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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67
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Alijichy Thompson
PROFESSIONAL AND INDUSTRIAL HISTORY
OF
SUFFOLK COUNTY
MASSACHUSETTS
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOLUME III
Illustrated
THE BOSTON HISTORY COMPANY
1894
CONTENTS.
Page.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BOSTON 9
C. W. ERNST.
MEDICAL PROFESSION OF SUFFOLK COUNTY 174 EDWARD JACOB FORSTER, M. D.
STREET RAILWAY SYSTEM OF BOSTON 286
PRENTISS CUMMINGS.
WHOLESALE SHOE TRADE OF SUFFOLK COUNTY 303
FRANK W. NORCROSS.
THE HIDE AND LEATHER TRADE OF SUFFOLK COUNTY.
368
FRANK W. NORCROSS.
INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF SUFFOLK COUNTY
392
BOSTON'S RELATION TO THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY
491
THE MASSACHUSETTS CHARITABLE MECHANIC ASSOCIATION
521
BIOGRAPHIES 543
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Facing Page
Facing Page
ALDEN, GEORGE A.
286
HUNTER, S. V. R. 384
BATCHELDER, EDWARD E.
90
JONES, V. K. 398
BATCHELLER, TYLER
62
KELLY, THOMAS .. 328
BRACKETT, WILLIAM D.
604
LEWIS, ORLANDO E. 658
BRAY, MELLEN
596
LINCOLN, JOSEPH B. 550
BREED, FRANCIS W. 412
476
MCKAY, GORDON 104
CONVERSE, ELISHA S.
20
McLAUTHLIN, GEORGE T. 258
CONVERSE, JAMES W. 574
494
MATTHEWS, NATHAN
220)
CURTIS, GEORGE
458
METCALF, ALBERT
644
CURTIS, NOAH1 542
Moody, WILLIAM H. 370
CURTIS, NOAH?
.546
MUNVAN, JONATHAN 134
DANCEL, CHRISTIAN
526
NICKERSON, ALBERT W. 206
DENMSON, AARON L ..
NORRIS, HOWES
618
DENNISON, ELIPHALET W. 218
POPE, ARTHUR W.
426
Dow, STEPHEN 34
PROUTV, CHARLES N. 1 192 . 1
EMERY, FRANCIS F.
272
RAWSON, WARREN W 1 1 668
EVANS, ROBERT D.
300
SMITH, AARON F. 1
1
1
626
FENNESSY, EDWARD H.
440
SPOFFORD, JOHN C. 664 1 1 1
FENNESSY, FRANK E.
630
SQUIRE, JOHN P. 350
FIELD, JOHN 584
THOMPSON, ABIJAHI Frontispiece
FLAGG, GEORGE H. P.
148
WALWORTH, JAMES J. 340
FOGG, JOHN S. 48
WARNOCK, ADAM 666
GAV, GEORGE W., M. D.
360
WHITE, WILLIAM H. 560
GOODYEAR, CHARLES 120
WINCH, JOHN F. 162 1
HOOD, GEORGE H.
314 WINCH, JOSEPH R. 178 1
LITCHFIELD, GEORGE A. 506
CHAPIN, NAHUM
MANSFIELD, GEORGE A 76
CONNIFF, MICHAEL M.
BIOGRAPHIES.
Page
ALDEN, GEORGE A.
615
HUNTER, S. V. R.
Page 599
BATCHELDER, EDWARD E.
549
JONES, V. K.
628
BATCHELLER, TYLER
572
KELLY, THOMAS 670
BRACKETT, WILLIAM D.
604
LEWIS, ORLANDO E. 658
BRAV, MELLEN
596
LINCOLN, JOSEPH B. 550
BREED, FRANCIS W
623
LITCHFIELD, GEORGE A. 664
CHAPIN, NAHUM
668
MCKAY, GORDON
586
CONVERSE, ELISHA S.
554
McLAUTHLIN, GEORGE T. .
6446
CONVERSE, JAMES W.
574
MANSFIELD, GEORGE A
548
CUNNIFF, MICHAEL M.
660
MATTHEWS, NATILAN
673
CURTIS, GEORGE 669
METCALF, ALBERT
644
CURTIS, NOAH 1
543
MOODY, WILLIAM H.
. 653
CURTIS, NOAH2
545
MUNVAN, JONATHAN 593
678
DENNISON, AARON L.
649
NORRIS, HOWES .618
POPE, ARTHUR W 621
Dow, STEPHEN 581
PROUTY, CHARLES N.
