USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Genealogical and personal memoirs relating to the families of Boston and eastern Massachusetts > Part 16
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*For more about this daughter, see beyond.
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attempt in this article to trace minutely his future movements or to palliate his motives. On the occasion of his arrival, "by the clear- ness of his details and the gracefulness of his manners, he insinuated himself so far into the graces of Lord George Germaine that he took him into his employment." In 1779 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1780 he was made "Under Secretary of State for the Northern Department," and the oversight of all the practical details for recruiting, equip- ping, transporting and victualling the British forces, and many other incidental arrange- ments, was committed to him. He held this office about a year. He next sought active service in the British army, and he was on the American side of the ocean in 1782, and he was honored at the age of twenty-eight with the commission in the British army of a lieu- tenant-colonel. He provided for himself by raising a regiment among the loyal Americans, or Tories, of his native land. He himself said, he "went to America to command a regiment of cavalry which he had raised in that country for the King's service." He disembarked at Charleston, South Carolina, passed the winter there, led his corps often against the enemy. and was always successful in his enterprises. Here he had the reputation of defeating the famous Marion's brigade, when its com- mander was absent, who, however, came in season to take part in the action, but had the mortification of witnessing the discomfiture of his little band. In the spring of 1782 Rum- ford sailed from Charleston to New York, and took command of his regiment there awaiting him, and passed the winter with his command at Huntington, Long Island. It has been as- serted, and apparently with truth, that he was merely quartered there from having nothing to do elsewhere. Cornwallis had already sur- rendered, and Rumford, by leave of absence dated April II, 1783, returned direct to Eng- land, where he was advanced to a colonelcy, and thus secured half-pay on the British estab- lishment for the remainder of his life.
IN GERMANY .- Rumford, on his return from America, readily obtained leave of the king to visit the continent. He accordingly left England in September, 1783. He arrived at Strasburg, where the Prince Maximilian of Deux Ponts, then field-marshal in the service of France, and later Elector of Bavaria, was in garrison, who, when commanding on par- ade, saw among the spectators an officer in a foreign uniform, mounted on a fine English horse, whom he addressed. The officer was
Rumford, and thus began an acquaintance which had a decisive influence on his future career. The Elector of Bavaria, Charles Theodore, uncle to the above Prince Maxi- milian, gave Rumford an earnest invitation to enter into his service in a joint military and civil capacity. The English king granted Rumford the permission desired, and also con- ferred on him the honor of knighthood. He therefore entered, at Munich, in 1784, on the service of the Elector. His labors ranged from subjects of the homeliest nature in rela- tion to the common people, up to the severest tests and experiments in the interests of prac- tical science. On his arrival the Elector ap- pointed him colonel of a regiment of cavalry and general aide-de-camp. He soon learned that the development of resources and the re- form of abuses were the emergent needs of the Electorate. He made reforms in the army and for the removal of mendicity. The manner of their accomplishment has been a "household tale" for a century and a quarter .*
In 1788 the Elector made him a major- general of cavalry and privy councillor of state. He was put at the head of the war department. He was raised in 1791 to the rank of a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and selected as his title the former name of the village in his own native country, where he had first enjoyed the favors of fortune,-that is, Rumford; and, criticize as one may, this distinction was won by merit. In 1796 he published his Essays-altogether on scientific subjects-in London. He had by 1797. "by his own exertions acquired a sufficiency" not only for his own "comfortable support" dur- ing his life, but also to enable him to make a handsome provision for his daughter. He was therefore willing to renounce all claims he might have on his late wife's estate, and engage his daughter to do so. He insisted, however, on the exchange of receipts. His fame was also by this time well established in America. The property of his deceased wife came for the most part from her former husband, and would go mainly to her son by him. A por- tion of the widow's dower which she had enjoyed as Mrs. Thompson, would legally de- scend to Rumford's daughter by her. On the event of a satisfactory arrangement with her relatives the Count agreed to assume the whole responsibility of her maintenance thereafter, and of provision for her survival, and that he
*His career was greatly popularized, particularly in America, by an article in "Chambers Miscellany," which appeared in the year 1847.
