted unto for the pre- paring for a church gathering at Mount Wollystone." Immediately he gathered a group of worshipers and organized a branch church here. For the single year of its existence this "Chapel of Ease" was the storm center of the historic religious dispute known as the Anti- nomian Controversy which threatened the entire colony. In the end, Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson were banished.
Wheelwright, with a number of followers, went north and founded Exeter, New Hampshire, established a church there, and became its first minister. William Coddington and Anne Hutchinson with her family and others fled south and established a colony on the island of Aquidneck, now Rhode Island. There Coddington soon became its first governor and later president of the colony. Mount Wollaston and other lands once owned by Coddington in Old Brain- tree, were purchased by William Tyng, Boston's richest merchant in that day. The natural leaders of the people were gone. Those who remained of the liberal party, who had attempted to give vitality and spirituality to the religion of the times, were sullen and resentful. The principle of freedom of worship appeared to be abandoned, but it was later to prove an important part of Quincy's heritage. During this time there was a great shifting of population and a change in the proprietorship of lands. The banished and voluntary exiles were sell- ing their estates as rapidly as they could to those coming here from Boston and over the sea. They infused into the settlement a more vigorous life but had no vital interest in the recent controversy. These newcomers were prepared to go forward in the course usual with pros- pering plantations.
page nineteen
:
Quincy Homestead or Dorothy Q. House - 1822
Quincy Homestead or Dorothy Q. House - 1944
On Monday, the 26th day of September, 1639, the inhabitants of Mount Wollaston assembled and entered solemnly into new church relations by renewing the original covenant, the following part of which has never been changed, and remains in use today: "to worship the Lord in Spirit and Truth, and to walk in Brotherly Love and the Duties thereof, according to the Will of the Gospel." This church, the Church of Christ in Braintree, the fifteenth gathered in the Massa- chusetts Bay Colony, exists today as the First Parish Church in Quincy.
Separation as a distinct town was a natural sequence to the establishment of an independent church.
The General Court, on May 23, 1640, granted the inhabitants of Mount Wollaston the liberty to incorporate as a town "to be called Braintree," the twenty-second town of the Commonwealth in order of establishment. The early Braintree was a community of widely scat- tered farms. At the northerly end, the Indians still lingered and cultivated the Massachusetts Fields. Mount Wollaston Farm forever to be associated with those apostles of religious and political freedom, Coddington, Wheelwright, Anne Hutchinson, the Quincys, Hancock, the Adamses lay along the banks of Black's Creek and Furnace Brook, where the Quincy Homestead or the Dorothy Q. House still stands. Such center as there was to the little settlement was grouped along the Town Brook from the Meeting House which stood in the middle of the present Hancock Street at Cliveden to the Grist Mill at the foot of the granite hills where Fort Street now is. On the edge of the little village on the north side of Elm Street about opposite the head of South Street, was the original Henry Adams grant. The birthplaces of the second and sixth Presidents of the United States, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, were not a part of the original grant, but were further to the south. In 1940 the birthplaces of the Presidents were presented by the Adams family to the City of Quincy as monuments to the Presidents and their times.
In the rapid growth of New England, Old Braintree shared. Progressive settlement and industry, with the consequent necessity of separate churches "for the more regular and convenient upholding of the worship of God," led to separation in parochial affairs. In 1708, Old Braintree was divided into two parishes. The original settlement became the North Precinct. Its southern boundary was substantially the same as that between the present Quincy and Braintree. The South Precinct included what is now Braintree, Randolph, and Hol- brook. Nineteen years later the South Precinct was divided into the Middle and South Precinct. Proximity and business ties linked the North Precinct with its neighbor Boston, north of the Neponset rather than with the settlement on the Monatiquot.
