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1
SOME INTERESTING BOSTON EVENTS
BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRAKY CHESTNUT HILL, MASS,
PRINTED FOR THE STATE STREET TRUST COMPANY BOSTON, MASS.
1
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE STATE STREET TRUST COMPANY
F 73.37 .58
53929
Compiled, arranged and printed by direction of Walton Advertising & Printing Co. Boston, Mass.
FOREWORD
It has been the aim of the State Street Trust Company to select for this the tenth pamphlet in its series, historical events associated with Massachusetts, particularly Boston, and at the same time to choose events of a varied nature in order to interest as many readers as possible. Certain of the better known subjects have been purposely omitted, as it was thought that a selection of somewhat less known, though perhaps equally important, events would prove of greater interest.
For assistance in preparing the present pamphlet the Trust Com- pany desires to give credit first of all to the officers of this Company; then to the late Governor, Curtis Guild, for valuable suggestions as to the subject-matter; also to Mr. Samuel Morison for other sugges- tions; to Mr. Otto Fleischner, of the Boston Public Library, for valu- able assistance in the selection of reference books; to Mr. C. K. Bolton, of the Boston Atheneum, and Mr. Charles F. Read, of the Bostonian Society; to Mr. P. K. Foley and Mr. C. E. Goodspeed for assistance covering certain pictures and references.
For assistance on specific subjects the Company wishes to thank Mr. Louis A. Cook for help in connection with the account of the first settlement in Boston Harbour; Prof. A. Lawrence Lowell, of Harvard College, Mr. William C. Lane, of the Harvard College Library, and Mr. Roger Pierce, for information furnished in regard to "Fair Harvard"; Dr. J. Collins Warren and Mr. C. K. Bolton for their assistance in obtaining certain facts in connection with the Old North Church; Mr. Charles H. Taylor, Jr., Miss Clara Parker, of the Nantucket Athenæum, Miss Anne W. Bodfish, Secretary of the Nantucket Historical Society, Mr. George H. Tripp, Librarian of the New Bedford Library, and Mr. William Rotch for information con- cerning Mr. Rotch's Counting House in Nantucket; Mr. C. H. W. Foster, Mr. W. S. Crane, and Mr. William Sumner Appleton for suggestions in regard to the Province House; Mr. F. H. Curtiss, of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, for books and information furnished in regard to the United States Branch Banks; Mr. Eric Pape and Dr. Robert T. Moffatt for information and photographs furnished concerning the frigate Constitution. Mr. J. Paulding Meade, of Boston, Mr. Charles W. Noyes, of New York, and Mr. Ricker, of Islesboro, Maine, for assistance concerning the Penobscot
FOREWORD
Expedition; Mr. Henry M. Faxon, of Quincy, Mr. Harold J. Coolidge, and Mr. J. S. Lawrence for their help in connection with the history of the Granite Railway Company; Dr. J. Collins Warren and Dr. Washburn, of the Massachusetts General Hospital, for suggestions and assistance concerning the first ether operation; Mr. Thomas A. Watson, Mr. Philip L. Spalding, President of the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, and Mr. George W. Dennison, Vice-President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Com- pany, for valuable help given in the preparation of the account of the first telephone message, and Mr. S. H. Levangia, Manager of the New Palace Theatre, for his kindness in allowing photographs to be taken; Mr. J. T. Wheelwright for information concerning the Boston Common; Hon. Louis A. Frothingham, Mr. Thomas E. Pedrick, Sergeant at Arms at the State House, and his secretary, Miss Ellen M. Burrill, for information and help in connection with the Return of the Flags, also Mr. Edward Simmons for permission to use a photo- graph of this painting; Duffield & Co. for permission to reproduce illustrations; and Mr. Edwin F. Rice, of the Boston Public Library, for help in connection with the story of Dickens' Walking Match.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
The First Permanent Settlement in Boston Harbour
7
Rev. William Blackstone, the First Settler of Boston, riding on his Brindled Bull 8
Some of the Early Punishments 10
The Beacon 14
Mrs. Sherman's Pig
16
Some Early Rules of Harvard College
17
Governor Winthrop treats with LaTour and the Subsequent Arrival of D'Aulnay
20
Some Interesting Events on Boston Common 21
The First Newspaper in America 26
Captain Kidd arrested and jailed in Boston
27
Benjamin Franklin delivers Newspapers in Boston 29
Some Interesting Events in Connection with Christ Church, or "Old North Church" 31
Woodbridge-Phillips Duel on the Common 33
Massachusetts issues Lottery Tickets to help rebuild Faneuil Hall 34
Liberty Tree 36
Signing of the Charter Papers of the Boston Tea Party Vessels in the Rotch Whaling Office, Nantucket . 37
General Warren climbs through the Window of the Old South Church to deliver his Famous "Massacre" Speech . 39
The Last Ball in the Province House, with Some Interesting Information in Regard to the House
41
"Frog" Dinner given to the Officers of the French Fleet 44
The Penobscot Expedition-Paul Revere a Lieutenant 45
Dr. John Jeffries of Boston-the First American to fly over the English Channel
47
The First United States Bank in Boston 49
Launching of the "Constitution " 51
Lafayette lays the Corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument . 54
The Granite Railway Company-the First Railroad in America 56
Mayor Theodore Lyman protects William Lloyd Garrison from the Mob, 59
The First Ether Operation 61
The "Jamestown" Expedition to Ireland 65
Colonel Robert G. Shaw leads his Negro Regiment to the War 67
Return of the Flags to the State House 68
Dickens' International Walking Match 72
First Telephone Message in Boston 74
AN ENGLISH CARICATURE ENTITLED "BOSTONIANS IN DISTRESS," NOVEMBER 19, 1774.
