USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913 > Part 13
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at Camden, and he passed out of our history into deserved obscurity.
How marked was the contrast between these vainglorious but treacherous soldiers and the honest virtues of comrades in arms like Heath and Thomas of Massachusetts, Sullivan and Stark of New Hampshire, Richard Gridley and Rufus Putnam, the engineers. At the Vassall house Washington first met those tried and true companions of all his after career, Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox and Benjamin Lincoln. Greene led the Rhode Island troops. He was Quaker bred, thought- ful, resourceful and judicious. He had none of the meretricious brilliancy of men like Lee and Arnold, but he was able, loyal and reliable, and became his chief's right arm. Knox was a Boston bookseller who made him- self an expert artillerist and was later Wash- ington's first Secretary of War. It was Knox who, with dauntless perseverance, in the depth of the New England winter, dragged to Cam- bridge the cannon captured at Ticonderoga, and so made possible the occupation of Dor- chester Heights and the consequent evacuation of Boston. Two of those cannon now stand on Cambridge Common in front of the Soldiers' Monument. Benjamin Lincoln had been the secretary of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. He was sound in judgment, in- dustrious and faithful. To him at Charleston it was given to win one of the noblest of achieve- ments, the preservation in defeat of the respect and confidence of all good men. Twenty years later, when Washington was asked to describe the characteristics of the then living officers who might be considered for com- mander-in-chief in case of war, it was to Lincoln that he gave the highest praise, saying that he was "sensible, brave and honest."
There were not lacking picturesque figures among the guests at headquarters. Israel Putnam was a better Indian fighter than he was disciplinarian, but his bluff, hearty ways and his resistless enthusiasm appealed to his men and he was easily the most popular leader in Cambridge. His manners and his vehement speech may not have always approved them- selves at the General's table, but Washington knew a man when he saw him and gave to the veteran his respect and confidence. Daniel
Morgan, the stalwart Virginia wagoner, and his riflemen clad in fringed hunting shirts, lent a dramatic aspect to the camp, and Colonel Glover and his Marblehead fishermen had been at home at the Vassall house before it became the headquarters. Those same fishermen a few months later ferried the army over the East River after the disastrous battle on Long Island, and it was they who rowed and pushed through the floating ice in the Delaware the boats that bore Washington and his freezing regiments to the victory of Trenton.
But it was not only the soldiers who walked the broad pathway to the door of the Vassall house. Hither, too, came the public men of the Colony, the members of the Committee of Safety, and of the Provincial Congress sitting hard by in Watertown. The most noted company, however, that sat at Washing- ton's table was when in October a committee of Congress, consisting of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Lynch of Carolina, and Colonel Harrison of Virginia, arrived to confer with the generals and with the New England leaders. We have a glimpse of a dinner party given to them, afforded by Dr. Belknap, who was a guest, and who wrote: "Lynch, Harrison, and Wales wished to see Boston in flames, but Lee told them it was impossible to burn it unless they sent men in with bundles of straw on their backs to do it." Dr. Franklin apparently took no part in the debate, but we can imagine that no visitor would attract more attention than this renowned man, who sat and listened to whether his native town should be destroyed. He was sixty-nine years old at this time, twenty- six years older than the commanding general, and he was the most distinguished American then living. He had foreseen the impending conflict years before, and was able now to write to his friend Priestly in England, "Enough has happened, one would think, to convince your ministers that the Americans will fight, and that this is a harder nut to crack than they imagined."
There was plenty of work to do inside and outside of headquarters. The raw militiamen were to be made into efficient soldiers. In the very face of the enemy an army had to be created and supplied, fortifications built, discipline enforced. "There is great overturning in
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camp," wrote the Reverend William Emerson. "New lords, new laws. The Generals Wash- ington and Lee are upon the lines every day. New orders from his Excellency are read to the respective regiments every morning after prayers. The strictest government is taking place, and great distinction is made between officers and soldiers. Every one is made to know his place, and keep in it .... Thousands are at work every day from four till eleven o'clock in the morning."
