USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Chelsea > Documentary history of Chelsea : including the Boston precincts of Winnisimmet, Rumney Marsh, and Pullen Point, 1624-1824, vol 1 > Part 2
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On June 29, 1866, he was appointed by Governor Bullock an Associate Justice of the newly created Municipal Court of the City of Boston. Mr. George B. Chase, in a most sym- pathetic tribute to his memory before this Society,1 has given an amusing account of the circumstances of this appointment. From June, 1866, to December, 1870, he served as Associate Justice, and then was appointed by Governor Claflin Chief Justice, which office he continued to hold till August, 1878. His services on the bench thus cover a period of twelve ycars. Mr. Chase has also quoted the opinion of one of his associates, the late Chief Justice Parmenter, as to his special qualifications for the office, and the method and quality of his work in it.
In the summer of 1875 Judge Chamberlain made a visit of six months to Europe, where his taste for art, scenery, his-
1 2 Proceedings, vol. xiv. p. 273.
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tory, and literature was amply gratified. His letters home were exceedingly entertaining. Several of them appeared in the Boston newspapers, and attracted more than usual atten- tion. In England and Ireland he took every opportunity to visit the courts, and always received a most polite welcome.
In August, 1878, Judge Chamberlain was called to be the Librarian of the Boston Public Library, succeeding our late associate Justin Winsor. This position he continued to hold until October, 1890, when he resigned on account of failing health, after another twelve years' term of faithful service. The circumstances of this appointment are amusingly told by Mr. Chase in an account of his interview with our late associate Mr. William W. Greenough, for so many years the President of the Board of Trustees of the Library. His first report as Librarian 1 shows how strenuously he took hold of his new duties, and what fresh measures he suggested, most of whichi have become a part of the permanent administration of the Library. Among these were the appointment of a night watchman to insure protection against fire, and the installa- tion of a self-registering clock to make certain his actual presence ; a thorough examination of the Library to discover its most important deficiencies, mainly incomplete sets of periodicals, serials, and continued works, and a permanent arrangement by which these could be gradually secured; and the employment of a bookbinder to take down each volume from the shelves, dust it, and make any needed repairs to the binding ; by this measure the annual closing of the Library for cleaning purposes could be dispensed with. But his most im- portant suggestion was for a conference with the Superin- tendent of Public Schools, our late associate Dr. Samuel Eliot, and a committee of the masters of the schools to devise some system whereby in his own words " the best literature of the Public Library shall find its way into the public schools . . . and become an instrument in the hands of the public teacher of imparting knowledge at the public expense to those whom the city is under legal obligations to educate." He also makes the recommendation that " a course of lectures be established ... designed to induce the critical and apprecia- tive reading of the best things in literature by those who
1 Twenty-seventh Annual Report of the Trustees of the Public Library, 1879, p. 17.
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mnight repair to them for instruction, as there always is in every community a considerable number of persons who would gladly avail themselves of such opportunities." It has taken some time to realize, but we all now perceive what substantial fruit this wise and far-seeing suggestion was destined to pro- duee in these later years. In his annual report of the follow- ing year1 he says : -
" In my annual report of last year I suggested to the Trustces the propriety of setting apart some portion of the annual appropriation for books to meet the requisitions of the teachers of the public schools by the purchase of such books as in their judgment might be useful to their pupils, and those to have their local habitation in the several houses under their charge, but always to remain the property of the Public Library. ... Some difficulties arose with respect to these requests. In the first place there were no more than two or three copies, instead of fifty, of each in the Library, and no funds from which they could properly be purchased ; and secondly, the nature of the loans and the time for which they were desired were in contravention of the Library rules."
