USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Old landmarks and historic personages of Boston.. > Part 4
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from the surface of the ground, no quarries being then opened. The rough appearance of the stone is due to the limited knowl- edge of the art of dressing it which then prevailed.
Greenwood's little work on King's Chapel gives the follow- ing facts. It was first erected of wood in the year 1688, en- larged in 1710, and, being found in the year 1741 in a state of considerable decay, it was proposed to rebuild it of stone. A subscription for this purpose was set on foot, and Peter Faneuil (of Faneuil Hall memory) was chosen treasurer of the building- fund. The building was to be of stone, and was to cost £ 25,000 (old tenor). It was not to be commenced until £ 10,000 were subscribed.
Among the first subscribers were Governor William Shirley, Sir Charles Henry Frankland, and Peter Faneuil. The Gov- ernor gave £ 100; Sir H. Frankland, £50; Faneuil, £200 sterling. Faneuil died in 1742, and the matter was for some time laid aside, but was revived by Mr. Caner in 1747. A new subscription was drawn up. Governor Shirley increased his gift to £ 200, and Sir H. Frankland to £ 150 sterling. For the subscription of Peter Faneuil the society was obliged to sue his brother Benjamin, who was also his executor, and recovered it after a vexatious suit at law.
The new chapel was built so as to enclose the old church, in which services continued to be held, in spite of its ruinous con- dition, until March, 1753, when the society was obliged to remove to Trinity. The congregation having applied for the use of the Old South on Christmas day, a verbal answer was returned granting the request on condition "that the house should not be decorated with spruce," etc.
Efforts to obtain money to complete the chapel were made in every direction. Among others, Captain Thomas Coram, founder of the Foundling Hospital in London, who had re- sided in this country, was applied to by a gentleman then in London ; but no sooner had he mentioned the object of his visit than he was obliged to listen to a burst of passionate reproaches for some alleged slight the vestry of King's Chapel had formerly put upon him. The old gentleman finally told his visitor, with
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an oath, "that if the twelve Apostles were to apply to him in behalf of the church, he would persist in refusing to do it."
The portico was not completed until 1789. In that year General Washington was in Boston, and attended an oratorio in the chapel, which had for its object the completion of the portico. The general was dressed in a black velvet suit, and gave five guineas towards this purpose.
The old building, which gave place to the present one, had an apology for a tower, on the top of which was a crown, and above this a cock for a vane. A gallery was added after the enlargement in 1710, and the pulpit was FOX SC. on the north side. Opposite OLD KING'S CHAPEL. was a pew for the governors, and near it another for officers of the British army and navy. In the west gallery was the first organ ever used in Boston, given to the society by Thomas Brattle. A bell was purchased in 1689, and a clock was do- nated in 1714 by the gentlemen of the British Society. The walls and pillars were hung with the escutcheons of the King, Sir Edmund Andros, Governors Dudley, Shute, Burnet, Bel- cher, and Shirley, and formed a most striking contrast with the bare walls of the Puritan churches of the town. In the pulpit, according to the custom of the times, was an hour-glass to mark the length of the sermons, while the east end was adorned with an altar-piece, the Ten Commandments, Lord's Prayer, etc. The emblems of heraldry have disappeared. It was the usage of the church to place the royal governors at the head of the vestry.
As you enter the chapel, at your left hand is the monument of William Vassall, erected by Florentine Vassall, of Jamaica, in 1766. To the right is a beautiful monumental tablet dedicated to the memory of the young men of the chapel who fell in the late civil war.
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On the south side are mural tablets to William Sullivan, John Lowell, Thomas Newton, - an original founder, - and Frances Shirley, wife of the Governor. Within the chancel are busts of Greenwood and Freeman, rectors, and of their successor Dr. Peabody. The burial-ground side contains tablets to Charles Apthorp and Samuel Appleton. Over the vestry are the names of Charles Pelham Curtis, long the treasurer, and of William Price, a patron of the church. These are about the only monu- mental marbles to be seen in our city churches, though others have mural tablets. The Vassal monument, a beautiful specimen of the art in the last century, is by Tyler, a London sculptor. These add interest to the church, and reflect in a modest way the glories of old St. Paul's and of Westminster Abbey.
