USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > History of the Old South church (Third church) Boston, 1669-1884, Vol. II > Part 19
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1 [" The Members of the Old South Church in this Town, after several Con- ferences with the Rev. Mr. Bacon, one of their Pastors, have mutually agreed that he is dismissed from the Ministerial care of that Church and Congregation : - A mutual Council, notwithstanding, we heer is soon to be called on the Occa- sion." - Mass. Gazette, February 16, 1775.
Mr. William Whitwell, a member of one of the committees mentioned above, died April 10, 1775. He was a prosper- ous merchant, one of the overseers of the poor, and a very useful man in the town.
His second wife, Elizabeth (Swett), died May 13, 1771, in her fiftieth year. He afterward married the widow of Royal Tyler, who survived him. His daughter Elizabeth, by his first wife, was the first wife of William Homes, Jr., " the honest goldsmith." His daughter Mary, by his second wife, married Josiah Waters, Jr .; her sister Catherine, married William Scollay; she died December 30, 1848, aged eighty-eight. Mr. Whitwell's broth- er, Samuel, was also an active member of the Old South, and survived until 1801.]
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THE FIFTH OF MARCH, 1775.
care of the Rev'd Mr. Chandler, the Church at Stoneham under the pastoral care of the Rev'd. Mr. Searl, be applied to in the stead of those who had excus'd themselves.
More than three years passed before the next entry was made upon either of the record books. The proposed council, as we suppose, was never assembled. It was evidently difficult to find ministers who were willing to sit upon it, and undertake to decide whether Mr. Bacon was "that erroneous person" the church had judged him to be, according to the Confession of Faith of 1680. The opinion of the council was not to be asked in reference to the dismission of Mr. Bacon ; that ques- tion both he and the brethren looked upon as "settled and de- termined." The theological question, both for his sake and theirs, might well be left to settle itself. Other concerns, how- ever, of momentous importance, now claimed the absorbing thought of all parties.
The 5th of March coming on Sunday, the anniversary of the Boston Massacre was this year kept on the following day. The town was in the possession of the British troops ; an un- usual degree of coolness and determination, therefore, would be required in the orator, and Joseph Warren had been selected as the man for the occasion. Indeed, on learning that threats had been made, this patriot had solicited the post of danger for himself. It appeared afterward that there was an organized movement on foot to break up the meeting, should any expres- sion escape the orator tending to reflect upon the king or royal family ; and the occasion had been judged opportune for com- mencing an onslaught upon the people.1 We have the follow-
1 General Warren, at the time of his death on Bunker Hill, was engaged to be married to Mercy, daughter of John Scollay. His wife, Elizabeth (Hooton), died April 29, 1773. He left four children, who were dependent on their friends and the public. In a letter dated December 20, 1779, Samuel Adams wrote, that the eldest son, Joseph, was under the care and tuition of the Rev. Mr. Payson, of Chelsea, and that the eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was with her uncle, Dr. John Warren. "The two younger children," he added, " a boy of about seven years, and a girl somewhat older, are in the family of John Scollay Esq. under the particular care of his daughter, at her
most earnest request ; otherwise, I sup- pose, they would have been taken care of by their relations at Roxbury, and edu- cated as farmers' children usually are. Miss Scollay deserves the greatest praise for her attention to them. She is ex- ceedingly well qualified for the charge, and her affection for their deceased father prompts her to exert her utmost to inculcate in the minds of these chil- dren those principles which may con- duce to render them worthy of the re- lation they stood in to him." Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, married Arnold, son of Arnold and Susanna Welles, bap- tized at the South Church September 27, 1761, H. Coll. 1780.