The Yankees are shown as prisoners in a cage on Liberty Tree and are being fed with codfish. The print is dated 1774. It may be seen on the walls of the State Street Trust Company.
Some Interesting Boston Events
THE FIRST PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN BOSTON HARBOUR
T 10 Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his son Robert belongs the credit for the establishment in 1623 of the first enduring settlement in Boston Harbour, at Wessagusset, now Weymouth, at a point on Phillips Creek, above the present Fore River Bridge. The Norsemen ventured near our coast over six hundred years before; the Cabots from Spain, backed by the English, had explored our New England ports; Captain John Smith had actually entered Boston Harbour and made a map, and Myles Standish visited the Indian camps along the Mystic River. Even as late as 1622 an expedition sent out by Thomas Weston had established a trading post at Wessagusset, which was abandoned in a short time.
Ferdinando Gorges, who was a great friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and enjoyed the confidence of King James to such a degree that that monarch appointed him Governor of Plymouth, England, had for years dreamed of a colony in the new world. His ambition was to establish a principality of a permanent character. For sixteen years he struggled and pleaded his cause before King and courtiers and made fruitless attempts at starting settlements on the Maine Coast. He had been given the title "Lord of Maine." When, in 1623, his son Robert returned from the Venetian wars he felt that the opportunity for favorable action had arrived, and accordingly the first meeting of the "Council of New England"-which had been granted a patent by the Crown in 1620 and was composed of forty persons-was held at Greenwich, England, on June 29. Among those attending the meeting were the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Richmond and a number of other notable peers. The territory covered by the patent lay on the northeast side of Boston Bay with a sea front of ten straight miles, including all the islands within a league of the shore, and extending thirty miles into the interior.
As a result of this meeting an expedition set out in the midsummer of 1623 under the leadership of Robert Gorges as Governor General. It was made up of mechanics, farmers and traders, as well as gentle- men and divines. A landing was made in September at Wessagusset, where use was made of the block house and other buildings erected by Weston the year before.
Robert Gorges, who was not a strong character, but a man of a somewhat vainglorious disposition, involved himself in quarrels with his neighbors, especially his predecessor, Weston, whom he proposed to punish for various trading misdemeanors. He even caused Weston's arrest and detention as a prisoner until the spring of the following year. The winter was a terrible surprise in its rigor. As Adams says: "They had come to enjoy the pleasures of the wilder-
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ness. Locked in a desert of ice and snow,-inhabiting a log hut on the edge of a salt marsh, with a howling, unexplored forest behind and around them,-well might they, with the mercury at zero, ask themselves 'Where was that moderate temper of the air, where those silent streams of a calm sea' which Smith had pictured? Young men accustomed to the soft winter climate of Devon were exposed to the blasts of Greenland. Where, too, was the 'fouling and fishing?' The waters were covered with ice and the woods were impassable with , snow. So Robert Gorges got through the long winter as best he could, heartily wishing himself back again in the Venetian service, or even the dreary tedium of Plymouth."