The lines of the beleaguering forts were care-
Frye, Bridge, Sargeant and Woodbridge, and General Heath's brigade, consisting of his own regiment and those of Colonels Prescott, Patterson, Scammon, Gerrish and Phinney. The intrenchments began at the River at the foot of Putnam Avenue, or about where the Riverside Press now stands, and ran along the brow of Dana Hill until they connected with the redoubts on Prospect Hill in Somer- ville. Fort No. 1 was at the southern end of this line. Fort No. 2 was at what is now the corner of Putnam Avenue and Franklin Street.
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AUSTIN HALL (THE LAW SCHOOL)
fully planned. The right wing of the army under General Ward, with General Spencer, and the best of the Massachusetts brigadiers, John Thomas, blocked the neck of the Boston peninsula and held the Roxbury forts. The lines stretched from Brookline to Dorchester. The left wing under General Lee was intrenched on the Somerville hills and along the Mystic with its outposts far out to the east. His two brigades were led by Greene and Sullivan. The center at Cambridge was commanded by General Putnam with his own brigade, con- sisting of the regiments of Colonels Glover,
Fort No. 3 was at Union Square in Somerville Roughly estimated, there were some 4,000 men on the Roxbury lines, 7,000 more on Prospect, Winter, Plowed and Cobble Hills and north of the Mystic, and about 6,000 on the Cambridge lines. Of these a thousand or more found what must have been very close quarters in the college buildings. Many were in rude shelters on the Common or along the line of the intrenchments, and the rest found shelter in the houses and barns of the village or in tents in the pastures between the college and the low crest of Dana Hill. Two small
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batteries, one at Captain's Island and one at the next angle of the river commanded the approach to Cambridge by water. The latter of these was long preserved by the Dana family, and in 1858 it was restored at the joint expense of the City and the State and named Fort Washington. It stands as an interesting memorial of the siege and a curious reminder of the time when the Charles River was navi- gable by war vessels.
Powder was fearfully scarce in the Cambridge camps. Very little of it was made in the colo- nies, and none at all in the neighborhood of Boston. More than once the army had but nine rounds to a man. On the twenty-fourth of August Washington wrote: "We have been in a terrible situation, occasioned by a mistake in a return: we reckoned upon three hundred quarter casks, and had but thirty-two barrels." Good muskets, too, were hard to get. The gunsmiths of Philadelphia, who had been ex- pected speedily to equip the army, were not able to supply guns with any rapidity, and Washing- ton had to pick them up, good, bad or indiffer- ent, wherever he could.
The progress of the siege of Boston was thus evidently predetermined by other causes than the courage of the soldiers or the skill of the opposing generals. General Gage did not dare make an aggressive campaign and General Washington could not. General Howe, on assuming the command of the troops in Boston early in October, wrote to the Earl of Dart- mouth: "The opening of a campaign from this quarter would be attended with great hazard, as well from the strength of the country as from the intrenched position which the rebels have taken, and from which they could not be forced without considerable loss on our part; and from the difficulty of access farther into the country they would have every advantage in the defence of it on their side, being indefatigable in raising field-works, which they judiciously suppose must wear us down by repeated onsets, whereas they are so numerous in this part of the country that they would not feel the loss they might sus- tain." These were very different views from those expressed in a letter written by a British officer eight months before: "What you hear about the rebels taking up arms is merely bully-
ing. Whenever it comes to blows, he that runs the fastest will think himself best off. Believe me, any two regiments here ought to be deci- mated if they did not beat the whole force of Massachusetts Province." Hard experience had taught the British commanders the con- viction that offensive operations in Massachu- setts were hopeless. This alone accounts for the fact that ten thousand British soldiers, admirably equipped and led, permitted fifteen thousand raw militia, without artillery or suffi- cient ammunition, to draw a net of intrench- ments around them without making an effort to break through the toils.