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would influence her to make a will in which in the event of her death all she received from these relatives would be returned to them or to their heirs. Her grandfather Walker left her a legacy of £140, to be received when she was married or when she was eighteen years of age. It is understood that all these matters were adjusted in a satisfactory manner. Rum- ford's foreign duties, however, and his obliga- tions to the Elector, debarred him from serv- ing in certain positions in England, and especi- ally in the position of Minister Plenipotentiary from Bavaria to the Court of Great Britain. to which he had been appointed. it being con- trary to the rules to receive in that capacity from another country a British subject. At the age of forty-five Count Rumford had at- tained the climax of his political services.
CONCLUSION .- From 1800 to the date of his death in a suburb of Paris, August 21, 1814. Count Rumford's career furnishes less inter- est for Americans. He was engaged in 1799 in the establishment of a new scientific institu- tion in London, called the Royal Institution of Great Britain, on a plan regarded exclusively as his own. He had reasons for believing that his official position in Bavaria would no longer yield the fruits it had previously enjoyed, and so he turned his attention more strictly to the pursuits of science. It is not our intention to enlarge on this, as there is plenty of published material at hand for any one who is interested to investigate it. A significant incident in connection with the name of his American birthplace, was his visit with his friend Pictet to Woburn Abbey, England, in the year 1801. He was in Paris before 1807. Previously, in 1805, he contracted a marriage with the rich widow of a celebrated French chemist. The money settled upon him by his second wife, or its remainder, he left by will to different institutions ; the reversion of half his Bavarian pension he left to his daughter. Owing to in- compatibility of dispositions the couple separ- ated by mutual agreement in 1809. The state of war in Europe aggravated his troubles and those of his second wife by preventing their contemplated travels for pleasure.
The subject with which, as a physicist, lie was chiefly engaged was the nature and effects of heat. A superb bronze statute of him was set up in 1867, in one of the public squares of Munich, and a replica, the gift of a private citizen, was in 1899 erected in Woburn.
His daughter, Sarah Rumford, sailed from Boston for London in the winter of 1796, to see her father, who had come from Munich to
meet her there. She went with him to Ba- varia, and remained abroad a little more than three years. The particulars of her stay are given in Ellis' Life. She received the title of Countess in 1797 from the Elector of Bavaria. and a pension which lasted during her life. She made a second visit to her father in 18II, and remained in France and England many years after her father's death. The Countess says, in her memoranda, that while her father was a great favorite with the ladies, some of them sharply censured him for the four fol- lowing faults: "First, for living so short a time with his wives, considering him, from it. a bad husband : second. for taking sides against his country : third, letting his daughter get on as she could, he revelling at the time in the city of Paris: fourth, that he should pitch on Paris as a permanent residence, when both in Munich and in London he had made himself so useful, had won such honors, and had such distinguished associates and friends." This, it should be understood, was the judgment of Eu- ropean women of his acquaintance, and Sarah displayed more wisdom than she is usually accredited with when she made a record of it. Her attractions and ability were in no degree remarkable. In 1835 she came to America and again went abroad in 1838. In 1844 she came back. She died in the chamber in which she was born, December 2, 1852, and her remains lie buried in the old burial-ground at Concord, New Hampshire. By inheritance and other- wise she left a handsome estate. She devised her homestead and fifteen thousand dollars in money to trustees to found an institution in Concord to be called "The Rolfe and Rumford Asylum" for young female orphans. The funds were allowed to accumulate. This in- stitution was opened for use about 1882, and has been in successful operation since.
A translation of part of Count Rumford's epitaph at Paris (the original is in the French language) is here inserted as an admirable tribute to his worth :
Celebrated Physicist! Enlightened Philan- thropist ! His Discoveries on Light and Heat have made His Name Famous. His Labors for the Bettering the Conditions of the Poor will Cause Him to be Forever Cherished by the Friends of Humanity.
In Bavaria,
Lieutenant-General,
Head of the State.
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Leader of the Realm,
Major-General, State Councillor, Minister of War.
In France,
Member of the Institute.
and of
The Academy of Sciences.
The following significant opinion of Rum- ford's life was written in the year 1847, and forms the conclusion of the sketch in "Cham- bers Miscellany":
"Rumford, whose memoirs we have now detailed, was not a faultless character, or a person in every respect exemplary ; but mak- ing due allowances for circumstances in which he was at the outset unfortunately placed, and keeping in mind that every man is less or more the creature of the age in which he lives, we arrive at the conclusion that few individuals occupying a public position have been so thoroughly deserving of esteem. The practical, calm, and comprehensive nature of his mind, his resolute and methodical habits, the bene- volence and usefulness of his projects, all excite our admiration. Cuvier speaks of Rum- ford as "having been the benefactor of his species without loving or esteeming them, as well as of holding the opinion, that the mass of mankind ought to be treated as mere ma- chines"-a remark which is applicable to not a few men who have been eminent for labors of a humane description, and which naturally gives rise to this other remark-that a good intellectual method, directed to practical ends, is often of more value to mankind than what is called a good heart."
