USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Old landmarks and historic personages of Boston.. > Part 34
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Stuart was not particularly prepossessing in appearance, and was very careless in dress, but a man of great genius. His eye was very piercing, and photographed a subject or a sitter at a glance. He was easily offended, and would then destroy his works of great value.
Having exhausted the patronage of Newport, Stuart went over to London, where he began to paint in 1781. He soon found himself without money and without friends in the great capital, and for some time played the organ at a church to secure the means of living. In this the knowledge of music cultivated in America stood him in good stead. He was a capital performer on the flute, and it is related by Trumbull that he passed his last night at Newport serenading the girls. His passion for music led him to neglect his art at this time, and some of his friends thought it necessary to advise him to go to work. To his musical genius he owed his bread in the swarming wilderness of London.
Among the first patrons of Stuart were Lord St. Vincent, the Duke of Northumberland (Percy), and Colonel Barré, who, learning of his embarrassments, came into his room one morn- ing soon after he had set up an independent easel, locked the door, and made friendly offers of assistance. This the painter declined. They then said they would sit for their portraits, and insisted on paying half price in advance. This is Stuart's own relation.
Stuart became a pupil of West at twenty-four, the latter having lent him a small sum and invited him to his studio.
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He afterwards painted a full length of his old master. While with West, Stuart often indulged of a morning in a bout with the foils with his master's son Rafe (Raphael West). He was surprised one morning by the old gentleman just as he had driven Rafe to the wall, with his back to one of his father's best pictures. "There, you dog," says Stuart, "there I have you, and nothing but your background relieves you." Stuart painted in London at John Palmer's, York Buildings.
Stuart, while in Paris, painted Louis XVI. But his greatest work was the head of Washington, now in the Athenæum Gal- lery. This portrait he offered to the State of Massachusetts for one thousand dollars, but it was refused. It would now be a matter of difficulty to fix a price upon it. The head remained in Stuart's room until his widow found a purchaser for it. The first picture of Washington painted by Stuart was a failure, and he destroyed it, but he produced at the second trial a canvas that never can be surpassed. Of the works of the older painters there are said to be eleven of Smibert's and eighteen of Blackburn's now in Boston.
The first glass-works in Boston were located in what is now Edinboro Street ; the company was established in 1787. The Legislature granted an exclusive right to the company to manu- facture for fifteen years, and exemption from all taxes for five years ; the workmen were relieved from military duty. The company first erected a brick building, conical in form, but this proving too small, it was taken down and replaced by a wooden one a hundred feet long by sixty in breadth. After many em- barrassments the company began the manufacture of window- glass in November, 1793. Samuel Gore was one of the originators of the enterprise, but the company failed to make the manufacture remunerative. In 1797 the works were con- trolled by Charles F. Kupfer, who continued to make window- glass. They were blown down in the great gale of 1815, and subsequently taking fire, were consumed.
The manufacture of glass in Massachusetts was begun some time before the Revolution in a part of Braintree called Ger- mantown. Nothing but bottles, however, were produced here,
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and the works failed before the commencement of the war. The house was burnt down and never rebuilt.
Opposite Oliver Place are two magnificent specimens of the American elm, standing in the pavement before two old-time brick houses. They are as large as those of the Tremont Street mall, and are thrifty and majestic.
Time was when the trees were everywhere; now they are indeed rare, and the places that once knew them "now know them no more." Formerly there were few, if any, situations in the town in which trees were not seen, but they are now fast following the old Bostonians who planted them or dwelt beneath their grateful shade. Fifty were removed at one time from Charles Street when the roadway was widened ; these were replanted on the Common. There were two noble elms at the corner of Congress and Water Streets forty years ago, scarcely exceeded in size by those of the malls. Bowdoin Square, the Coolidge, Bulfinch, and Parkman estates, were adorned with shade and fruit trees. Occasionally, during our pilgrimage, we have discovered some solitary tree in an unexpected place, but it only stands because its time has not yet come.
" But rising from the dust of busy streets, These forest children gladden many hearts ; As some old friend their welcome presence greets The toil-worn soul, and fresher life imparts. Their shade is doubly grateful where it lies Above the glare which stifling walls throw back ;
Through quivering leaves we see the soft blue skies, Then happier tread the dull, unvaried track."
