USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Old landmarks and historic fields of Middlesex > Part 2
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Two handbills, each embellished with a rude woodcut of the bridge, were printed on the occasion of the opening, in 1786. One was from the " Charlestown Press"; the other was printed by "E. Russell, Boston, next door to Dr. Haskins', near Liberty Pole." * From the broadside (as it was then called), published at the request and for the benefit of the directors and friends of this "grand and almost unparalleled undertaking," we present the following extract : -
" This elegant work was begun on the First of June 1785, (a day remarkable in the Annals of America as the Ports of Boston and Charlestown were unjustly shut up by an arbitrary British Admin- istration) and was finished on the seventeenth of the same month 1786, the ever memorable day on which was fought the famous and bloody Battle of Bunker-Hill, where was shewn the Valour of the undisciplined NEW ENGLAND MILITIA under the magnanimous Warren who gloriously fell in his COUNTRY'S CAUSE ! Blessed Be His Memory ! ! And All the People - Say Amen ! ! ! ! "
* Ezekiel Russell's printing-office was at the head of Essex Street.
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The building committee were Hon. Nathaniel Gorham, Richard Devens, David Wood, Jr., Captain Joseph Cordis, Andrew Symmes, Jr., and John Larkin.
Lemuel Cox, the artisan, was born in Boston in 1736, and died in Charlestown in 1806. In 1787 he built the bridge to Malden, which was finished in six months ; and in the fol- lowing year (1788), the Essex Bridge, at Salem, was con- structed by him. In 1789 he was living in Prince Street, in Boston, and styled himself a millwright. In 1790, accom- panied by a Mr. Thompson, Cox went to Ireland, where he was invited to estimate for the building of a bridge over the Foyle at Londonderry. His proposals being accepted, the two Americans purchased a ship, which they loaded at Sheepscot, Maine, with lumber, and having secured about twenty of their countrymen, skilled in shaping timber, set sail for Ireland. The bridge, which connected the city and county, consisted of fifty-eight arches, all of American oak, and was completed in five months. The Foyle was here about nine hundred feet wide and forty feet deep at high water. What made Cox's achievement the more important was the fact that Milne, an English engineer, had surveyed the river and pronounced the scheme impracticable.
Our pioneer in bridge-building on a great scale in America has received but scanty recompense at the hands of biographers. Dr. Ure has neither noticed his great works in Ireland nor in this country. Before he left Europe, Mr. Cox was applied to by the Corporation of London to take down Wren's monument, which was supposed to threaten a fall ; but, as they would not give him his price, he declined. Massachusetts granted him, in 1796, a thousand acres of land in Maine, for being the first inventor of a machine to cut card-wire, the first projector of a powder-mill in the State, and the first to suggest the employ- ment of prisoners on Castle Island to make nails. The rude woodcut which adorned the head of the broadside circulated at the opening of Charles River Bridge was executed, as the printer says, by "that masterpiece of ingenuity, Mr. Lemuel Cox." It shows a detachment of artillery with cannon ready
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for firing, and a coach with four horses, and a footman behind, driving at full speed over the bridge.
In 1786 no ceremony would have been considered complete without the aid of the Muses, and the Nine were energetically invoked in forty stanzas, of which we submit a fair specimen : -
" The smiling morn now peeps in view, Bright with peculiar charms, See, Boston Nymphs and Charlestown too Each linked arm in arm.
2. " I sing the day in which the BRIDGE Is finished and done, Boston and Charlestown lads rejoice, And fire your cannon guns.
3. " The BRIDGE is finished now I say, Each other bridge outvies, For London Bridge, compar'd with ours Appears in dim disguise.
23. " Now Boston, Charlestown nobly join And roast a fatted Ox On noted Bunker Hill combine, To toast our patriot COX.
38. " May North and South and Charlestown all Agree with one consent, To love each one like Indian's rum, On publick good be sent."
Chelsea Bridge was built in 1803, and the direct avenue to Salem opened by means of a turnpike, by which the distance from Boston was greatly diminished. The bridge was to revert to the Commonwealth in seventy years.