Cuvier's remarks, above referred to, were more fully as follows: "But it must be con- fessed that he exhibited in conversation and intercourse, and in all his demeanor, a feel- ing which would seem most extraordinary in a man who was always so well treated by others, and who had himself done so much good to others.
It was as if while he had been rendering all these services to his fel- low-men he had no real love or regard for them. It would appear as if the vile pas- sions which he had observed in the misera- ble objects committed to his care, or those
other passions, not less vile, which his suc- cess and fame had excited among his rivals, had imbittered him towards human nature. So he thought it was not wise or good to intrust to men in the mass the care of their own well-being. The right, which seems so natural to them, of judging whether they are wisely governed, appeared to him to be a fictitious fancy born of false notions of en- lightenment. His views of slavery were nearly the same as those of a plantation-owner. He regarded the government of China as coming nearest to perfection, because in giving over the people to the absolute control of their only intelligent men, and in lifting each of those who belonged to this hierarchy on the scale according to the degree of his intelligence, it made. so to speak, so many millions of arms the passive organs of the will of a few sound heads-a notion which I state without pre- tending in the slightest degree to approve it, and which, as we know, would be poorly cal- culated to find prevalence among European nations.
"M. de Rumford had cause for learning by his own experience that it is not so easy in the West as it is in China to induce other people to consent to be only arms; and that no one is so well prepared to turn these arms of others to his own service as is one who has reduced them to subjection to himself. An empire such as he conceived would not have been more difficult for him to manage than were his barracks and poorhouses. He relied wholly on the principle of rigid system and order. He called order the necessary auxiliary of genius, the only possible instrument for se- curing any substantial good, and in fact almost a subordinate deity, for the government of this lower world."
De Candolle, the Swiss botanist, said of Rumford's personal appearance in later life : "The sight of him very much reduced our enthusiasm. We found him a dry, precise man, who spoke of beneficence as a sort of discipline, and of the poor as we had never dared to speak of vagabonds." Speaking of Rumford's second wife, he said: "I had re- lations with each of them, and never saw a more bizarre connection. Rumford was cold. calm, obstinate, egotistic, prodigiously occu- pied with the material element of life and the very smallest inventions of detail. He wanted his chimneys, lamps, coffee pots, windows, made after a certain pattern, and he contra- dicted his wife a thousand times a day about the household management." Here we draw
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the veil. Another has said: "We enter into labors of Count Rumford every day of our lives, without knowing it or thinking of him." Professor John Tyndall said : "Men find pleasure in exercising the powers they possess. and Rumford possessed, in its highest and strongest form, the power of organization."
Baldwin says of his friend: "He laudably resolved not to sacrifice his bright talents to the monotonous occupations of domestic life. The world had higher charms for him. This ambition was to rise in the estimation of man- kind by his usefulness. With a mind suscepti- ble to impressions from every quarter, he could not fix his attention upon any uniform line of conduct when young, and from this cause alone, a want of regularity in his behavior, impressions unfavorable to his character as a patriot were made upon the minds of his acquaintance at Concord. The people in their zeal for the American cause were too apt to construe indifference into a determined attach- ment to the British interest. Believing that the benevolent plans which he afterwards adopted could never be executed but under the fostering hand of well-directed power, he sought a field for the exercise of his goodness and ingenuity where they could be executed, and where there was the most obvious de- mand."
Count Rumford says himself in one of his essays: "It certainly required some courage and perhaps no small share of enthusiasm, to stand forth the voluntary champion of the public good. Again he says: "I am not un- acquainted with the manners of the age. I have lived much in the world, and have studied mankind attentively. I am fully aware of all the difficulties I have to encounter in the pur- suit of the great object to which I have de- voted myself."