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HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
ing account of the meeting, from the pen of a loyalist, in a New York paper : -
On Monday, the 5th instant [sic], the Old South Meeting-house being crowded with nobility and fame, the Selectmen, with Adams, Church and Hancock, Cooper and others, assembled in the pulpit, which was covered with black, and we all sat gaping at one another above an hour expecting ! At last, a single horse chair stopped at the apothecary's, opposite the meeting, from which descended the orator (Warren) of the day ; and entering the shop, was followed by a servant with a bundle, in which were the Ciceronian toga, etc. Having robed himself, he proceeded across the street to the meeting, and being received into the pulpit, he was announced by one of his fraternity to be the person appointed to declaim on the occasion. He then put himself into a Demosthenian posture, with a white handker- chief in his right hand, and his left in his breeches, - began and ended without action. He was applauded by the mob, but groaned at by people of understanding. One of the pulpiteers (Adams) then got up and proposed the nomination of another to speak next year on the bloody Massacre - the first time that expression was made to the audience - when some officers cried, " O fie, fie !" The gallerians ap- prehending fire, bounded out of the windows, and swarmed down the gutters, like rats, into the street. The Forty-third Regiment returning accidentally from exercise, with drums beating, threw the whole body into the greatest consternation. There were neither pageantry, exhi- bitions, processions, or bells tolling as usual, but the night was re- marked for being the quietest these many months past.1
The front seats in the meeting-house had been reserved for the British officers, about forty of whom were present. Several of them, however, seated themselves on the pulpit stairs, and the whole of the military present continually interrupted Dr. Warren by laughing, hemming, and coughing. The oration must, indeed, have been unpalatable to them, for it treated of the baleful effects of standing armies in times of peace, while the assemblage itself was in fact a town meeting, - a portion of the democratic system which an army had been sent to sup- press. One of the officers attempted to intimidate Warren by holding up one of his hands with several bullets on the open palm, but the orator, without pausing in his discourse, dropped a white handkerchief upon them. Every move on the part of the troops, as well as the people, showed that each was await- ing some action of the other for the commencement of blood-
1 [Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, vol. ii. pp. 278, 279.]
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LEXINGTON AND CONCORD.
shed.1 A volcano was ready to burst forth, and the time for the eruption was not far distant. Samuel Adams, soon after the meeting, wrote to Richard Henry Lee : -
I had long expected that they would take that occasion to beat up a breeze, and therefore (seeing many of the officers present before the orator came in), as moderator of the meeting, I took care to have them treated with civility, inviting them into convenient seats, so that they might have no pretence to behave ill ; for it is a good maxim in politics, as well as in war, to put and keep the enemy in the wrong. They behaved tolerably well until the oration was finished, when, upon a motion made for the appointment of another orator, as usual, they began to hiss, which irritated the assembly to the greatest degree, and confusion ensued ; they, however, did not gain their end, - which was apparently to break up the meeting, - for order was soon restored, and we proceeded regularly, and finished the business. I am per- suaded, were it not for the danger of precipitating a crisis, not a man of them would have been spared.2
Thursday, March 9, was observed throughout the province as a day of fasting and prayer, in compliance with the recommen- dation of the Provincial Congress.
We need not repeat here the story of the expedition sent out from Boston on the evening of April 18, for the capture of Adams and Hancock, who were at the parsonage in Lexington,3 and for the seizure of the military supplies collected at Concord, nor of what took place on the following day. But we must not fail to mention the important part borne by a member of the Old South Church, in the movement which made General Gage's plans unsuccessful. Paul Revere's ride over Charlestown Neck and through Medford has been celebrated in verses which have be-
1 Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, vol. hang them in Boston, he said, the Gen- ii. p. 280.
2 [Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 280, 281. The ora- tion in 1776 was delivered in Watertown by the Rev. Peter Thacher, then minis- ter of the church in Malden.]
3 A gentleman in London, writing to a friend in Boston, April 25, 1775, said : " The administration [a friend had told him], on Friday, received advices from General Gage to the 18th of March, wherein he acknowledges the receipt of the king's order to apprehend Messrs. Cushing, Adams, Hancock, &c. and send them over to England to be tried ; but that the second orders, which were to
eral had not then received. The General expressed his fears on the occasion; and in hopes of their being reversed, he should delay the execution a while longer, because he must, if the orders were fulfilled, come to an engagement, the event of which he had every reason to apprehend, would be fatal to himself and to the King's troops; as the Massa- chusetts government had at least fifteen thousand men trained for the onset, . . . in which unwelcome situation he earnestly wished for a reinforcement, if that dis- agreeable order must be effected." - Ibid., vol. ii. pp. 289, 290.
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HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
come a part of our national history, but he was not the only one with whom "the fate of a nation was riding that night." Dr. Warren, as soon as he learned of the intention of the Brit- ish troops, determined to send out two trusty messengers by different routes, to rouse the country towns and to warn the patriot leaders. Of these, William Dawes was the first to start. He took the land route to Roxbury over the Neck, eluding the guard with difficulty, and, crossing Charles River at the Brigh- ton bridge, proceeded through Cambridge to Lexington. Re- vere went by the water route through Charlestown, and arrived first at Lexington. Dawes, who had had the longer distance to travel, came in soon after.