In 1643 the colony of Massachusetts Bay was divided into four shires, of which Middlesex, named after that county in Old England which includes London, was one. It is the most populous of all the counties of the Old Bay State, and em- braces within its limits the earliest battle-fields of the Revolu- tion, the first seat of learning in the English colonies, and the manufactures which have made American industry known in every quarter of the globe.
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Charlestown, the mother of Boston, resembled in its super- ficial features its more powerful offspring. It was a peninsula, connected with the mainland by a narrow neck ; it had three principal hills also, but the mutations which have swept over the one have not left the other untouched. To remove a mountain is now only a question of time ; and were Mahomet to live again, he would see that his celebrated reply has be- come void of significance.
Like Shawmut, Mishawum * had its solitary settler in Thomas Walford, the sturdy smith, who was found living here in 1628, when some of Endicott's company made their way through the wilderness from Salem. The next year the settle- ment received some accessions, and was named Charles Towne by Governor Endicott, in honor of the reigning prince. Win- throp's company arrived at Charlestown in June and July, 1630 ; but, owing to the mortality that prevailed and the want of water, the settlers soon began to disperse, the larger part re- moving with the governor to Shawmut. A second dispersion took place on account of the destruction of the town during the battle of 1775, leaving nothing but the hills, the ancient burial-place, and a few old houses that escaped the conflagra- tion.
After nearly two centuries and a half of separate existence, Charlestown has at length become part of Boston. The peo- ple simply ratified what History had already decreed. Now Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights lie, as they ought to lie, within a common municipal government.
The old ferry, besides serving the primitive settlers, is de- serving of recognition as the place where the first exchange of prisoners took place after hostilities begun between America and Great Britain. This event occurred on the 6th of June following the battle of Lexington, and was conducted by Dr. Warren and General Putnam for the colony, and by Major Moncrieff on behalf of General Gage. The contending parties concerned themselves little at that time about what has since
Indian name of Charlestown.
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been known as " belligerent rights," each being ready to get rid of some troublesome visitors by the easiest and most natural method. Warren and Putnam rode to the ferry in a phaeton, followed by a cavalcade of prisoners, some mounted and others riding in chaises. Arrived at the shore, the Doctor and 'Old Put' signalled the Lively, man-of-war, and Major Moncrieff come off as related. After the performance of their public business, the parties to the exchange adjourned to Mr. Foster's, and had what was then and since known as "a good time." A much worse fate happened to the Bunker Hill prisoners, and it is quite evident that both parties looked upon the collision at Lexington as premature, - the King's commander with misgiving as to whether his conduct would be sustained in England ; the colonists as to whether their resistance had not closed the door against that reconciliation with the throne they professed so ardently to desire.
The great square around which clustered the humble habita- tions of the settlers ; the "great house," inhabited for a time by the governor, and in which the settlement of Boston was probably planned ; the thatched meeting-house, and even the first tavern of old Samuel Long, - afterwards the sign of the Two Cranes and situated on the City Hall site,* - were what met the eye of Josselyn as he ascended the beach into the market-place in 1638. He describes the rattlesnake he saw while walking out there, and his visit to Long's ordinary. Eventually, the town stretched itself along the street leading to the mainland.
In these times of degeneracy, when man requires the most repressive measures to compel him to abstain from the vice of intemperance, we can but look back with longing eyes upon those halcyon days when a traveller entering a public inn was immediately followed by an officer, who, with the utmost sang froid, placed himself near the guest, and when, in his opinion, his charge had partaken of enough strong waters, by a wave of his hand forbade the host to fetch another stoup of liquor. What a companion for a midnight wassail of good fellows! With his
Also the site of the " Great House." 1 *
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gaze riveted upon the countenances of the revellers, he marks each stage of transition from sobriety to that point which we may call the perfect equipoise, where the law steps in. With a rap of his staff upon the floor, or a thwack of his fist on the table, he checks the song or silences the jest. We hardly know how to sufficiently admire such parental care in our forefathers ; we hesitate to compare it with the present system.
The night-watch, too, was an institution. With their great- coats, dark-lanterns, and iron-shod staffs, they went their rounds to warn all wayfarers to their beds, admonish the loiterers who might chance to be abroad, or arrest evil-doers. Whether they were marshalled nightly by their officer we know not, but we doubt not they would have diligently executed their commission.