557
RAWSON, WARREN W.
667
EVANS. ROBERT D.
654
SMITH, AARON F.
626
FENNESSY, EDWARD H.
630
SPOFFORD, JOHN C.
661
FENNESSY, FRANK E.
630
SQUIRE, JOHN P. 656
FIELD, JOHN 584
THOMPSON, ABIJAII _ _ 568
FLAGG, GEORGE H. P.
601
WALWORTH, JAMES J. 632
FOGG, JOHN S.
577
WARNOCK, ADAM 666
GAY, GEORGE W., M. D.
672
WHITE, WILLIAM H. 560
GOODYEAR, CHARLES
590
WINCH, JOHN F. 563 1
HOOD, GEORGE H. 650
WINCH, JOSEPH R. 563
DANCEL, CHRISTIAN
595
NICKERSON, ALBERT W.
DENNISON, ELIPHALET W.
635
EMERY, FRANCIS F. 606
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.
AN ESSAY BY
C. W. ERNST, A. M., SECRETARY OF THE MAYOR'S OFFICE, 1889-90.
COLONIAL PERIOD, 1630 TO 1692.
Two things helped to make Boston a great city: Geographical posi- tion, and the character of the founders. Without certain natural ad- vantages the founders of Boston would have failed; for even a Puritan cannot militate effectually against nature. Yet the geographical posi- tion and the topography of Boston are not without disadvantages. For the city proper, nature provided a peninsula wholly insufficient to meet the wants of a great community. A large part of modern Boston, that is, the peninsula, known to the Fathers as "the neck," stands on ground that was wrested from salt water. But the harbor is magnifi- cent, and was provided by nature. The advantage of the harbor is its proximity to the fisheries,-an advantage generally underrated by mod- ern opinion. But without the fisheries, Boston and Massachusetts could not have lived. The fisheries led directly to commerce; for in agriculture Massachusetts could not rival the colonies further south. This made Boston from the very beginning a commercial city and the chief port of New England. In the days of the Colony and Province. Bos- ton was the chief port on this continent, the most easily reached and the most generally frequented by English shipping. This supremacy was lost, when the empire west of the Hudson river became the
2
10
BOSTON.
granary of the United States and Europe. For it is easier and cheaper to send grain from the fresh-water lakes to New York than to Boston. Nature provided a way to New York; it barred the way to Boston. And the gain on the voyage to European markets was more than offset by the greater cost of carrying freight from the great wheat farms to Boston. Even steel rails, steam, and the Hoosac tunnel have not de- stroyed this advantage, as compared with the easier and shorter road to New York. Nor is the port of Boston favorably placed for easy commerce with the South, which produces cotton, or even with Penn- sylvania, which supplies our coal.
These comparative disadvantages put Boston to a sharp test, and helped to develop its character. Boston was obliged to work hard, and to mix its toil with farsighted intelligence. The character of Boston is best shown in its institutions, and not the least, perhaps, in the general organization and management of the community. Whoever wishes to understand and appreciate Massachusetts, should read her laws, and ascertain what they effected. Our public laws, after all, are the quint- essence of our public life no less than of our joint ambition and public morals. They are the outcome of what the community for the time being wants. To the historian they are the backbone of all researches. The sources for a constitutional history of Boston, therefore, are the town orders and the town records, interpreted by the acts of the town officers, on the one hand, and by the Massachusetts statutes and records, on the other. The first period of Boston, in the history of its constitu- tion the most important, begins with the settlement under the patent, in 1630, and ends with the granting of the Province Charter, in 1691-92. The chief sources are the second and seventh Report of the Boston Record Commissioners (cd. of 1881); the Colonial Laws of Massachu- setts, edited, after the editions of 1660 and 1672, by W. H. Whitmore (1889 and 1887); and the Records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay (1853-4, 5 vols. in six parts. )
THE PATENT OF 1629.
The men and women who founded Boston and Massachusetts came here to improve their condition. But they came as English subjects, not prepared to lose any advantage that relation might afford. The chief attraction in New England were the fisheries, famous along the At- lantic coast of all Europe, and the certainty that the land hunger of the English race could be appeased in the new world. The land laws of
11
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.