In the early spring word came from Sir Ferdinando Gorges that there were no further funds available for the colony, and inasmuch, to quote Bradford, as Gorges had not found "the state of things hear to answer his qualitie and condition" he was only too ready to give up his share in the expedition and return to England, after, as Bradford again says, "having scarcely saluted the cuntrie in his governmente." The settlement, however, was never abandoned.
An amusing story, about the authenticity of which there may be some question, is told in connection with the early days of this colony. The settlers had stolen a good deal of corn from the Indians, and one of them was at last caught. The Indians demanded that he should be executed, but were willing to allow the whites to act as his execu- tioner. Strong men were not very plentiful in the settlement, so, after thinking matters over, the colonists concluded that it would be a pity to kill one of the best men they had when they could take an old and impotent member of the colony. They therefore decided to take off the clothes of the man who committed the robbery and put them on another, "to let this sick person be hung in the other's steade." By persuasion they got the innocent man "bound fast in jest and then hung him up hard by in good earnest." An old poem commemorates this incident in the following words :-
"Resolved to spare him; yet to do The Indian Hogun Moghan too Impartial justice, in his stead did Hang an old Weaver that was bed-rid."
REV. WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, THE FIRST SETTLER OF BOSTON, RIDING ON HIS BRINDLED BULL
"Old Shawmut's pioneer The Parson on his brindled Bull."
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
It is rather difficult to imagine the Rev. Mr. Blackstone galloping by moonlight along the sands of a cove, which is now part of Charles Street, on his mouse-colored bull; nevertheless such is the picture which Motley gives of him in his "Merry Mount."
The first settler of Boston, William Blaxton (now spelled Blackstone), often alluded to as the Hermit of Shawmut, is supposed to have brought this bull from England and to have trained him to the saddle. During his rides he was wont to distribute "Blackstone" apples or
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"sweetings" to both children and grown-ups. His orchard, situated on a part of the Common near what is now Louisburg Square, was the first one to cultivate this fruit in New England.
Blackstone, a man of much culture and many eccentricities, had come over either with Robert Gorges in 1623 or with Captain Wollas- ton in 1625, and about the latter year he took up his lonely abode on Shawmut peninsula. He lived in a hut near an excellent spring on that part of Beacon Hill which overlooked the Charles River, a point later known as Blackstone Point, and now corresponding to the corner of Beacon and Spruce Streets. He is described as being "a solitary, bookish recluse, about thirty-five years of age, somewhat above middle
Blackstone's house, near Beacon and Walnut Streets, at the foot of Beacon Hill
height, slender in form, with a pale, thoughtful face, wearing a con- fused, dark-colored, 'canonical coate,' with broad rimmed hat strung with shells like an ancient palmer, and slouched back from his pensive brow, around which his prematurely gray hair fell in heavy curls far down his neck. He had a wallet at his side, a hammer in his girdle, a long staff in his hand."
Blackstone came to New England for peace and quiet and stead- fastly refused to embroil himself in the religious controversies of the time, so much so that Cotton Mather in his "Magnalia" wrote of him, "he would never join himself to any of our churches, giving as his reason, 'I came from England because I did not like the Lord Bishops; I can't join with you because I would not be under the Lord Brethren.'" On the whole, however, he dwelt in amity with these intolerant religionists.
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He was not long to remain undisturbed, for in 1630 when Governor Winthrop and his followers moved from Charlestown-really follow- ing a generous invitation from Blackstone himself-we find the hermit saying, "I looked to have dwelt with my orchards, and my books, and my young fawn, and my bull, in undisturbed solitude. Was there not room enough for all of ye? Could ye not leave the hermit in his corner?"
In 1634 Blackstone sold forty-four of his fifty acres to Governor Winthrop for £30, the money being raised by a tax levied on the inhabitants. He retained his house and remaining six acres for himself. This six acre lot was later owned by Copley, the painter. The forty-four acres purchased by Governor Winthrop were laid out for a training field, which is now our Common.
In 1635 the place became too crowded for the parson, so he moved to a farm at Rehoboth, in Rhode Island. It is generally admitted to-day that he, and not Roger Williams, was the first white inhabitant of Rhode Island. In his new home he cultivated his seven hundred acre estate, and rode about on his bull, preaching the gospel occasion- ally. He was married by Governor Endicott in Boston in 1635 to Mistress Sarah, widow of John Stevenson, with whom he lived many years in happiness. Finally, on May 26, 1675, he died at the ripe age of eighty. Roger Williams, his neighbor, records his death as follows: "About a fortnight since your old acquaintance, Mr. Black- stone, departed this life in the fourscore year of his life; four days before his death he had a great pain in his breast and back, and bowels, afterward he said he was well, had no paines and should live, but he grew fainter and yielded his breath without a groan."