Dogb. Well, you are to call at all the alehouses, and bid those that are drunk get them to bed.
2 Watch. How if they will not ?
Dogb. Why, let them alone till they are sober.
The watchman had an ancient custom of crying " All 's well!" and the hour of the night, as he went his rounds, at the same time striking his bill upon the pavement. This was to banish sleep altogether from the bed of sickness, or divide it into periods of semi-consciousness for the more robust. Well can we imagine the drowsy guardian, lurking in some dark passage or narrow lane, shouting with stentorian lungs his sleep-destroying watch-cry under the stars, and startling a whole neighborhood from its slumbers. Like the Scot, he murdered sleep ; like him, he should have been condemned to sleep no more.
Dr. Bentley, of Salem, who perhaps had a watchman nightly posted under his window, pertinently inquired through a news- paper if it would not be better to cry out when all was not well. and let well enough alone.
Charlestown has given to the world some eminent public characters. Earliest among these is John Harvard, the patron of the college that bears his name. He was admitted a free- man "with promise of such accommodations as we best can," in 1637, but died the following year, leaving half his estate for
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the use of the infant school of learning. He also left his li- brary of more than three hundred volumes to the College, and has a simple granite shaft, erected to his memory on Burial Hill, in Charles- town, by the graduates of the University he aided to found. Edward Everett delivered the ad- dress on the oc- casion of the ded- ication. The eastern face of the monument, besides the name of John Harvard, bears the follow- HARVARD'S MONUMENT. ing inscription.
"On the 26th of September, A. D. 1828, this stone was erected by the graduates of the University at Cambridge, in honor of its founder, who died at Charlestown on the 26th of September, 1638."
The western front bears a Latin inscription, recognizing that one who had laid the corner-stone of letters in America should no longer be without a monument, however humble. This memorial, which was raised nearly two hundred years after the decease of Harvard, rests on a suppositive site, his burial-place having been forgotten or obliterated. Unfortunately, less is known of Harvard than of most of his contemporaries, but that little is treasured as a precious legacy to the Alumni of the University. The old graveyard, one of the most interesting in New England, as having received the ashes of many of Win- throp's band, suffered mutilation while the town was held by the British in 1775-6. It is stated that the gravestones were in some cases used by the soldiers for thresholds to their barracks.
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THE NIGHT SURPRISE AT DONCASTER.
Charlestown may also lay claim to having given two brave soldiers to Old Noll's army when that hard-hitting Puritan was cracking the crowns of loyal Scot, Briton, or Celt, and sending the ringleted cavaliers over-seas to escape his long arm.
Principal of these was William Rainsborrow who lived here in 1639, and was, with Robert Sedgwick and Israel Stough- ton, a member of the Honorable Artillery Company of Boston. Rainsborrow had risen to be colonel of a regiment in the Parliamentary army, in which Stoughton (of Dorchester) was lieutenant-colonel, Nehemiah Bourne, a Boston shipwright, major, and John Leverett, afterwards governor, a captain ; William Hudson, supposed to be of Boston, also, was ensign.
In the year 1648, the Yorkshire royalists, who had been living in quiet since the first war, were again excited by intel- ligence of Duke Hamilton's intended invasion. A plan was laid and successfully carried out to surprise Pomfret Castle, (sometimes called Pontefract) the greatest and strongest castle in all England, and then held by Colonel Cotterel as governor for the Parliament. The castle was soon beseiged by Sir Ed- ward Rhodes and Sir Henry Cholmondly with five thousand regular troops, but the royal garrison made good their conquest.
It being likely to prove a tedious affair, General Rains- borrow was sent from London by the Parliament to put a speedy end to it. He was esteemed a general of great skill and courage, exceedingly zealous in the Protector's service, with a reputation gained both by land and sea, - he having been, for a time, Admiral of Cromwell's fleet. Rainsborrow pitched his headquarters, for the present, at Doncaster, twelve miles from Pomfret, with twelve hundred foot and two regi- ments of horse.
The castle garrison having learned of Hamilton's defeat at Preston, and that Sir Marmaduke Langdale, who commanded the English in that battle, was a prisoner, formed the bold design of seizing General Rainsborrow in his camp, and hold- ing him a hostage for Sir Marmaduke. The design seemed
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the more feasible, because the general and his men were in no apprehension of any surprise; the castle being twelve miles distant, closely besieged, and the only garrison for the King in England.