The first bell was cracked, while tolling for evening service, May 8, 1814. The wits seized upon the accident with avidity, and commemorated it in the following effusion (Paul Revere re- cast the bell, and some churchman answered the innuendo) :-
"The Chapel church, Left in the lurch, Must surely fall ; For church and people And bell and steeple Are crazy all.
" The church still lives, The priest survives,
With mind the same.
Revere refounds,
The bell resounds, And all is well again."
The present organ of King's Chapel was procured from Eng- land in 1756, and paid for by private subscription. It cost £ 500 sterling, and was said to have been selected by the im- mortal Handel himself, though the great maestro was then blind. Over this organ a crown and a couple of gilt mitres are placed which have a history of their own.
In the year 1775, when Boston was in a state of siege, the British military and naval officers worshipped in King's Chapel, as they had in fact done during the previous years the town was in occupation of the British soldiers. The burial of three soldiers of the Sixty-fifth Regiment are the last-recorded inter- ments in the Chapel cemetery previous to the evacuation of the town in March. The rector, Dr. Caner, went to Halifax with the king's troops, taking with him the church registers, plate, and vestments. The service, which had in part been presented
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KING'S CHAPEL AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
by the King, amounted to two thousand eight hundred ounces of silver. It was never recovered.
When the society of King's Chapel were ready to rebuild, in 1748, they desired an enlargement of the ground for their site a few feet northwardly, also a piece of ground at the east side, on part of which then stood the Latin School. After a good deal of negotiation between the town and the church committee, the church erected a new school-house on the opposite side of the street on land belonging to Colonel Saltonstall, where the Latin School remained up to a comparatively recent time. The removal of the old school-house was viewed with no favorable eye by the townspeople, and Joseph Green, a Harvard graduate of 1726, and a noted wit, expressed the popular feeling thus :-
" A fig for your learning ! I tell you the town, To make the church larger, must pull the school down. ' Unhappily spoken !' exclaims Master Birch ; 'Then learning, it seems, stops the growth of the church.'"
After the departure of the royal troops, the popular furor against everything savoring of their late allegiance to the throne found expression in the removal of the royal emblems from public buildings, changing the names of streets and every- thing that bore any allusion to the obnoxious idea of kingly authority. King's Chapel was therefore newly baptized Stone Chapel, a name that has in turn been discarded for the old, high-sounding title of yore. In the reign of Queen Anne the church was called "Queens Chappell."
The establishment of the Church of England in Boston was attended with great opposition. The Puritans, who had fled from the persecutions of that church in the old country, had no idea of admitting it among them in the new. In 1646 a petition praying for the privilege of Episcopal worship, addressed to the General Court at Boston, caused the petitioners to be fined for seditious expressions, and the seizure of their papers. Charles II., after his accession, wrote to the colony requiring, among other things, that the laws should be "reviewed " so as to permit the Episcopal form of worship, the use of the Book of Common Prayer, etc. The chief people and elders of the
2 + C
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colony looked upon the efforts of the profligate Charles II. in behalf of religious liberty as they would upon the quoting of Scripture by his Satanic Majesty, and paid little heed to the mandate of the merry monarch of whom his favorite Rochester wrote, -
" Here lies our sovereign Lord the King, Whose word no man relied on ; Who never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one."
The King, when over his bottle, commanded Rochester to write him a suitable epitaph, "something appropriate and witty." The Earl, seizing his pen, wrote as above, and for his keen effusion remained some time in disgrace.
In 1686, in the reign of James II., the first Episcopal services were held in the Old Town House, which then stood on the site of the Old State House. Rev. Robert Ratcliff was the first Episcopal clergyman, and came over in the Rose frigate in May, 1686. The town, however, continued to refuse the use of any of the meeting-houses, and the society were unable to buy land on Cotton (now Pemberton) Hill to build on. Edward Randolph - the first officer of customs that Boston had, a man specially hated for his successful efforts to have the king revoke the colonial charter-may be considered as chiefly instrumental in setting up the Episcopalians in Boston. Randolph was also at this time one of his Majesty's council for New England.
Sir Edmund Andros, who arrived in Boston in December, 1686, after having several conferences with the ministers on the subject of using one of the meeting-houses for Episcopal services, sent Randolph, on Wednesday, the 22d of March, 1687, to demand the keys of the South Meeting-house, now- Old South. On Good Friday, which was the following Friday, the sexton opened the doors by command of Andros "to open and ring the bell for those of the Church of England."