His library comprised one hundred and sixty volumes, and ten manuscripts which were valued in the inventory of his estate at six pence each, or five shillings for the lot. Within one month of his death King Philip's War broke out, and up in smoke went his library, with these ten precious paper volumes which undoubtedly contained the written records of the beginnings of Boston.
Among the reminders of Blackstone to-day, inasmuch as they bear his name, are the river, the valley, a town in Massachusetts and a busy street in Boston.
He was certainly a singular character and was fittingly described by his namesake, Sir William Blackstone, the English lawyer, who said,-
"As by some tyrant's stern command, A wretch forsakes his native land, In foreign climes condemned to roam, An endless exile from his home."
SOME OF THE EARLY PUNISHMENTS
It was customary in the early days of the Colony to punish people by degrading them in public by exposure in stocks, bilboes, the pillory, the brank or the ducking stool, rather than by imprisonment or fines, and the usual places for such punishment were in the market squares or in front of the meeting-houses.
The bilboes, which were often used in Boston to "punyssche trans-
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gressours ageynste ye Kinges Maiesties lawes," consisted of a long, heavy iron bar with two sliding shackles, like handcuffs, for the legs. This bar was fastened to the top of a post, and the offender had to lie on his back on the ground with his feet in the air. The instrument derived its name from Bilboa where it was be- lieved many were made and shipped on the Spanish Armada to shackle the English prisoners when captured!
The earliest record we have in Boston of the bilboes was in 1632 when the entry says that "James Woodward shall be sett in the bilbowes for being drunk at the Newetowne," now Cambridge. The fol- lowing year Thomas Dexter was likewise punished for "prophane saying dam ye come." Thomas Morton of Merry Mount was also sentenced to be "clapt into the bilbowes." In 1639 Edward Palmer, a Boston carpenter, made a pair of stocks, and, as most people know, he was the first person to be placed in them, "for his extortion in taking £1, 13/ 7d. for the plank and woodwork." He was "censured THE BILBOES. to bee sett an houre in the stocks." On many occasions did they per- form service in the colony, being chiefly used to take care of drunkards who couldn't handle their legs properly. Each town was obliged to have its stocks, and in 1639 Dedham was fined for not having a pair.
The most interesting and ignoble of all the instruments of punish- ment was the ducking stool, which was used especially as a cure for scolding women, "chyderers" and wife beaters; also it was used to punish brewers of bad beer and bakers of poor bread; it was also supposed to stop all quarrelling between married couples, after they had been ducked several times while tied back to back. The culprit was plunged in as often as the sentence directed, and it has been re- lated how quickly a bath, especially in cold water, would change a person's point of view. A few lines from a poem entitled "The Ducking Stool" are amusing :-
"If noisy dames should once begin To drive the house with horrid din, Away, you cry, you'll grace the stool;
We'll teach you how your tongue to rule. Down in the deep the stool descends, But here, at first, we miss our ends; She mounts again and rages more Than ever vixen did before. If so, my friend, pray let her take A second turn into the lake, And, rather than your patience lose, Thrice and again repeat the dose, No brawling wives, no furious wenches, No fire so hot but water quenches."
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Massachusetts had no "ducking stool" until fifty years or so after the first settlement, when we find that Governor Bellingham had a law passed that "persons convicted of rayling or scolding shalbe gagged or sett in a ducking stoole and dipt The Ducking-Stool over head and eares three times in some convenient place of fresh or salt water.' John Dunton, who wrote about Boston in' 1686, said that "Scolds they gag and set them at their own doors . .. for all comers and goers to gaze at, ... to cure the noise that is in many Women's heads."
The pillory, or "stretch-neck" as it is often called, was much used in Massachu- setts until 1803, and it was a very common occurrence to see the helpless culprits ex- posed to the jeers of the passers-by, who often added to their insults by throwing rotten eggs and even garbage.
The whipping post "for fools' backs" was the punishment inflicted for lying, swearing, perjury, drunkenness, selling rum to the Indians, "for repeated sleeping on the Lord's Day," and slander. A sentence was usually forty stripes, and often the Court decreed that the offender should be whipped in two cities, usually some dis- tance apart, so that at the second whipping the culprit's back would have stiffened and would therefore hurt the more. The most con- spicuous whipping post was on State Street, then King Street; there was also one on Queen Street, as well as on the Common.