Count Rumford, at the beginning of one of his Essays entitled "An Account of an Es- tablishment for the Poor at Munich," says of himself: "Among the vicissitudes of a life checkered by a great variety of incidents. and in which I have been called upon to act in many interesting scenes, I have had an op- portunity of employing my attention upon a subject of great importance-a subject inti- mately and inseparably connected with the happiness and well-doing of all civil societies, and which from its nature cannot fail to in- terest every benevolent mind: it is the pro- viding for the wants of the poor, and secur- ing their happiness and comfort by the intro- duction of order and industry among them."
Jean Rivoire, the immigrant REVERE ancestor of the Revere family of Massachusetts, belonged to the ancient and distinguished family of Ri- voires or De Rivoires of Romagnieu, France. They were Huguenots and some of the family fled from France during the Catholic Inquisi- tion. He married Magdelaine Malaperge. Children : 1. Simon, eldest son, was a re- fugee from France ; went first to Holland and afterwards settled in the Isle of Guernsey, Great Britain : took with him the coat-of-arms of the family, on a silver seal ; and these arms were afterwards registered in the French Heraldry Book, in London, at the Herald's Office. 2. Apollos. 3. Isaac, mentioned be- low.
(11) Isaac Rivoire, son of Jean Rivoire (1), was born about 1670 in France : married in 1694 Serenne Lambert. They had several children, one of whom was named Apollos. The following account of his birth was written in the family Bible by the father and a copy of it sent to Colonel Paul Revere, Boston, by Matthias Rivoire, a second cousin, of Martel. near St. Foy, France. "Apollos Rivoire, or son, was born the thirtieth of November, 1702. about ten o'clock at Night and was baptized at Riancaud, France. Apollos Rivoire, my brother, was his Godfather and Anne Maul- mon my sister-in-law his Godmother. He set out for Guernsey the 21st of November 1715." According to the late General Joseph Warren Revere. Apollos, the father of the famous Paul Revere, became the true heir and lineal representative of his brother, Simon de Ri- voire, and the American branch of the family. consequently, is the legal heir at the present day. All the other heirs having become ex- tinet, the American family would inherit the titles and estates if any now remained to in- herit.
( III ) Apollos Rivoire, son of Isaac Rivoire (2), was born in Riancaud, France, November 30, 1702. As stated above he set out for the Isle of Guernsey. November 21, 1715, and must have reached the home of his uncle by the time his birthday arrived. He was then thirteen and was apprenticed to his Uncle Simond who soon afterwards sent the boy to Boston, Massachusetts, with instructions to his correspondents to have him learn the gold- smith's trade, agreeing to defray all expenses. HIe learned his trade of John Cony, of Boston, who died August 20, 1722. Revere's "time." valued at forty pounds, was paid for, as shown by the settlement of Cony's estate. During
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the year 1723 he returned to Guernsey on a visit to his relatives, but determined to make his home in Boston and soon came back. He established himself in the business of a gold and silversmith, and modified his name to suit the demands of English tongues, to Paul Re- vere. But for many years the surname was variously spelled in the public records. "Re- verie" and "Revear" being common. 1 About May, 1730, he "removed from Captain Pitt's at the Town Dock to the north end over against Colonel Hutchinson's." This house was on North street, now Hanover, opposite Clark street, near the corner of Love lane, now Tileston street. He was a member of the New Brick or "Cockerel" Church, so called from the cockerel weather vane which is still in ser- vice on the Shepherd Memorial Church, Cam- bridge. Samples of his handiwork have been preserved. A silver tankard owned now or lately by Mrs. William H. Emery, of Newton. Massachusetts, was made about 1747 for Re- becca Goodwill, whose name and the date are engraved on it.
After he had been in business a few years he married, June 19, 1729, Deborah Hitch- born, who was born in Boston, January 29, 1704. She died in May 1777; he died July 22, 1754. Children : I. Deborah, baptized February 27, 1731-32. 2. Paul, born Decem- ber 21, 1734, mentioned below. 3. Frances, born July, 1736, baptized July 18. 4. Thomas, baptized August 27, 1738, died young. 5. Thomas, baptized January 13, 1739-40. 6. John, baptized October 11, 1741. 7. Mary. baptized July 13, 1743. 8. Elizabeth (twin ), baptized July 13. 1743, died young. 9. Eliza- beth, baptized January 20, 1744-45. There were twelve in all.