" After a little delay for refreshment, they rode on towards Concord, accompanied by a 'high son of liberty,' young Dr. Prescott, who had been visiting his sweet-heart, a Miss Mulli- ken, of Lexington. About half-way along, near Hartwell's tavern, in lower Lincoln, they met British officers again ; Pres- cott and Dawes being a hundred rods behind, alarming a house, when Revere discovered them. Prescott, who was best mounted, jumped the stone wall and escaped. Dawes, chased by the sol- diers, dashed up to an empty farm-house, slapping his leather breeches and shouting, 'Halloo, boys, I've got two of 'em !' and his pursuers were fortunately frightened, and made off. In the excitement of the chase, Dawes pulled up so suddenly that he was thrown from his horse, and lost his watch, and did not get it again until some days later, when he returned to search for it. Here we lose sight of Prescott and Dawes; but we know that one of them got to Concord with the news about two that morning, or a little later, and both, no doubt, played their part in the later turmoil of the day. Revere did not escape so easily. Striking off for some woods near by, he rode into an- other party of British, and was forced to surrender." 1
William Dawes, born April 6, 1745, was a tanner, and lived in Ann Street. His wife was Mehetabel, daughter of Samuel May. In 1769 they joined the church of which, in 1669, his an- cestor, William Dawes, was one of the founders, and of which his great-grandfather, Ambrose, became a member in 1670, his grandfather, Thomas, in 1705, and his father, William, in 1735.
1 William Dawes and His Ride with Paul Revere, by Henry W. Holland, pp. 9-13. During the dispersion of the con- gregation of the Old South, an infant
son of Mr. Dawes was baptized by the name of Israel Putnam, May 18, 1777, at Dr. Cooper's meeting house, by the Rev. William Gordon.
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THE SIEGE OF BOSTON.
Major Thomas Dawes, who was one of the committee to make provision for the council called at the request of the Rev. Mr. Bacon, and who was chosen deacon in 1786, was his second cousin.
Boston was now besieged by the patriot forces, and was under martial law. The last meeting of the selectmen was held on the 19th of April, and the only fact recorded was the presence of three members of the Board. Mr. Scollay was absent.1 The battle of Bunker Hill was fought two months later. In antici- pation of the coming conflict, many families had left the town, and the British general now gave opportunity for all to go who wished to do so.2 Most of the congregations were broken up, that of the Old South among the rest; but when it met for worship for the last time we have no means of knowing. The families of Deacon Mason, Deacon Phillips, and Mr. William Phillips, Jr., took up their residence at Norwich, Connecticut. We hear of "Mrs. Cushing and a good part of her family, Mr. Samuel Whitwell's wife, Mrs. Winslow, and Miss Polly Vans" at Attleborough.3 Later in the year, Mr. Cushing was estab- lished with his family at Dedham. Robert Pierpont was at Milton,4 and others were in or near Cambridge and Water- town,5 where they were busy with public affairs. Mr. Hunt was visiting in Brookline when the siege began. On his return, he was told that he might enter the town if he would pledge him- self to remain there. This he declined to do, and he went to his father's house at Northampton.
In Mr. Ephraim Eliot's Historical Notices of the New North Church we read : -
Some chose to stand by their property, others were not suffered to leave the town. Among these was - Dr. Eliot. Most of his family
1 Mr. Scollay lost a son during the tinguished himself as early as 1773, by siege-John Scollay, who graduated at emancipating his slaves. Harvard College in 1764.
2 It was estimated that before the bat- tle in Charlestown, ten thousand of the inhabitants had left the two peninsulas.
3 See Ezekiel Price's diary. Mary, daughter of Hugh Vans, and grand- daughter of the Rev. Ebenezer Pember- ton, third minister of the church, was married to Deacon Jonathan Mason, Lord's Day evening, December 20, 1778. 4 After the siege Mr. Pierpont was commissary of prisoners. He had dis-
5 The note addressed by Phillis Wheatley to General Washington, ac- companying the lines she had written upon his taking command of the Amer- ican forces, was dated Providence, Oc- tober 26, 1775. Her line, "Columbia's scenes of glorious toil I write," was one of the first instances, if not the first in- stance, of the poetical use of the word Columbia in America. See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Dec., 1885, and N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, July, 1886.