A customary form of punishment in the Colony was to tie round the offender's neck a placard upon which was marked the initial de- scriptive of the crime, such as "B" for uttering blasphemous words, "V" for viciousness, "R" for rogue, "D" for drunkenness, etc. The culprit was also often exhibited to public view in a cage, in the stocks, in the pillory, or on the gallows.
The brank, or gossip's bridle, was used in a mild form in Massachu- setts, being called a cleft stick, and there are numerous cases men- tioned of persons having been subjected to this punishment for "swear- inge or railinge." Public penance was another form of punishment, the guilty person, wrapped in white, being obliged to sit on a stool "in the middle alley" of the meeting-house to make public acknowl- edgment of some small crime against the strict laws of the day. Burglary and some other crimes were punished in all the colonies by branding.
The wooden horse was a punishment reserved especially for soldiers, and on one occasion we find Paul Revere as presiding officer ordering a Continental soldier to "ride the Wooden Horse for a quarter of an hower with a musket on each foot." In Governor Winthrop's day · delinquent soldiers were sentenced to carry pieces of turf to the Fort, while others were chained to a wheelbarrow and made to work. A de-
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serter at the time of the battle of Bunker Hill was tied on a horse with his face towards the horse's tail and led around the camp. During the Civil War another soldier was condemned to get inside a barrel, which was then tied to his neck so that he could walk around without its touching the ground.
The laws in regard to Quakers are too numerous to enumerate. One of the laws passed in Massachusetts in 1657 was as follows: "A Quaker, if male, for the first offense shall have one of his eares cutt off; for the second offense have his other eare cutt off; a woman shalbe severely whipt; for the third offense, they, he or she, shall have their tongues bored through with a hot iron." There were also some other very curious punishments. Often an offender was ordered to sit on the gallows or to walk around the town with a rope around his neck. In Boston a man was once fined and imprisoned for en- deavoring to spread the smallpox. In 1652 another was fined for excess of apparel "in bootes, rebonds, gould and silver lace." In Salem, in Governor Endicott's time, a Puritan was penalized for wearing too long hair,-long hair being considered at this time "bushes of vanity." Kissing in the street was an offence punishable by a fine or whipping, and it is related that a husband who had just returned from a long voyage happened to meet his wife in the street and kissed her. He was discovered, and when fined was so angry that he swore he would never kiss her again. There was a Bostonian who purchased a horse from a countryman and gave in exchange a note payable on the. "Day of the Resurrection." The amount of the fine is not mentioned. One of the Plymouth Laws of 1638 forbade a man from proposing marriage before obtaining consent of one of the parents. The penalty for counterfeiting bills was very severe, and the Continental bills all bore this inscription: "To counterfeit this bill is Death." Another curious punishment of the very early days was to call a man by his first name instead of "Mr." In 1643 a Salem man called Scott was whipped "for repeated sleeping in meeting on the Lord's Day, and for striking the person who waked him." In 1786 four convicts were ordered to the Castle to make nails. A notice in one of the Boston papers gave a list of the heads of families who would have to spend Christmas in jail on account of debt, giving after each the amount owed. A postscript at the bottom asks, "Who among the opulent is willing to restore a father to his family and Christmas Fire Side?" Sometimes debtors were allowed the "Limits of the jail," or in other words, they couldn't go more than a specified distance away. At one time it was believed there was a Tread-Mill at the Massachusetts State Prison at Charlestown. There was a law in 1639 that no ladies' garments "shall be made with short sleeves whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered in the wearing thereby." Another curious record, a few years later, shows us that Robert Saltonstall was fined 5s. for presenting his petition "on so small and bad a piece of paper."
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THE BEACON
The Beacon was erected under an order of the General Court in 1635 on one of Boston's three hills, which was called by the early settlers "Tramount," as it was composed of a group of three small hills. The elevation, or mountain as it was called, was, used as a lookout, and the name was changed to Centry or Sentry Hill, and when the Beacon was set up it was known by its present name of Beacon Hill. Its object was "to give notice to the country of any danger, and that there shalbe a ward of one person kept there from the first of April to the last of September, and that upon the discov'ry of any danger the beacon shalbe fired, an allarum given, as also messengers presently sent by that towne where the danger is discov'ed, to all other townes within their jurisdiccon."
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