Eventually the books were purchased from funds supplied from a private source, presented to the Library and accepted by the Trustees, upon the condition that they should be loaned according to the wishes of the donor. After a year's use in one of the schools they were returned in good order to fulfil similar requisitions for other schools. The reading of these books was not a part of the regular school exercises ; each pupil was expected to read his copy at home, as he would read any other books taken from the Public Library, but to be examined once a week upon what was thus read. The cost of the experiment for a year was less than fifty dol- lars. Thus was taken the first step in the important work of supplying "supplementary reading matter" to the schools from the Public Library. Another improvement suggested was to have important new English publications forwarded promptly by mail for the use of the patrons of the Library, instead of waiting to have them sent in the usual slow course of purchases by the foreign agents of the Library. He also introduced a method of covering with linen canvas the heavy, costly volumes, that were subjected to great wear and
1 Report, 1880, p. 19.
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tear in their use, and this style of binding has been substan- tially adopted for the greater portion of the books newly added to the Library, and of the older volumes as their binding wears out.
Such were some of the new ideas introduced into the mall- agement of the institution by the new Librarian. Though it cannot be claimed that he developed remarkable executive ability in this office, he certainly made a satisfactory officer in all of his relations with the public; and he won the respect and affection of all its employees, from the highest to the lowest. The opinion of his services lield by the Trustees, of whom the writer was one during nearly the whole of his term of office, is manifested by the tenor of the resolutions adopted by them on accepting his resignation : ---
" Whereas, Hon. Mellen Chamberlain has been constrained by the impaired condition of his health to resign the office of Librarian of the Public Library, and the Trustees have reluctantly accepted liis resignation, to take effect on the First day of October next.
Voted, That the Trustees hereby place upon their records the expres- sion of their regret for the loss which the Library must sustain in no longer benefiting by the services of so accomplished and so faithful a scholar as Judge Chamberlain has shown himself to be during his twelve years of service.
Voted, That the special attainments of the Librarian in the study of early American history have proved of essential advantage to the Library in bringing up that department to tlie high standing that had already been reached in other branches of knowledge.
Voted, That the Trustees hereby convey to Judge Chamberlain the expression of their respect and regard, their regrets that their pleasant intimate relations must cease; their hope that his enforced leisure may result in restored health, and their wish that his life may long be spared to give to the world from his stores of knowledge."
The antiquarian tastes of Judge Chamberlain were devel- oped in his early youth, and were fostered after his removal to Concord, New Hampshire, in 1836, by his intimacy with John Farmer, the archivist of the State of New Hampshire, whom he assisted in some of his historical and genealogical investi- gations. He began at that time to gather his remarkable col- lection of autographs, to which he afterwards added such letters, documents, and other manuscript material, portraits, and engravings, as he could obtain by exchange with other
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collectors, and by purchase as his income increased. He was an indefatigable searcher of old garrets and all out-of-the- way repositories of letters and other papers, making repeated journeys throughout New England for that purpose, and numbered among his correspondents, with whom he made con- stant exchanges, all the prominent collectors of this country ; among whom were his boyhood friend, Dr. George H. Moore, of the Lenox Library in New York, Dr. Sprague, of Albany, Mr. Taft, of Savannah, and Mr. Gilmore, of Baltimore ; from the latter he obtained Southern autographs and documents. Personally, or by order, he attended all the autograph sales in this country, and through dealers' catalogues added to his stores by purchase from England, France, and Germany. Thus his collection gradually grew to be of incalculable value, and it became a matter of great anxiety with him to decide what to do with it.' To prevent the possibility of its ultimate dis- persal, if left to his heirs, he concluded to provide by his last will that it should become the property of the Boston Public Library. In 1893, seven years before his death, he made an arrangement with the Trustees that it should be deposited in a room to be specially prepared for it in the new Library build- ing and set apart as its permanent home, though he retained his property in it during his lifetime. It will hardly be neces- sary to attempt to give here an account of its treasures, as the Trustees published, in 1897, " A Brief Description of the Chamberlain Collection of Autographs, now deposited in the Public Library of the City of Boston." This was based in part upon an elaborate article, contributed by the late Rev. Julius H. Ward, to the " Boston Sunday Herald," of April 7, 1895, from memoranda furnished by Judge Chamberlain him- self. To this publication the Trustees added, in 1898, a sup- plement containing " The Texts of the Four Great Documents," reprints of " The Address to the King, 1774," the " Declara- tion of Independence (1776)," the " Articles of Confedera- tion (1777)," and the "Constitution of the United States (1787)." To these texts are affixed the autographs of the respective signers. These four texts have been removed from the rest of the collection, and with a series of sixty-three framed tablets, made up also of detached autograph signatures, grouped and illustrated by portraits, biographical sketches, and historical notes, are now displayed upon the walls of the
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room for Younger Readers. These two pamphlets, however, are intended only to be preliminary to a complete description and analysis of the whole collection, now in course of prepa- ration ; they are sufficient, however, to indicate that The Chamberlain Collection of Autographs and Manuscripts will eventually prove one of the richest sources of information available for the students of American History, a worthy monument to the memory of its creator.