(IV) Colonel Paul Revere, son of Paul Revere (Apollos Rivoire 3), was born in Boston, December 21, 1734, and was baptized December 22, 1734, the following day. He received his education from the famous Mas- ter Tileston at the North grammar school, and then entered his father's shop to learn the trade of goldsmith and silversmith. He had much natural ability in designing and drawing and became a prominent engraver. He taught himself the art of engraving on copper. His early plates, of course, were crude in detail, but they were forceful and expressive, and his later work was characterized by a considerable degree of artistic merit and elegance. His unique abilities show to the best advantage in his craft of which he was a master. His ser- vices to the colonies in the struggle for inde-
pendence and afterward by his skill as an en- graver and artisan were as important, per- haps, as his military achievements, to the cause of liberty. One of his triumphs for the American cause was the manufacture of gunpowder at Canton, Massachusetts, when the only source of supply was in the vicinity of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the proprietor of which was hostile to the establishment of Revere's plant. He succeeded, however, and thus greatly strengthened the resources of the Northern army. He was also employed by the government to oversee the casting and manufacture of cannon, to engrave and print the notes issued in the place of money by Con- gress and by the state of Massachusetts. In addition to his shop, he established an impor- tant hardware store on Essex street, opposite the site of the famous Liberty Tree that was the center of much of the patriotic demonstra- tion of pre-Revolutionary times. There was apparently no limit to the variety of work suc- cessfully essayed by Revere, for it is shown on abundant testimony that in his younger days he practiced with much skill the making and inserting of artificial teeth, an art that he learned of an English dentist temporarily lo- cated in Boston, and he also designed many of the frames that surrounded the paintings of his friend, Copley. These were, however, but incidents in comparison with the bolder under- takings of later years. In 1789 he established an iron foundry of considerable capacity and in 1792 began to cast church bells, the first of which, still in existence, was for the Second Church of Boston. He cast many bells, of which some are still in use in the old parish churches of Massachusetts. He took his son, Joseph Warren Revere, into business with him. Brass cannon and many kinds of metal work needed for the building and equipment of the ships of the navy were manufactured for the government. He invented a process of treating copper that enabled him to hammer and roll it while heated, thus greatly facili- tating the manufacture of the bolts and spikes used in his work. In many respects the most important of all his enterprises was that of rolling copper into large sheets, established in 1800, aided by the United States government to the extent of ten thousand dollars, to be repaid in sheet copper. It was the first copper rolling mill in the country. The plates were made in this mill for the boilers of Robert Fulton's steamboat and for the sheathing of many men-of-war. In 1828 the business was incorporated as the Revere Copper Company
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and under this name still continues and pros- pers.
He is best known perhaps for his part in the events preceding the battle of Lexington and Concord. The martial spirit that stirred him to such a degree in later life asserted itself first on the occasion of the campaign against the French in Canada in 1756, and he was at that time commissioned second lieutenant of ar- tillery by Governor Shirley and attached to the expedition against Crown Point under the command of General John Winslow. His ser- vice in this campaign, however, proved un- eventful, and he returned some six months later to his business. From this time his al- legiance to royal authority steadily waned. He became a prominent Whig leader in Boston. He was popular among his fellow patriots in the secret organization known as the Sons of Liberty. The meetings were conducted with great secrecy, chiefly at the Green Dragon tavern, and measures of importance taken to resist the encroachments of the British author- ity on the rights that the colonies had enjoyed for a century or more. Revere was intrusted with the execution of many important affairs. often bearing dispatches of importance be- tween the committees of safety and corres- pondence that virtually organized and carried on the Revolution itself. He was prominent at the time of the Stamp Act troubles, and he designed and published a number of famous cartoons and caricatures. His views of the landing of British troops in Boston and of the Boston massacre had a large influence on the public mind. In pursuance of the non-impor- tation agreement the citizens of Boston took steps to prevent the landing of the cargo of the ship "Dartmouth," November 29. 1773: Revere himself was one of the guard of twen- ty-five appointed to carry out the vote of a public meeting provided that "the tea should not be landed," and he was one of the leaders of the Tea Party. December 16, 1773. That was the first act of open rebellion against the government : the port of Boston was closed and Revere proceeded to New York and Phil- adelphia to secure the co-operation of the other colonies, and he took an important part in organizing the first confederacy of the pro- vinces effected in 1774. He made two more trips to the city of Philadelphia bearing mes- sages from the Provincial congress of Massa- chusetts, as the re-organized general court was known. In Boston the situation was be- coming critical. Dr. Joseph Warren sent for Revere, April 18, 1775, to tell him that the
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