On the other hand, it was impossible for Washington to make any assault. His soldiers were intelligent and full of faith in their cause; but they were not so much soldiers as the material out of which soldiers should be made. The term of enlistment was so brief that the army was perpetually changing, and was never all ready at one time. As Washington declared, never before had a siege like this been main- tained, when one army had been disbanded and another recruited within musket-shot of the enemy. As for cannon, not until Knox, with incredible labor, had dragged them from the shores of Lake George, and Captain Manly had captured the transport Nancy, filled with the guns and ammunition which the Americans needed, could there be said to be any proper train of artillery.
Meanwhile, impatient patriots all over the country were wondering and complaining that Boston was not stormed or the commanding points about the town occupied. Criticism of the commander-in-chief was severe in Congress and in the newspapers. "I cannot stand justified," wrote Washington, "without ex- posing my own weakness, and injuring the cause by exposing my wants. If I did not consult the public good more than my own tranquillity, I should long ere this have put everything on the cast of a die." Twice during the siege he proposed to a council of generals, to attempt to take the town by assault,-once in September by boats, and once in February over the ice-but his own better judgment must have agreed with his officers that the feat was impossible. So, with the whole country full of great expectations, with his own impetu-
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ous nature chafing at the delay, Washington had to wait and patiently plan how to expel the enemy by less heroic means.
The chief event of the early winter was the discovery of the treason of Dr. Benjamin Church, formerly a leader of the Boston patriots and now the chief medical officer of the army, with his quarters at the Henry Vassall house. From Newport there was brought by an Ameri- can patriot to whom it had been given by a woman from Cambridge, a letter which he had been requested to deliver to some officer of a British man-of-war stationed in Narragansett Bay. The American had opened the letter, and found it to be in cipher. This was sus- picious, and so he brought the letter to General Putnam who caused the woman to be arrested, and mounting her behind him on his horse, carried her to headquarters, where she named Dr. Church as the writer. The letter, when deciphered, proved to give information about the numbers and disposition of the American forces.
The army and country, as Washington wrote, were "exceedingly irritated" at this revelation of treachery in a trusted leader. Abigail Adams was probably right when she wrote, "If he is set at liberty, even after he has received a severe punishment, I do not think he will be safe." Church was brought before the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and allowed to defend himself. He did not deny the authorship of the letter, but insisted that he was writing to his brother, and that he meant no harm. He was not believed, and was expelled from the Congress and the army. Later the Continental Congress ordered him to be imprisoned. Re- leased later, on account of his health, he was
allowed to sail for the West Indies, and his vessel was never again heard from.
As the winter passed, the pressing needs of the army were gradually supplied. "Officers" wrote the historian of the siege, "were slowly learning their duty; discipline was growing more firm and steady, and the whole army was settling down into the habits of military life. Every hill and projecting point from the Mystic River to Dorchester Neck had been made im- pregnable, stretching around Boston in a vast semicircle of redoubts and breastworks of fifteen or twenty miles in length, until at last-Knox's precious convoy of cannon and mortar arrived, the almost priceless stores of Manly's fortunate capture transported to camp, and a moderate supply of powder gathered up the decisive move was made." The first step was to plant a battery on Lechmere's Point (East Cambridge). This was accomplished by General Heath under a heavy cannonade. Guns were planted which not only commanded the shipping in the river, but which threw their shells into Boston. "Then one moonlight, hazy night in March, while all along the line the artillery thundered to drown the noise of the movement, three thousand men, and three hundred ox-carts laden with bales of pressed hay, quietly stole across Dorchester Neck, and climbed the heights. All night, while the enemy slept, the men labored. General Howe woke to find the town, the harbor, the fleet, commanded by his adversary's guns." A few futile plans of attack, a few days of uncertainty, and then the hurried embarkation of the British and the siege was over. On the 17th of March the Americans marched in over the Neck and others, crossing by boats from Cambridge, landed at the foot of the Common.