England, and its controversies in church and state, made the new world attractive. But the immediate precedent for the New-England enterprise was the success that had attended the charter of the East- India company. Perhaps it is not unjust to affirm that the charter of 1600, granted by Queen Elizabeth, has made Queen Victoria the Em- press of India, with almost three hundred million inhabitants. Greater triumphs might have been achieved, by the successors of Queen Eliza- beth, in New England and America. The beginning was auspicious. On the last day in 1600 " The Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading in the East Indies" was incorporated; on March 4, 1628-9, a better charter was given to "The Governor and Company of the Mattachusetts Bay in Newe England." The East-India merchants were given a monopoly of trade; the Massachusetts Company received a monopoly of trade together with a monopoly of land to be held "in free and common Socage," that is, absolutely, the crown reserving only one-fifth of the gold and silver that might be mined in Massachu- setts.
It was an interesting fiction that led the crown to give the present United States to enterprising Englishmen, and the latter to treat the patents of James and Charles as a valid title in the land that became New England and America. Yet so strong is the attachment of Amer- cans to the forms of law that the present boundary of Essex county, Massachusetts, to the north was established in the patent of 1629, when Charles I. gave to the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay " all those landes and hereditaments whatsoever, which lye and be within the space of three English myles to the northward of the saide river called Monomack, alias Merrymack." The same patent established the Great and General Court which still controls the public affairs of Bos- ton and Massachusetts, although the authors of the patent thought only of a commercial company, with headquarters in England. The patent intended to constitute the Governor and Company of Massachusetts " one body corporate and politique," that is, a corporation that could sue and be sued, "like any other corporation." The corporation was to have very large rights, except those of sovereignty or semi-sover- eignty. The corporation was to have a Governor and Deputy Gover- nor, to be elected annually; and a board of Assistants or directors consisting of eighteen persons, who were to hold monthly meetings; while the corporation at large, meeting four times a year, was to con- sist of freemen formally admitted as such. In the patent a meeting of
12
BOSTON.
the freemen, the Assistants, and the Governor combined, was called the Great and General Court.
Under the patent of 1629 the Governor and Company of Massachu- setts were to be exempt from taxes for seven years, as far as New England was concerned, and in the same respect to enjoy free trade for twenty-one years. The emigrants were to remain English subjects, and might admit " any other strangers that will become our [the King's] loving subjects." The Governor and Company were given leave "from tyme to tyme to make, ordeine, and establishe all manner of wholesome and reasonable orders, lawes, statutes, and ordinances, directions and instructions, not contrarie to the lawes of this our realme of England, as well for setling of the formes and ceremonies of government and magistracy fitt and necessary for the said plantation and the inhabit- ants there;" but all this was to be done "according to the course of other corporations in this our realme of England," showing that the patent expected the Governor and Company, who were made a close corporation, to remain in England. In reality the Governor and Com- pany, together with the patent, were taken to New England; and the commercial corporation acted from the outset as a semi-sovereign com- monwealth, or rather as a quasi-autonomous aristocracy. The Governor was the head; the Assistants were his senators; the citizens were the freemen, and all freemen were citizens, with the active and passive right of suffrage, with all that implied. The belief, commonly enter- tained (Washburn, Judicial History of Massachusetts, 15), that "the government of the company, as established by the charter, was a pure democracy," is not well founded. The early church and the early Commonwealth of Massachusetts were an aristocracy, which prescribed mechanies' wages, did not allow servants to trade, and discriminated against " the poorer sort of the inhabitants."
THE COLONY.
The king had intended to create another commercial corporation ; from the outset it was a municipal corporation, nominally attached to the crown, in fact separated from king and parliament by the Atlantic ocean and a deeper gulf. In time this municipal corporation became a sovereign commonwealth. Land hunger, or love of wealth, scattered the early immigrants over a wide area, and thus led to the founding of numerous neighborhoods, called towns. The accidental right of towns to distribute all land within their boundaries, increased their number
13
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.
rapidly. As soon as a town was named or otherwise recognized by the General Court, it was deemed to be incorporated, and even a table of precedency among towns was adopted and retained (3 Mass. Records, 2). Boston ranked fourth in this hierarchy, Salem, Charlestown, and Dorchester having precedence. The ruling minds had brought from England certain notions of the realm being subdivided into shires or counties, which consisted of several towns each, beside boroughs or cities. These notions received a new application and development in Massachusetts, where the town obtained some of the rights of the English shire, notably that of direct representation in the General Court. Yet our Massachusetts counties began with a copy of the Eng- lish lord lieutenant (? Mass. Records, 42). The Massachusetts town became important at the expense of the county, and in Rhode Island it became the rival of the State itself. Outside of New England the county is the political unit; in New England the town is the chief ele- ment to make good citizens and good states. Easily the chief town in New England is Boston, whose rank has never been disputed. Yet the great importance of the New-England town is an accident. A French governor and company of Massachusetts might have begun with the laying out of counties; Governor Winthrop and his company wanted land, but on it they wanted actual settlers with a church and a con- stable. The church and the constable became the attributes of the New-England town; the county was an afterthought, occasioned by the arrangement of judicatories. When Massachusetts established its first counties, in 1643, there were thirty towns, and these were grouped in four " sheires," namely, Essex, Middlesex, old Norfolk, and Suffolk.