But time, which makes all things even, gave the Old South Society a signal revenge for what they considered little less than sacrilege. King's Chapel, abandoned by its rector and con- gregation when the town was evacuated, remained closed until the autumn of 1777, when it was occupied by the Old South
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Society, whose house had been converted into a British riding- school. This society used the Chapel about five years.
King's Chapel stands as a monument to mark the resting- place of Isaac Johnson, the second white inhabitant of Boston. The locality of the grave is unknown, and is likely to remain so, owing to the many changes, both past and prospective, in the old burial-ground. Johnson, under whose direction the settlement of Boston mainly proceeded in its incipient steps, selected for himself the square enclosed by Tremont, Court, Washington, and School Streets. So says tradition on the authority of Chief Justice Sewall. Johnson died in September, 1630, and was buried at his own request at the southwest end of his lot. This solitary grave was the nucleus around which gathered the remains of the first settlers, and constituted the first place of sepulture in the town. The old church of 1688 was erected on the burying-ground, it is conjectured by authority of Andros ; the town would not have permitted the use of the public burying-ground for this purpose.
Johnson's history has a touch of romance. He married Lady Arabella, daughter of the Earl of Lincoln. She left her native land and a life of ease to follow her husband to the wilds of America. She died very soon after her arrival, in Salem, and was probably buried there ; but the location of her grave, like that of her husband, who so soon followed her, is unknown. Johnson's death was said to have been hastened by the loss of his amiable and beautiful wife. It was to the memory of the Lady Arabella that Mrs. Sigourney wrote, -
" Yet still she hath a monument To strike the pensive eye, The tender memories of the land Wherein her ashes lie." 1164596
It is a popular belief that the Chapel Burying-Ground, or " Old Burying-Place," as it was first called, contains the mortal remains only of such as were of the Episcopal faith ; but this is very far from being the case. The dust of Governor Win- throp, of John Cotton, Davenport, Oxenbridge, and Bridge, pastors of the First Church, and of other Puritans of the stern-
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est type, lie under the shadow of a detested Episcopal edifice. Besides these, the remains of Governor Shirley and of Lady Andros repose here. Here may be seen on the tombstones the arms and escutcheons of the deceased, carry- ing us back to the days of heraldry. Under the Chapel are vaults for the reception of the dead.
As we look through the iron gate into the enclosure, the curious ar- rangement of the gravestones strikes us. In the centre the headstones form SHIRLEY ARMS. a sort of hollow square, as if to repel further aggression upon the territory of the dead, while at the sides and walls the same plan is observed. This peculiar arrangement was the chef d'œuvre of a former Superintendent of Burials ; many stones were removed from their original posi- tions, and now give effect to the proverb, "to lie like a tomb- stone." What would the future or even present seeker after the grave of an ancestor do in such a case of perplexity ? Doubtful, in a certain sense, of the legend " Here lies," he would restrain his emotion, fearing that the tear of affection might fall on the ashes of a stranger.
King's Chapel Burying-Ground is by no means exempt from the ghostly legends that usually attach to cemeteries. One is recorded of a negro-woman, whose coffin the careless carpenter having made too short, severed the head from the body, and, clapping it between the feet, nailed down the lid to conceal his blunder. Another is related of a person who was asserted to have been buried alive. A hue-and-cry was raised, the corpse was exhumed in the presence of a mob which had gathered, and it needed the assurance of the doctors who examined the remains to set the affair at rest. The mob, disappointed of its expected sensation, proposed to bury the old woman who had raised the uproar, but did not execute the threat .* Interments ceased here in 1796.
* Dealings with the Dead.
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Next northerly from the burying-ground once stood an old wooden building covered with rough cast. It was the residence of some of the rectors of King's Chapel, and of Dr. Caner, the last one. This building was occupied by the Boston Athenaum in 1810, and was taken down about forty years ago, to give place to the stone building occupied later as a Savings Bank and by the Historical Society. The Athenaeum, now so conspicuous among literary institutions, owes its origin to the Anthology Club, an association of gentlemen for literary purposes. They conducted a periodical called the Monthly Anthology, and in it published proposals in 1806 for subscriptions for a public reading-room. Success following this effort, it was determined to add a library, and trustees were appointed for the manage- ment. The rooms were first opened in Joy's Buildings, on the west corner of Congress and Water Streets ; then in Scollay's Building in Tremont Street ; and later, in the location first mentioned.