IX THE TOWN
T HE tides of war ebbed away from Cambridge. The college teachers and students who had continued their work, first at Andover and then at Concord, returned. There was a great cleaning out of the college buildings and of the village houses so long occupied by the soldiers. The community did not, however, at once settle down into the old ways, for practically all the men of the town who were of military age were serving at one time or another in the Revolutionary army. Their leader was Captain Samuel Thatcher, who lived on the farm which had been tilled by three generations of his family, at what is now the corner of Mt. Auburn Street and Coolidge Avenue, and who succeeded Colonel Gardner in the command of the regiment in which most of the Cambridge men were en- listed. After the war Colonel Thatcher sold his farm and lived for the remainder of his life at the eastern corner of Mt. Auburn and Boylston Streets. He was selectman and representative, and a useful citizen. His son, Samuel, married the daughter of General Knox and went to Maine. He was a member of Congress and lived to be ninety-six years old, being at the time of his death the oldest graduate of Harvard. Another noteworthy Revolution- ary officer was Dr. Abraham Watson, Jr., the surgeon of Colonel Thatcher's regiment. He came of a family that had lived for four gen- erations on a farm in North Cambridge, cover- ing all the region from about where the railroad now runs northerly to Spruce Street. After the war Dr. Watson went to live in Littleton. His father was a tanner as well as a farmer, and began the tanning business which was long continued in North Cambridge. Many of the Watson stock were tanners, curriers, cordwainers, or followed other branches of the leather business.
Among the Cambridge patriot soldiers there were three Adamses, four Barretts, four Board- mans, four Champneys, six Cooks, six Coolidges,
five Cutters, four Danas, seven Frosts, three Hastingses, five Prentices, three Reads, three Russells, and four Whittemores. These are all family stocks that are well represented in Cambridge today. The Boardmans, Cooks, Danas and Hastingses have already been men- tioned. The Adamses were one of the leading families in Menotomy. The Barretts were mechanics and lived on the east side of Dunster Street. The Champneys lived on the south side of the river where they had long been large landholders. The Coolidges were primarily a Watertown family, but a good many of them lived then, as now, within the boundaries of Cambridge. The Cutters were a very numer- ous clan, centering about Cutters Mill in Menotomy. On the gravestone of John Cutter, who was a farmer and deacon of the Menotomy Church, and died in 1776, it is recorded that he was survived by eight children, sixty-eight grandchildren, and one hundred and fifteen great-grandchildren. The Frosts were another very large family. The homestead was on the Charlestown road, which is now Kirkland Street, but different branches of the family had spread to North Cambridge and Menotomy. At the time of the Revolution the chief man of the family was Gideon Frost, the blacksmith and deacon of the Cambridge Church, who lived in the old house which is still standing on Lin- naean Street. The Prentices were even more numerous in Cambridge than the Cutters. The original homestead was on the eastern side of the Common, about where the Methodist Church now stands, and that place long re- mained in the family. Spreading from that homestead some of the Prentices established themselves on the Menotomy road, just above the present railroad bridge, others built on the westerly side of the Common, along what is now Mason Street; another branch took root in a farm adjoining the Oliver and the Thatcher places, or about at the junction of Mt. Auburn Street and Elmwood Avenue. Still another
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group of Prentices acquired the lands on what is now Garden Street toward Fresh Pond, and developed the brickmaking business, which has been carried on in that section ever since. These Prentices built their houses on Garden Street, where the Botanic Garden now is, and on the slope of the observatory hill opposite. The Reads established themselves in Cambridge early in the eighteenth century, and for three generations dealt in leather. The homestead was on the south side of Brattle Street, between the estate of General Brattle and the Henry Vassall place. In the third generation the family spread into houses on the opposite side of Brattle Street. One of them is the house still standing at the corner of Brattle and Church Streets. In the fifth generation William Read acquired the large estate through which Apple- ton Street and Highland Street now run, and where the descendants of this serviceable family still live. The Russells were early settlers, for, in 1635, John Russell was living at the corner of Holyoke and Mt. Auburn Streets, and it was his son, Rev. John Russell, who was the protector of the Regicides in his parsonage at Hadley. In the later generations the Russells were chiefly identified with Menotomy and with Lexington, and we have seen how Jason Russell was killed on the 19th of April, 1775. The Whittemores were also chiefly connected with Menotomy and Lexington. The Whittemore farms were along Alewife Brook and the road that now runs from Winter Hill to Arlington. Captain Samuel Whittemore was the chief revolutionary representative of the family. He had been for sixteen years a selectman of Cambridge, and when the war broke out was nearly eighty years old. With the utmost enthusiasm he joined in the Lexington battle. He was desperately wounded and left for dead, but recovered and lived to be ninety-six, with living descendants to the fifth generation and numbering nearly two hundred. His nephew, another Samuel Whittemore, lived in Cam- bridge village on Boylston Street, and was for forty years deacon of the church. It shows the typically close connection of these old Cambridge families, when we read that the children of this Samuel Whittemore married respectively a Watson, an Angier, a Prentice and a Hastings.