The plan was shrewdly laid, favored by circumstances, and was completely successful except that instead of bringing the general off they were obliged to kill him. With only twenty- two picked men, well mounted, Captain William Paulden penetrated into Doncaster undiscovered. The guards were forced and dispersed, while a party of four made for the gen- eral's lodgings. At the door they were met by his lieutenant, who, on their announcing that they had come with despatches from General Cromwell, conducted them to the general's cham- ber, where he was in bed. While the general was opening the despatch, in which was nothing but blank paper, the king's men told him he was their prisoner, but that not a hair of his head should be touched, if he went quietly along with them. They then disarmed his lieutenant, who had so innocently facilitated their design, and brought them both out of the house. A horse was prepared for the general, and he was directed to mount, which he at first seemed willing to do, and put his foot in the stirrup, but looking about him and seeing only four enemies, while his lieutenant and sentinel (whom they had not disarmed) were standing by him, he pulled his foot out of the stirrup, and cried Arms ! Arms !
Upon this, one of his enemies, letting fall his sword and pistol, - for he did not wish to kill the general, - caught hold of Rainsborrow, who grappled with him, and both fell to the ground. The general's lieutenant then picked up the trooper's pistol, but was instantly run through the body by Paulden's lieutenant, while in the act of cocking it. A third stabbed Rainsborrow in the neck ; yet the general gained his feet with the trooper's sword, with whom he had been struggling, in his hand. The lieutenant of the party then passed his sword through his body, when the brave but ill-fated Rainsborrow fell dead upon the pavement.
Another of Charlestown's worthies whom we cite was
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Robert Sedgwick, who became a major-general under the Protector, and is mentioned by Carlyle. Sedgwick was a favorite with the "Usurper " as he was called by the King's party, who sent him with a well-appointed fleet to Jamaica, to replace D'Oyley, a cavalier, who, notwithstanding his success in the West Indies, was disliked by Cromwell. Cromwell had, with his usual astuteness, encouraged the cavaliers to embark in the conquest of Jamaica, where rich booty was expected and whence few of them returned. Sedgwick, unaccustomed to the climate and mode of life, died before he had an oppor- tunity of accomplishing anything.
An original portrait of Leverett in his military garb shows him to be every inch a soldier. He is painted in a buff sur- coat fastened with steel frogs, and has a stout blade with steel hilt and guard suspended by an embroidered shoulder-belt, at his thigh.
" His waistcoat was of stubborn Buff, Some say Fuizee and Ponyard proof";
his head is uncovered, and his curling black locks and beard set off a bronzed and martial countenance. Plumed hat, high jack-boots, and gauntlets complete a military attire of the time by no means unbecoming.
Nathaniel Gorham, a resident of Town Hill, whose name appears among the projectors of Charles River Bridge, was a man eminent in the councils of the State and the nation. He was a member of both the First and Second Provincial Con- gress ; of the General Court, the Board of War, and of the State Constitutional Convention. A delegate to the Conti- mental Congress in 1782-83, and president of that body in 1786 ; he was also a member of Governor Hancock's council in 1789, at the time of Washington's visit. His account of the difference which arose between the President and the Governor, as to which should pay the first visit, and which it is believed is now for the first time in print, sheds some new light on that affair which at the time convulsed all circles of the Massachu- setts capital. In regard to the assertion that the Governor expected the first call, Mr. Gorham says : --
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" There is nothing further from the truth than this idea; and I do not speak from uncertainties, for the Council was sitting every day for a week before the President's arrival, and met almost every day at the Governor's house to concert proper measures for his reception. I was apprehensive something like what has happened might take place, and proposed that the address which the Governor and Coun- cil had agreed to make should be delivered at Cambridge, where the Lieutenant-Governor and Council first saw the President, with a letter from the Governor, or an authorized message, that his indis- position prevented his attending with the Council : but this idea was not supported. The Governor did not oppose it, but on the contrary declared in the most explicit terms that he had no doubt in his mind of the propriety of his making the first visit. This was on Friday. On Saturday the President arrived, and not choosing to come up to the Governor's to dine, the Lieutenant Governor and two of his Council went down to his lodgings in the evening, authorized by the Governor to make the most explicit declaration as to the point in question. This brought some explanation from the President by which it appeared that he had been misinformed as to the state of the Governor's health ; for he had been led to believe that the Governor had dined out some days before, and had rode out every day the preceding week, when to my knowledge he had not been out of his chamber. But the explanation made by the Council on Saturday evening and the Governor's visit on Sunday soon removed every difficulty."