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HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
were sent into the country ; and he expected soon to join them. But this liberty was refused to him, probably through the influence of the selectmen and others in the whig interest, in order to keep up the worship of God in the Congregational way.1 Most of the ministers of that persuasion were fortunately absent, when hostilities commenced ; and all communication between town and country was cut off by the pro- vincial troops, after the rout of the British army on the 19th of April. Dr. Samuel Mather and Dr Eliot were the only Congregational minis- ters left in the town, excepting at the southern extremity, where Dr Mather Byles officiated, who, being in the tory interest, was neglected by most of the inhabitants, although he performed service for some time in one of the central meeting-houses. The New North was opened every Lord's day during the blockade, and was decently filled with hearers. A small congregation assembled at Dr. Mather's, and another at the Second Baptist meeting-house, then under the care of the Rev. Isaac Skilman.
The exigencies of war may properly be pleaded, under spe- cial circumstances, for the occupation of houses of worship for military uses, and especially for hospital purposes ; but there can be no question that, during the War of the Revolution, the British commanding officers, in many instances, needlessly and wantonly used and injured buildings set apart for the worship of God, and consecrated by the prayers and praises of His peo- ple. No doubt, these men despised the Puritan and Presbyterian meeting-houses of America, as they had been taught and trained to despise the " dissenting chapels" at home, for they seem to have discriminated carefully between non-episcopal and episcopal churches ; but in this they only added the offence of intolerance to the crime of sacrilege. In New York, they used the Middle Dutch Church in Nassau Street as a prison, and afterward turned it into a riding school. The Presbyterian Church in Wall Street they converted into barracks, and that in Beekman Street into a hospital.2 In Boston, they took possession of sev- eral of the meeting-houses for barracks, and for the storage of
1 [Dr. Eliot wrote, April 5, 1776, to Mr. Isaac Smith : " I cannot repent my having tarried in town; it seemed necessary to preserve the very face of religion. But nothing would induce me again to spend eleven months in a garrison town."]
2 " The ruinous situation in which they left two of the Low Dutch Reformed Churches, the three Presbyterian Churches, the French Protestant Church,
the Anabaptist Church, and the Friends' new Meeting House, was the effect of design, and strongly marks their enmity to those societies. Boston, Newport, Philadelphia and Charleston, all fur- nished melancholy instances of this prostitution and abuse of the houses of God."- Miller's Life of the Rev. Dr. John Rodgers (p. 234), quoted by Dr. Wisner.
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OCCUPATION OF THE MEETING-HOUSE.
hay ; but upon none of them did they heap such indignity as upon the Old South. The. " heart of iron beating in its ancient tow- er " had always been true to popular liberty ; its doors had been freely opened to the citizens, whenever necessary, for their great town meetings ; and its walls had reverberated with the applause that had come in response to the earnest words of James Otis, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and other patriots. Such a record would almost certainly bring down upon it the vengeance of the men who wantonly injured Samuel Adams's house ; 1 who cut down the Liberty Tree; and who " destroyed the steeple of the West Church, because they supposed it had been used as a signal staff." The New Brick, where Governor Hutchinson had worshipped, was not touched ; but the Old North, Mr. Lathrop's, which had stood for a century, was torn down for fuel.2 Timothy Newell, a deacon of Brattle Street Church, and one of the selectmen, kept a journal during the siege, and recorded under date of October 27 : -
The spacious Old South Meeting house, taken possession of by the Light horse 17th Regiment of Dragoons, commanded by Lieut. Colo. Samuel Birch. The Pulpit, pews and seats, all cut to pieces and car- ried off in the most savage manner as can be expressed and destined for a riding school. The beautiful carved pew with the silk furniture of Deacon Hubbard's was taken down and carried to [John Amory's] house by an officer and made a hog stye. The above was effected by the solicitation of General Burgoyne.8
1 " During the tedious months that the siege of Boston had continued, his resi- dence in Purchase Street was occupied by royal officers, who had wantonly mu- tilated the interior, destroyed the out- houses, and, with spiteful hatred of the proprietor, had cut into the window panes obscene and blasphemous writ- ings, some of them ridiculing his reli- gious habits. Caricatures were dis- played upon the walls, and the garden was completely ruined. . . . The family returned, with the design of occupying the house, soon after the departure of the British, but they found the premises uninhabitable." Mr. Adams was never pecuniarily able thereafter to repair the damage, and the family went to Ded- ham, and resided there until 1778 .- Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, vol. ii. p. 3So.