The most interesting document of the early days of Old Brain- tree which remains today, is the Indian Deed of 1665, now in the archives of the Town of Braintree.
page twenty-one
INDIAN DEED OF 1665
"On August 10, 1665, in consideration of twenty-one pounds and ten shillings (about seventy-two dollars), Wampatuck, alias, Josiah Sagamore, the son of Chickatbut, deceased, with the full consent of his wise men, Squamog, his brother Daniel, old Hahatun, William Mananiomott, Job Nassott, Manuntago, and William Nahanton, sold lo Samuel Bass, Thomas Faxon, Francis Eliot, William Needham, William Savill, Henry Neale, Richard Thayer, and Christopher Webb, all of Braintrey, in behalf of the inhabitants of Braintrey, all the lands within the Town of Braintrey, excepting the farms of Mr. Wilson, Mr. Coddington, and Mr. Quincy, and Mr. Hough's neck of land, which lands were purchased by the said men of Wampatuck's prede- cessors."
The Indian Deed was signed, sealed, and delivered by turf, and twig. This was in conformity with the prevailing custom. The pur- chaser of a parcel of land actually went on to the premises and took into his possession, a turf of the land and a twig of the trees growing thereon, delivered to him by the person from whom the land was purchased.
page twenty-two
CHAPTER II
GERMANTOWN
ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE YEARS after Quincy's original set- tlement occurred an event which was to prove of corresponding im- portance in the development of the town. In 1750, a company organ- ized to manufacture glass, leased Shed's Neck, said at the time to comprise one hundred acres, from Colonel John Quincy for ten shil- lings an acre, "this tract of land intended to be a town called German- town." Immediately the land was surveyed and laid out in lots with ample, pleasant, and commodious streets and squares in the German tradition. Here this company proposed to use as "labourers" a group of indentured persons imported from Germany. These were brought to this country with the promise that here unmolested they should enjoy civil and religious freedom. At Germantown, they were assured, "cows and geese could be got in abundance in the woods, and that their living would cost them little or nothing." This manufacturing company did not carry out its intention to commence business at Germantown, but in 1752, re-leased this town within a town to Joseph Palmer and Richard Cranch. They constructed buildings for the manufacture of glass, pottery, chocolate, stockings, whale-oil products, common salt, medicinal salt, and saltpeter. Fragments of Germantown glass, in existence today are of the coarsest description. The project was unsuccessful because of the pressure of the restrictions on manu- factured products previous to the American Revolution and the de- struction of the buildings by fire. The glass works, in combination with the other endeavors, was one of the first localized general manu- facturing attempts in the colonies. Some of the settlers of German- town remained in this vicinity, and their descendants constitute an important factor in the life of our city today.
page twenty-three
Colonel Josiah Quincy Homestead -- 1822
Colonel Josiah Quincy Homestead - 1944
CHAPTER III "INDEPENDENCE FOREVER": EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
AT THE time of the American Revolution, it was fortunate for the colonies that the tradition of independence flourished in Old Brain- tree and influenced able and steadfast leaders. John Adams, in the Continental Congress of 1775, urged that governments be instituted by the people of the colonies and that a common declaration of inde- pendence be immediately issued. There he also spoke the decisive word which summoned Colonel George Washington to the supreme command of the Continental Army. John Hancock, skilful politician with astute judgment, became President of the Second Continental Congress and the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. Colo- nel Josiah Quincy, from his home (erected in 1770) at Massachusetts Fields, the present 20 Muirhead Street, Wollaston, kept a sharp look- out upon the maneuvers of the British Fleet and reported them to General Washington at Cambridge. It was from the upper windows of this house that Colonel Quincy watched General Gage sail out of Boston, an incident which he recorded with the diamond in his ring on a pane of glass, both glass and ring being still preserved in the Quincy family: "October 10th 1775 General Gage sailed for England with a fair wind." Brigadier General Joseph Palmer of Germantown fought at Bunker Hill and liberally donated funds in support of the Revolution. Abigail Adams from her home at what is now 131 Frank- lin Street, on the eighteenth of May, 1778, wrote her husband, “Dif- ficult as the day is, cruel as this war has been, separated as I am, on account of it, from the dearest connexion in life, I would not exchange my country for the wealth of the Indies, or be any other than an American."
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