A very interesting example of Judge Chamberlain's skill and judicial temperament in the investigation of questions bearing upon the genuineness of autograph signatures can be found in a note, appended to the "Bulletin of the Boston Public Library, No. 79, May, 1889," upon an " Autograph which may be Shakespeare's." In 1880 a copy of North's Plutarch, 1603, had been purchased by the Library, which, though complete and in the original binding, was in bad con- dition and was consequently sent to the bindery for repairs. There was found to be a fold of parchment, about two inches wide, running the entire length of the hinge of the cover, a strip of paper of the same width and length, together with two or more shorter strips, on one of which at the beginning of the volume were written the words " William Shakespeare, hundred and twenty poundes." The paper bearing the name of Shakespeare is a fold, organically a part of the volume when it was purchased, as appeared by the sewing, but at what time the name was written on it is the important ques- tion. The strips of paper at the end of the volume also con- tained some writing, a couple of Latin quotations which must have been there when the volume was originally bound. All of these writings, including that containing the name of Shakespeare, though not in the sanie ink, are in the ink and handwriting of the seventeenth century, and probably were concealed from view until the linings of the inside covers became detached. There was also a worm-hole, running through the parchment, the title-page, and three hundred and ten pages of the text. This hole pierced between the words "and " and " twenty," in the Shakespeare writing, and it must have been bored after the writing was made, as other- wise the pen would have caught upon its edges, which plainly did not happen. Judge Chamberlain proceeds to discuss the question whether it is an autograph writing, and whether it
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is in the handwriting of Shakespeare, at considerable length and with great acuteness. Quoting the opinion of three ex- perts, collectors of autographs of long experience, he concluded that the writing is an original signature, not a man's name written by another, or an imitation. He insists that the writ- ing bears a strong resemblance to the known genuine signa- tures of Shakespeare, and discusses the possibility of its being a forgery ; deciding against its being such, and laying stress upon his familiarity with the history of historical, literary, and autograph forgeries in England and America. His conclusion is that " the Library autograph presents more reasons in favor of its genuineness and too few objections to warrant an ad- verse judgment." Eight process plates are appended to the article showing the title-page, with the paper fold at the hinge containing the worm-hole, also the same turned back upon the cover, the hinge at the end of the volume, with the strips of parchment and paper bearing writing, and the same with the strip turned down disclosing writing otherwise .concealed ; there are also added four pages of facsimiles of Shakespeare's autographs, together with enlargements of the same and also of the Ireland forgeries and of the Library signature.
Judge Chamberlain was elected into the Massachusetts Historical Society January 9, 1873, and immediately began to take a prominent part in its proceedings. He delighted in his membership, and was most assiduous in his attendance at the meetings. To its published volumes he made numer- ous valuable and interesting contributions, while in the dis- cussions that arose he was ever ready to draw upon his stores of knowledge with a fulness and accuracy of memory truly remarkable. He served frequently upon the committees, from 1885 to 1888 was a member of the Executive Committee of the Council, and presented the annual report in 1888. The notes contributed by him as one of the editors of Sewall's Letter-Book, 1886-1888, are marked by his usual thorough- ness and accuracy. He was also one of the members of the Committee to publish a volume of Belcher Papers, in 1892, and in 1894 was made one of the Publication Committee of the Bowdoin and Temple Papers.