2 " At this time, most of the churches in the town were broken up; and while the pastor of this church and the mem- bers in general were dispersed abroad, a number of evil-minded men, of the king's party, obtained leave of General Howe to pull down the Old North Meet- ing-house, under a pretence of wanting it for fuel, although there were then large quantities of coal and wood in the town." - Second Church Records.
8 [" A Gentleman who lately came out of Boston affirms, That the Rebels in Boston, by Order of their General, How, have taken down the Pulpit and all the Pews in the Old South Meeting House, and are using it for a Riding School, - this he saw. Thus we see the House once set apart for the true Worship and Service of God, turned into a Den for Thieves !" - Boston Gazette, November
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HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
Everything inside the building was taken out and burnt for fuel, except the sounding board and the east galleries ; the latter were left for the accommodation of the officers and their friends, and in the first gallery a place was fitted up where refresh- ments, including liquors, were sold to those who came to wit- ness the feats of horsemanship. Many hundred loads of dirt and gravel were carted in, and spread upon the floor. The south door was closed, and a bar was fixed, over which the cav- alry were taught to leap their horses at full speed.1 In the winter, a stove was put up, and many of Mr. Prince's books and manuscripts were brought from the tower and used to kindle the fires.
The old parsonage also was torn down and consumed, - the house in which Governor Winthrop lived and died, the home of the Rev. John Norton, and, from the days of Mr. Willard, the abode of generations of ministers of the Third Church.2 Dr.
13, 1775 ; this paper was published during the siege by Benjamin Edes at Water- town.
General Burgoyne occupied the Bow- doin mansion, directly opposite the Old South parsonage in Milk Street.
In the cellar of the old meeting-house there is an enclosed space which looks as if it had been built in for a guard- room, and may have been used as a place of confinement for disorderly soldiers. It has two small windows. We show a draw- ing of the door of this room at the end of this chapter. It has a wooden frame, and, instead of panels, a strong network of iron, for the admission of air. In the upper part of this network there is a small opening through which food may have been passed to those in confine- ment.
When the national flag was thrown to the breeze from the steeple of the Old South, May 1, 1861, the Rev. J. M. Man- ning, in the course of an eloquent speech addressed to a great assembly, said : " This building has served as an exercise- ground for horsemen, who sought to conquer the immortal emblem above us, The horse and his rider have perished, while the temple they profaned still stands, and the flag they hated still waves on high !"]
1 In reference to the tradition that a
common drinking shop was opened in the gallery, and that scenes of riot and debauchery on the part of the soldiery were witnessed in the holy temple, (see Columbian Centinel, November 17, 1821,) Dr. Wisner says : " Several aged per- sons with whom I have conversed, some of whom were here while the town was occupied by the British troops, and all of whom say they recollect the appear- ance of the church after their departure, and the conversation current respecting it at that time, say that the soldiers were not allowed to resort to the gallery, which was reserved for the officers and their ladies and friends, who used to assemble there to witness the perform- ances, and that the erection in the gal- lery was to furnish them liquor and refreshments."
2 There was a fine row of buttonwood trees on the parsonage green, which was also destroyed.
The occupants of the old parsonage, so far as we know them, and the approx- imate dates of their occupancy, were as follows : John Winthrop, 1644 to 1649; John Norton, 1656 to 1663 ; Mary Nor- ton, 1656 to 1678 ; Samuel Willard, 1678 to 1707; Ebenezer Pemberton, 1708 to 1710; Joseph Sewall, 1714 to 1719; Thomas Prince, 1719 to 1758. John Osborne occupied it after the fire of
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DEATH OF MR. HUNT.
Holmes has said, in reference to another historic parsonage taken down not many years ago: "With its destruction are ob- literated some of the footprints of the heroes and martyrs who took the first steps in the long and bloody march which led us through the wilderness to the promised land of independent nationality." A long procession of heroes and martyrs, in the cause of religious as well as civil freedom, passed in and out of this venerable South Church parsonage, during the century and a half of its existence.
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