We have remarked that the old peninsula was but thinly wooded, and the settlers soon began to plant trees, supplying themselves with wood from the islands for a time. We find by the records that the town took order as early as 1655 "to pre- vent the trees planted on the Neck from being spoiled." In March, 1695, it appears that several attempts had been made by Captain Samuel Sewall "to plant trees at the south end of the town for the shading of Wheeler's Point," and all others were prohibited from meddling with them. The trees on the Common and Liberty Tree were planted early. There was an
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English elm on the Storer estate, Sudbury Street, which had few horizontal limbs, but which attained a very great height, the trunk being larger than those of Paddock's Mall. We have pointed to its fellow on West Street. Three English elms, thought to have been planted by some of the Oliver family early in the last century, stood on the edge of High Street, in what was Quincy Place, on the building of which they were levelled. They were of the size of those in Paddock's Mall. A fourth of the same species stood in solitary grandeur at the upper part of the lot on Fort Hill, for years denominated as Phillips's Pasture, which was the finest specimen of the English elm in the town. Having " ample room and verge enough," it extended its branches horizontally in every direction. This must have corresponded nearly in age with those mentioned in High Street.
In Essex Street was the cooper-shop of Samuel Peck, one of the Tea Party, whose two apprentices, Henry Purkett and Edward Dolbier, followed him to the scene of action at Griffin's Wharf.
The visitor to this quarter will find, at the corner of Essex and Columbia Streets, an old wooden house, to which is ascribed the honor of being the residence for a time of the ubiquitous Earl Percy. It stands at a little distance back from Essex Street, on which it fronts. Built of wood, with gambrel roof, it did not differ materially from the neighboring struc- tures.
According to Mr. Sabine, this was the residence of Mrs. Sheaffe, whose son, Roger Hale, became the protege of Percy, who took a great liking to him while lodging with his mother in this house. Under the protection of the Earl the young Bostonian advanced to the rank of lieutenant-general in the British army, and became a baronet. His principal military service seems to have been in Canada, though it was his wish not to have been employed against his native country. He took command at Queenstown after the fall of General Brock, and defended Little York (Toronto) from the attack of our forces under General Dearborn. He was also in the attack on
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Copenhagen under Nelson in 1801, and saw service in Holland. Sir Roger made several visits to his native town, and is repre- sented as a man of generous impulses, high-minded, and well worthy the interest of his noble friend and patron. The build- ing is of course much altered in its exterior aspect.
The lower part of Essex Street brings us to the limit of the South Cove improvement in this direction, by which the an- cient sea-border was obliterated, and a territory nearly twice as large as the Common added to the area of Boston. Charles Ewer has been named as the projector of this enterprise, which reclaimed from tide-water that part of the South Cove from Essex Street to South Boston Bridge, and lying east of Harrison Avenue. Work was begun in 1833, a bonus of $ 75,000 being paid to the Boston and Worcester Railroad Company to locate its depot within the cove forever. The railway purchased 138,000 feet of land for its purposes, and 48,000 were sold for the City, now the United States, Hotel. Another parcel of land was sold to the Seekonk Branch Railroad Company. By 1857 the agent had acquired seventy-three acres of land and flats ; seventy-seven acres in all were proposed to be reclaimed.
The locomotives, cars, rails, etc. first used on the Worcester railroad were all of English make. The passenger carriages were shaped like an old-fashioned stage-coach, contained a dozen persons, and ran on single trucks. They bore little comparison, either in size, comfort, or adornment, to the luxurious vehicles now used on the same road. The freight cars, or vans, had frames, over which was drawn a canvas covering similar to those in use on the army baggage-wagon, so that when seen at a little distance a freight train did not look unlike a number of hay- stacks in motion across the fields. The first locomotive used on this road was brought over from England on the deck of a ship, and was with great difficulty landed and moved across the city from Long Wharf. It was called the Meteor.
We will now transfer our readers to the vicinity of Hollis Street. Opposite the entrance to that avenue on Tremont Street is a collection of old wooden buildings, whose antiquity is vouched for by their extreme dilapidation. Patches of the
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roof seem returning to their native earth, and the crazy struc- tures appear to have outlived their day and generation.