Since his contributions to the successive volumes of our Proceedings form a substantial portion of his published work and are of great variety and of exceptional value, it seems
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advisable to give a complete list of them, with the volumes in which they can be found, in order to facilitate ready refer- ence to then. His first paper was a "Sketch of the Life of Rev. Samuel Henly " (Vol. XV. p. 230). Next appeared a study of "The Currency Question in Provincial Times " (Vol. XX. p. 32) ; and in the same volume (p. 223), a discussion of "The Charges against Samuel Adams."
In the first volume of the second series (p. 211) he gave an account of the remarkable very early "Map of Eastern Massachusetts," discovered by our associate Mr. Henry F. Waters, in the Sloane Collection of the British Museum, and published by the Trustees of the Boston Public Library in the Bulletin for October, 1884, from which it was reproduced in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America " (Vol. III. p. 381). In the same volume of our Proceedings (p. 273) appeared a notable paper on " The Authentication of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776," in which, after a thorough study of the original records and of all the available evidence, he proves that the signing did not take place upon the Fourth of July. He suggests that the Declaration should have been preceded by some such recital as the following : "The foregoing Declaration having been agreed to on July 4th by the delegates of the thirteen united Colonies, and the same having been engrossed, is now subscribed, agreeably to a Reso- lution passed July 19th, by the Members of Congress present this 2nd day of August, 1776." On page 266 of the same volume he showed that "Samuel Maverick's House " was not built on Noddle's Island, East Boston, some time before 1628, as stated by Edward Johnson in his " Wonder-working Provi- dence," but was erected in 1625, - as he himself states in the valuable manuscript, " A Brief Description of New Eng- land, etc.," discovered by Mr. Waters in the British Museum and printed on page 236 of the same volume of our Pro- ceedings, -and was built in " Winnisime," upon land now in the grounds of the United States Marine Hospital in Chelsea.
In Vol. II. 2d ser. p. 122, he told of an interesting episode in the history of "The Old Province House," which had escaped the notice of local antiquaries : its occupation by the Earl of Bellomont, when Governor, for fourteen months, from the latter part of May, 1699. On pages 275-305 of the
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same volume he printed a Journal of Captain Henry Dearborn on " Arnold's Expedition to Quebec."
For the next volume (Vol. III. 2d ser. pp. 102-133), he contributed three other "Journals of Captain Henry Dear- born," belonging to the Boston Public Library and covering the period from July 25, 1776, to March 1, 1783. On page 371 he called attention to the new edition of the " Massachu- setts Colonial Laws," in the Revision of 1672, published under the editorial supervision of our late associate Mr. William H. Whitmore, and he has no doubt that this will stimulate, and go very far to answer, inquiry on a great many subjects of historical interest. Among matters instanced was the fact that the General Court of Massachusetts had passed laws going far beyond the Acts of Parliament that were supposed to give validity to Writs of Assistance in the Colonies, which were so grievous to our ancestors a hundred years later. So, too, the requirement that revenue cases should be tried in Admiralty, which caused much dissatisfaction when enacted by Parliament, was in substance the Massachusetts law of 1674. Also we find, among other invasions of the King's prerogative, that the Colonists apparently claimed the right to grant and annul patents.
In Vol. IV. 2d ser. p. 48, Judge Chamberlain gave all account of the efforts of Samuel Adams to safeguard "New England Fisheries" in the negotiations for peace with Great Britain, as proved by the original draft of documents in Adams's handwriting in his own possession. On page 82 of the same volume he printed the first eight pages of the " Journal of the Committee of Correspondence " of Massa- chusetts, with the other Colonies, in 1773, from the original in the possession of the Boston Public Library.