The Boston Atheneum became incorporated in February, 1807, and occupied three rooms in the old rough-cast building. The first was the news or reading room ; the second, the library of the Atheneum and American Academy ; the third, the pri- vate library of John Quincy Adams, now in a building erected for it in the garden of the old mansion at Quincy.
Mr. Shaw, in his history published in 1817, gives the follow- ing particulars with regard to the library at that time : "The library of the Atheneum contains upwards of ten thousand volumes. The collection in history and biography is very complete, and in American History unrivalled ; under this head may be noticed three thousand pamphlets. Twenty-one foreign and about twelve American periodicals are received." In 1822 the Athenæum was removed to Pearl Street, near the corner of High, to a building partly purchased and partly pre- sented by James Perkins. At this time the library possessed seventeen thousand five hundred volumes and ten thousand tracts. It now contains ninety-seven thousand six hundred volumes.
The Atheneum was removed in 1849 to Beacon Street,
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where its spacious halls, devoted to sculpture and painting, attract the lovers of art, no less than its unrivalled library and extensive reading-rooms draw to its shrine the student in every department of literature. Pope tells us, -
" A little learning is a dangerous thing ; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."
Here we may drink to intoxication, and avoid the danger he points out. This institution has received munificent contri- butions ; among others may be named twenty-five thousand dollars nobly donated at once by John Bromfield. Thomas H. Perkins was a generous benefactor, and many other eminent Bostonians have aided it handsomely.
The corner-stone of the elegant freestone building on Beacon Street was laid in April, 1847. The design was by Edward C. Cabot, but some interior alterations were made under the direction of Billings. The site was the estate of Edward B. Phillips, but the proprietors had purchased the ground on which the Museum stands in Tremont Street, with the intention of building there. This ground was sold. The original members of the Anthology Club, founders of the Athe- næum, were John Sylvester John Gardner, William Emerson, Arthur M. Walter, William S. Shaw, Samuel C. Thacher, Joseph S. Buckminster, Joseph Tuckerman, William Tudor, Jr., Peter O. Thacher, Thomas Gray, William Wells, Edmund T. Dana, John C. Warren, and James Jackson.
The Athenæum contains, among other works of art, marble busts of Dr. Kirkland, by Greenough ; of Chief Justice Mar- shall, by Frazee ; of W. H. Prescott, by Greenough ; Crawford's marble statues of Hebe and Ganymede, and of Orpheus ; a bust of Loammi Baldwin, by Powers ; and Greenough's Shep- herd Boy in bronze. In the superb collection of paintings are Allston's portrait of West, and his Isaac of York ; portraits by Rembrandt and Vandyke ; a cattle piece by Cuyp; a Holy Family by Murillo, and landscapes by Vanderwert. The origi- nal portraits of Washington and wife, by Stuart, were pur- chased for fifteen hundred dollars in 1831. Besides these are several unfinished works of Allston.
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KING'S CHAPEL AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
The Academy of Arts and Sciences is the oldest institution with literary objects in Boston, and the second in America. It was instituted in 1779, and received a charter the next year, in which the design of the Academy is stated to be, " the pro- motion of the knowledge of the antiquities of America and of the natural history of the country." The number of members is limited to two hundred.
Governor Bowdoin was the first president, followed by John Adams, Edward A. Holyoke, J. Q. Adams, Nathaniel Bowditch, John Pickering, and other distinguished persons. Count Rum- ford left a legacy within the control of the Academy to ad- vance the cause of science. The society occupies a room in the Athenæum.
The Historical Society originated as early as 1791. On the 24th of January, Hon. Judge Tudor, Rev. Drs. Belknap, Thacher, and Eliot, Judge Winthrop of Cambridge, Rev. Dr. Freeman, Judge Minot, Hon. W. Baylies of Dighton, Judge Sullivan, afterwards governor of Massachusetts, and Thomas Wallcutt, met and organized. The meetings were first held in Judge Minot's office in Spring Lane, but the use of a corner room in the attic of Faneuil Hall was soon obtained, " a place as retired and recondite as explorers into the recesses of antiq- uity would think of visiting." In 1791 the society occupied the Manufactory House in Hamilton Place. In 1793 the society was offered a room in the Tontine Crescent, on the south side of Franklin Street, over the arch, the entrance into Arch Street. Charles Bulfinch, William Scollay, and Charles Vaughan, who reclaimed Franklin Street from a quagmire, made this offer, and here the society remained until 1833, when it removed to its late quarters in Tremont Street, from which it is now temporarily ousted by the repairs of the building. The situation in Franklin Street presented the singular phase of a building without land, as it rested upon an arched passage- way.