A curious episode of the Revolutionary time was the occupation of Cambridge by the troops that surrendered with General Burgoyne at Saratoga on October 17, 1777. Cambridge was selected as the place of their detention. Fortunately the district was under the com- mand of General Heath, and that efficient officer had sufficient notice to prepare for the coming of these unexpected visitors. The old barracks on the Somerville hills were put in order for the troops, and such quarters as could be obtained were provided for the officers in the Cambridge houses. General Burgoyne occupied the Borland house (the Bishop's Palace) and Baron Riedesel and his accom- plished wife lived in the Lechmere-Sewall house, whence the Baroness wrote the charm- ing letters and the journal which are the best original account of the northern campaign, and which contain pleasant descriptions of Cambridge and the life of the village. Bur- goyne left Cambridge in April, 1778, but some of the prisoners stayed until November, when they departed to Virginia to complete a chapter of our military annals which is by no means creditable to American good faith.
The next visitors were of a very different kind. On September 1, 1779, there convened in the Cambridge meeting-house the delegates of all the Massachusetts towns who had gathered to frame a constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. All the patriot leaders, save those who were serving in the Continental Congress or in the army, were there. The Cambridge representatives were Abraham Watson, Benjamin Cooper and Stephen Dana. The Convention remained in session all winter, and finally adjourned in May, 1780. On May 20th, the Cambridge town meeting ratified the Constitution.
The next visitor was even more distinguished. On October 27, 1789, President Washington revisited the scenes of his first successes in com- mand of the army, and was given an honorary degree by the College. Dr. Joseph Willard had succeeded President Langdon in 1781, and it fell to him to express in the meeting-house the greeting of the College and the community. The style of his academic welcome was some- what more elaborate than would suit the taste of a later day, but it certainly lacked nothing
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in ardent admiration and praise of the honored guest. After lauding the character and achieve- ments of Washington, President Willard said : "When you took the command of the troops of your country, you saw the University in a state of depression-its members dispersed- its literary treasures removed-and the Muses fled from the din of arms then heard within its walls. Happily restored, in the course of a few months, by your glorious successes, to its former privileges, and to a state of tran- quillity, it received its returning members, and our youth have since pursued without inter- ruption their literary courses, and fitted them- selves for usefulness in church and state. The public rooms, which you formerly saw empty, are now replenished with the necessary means of improving the human mind in literature and science; and everything within these walls wears the aspect of peace, so necessary to the cultivation of the liberal arts. While we exert ourselves, in our corporate capacity, to promote the great objects of this institution, we rest assured of your protection and patronage."
Washington's reply was in a similar though simpler style. He entreated the President and Fellows to be persuaded of the respectful and affectionate consideration with which he received his degree.
"Unacquainted," he said, "with the expres- sion of sentiments which I do not feel, you will do me justice by believing confidently in my disposition to promote the interests of science and true religion.
"It gives me sincere satisfaction to learn the flourishing state of your literary republic- assured of its efficiency in the past events of our political system, and of its further influence on those means which make the best support of good government, I rejoice that the direc- tion of its measures is lodged with men whose approved knowledge, integrity and patriotism give an unquestionable assurance of their success."
The next visitor came from over seas, but he found here the memories of his generous and ardent youth. Lafayette came in August, 1824, and the scene is preserved for us by the accounts of many enthusiastic witnesses. He rode to Cambridge through cheering throngs, and President Kirkland, who excelled in just
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