The theocratic element in early New England is easily overrated and misjudged. In those theological days it was easy for the patent of King Charles to profess that the conversion of the Indians to the Chris- tian religion was the principal end of the plantation in New England. The king himself could have added with perfect truth that the chief end of the patent and all it implied or occasioned was the glory of God. But let no one imagine that such utterances meant any disregard of secular interests. Strict Calvinism and sound business go very well together. Sound business and ecclesiastical rivalries do not. For this reason it was sound business and legitimate, not to say necessary, that the founders of Massachusetts, who were also the founders of Boston, insisted upon uniformity in church matters. Had they begun each town with two or three churches, or with none at all, the great experi-
14
BOSTON.
ment they made would have failed. They came here to improve their con- dition, that is to say, to flourish as they could not in England. They knew what they wanted, and they were right in excluding dissent, until the safety of Massachusetts was well assured. It was better for the dis- senter to be exiled than for the infant town and colony to fail, in order that men with a windmill in their heads might be let loose upon a community that had harder work to do than to concoct schemes of reform or discuss rival theologies. The early settlers were strong; but one system of theology was all they could bear. And it was all the infant town and country could bear.
The glory of the Fathers is not their development of theology or theoretical jurisprudence, but the fact that they succeeded in building a great city, a multitude of happy towns, and a great commonwealth in the wilderness which offered few attractions beyond good water, a wholesome climate, free land, and ready access to abundant fisheries. This glory will not diminish upon a comparison of the natural advan- tages that favor other cities and States in this nation. It is an open question whether the relative sterility of the agricultural lands of Mas- sachusetts was a help or a hindrance in the founding of the State. compelled hard work, and thus tended to produce a hardy race. It
It led men to seek wealth by commerce, and thus prevented them from leading the narrower life of prosperous farmers. The very struggle for existence bound the founders more closely together; for partners in business quarrel more easily in days of success than in times of struggle and adversity. The early settler wanted prosperity for himself; but he knew that individual prosperity cannot endure in a loose and ill- governed community. Hence the double endeavor of the founders to build their own fortunes together with the orderly government of the settlement at large. These practical interests were paramount, and left no time for theories. Theories may have suffered ; the founders of Massachusetts were not, perhaps, very systematic; but their experi- ment succeeded, and that under circumstances which would have dis- heartened almost any other set of men. This is their honor; this honor is among the many inheritances of modern Boston and Massachusetts, that they have prospered in everything that makes life attractive, where a race less sturdy, less ambitious, and less gifted would have failed.
To be sure, the Fathers brought with them the very flower of English civilisation, which had just passed through the Elizabethan
15
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.
age; they had the English Bible, which gave to New England the purity of its speech. But what was uppermost in the minds of the New-England Puritan was dissent from king and prelate, deep distrust of crown law, and an ardent desire to do better in the new world than seemed possible in the old. In all constitutional questions the New- England fathers were opposed to the dominant doctrines preached and practised in old England. With inexpressible joy they found them- selves unopposed, in New England, by royal pretensions and ecclesi- astical authority. This relief gave strength to new endeavors; here the freedom-loving Puritan could be his own king, lord, and parliament. What wonder that he clung to such an opportunity with the full tenac- ity of a tenacions race, kindled by new ambitions. But it is not true that he brought with him a full set of municipal and state institutions. The institutions he left were tottering; royalty and popular self-gov- ernment were arrayed against each other; and nobody could know what the outcome might be. All that was settled in the minds of the emigrants was that they proposed to establish, if possible, a New Eng- land with the tyranny and foolish traditions of old England left out. In reality they had to build anew; their chief advantage was that they were not called upon to tear down and clear the ground before they could begin the new building. But the plan for the new building in America was their own; the plans brought from the old world would not answer. The municipal laws of Elizabeth and Charles were bad ; they legalized "select" bodies that made municipal government in England a failure.
COLONIAL SUFFRAGE.