It was during this visit that an incident occurred illustrat- ing Washington's rigid punctuality. He had appointed eight o'clock in the morning as the hour in which he should set out for Salem; and while the Old South clock was striking eight, he was mounting his horse. The company of cavalry which was to escort him, not anticipating this strict punctuality, were parading in Tremont Street after his departure ; and it was not until the President had reached Charles River Bridge, where he stopped a few minutes, that the troop overtook him. On passing the corps, the President with perfect good-nature said, " Major Gibbs, I thought you had been too long in my family, not to know when it was eight o'clock." Charlestown was the first town in Massachusetts to institute public funeral honors on the death of this great man.
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What was particularly remarkable in Mr. Gorham was his perspicacity with regard to the destiny of the great West. This led him, at a time when there was neither public nor private credit, to purchase, in connection with Oliver Phelps, an im- mense tract of land then belonging to Massachusetts, lying on the Genesee, in New York. The area of the purchase com- prises ten or twelve counties and includes hundreds of flourish- ing towns.
Jedediah Morse, the father of American geography, and minister of the first church in Charlestown from 1789 to 1820, describes Charlestown in his Gazetteer of 1797 as containing two hundred and fifty houses and twenty-five hundred in- habitants, with no other public buildings of note than the Congregational meeting-house and almshouse. A traveller who visited the place in 1750 says it then had two hundred houses, and was a pleasant little town "where the Bostoneers build many vessels." The destruction of the town and disper- sion of the inhabitants caused the exemption of that part lying within the Neck, that is to say the peninsula, from furnishing troops for the Continental army in 1776. In 1784 Nathaniel Gorham was sent to England on a singular mission by the suf- ferers from the burning of the town in 1775, - it being for no other purpose than to solicit aid for the consequences of an act of war. The mission resulted in failure, as it deserved, and was condemned by the thinking portion of the community, who did not believe we could afford to ask alms of those whom we had just forced to acknowledge our independence.
Dr. Morse's first work on geography for the use of schools was prepared at New Haven in 1784. This was soon followed by larger works on the same subject and by gazetteers, com- piled from the historical and descriptive works of the time, and aided by travel and correspondence. We cannot withhold our astonishment when we look into one of these early volumes ; for it is only by this means we realize the immense strides our country has been taking since the Revolution, or that a vast extent of territory, then a wilderness, has now become the seat of political power for these states and the granary from whence
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half Europe is fed. What was then laid down as a desert is now seamed by railways and covered with cities and villages. The early volumes of the Massachusetts Historical Society contained many valuable topographical and descriptive papers contributed by Drs. Belknap, Holmes, Bentley, and others, and of which Dr. Morse, an influential member of the society, in all proba- bility availed himself in his later works.
Geography was an original passion with Dr. Morse, which it is said rendered him so absent-minded that once, being asked by his teacher at a Greek recitation where a certain verb was found, he replied, "On the coast of Africa." While he was a tutor at Yale, the want of geographies there induced him to prepare notes for his pupils, to serve as text books, which he eventually printed. Such was the origin of his labors in this field of learning.
The clergy have always been our historians, and New Eng- land annals would be indeed meagre, but for the efforts of Hubbard, Prince, the Mathers, Belknap, Gordon, Morse, Holmes, and others. As Hutchinson drew on Hubbard, so all the writers on the Revolution derive much of their material from Gordon, whose work, if it did not satisfy the intense American feeling of his day, seems at this time remarkable for fairness and truth. The meridian of London, where Dr. Gor- don's work first appeared, was freely said to have impaired his narrative and to have caused the revision of his manuscript to the suppression of whatever might wound the susceptibilities of his English patrons.
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