Here was the dwelling and carpenter-shop of Colonel John Crane, who came so near meeting his death in the hold of the tea-ship. The shop is still used by mechanics of the same craft. Crane, after the construction of the fortifications on the Neck, commanded that post, being then major of a regiment of artillery, of which the Boston company formed the nucleus. He became an expert marksman, and was considered the most skilful in the regiment. It is related that one day, as he - sighted a gun bearing upon Boston, he intended to hit the house of Dr. Byles, a tory neighbor of his, who lived next door. The shot, however, passed over the doctor's house, and tore away his own ridgepole.
Crane was wounded in New York in 1776 ; he was in Sulli- van's expedition to Rhode Island in 1778, and succeeded Knox in the command of the Massachusetts artillery. His services were highly valued by the commander-in-chief, who retained him near his headquarters. Colonel Crane was a Bostonian by birth.
Mather Byles lived in an old two-story wooden house, with gambrel roof, situated just at the commencement of the bend or turn of Tremont Street ; so that when that street was ex- tended, it cut off a part of the southeast side of the house. What is now called Common Street is a part of old Nassau Street, which commenced at Boylston and ended at Orange, now Washington Street. Tremont Street was opened through to Roxbury line in 1832. At one time that part from Boylston to Common was called Holyoke Street.
Rev. Mather Byles, the first pastor of Hollis Street Church, came on his mother's side from the stock of those old Puritan divines, John Cotton and Richard Mather. He was by birth a Bostonian, having first seen the light in 1706, and died, an octogenarian, in his native town in 1788. He was evidently popular with his parish, as he continued his ministrations for more than forty years, until his tory proclivities caused a sepa- ration from his flock. After the name of tory came to have a
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peculiar significance, Mather Byles's associations seem to have been almost altogether with that side. He was a warm friend of Hutchinson and other of the crown officers, but remained in Boston after the adherents of the royal cause had generally left the town.
" In 1777 he was denounced in town-meeting, and, having been by a subsequent trial pronounced guilty of attachment to the Royal cause, was sentenced to confinement, and to be sent with his family to England. This doom of banishment was never enforced, and he was permitted to remain in Boston. He died in 1788, aged eighty- two years. He was a scholar, and Pope, Lansdowne, and Watts were his correspondents." *
Many anecdotes are recorded of this witty divine. On one occasion, when a sentinel was placed before his door, he per- suaded him to go an errand for him, and gravely mounted guard over his own house, with a musket on his shoulder, to the amusement of the passers-by. Dr. Byles paid his addresses unsuccessfully to a lady who afterwards married a Mr. Quincy. " So, madam," said the Doctor on meeting her, "you prefer a Quincy to Byles, it seems." The reply was, " Yes ; for if there had been anything worse than biles, God would have afflicted Job with them." His two daughters, whose peculiarities were scarcely less marked than those of their father, continued to reside in the old homestead. They remained violent tories until their death, though they were very poor and somewhat dependent upon the benevolence of Trinity Church parish.
The following anecdotes of Rev. Mather Byles illustrate his peculiar propensity. Just before the Revolution, Isaiah Thomas, author of the History of Printing, paid a visit to the Rev. Dr. B., and was taken by him to an upper window, or observatory as the Doctor called it, from which there was a fine prospect. "Now," said Dr. Byles to his companion, "you can observe-a-tory." At another time, when Dr. Byles was bowed with the infirmities of years, Dr. Harris, of Dorchester, called upon him, and found him sitting in an arm-chair. "Doctor," said the aged punster, " you will excuse my rising ; I am not one of the rising gener-
* Sabine's Loyalists.
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ation." In his last illness he was visited by Rev. William Montague, rector of Christ Church, and Rev. Dr. Parker, rector of Trinity. Dr. Parker approached the sick man's bed- side, and asked him how he felt. "I feel," said the inveterate joker, "that I am going where there are no bishops."
The two following verses, addressed to Dr. Byles, are from a poetical description of the Boston clergy, which appeared about 1774. It contained thirty-seven stanzas, and was the rage of the town. Green, Trumbull, Dr. Church, and Dexter of Ded- ham were all charged with the authorship.