The patent did not define in detail the grounds on which the corpo- ration of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts might enlarge itself, but authorized the incorporators to admit whom they pleased. The members of the corporation were called freemen. New freemen were admitted by vote. Beside the freemen there were "inhabitants," who were not voters, but owed allegiance to the corporation, or Com- monwealth, and in theory to the king. Thus, both in theory and practice, the constitution was aristocratic, The Governor exemplified this trait, which still survives. The corporation was a pure democracy ; but the corporation was not the whole enterprise, and from the outset had attached to it many persons who were not freemen. Freemen was a term borrowed from the municipal corporations of England, which
16
BOSTON.
admitted freemen by a vote of the ruling body, itself elected by the freemen. In London a prerequisite of freemen was their admission to a city guild, usually procured by purchase. As the New-England company consisted of Puritan church members, it was natural that they were slow to admit any but church members, except as inhabitants occupying a subordinate position. This prerequisite, that the freemen of Massachusetts must be church members, was relaxed as soon as it was safe to indulge in greater latitude. In defense of the requirement it should not be forgotten that the patent had created a close corpo- ration. The East-India company, not a wholly dissimilar body, was never expected to admit all comers to membership. At any rate the Massachusetts company aeted lawfully and from legitimate self- interest. It did not set out to be an asylum for the refugees of man- kind.
The opinion that church membership conferred the rights of a free- man, is not well founded. It required a formal vote of freemen, or their authorized representatives, to admit new freemen. In 1641 this right was conferred upon courts where at least two magistrates were present ; and they could admit as freemen such church members only as were "fit," the magistrates deciding what constituted fitness. The provision was distinctly aristocratic, and was administered in that spirit. In 1664 the right of admitting freemen reverted to the General Court, which required applicants to be Englishmen, twenty-four years of age or more, "settled inhabitants in this jurisdiction," householders, tax- payers in their own name, "orthodox in religion," and not vicious in their lives; or, "that they are in full communion with some church amongst us." In English municipal corporations the rights of a freeman could be acquired by marriage with the widow or daughter of a free- man; this law was never adopted in New England, possibly because the daughters of New England usually declined to marry men not freemen in their own right. The religious test of freemen disappeared with the patent, the Province charter of 1691 establishing other re- quirements than those deemed prudent in Colony days. The sterner requirements of the first comers, who laid the foundation and were re- sponsible for its strength, had been complied with, and Massachusetts was the result.
The right of suffrage in America is municipal rather than imperial. In Massachusetts, where the supreme authority-the General Court- has always been jealous of its prerogative, a municipal character of the
17
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.
suffrage has never been wholly avoided. When the "Company " es- tablished by the patent became too numerous for all freemen to take part in the Great and General Court, each Town was invited to send deputies. This arrangement began as early as 1634 (1 Mass. Records, 118), and added to the dignity of towns, all being treated alike. When the General Court resumed the right of conferring the freedom of the colony, it required applicants to present proper credentials from the clergy as to character, and from the other town officers as to secular qualifications, like domicile and freehold. But domicile could not be acquired without the formal consent of the selectmen, thus giving them, at least indirectly, great power over the admission of freemen. Applicants for the freedom of the colony had to acquire also a free- hold before they could be considered, and the freehold was likewise conferred by the towns. Even the temporary presence of strangers re- quired the consent of the selectmen. Admission as an inhabitant and as a freeman was thus carefully guarded, and it was guarded through the towns and their selectmen. The Boston Town Records show how carefully this was done. Anybody was free to go, but not to come (Col. Laws, 1660, ed. Whitmore, 50, 2). It was the Town through which men entered the "Company" of Massachusetts, and through which they exercised their rights as freemen.
The number of freemen appears to have been from one-twentieth to one-tenth of the population. In 1675 Boston was estimated to have a population of about 4,000; in 1619, when it demanded more deputies to represent it in the General Court, a Town Meeting asked indignantly : "Shall twenty freemen [rural towns of twenty freemen were entitled to two deputies, the maximum number of any town] have equal privi- lege with our great Town, which consists of near twenty times twenty freemen " (? Boston Rec. Comm., 134). A full list of all freemen is given in the Massachusetts Records (ed. Shurtleff, 6 vols., 4to, 1853-54), and to every living freeman it may be safe to count about fifteen "in- habitants " or persons. These latter were so important that at an early day they received privileges of value. In 1641 the General Court pre- vided that "every man, whether inhabitant or foreigner, free[man] or not free[man ], shall have liberty to come to any public court, council or Town Meeting, and either by speech or writing to move any lawful, seasonable or material question, or to present any necessary motion, complaint, petition, bill, or information whereof that meeting has proper cognizance, so it be done in convenient time, due order and re-
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