To Vol. V. 2d ser. p. 265, he contributed a paper on "The New Historical School," devoted principally to criticism of the late Professor Alexander Johnston's "History of Con- nectient." As a disciple of Edward A. Freeman, Professor Johnston had propounded the theory that Connecticut towns came originally from the forests of Germany to England, and from England to Massachusetts Bay, whence three of them (Watertown, Newton, and Dorchester) migrated to Connec- tient as organizations, and there, in 1669, set up a common- wealth as the result of their joint corporate action; that these
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towns having created a commonwealth, became a pattern for towns in other commonwealths ; and so happily had their sys- tem of confederated towns worked, and especially in relation to the commonwealth, that the Connecticut delegation in the Convention of 1787 was able to persuade that body to form the Constitution of the United States on the same basis, -the Senate with its equal and unalterable representation of sovereign States answering to the independent Connecticut towns, and the House of Representatives answering to the Connecticut Council, both being elected by popular vote. To this reasoning Judge Chamberlain replies that the fallacy of this scheme lies in its theory respecting towns : their existence independent of some sovereign power, and in call- ing the towns the political cell from which the common- wealth was evolved. A town can be the germ of nothing but a greater town, never of a commonwealth. The rights and duties of towns are communal, and for such rights and duties they may provide; but even these powers are delegated, not inherent. The rights and duties of the State primarily concern sovereignty, external relations, and general laws affecting the inhabitants of all the State. He then proceeds to state his own views of the question: that our English ancestors did not bring with them English towns or English churches or British institutions ; but as occasion required they builded for themselves, as Englishmen always and everywhere had done and still do. Analogies do not con- stitute identities, instincts are not institutions ; nor does simi- larity of design or adaptation of institutions indicate heredity, or even relationship. "The genesis of American Common- wealths," according to his view, "is historically clear: (1) They originated with mere adventurers for fishing, hunting, or trading, who, without territorial ownership or by state authority, established themselves on the coast. Among these, though with other views, must be included the Pilgrims, driven out of their course by adverse circumstances, as well as the first settlers of Rhode Island and Connecticut. (2) They originated with those who had purchased lands and obtained charters from the crown. (3) They were founded under Proprietary governments. (4) They were founded as Royal governments." Judge Chamberlain admits that the Connecticut delegation had great influence in the Conven-
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tion : first, because Sherman, Johnson, and Ellsworth were very able men, and the only three very able men from any State who worked together; and, secondly, because Connec- tient, being neither one of the largest nor one of the smallest States, held a position of great influence as a mediator between the two classes of States.
In the same volume (Vol. V. 2d ser. p. 313) Judge Cham- berlain gave an account of the sale of the Aspinwall-Barlow Library in New York, February 3-8, 1890. This sale at- tracted great attention in Boston, as the City Council had made a special appropriation of $20,000 for the purchase of rare and costly books on American history not to be found in the Public Library. He recounts the history of the Library, so far as it could be discovered, and gives a statement of the valuable purchases made from it, of which a complete list can be found in Bulletin of the Public Library, No. 82, October, 1890, pp. 359-376. The most important acquisitions were a Latin copy of the first work ever printed about the discovery of America - a translation of the First Letter of Columbus to the King and Queen of Spain in 1493. The price paid was $2,900 ; and though the copy is not unique, it is very rare, as only four other copies are known, - two in the British Museum, one in the Royal Library in Munich, and one in that of Mr. Brayton Ives in New York. It has been claimed for this edition that it is the earliest of all that were published ; but this is not Mr. Win- sor's opinion, who states that there may be about thirty copies known of the eight editions, and of all these not more than five or six are ever likely to come on the market.1 The Trus- tees of the Library immediately published a facsimile of the letter, in the Library Bulletin referred to, with a translation into English by Mr. R. H. Major; but as that translation was made from a different Latin text, of another edition, the pres- ent writer, at the request of his colleagues, prepared a new translation, which was printed separately in 1891. Besides the Columbus Letter there was purchased, for the sum of $6,500, " A true copie of the Court Booke of the Governor and Society of Massachusetts Bay in New England." This is the most perfect copy known of the first volume (in manuscript) of the Massachusetts Colony Records, and contains historical matter of great importance nowhere else to be found. The
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