"There 's punning Byles, provokes our smiles, A man of stately parts ; Who visits folks to crack his jokes, That never mend their hearts.
"With strutting gait and wig so great, He walks along the streets, And throws out wit, or what 's like it, To every one he meets."
The original name of Hollis Street was Harvard. Street and church were named for Thomas Hollis, an eminent Lon- don merchant, and benefactor of Harvard College. Hollis Street appears on a map of 1775, continued in a straight line to Cambridge (Back) Bay. The growth of this part of Boston had, by 1730, called for a place of worship nearer than Sum- mer Street. Governor Belcher, who was then a resident in the vicinity, gave the land for a site, and a small wooden meeting-house, thirty by forty feet, was erected in 1732. The first minister was Rev. Mather Byles. A bell weighing 800 pounds was given by a nephew of the Thomas Hollis for whom the church was named, and was placed in the steeple on its arrival. This bell began the joyful peal at one o'clock on the morning of the 19th of May, 1766, as nearest to Liberty Tree, and was answered by Christ Church from the other extremity of the town, announcing the Stamp Act Repeal. The steeples were hung with flags, and Liberty Tree decorated with banners.
The church was destroyed by the great fire of 1787, but the society, nothing daunted, reared another wooden edifice in the
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year following, of which we present an engraving. It was erected upon the same spot as the former church, but had, un- like it, two towers instead of a steeple. Charles Bulfinch was the architect, and Josiah Wheeler the builder. This building was removed in 1810, to give place to the present edifice, and was floated on a raft down the harbor to East Braintree, where Rev. Jonas Perkins preached in it forty-seven years. Though recently re- arranged, it remains substan- tially the same as when it was one of the chief orna- ments of the town of Boston. HOLLIS STREET CHURCH.
The steeple of Hollis Street reaches an altitude of nearly two hundred feet, and is one of the most prominent objects seen from the harbor. This is the church of West, Holley, Pierpont, and Starr King.
Singularly enough, the church has lost by death, while in the service of the church, but a single one of its pastors (Dr. Samuel West) since its organization. Rev. John Pierpont, one of our native poets, was first a lawyer, and then a merchant. In the late civil war, though past his " threescore and ten," he joined a Massachusetts regiment as chaplain. He died at Medford, in 1866, while holding a clerk- ship in the Treasury Department at Washington. Thomas Starr King was but twenty-four when he assumed the pastorate of Hollis Street, and after twelve years of service removed to San Francisco, where he bore a prominent part in arraying Cali- fornia in active sympathy with the North during the civil war. A number of works have emanated from the pen of this gifted and lamented author and divine, of which the White Hills is perhaps the best known, and most enjoyable.
It is a singular fact that in only two instances the (Han- over Street Methodist and Hollis Street) have three churches been erected on the same spot in Boston. The New North, Old South, Brattle Square, Bromfield Street, Bulfinch Street,
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West, Baldwin Place, Phillips, Maverick, and Trinity churches, Baptist Bethel, and King's Chapel, are the second edifices on the same site.
Zachariah Whitman, in his History of the Ancient and Hon- orable Artillery, says, -
" The erection of pews on the ground-floor of meeting-houses was a New England invention. Some of the first meeting-houses in Boston that had pews had no broad or other aisle, but were entered from without by a door, the owner keeping the key."
The tablets in Hollis Street Church bearing the Ten Com- mandments were the gift of Benjamin Bussey.
The terrible fire of 1787 laid waste the whole of the region around Hollis Street. It commenced in William Patten's malt- house in Beach Street, extending with great rapidity in a southerly direction. The spire of Hollis Street Church soon took fire from the burning flakes carried through the air, and the church was burnt to the ground. Both sides of Washing- ton Street, from Eliot to Common on the west, and from Beach to a point opposite Common Street on the east, were laid in ruins. This fire cost the town a hundred houses, of which sixty were dwellings. Subscriptions were set on foot for the sufferers, and the Marquis Lafayette, with characteristic gener- osity, gave £ 350 sterling towards the relief of the sufferers.
The British, it is said, on their retreat from the works on the Neck left a rear-guard at Hollis Street, who had orders, if the Americans broke through the tacit convention between Wash- ington and Howe, to fire a train laid to Hollis Street Church, which had served them as a barrack. This guard, after remain- ing a short time at their post, took to their heels, and scampered off under the impression that the Yankees were close upon them.