Governor Gore was president in 1806. In 1838 the society's collections amounted to six thousand volumes and manuscripts. The society possesses many relics of historic interest. It has
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portraits of Governors Endicott, Winslow, Pownall, Dummer, Belcher, Winthrop, Hutchinson, Strong, Gore, etc. That of Winslow is supposed to be a Vandyke. The swords of Gover- nor Carver, Myles Standish, Colonel Church, Governor Brooks, Sir William Pepperell, and those of Captain Linzee and Colo- nel Prescott, worn at Bunker's Hill, are the property of the society. Not the least curious among these relics is a silk flag presented by Governor Hancock to a colored company called the " Bucks of America," bearing the device of a pine-tree and a buck, above which are the initials "J. H." and "G. W." There is also a gun used at the capture of Governor Andros by the Bostonians in 1689 ; the samp-bowl of King Philip, and the lock of the gun with which he was killed.
The library of the society has a value not to be estimated in dollars and cents. It was the foundation of materials for the history of New England, many of which have been published in the society's valuable collections.
Among other valuable donations to the society may be men- tioned the papers and documents of General William Heath of Revolutionary fame, besides the magnificent library of Thomas Dowse of Cambridge, containing about five thousand volumes, many being of the greatest historical interest.
The Museum building, which covers twenty thousand feet of land, and cost a quarter of a million, is one of the attractive objects of the street and of the city. For many years its rows of exterior lights have been a lamp in the path of the pedes- trian and a lure to its votaries. On its boards have stood in times past the elder Booth and Mrs. George Barrett. Booth, of whom a capital likeness in crayon, by Rowse, hangs in the main hall, deserves to be classed with Kean, Kemble, and the giants of the stage. His unfortunate penchant for convivial in- dulgence has given rise to many anecdotes. On one occasion, while playing at the Howard, Tom Ford, the manager, stipu- lated that Booth should submit to be locked in his room by a certain hour, in order that the actor might not be in a condition to disappoint the audience, as was sometimes the case. The chagrin of the manager may be imagined at finding the tragedian
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intoxicated when he came to fetch him to the theatre. Booth had bribed a waiter to bring liquor to his door, where succes- sive glasses were emptied by means of a straw through the key- hole. As Richard III. Booth was incomparable. He often became greatly excited in the combat scene, and on one occa- sion it is stated that he attacked W. H. Smith, the veteran actor, lately deceased, in dead earnest, driving him from the stage, and pursuing him into the street.
William Warren, the first comedian of the American stage, made his first appearance at the Museum in 1847, and after twenty-five years of service is still without a peer in his pecu- liar parts. Adelaide Phillips, whose triumphs on the lyric stage are well known, was a danseuse at the Museum in the year just mentioned. By the generosity of Jenny Lind and other friends she was enabled to obtain a musical education in Europe.
The present Museum is near the site of the old Columbian Museum, which passed through many mutations, and was finally destroyed by fire in January, 1807. The Columbian Museum originated in the exhibition of wax-works at the American Coffee House in State Street, opposite Kilby, as early as 1791. Mr. Bowen, the proprietor, removed to what was called " the head of the Mall," at the corner of Bromfield's Lane (now Street) in 1795. This building was burnt in Janu- ary, 1803 ; but Mr. Bowen was enabled to reopen his Museum in Milk Street, at the corner of Oliver, in May of that year. In 1806, a brick building five stories high was erected by Doyle about where the present Probate Office is, and reached by a pas- sage from Tremont Street. It was opened Thanksgiving evening.
The destructive element soon swept away this edifice. It took fire about midnight, and was consumed with all its con- tents ; not an article was saved. The event was signalized by a painful disaster. A large crowd of spectators had collected in the burying-ground adjoining, when the walls fell, killing nine or ten boys, from twelve to fifteen years old. Dr. William Eustis, afterwards governor of Massachusetts, resided then in Sudbury Street, and with other physicians lent his aid on the
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