We conclude our chapter with a visit to another poet, Charles Sprague, now in his eighty-first year, who resides, in the evening of his life, at No. 636, on the east side of Wash- ington Street, in a substantial old-fashioned house.
It has been stated that the oration which Mr. Sprague de- livered July 4th, 1825, before the city authorities was afterwards
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effectively used on a similar occasion as an original production by a Western Cicero, who might have worn his laurels undis- covered had he not in an unguarded moment furnished a copy for the press.
Mr. Sprague went to the Franklin School when Lemuel Shaw, the late Chief Justice, was usher there. He became con- nected with the State Bank in 1820, and subsequently cashier of the Globe when that bank was organized. His first poetical essay, by which his name came before the public, was a prize prologue, delivered at the opening of the Park Theatre, New York, of which the following is an extract : -
" The Stage ! where Fancy sits, creative queen, And waves her sceptre o'er life's mimic scene ; Where young-eyed Wonder comes to feast his sight, And quaff instruction while he drinks delight. The Stage ! that threads each labyrinth of the soul, Wakes laughter's peal, and bids the tear-drop roll ; That shoots at Folly, mocks proud Fashion's slave, Uncloaks the hypocrite, and brands the knave."
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CHAPTER XV.
THE NECK AND THE FORTIFICATIONS.
The Neck described. - Measures to protect the Road. - Paving the Neck. - Henry T. Tuckerman. - Old Houses vs. Modern. - Massachusetts Mint. - The Gallows. - Anecdote of Warren. - Executions. - Early Fortifica- tions. - The British Works and Armament. - American Works. - George Tavern. - Washington's Staff. - His Personal Traits. - Washington House. - Washington Hotel. - Anecdotes of George Tavern. - Scarcity of Powder. - Continental Flags. - Entry of Washington's Army. - Entry of Rochambeau's Army. - Paul Jones.
W E have conducted the reader through all of Colonial Boston embraced within the peninsula, and are now to survey the barrier which the colonists raised against the power of the mighty British Empire. The more we examine the resources and state of preparation of the people, the more we are astonished at the hardihood with which a mere collection of the yeomanry of the country, without any pretension to the name of an army, sat down before the gates of the town of Boston, and compelled the haughty Britons to retire from her profaned temples and ruined hearthstones.
A strip of territory lying along the great avenue to the main- land still retains the appellation of "The Neck." Long may the only battle-ground within our ancient limits preserve the name by which it was known to Winthrop and to Washington. All Boston proper was once styled "The Neck," in distinction from Noddle's Island, Brookline, and other territory included within the jurisdiction. The peninsula outgrowing her de- pendencies, the name attached itself to the narrow isthmus connecting with the mainland.
The Neck may be said to have begun at Beach Street, where was its greatest breadth, diminishing to its narrowest point at Dover Street, increasing gradually in width to the neighborhood
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of Dedham Street, thence expanding in greater proportion to the line at the present car stables nearly opposite Metropolitan Place. The Neck, according to its designation in Revolution- ary times, was that part lying south of Dover Street.
Captain Nathaniel Uring, in his account of his visit to Bos- ton in 1710, printed in London in 1726, says : --
" The Neck of Land betwixt the city and country is about forty yards broad, and so low that the spring tides sometimes wash the road, which might, with little charge, be made so strong as not to be forced, there being no way of coming at it by land but over that Neck."
Whether what constituted old Boston was at one time an island, or was becoming one by the wasting forces of the ele- ments, is an interesting question for geologists. We know that for nearly a hundred and fifty years scarcely any change had taken place in the appearance of the Neck ; but the action of the town authorities seems to indicate a fear that its existence was seriously threatened.
Within the recollection of persons now living the water has been known to stand up to the knees of horses in the season of full tides at some places in the road, on the Neck. The narrowest part was naturally the most exposed, as it was the most eligible also for fortifying. At some points along the beach there was a good depth of water, and Gibben's shipyard was located on the easterly side a short distance north of Dover Street as early as 1722, and as late as 1777. Other portions, on both sides of the Neck, were bordered by marshes, more or less extensive, covered at high tides.
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