USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Old landmarks and historic personages of Boston.. > Part 7
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Aid de Camp Head Quarters 25th November 1778 Joseph Green, beyond comparison the keenest wit of his
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KING'S CHAPEL AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
time, lived in School Street. He was a merchant, -- Dr. Byles terms him a distiller, - and accumulated a handsome property. He was the general satirist, epic, and epitaph writer of his day, and wielded a trenchant pen, of which none stood more in awe than Governor Belcher. His epitaph on the countryman whose forte was raking hay, in which he excelled all but his employer, is as follows : -
" He could rake hay ; none could rake faster, Except that raking dog his master."
Green, who was well advanced in life when the Revolutionary struggle begun, removed to England, where he engaged in busi- ness, residing in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, London. He died in London in 1780. There is a portrait of Joseph Green, by Copley, in the possession of Rev. W. T. Snow of Jamaica Plain. Green often run a tilt with Mather Byles, unhorsing his clerical opponent with his goose-quill lance. His residence was between the house of Dr. Warren and the Crom- well's Head.
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LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.
CHAPTER II.
FROM THE ORANGE-TREE TO THE OLD BRICK.
Hanover Street. - General Warren. - The Orange-Tree. - Concert Hall. - Brattle Street. - Samuel Gore. - John Smibert. - Nathaniel Smibert. - Colonel Trumbull. - The Adelphi. - Scollay's Buildings and Square. - Queen Street Writing School. - Master James Carter. - Cornhill. - Brattle Street Parsonage. - Old Prison. - Captain Kidd. - Court Houses. - Franklin Avenue. - Kneeland. - Franklin. - Edes and Gill. - Green and Russell. - First Book and Newspaper printed in Boston. --- Rufus Choate. - Governor Leverett. - John A. Andrew. - Henry Dun- ster. - Town Pump. - Old Brick. - General Knox. - Count Rumford. - John Winslow.
STANDING at the head of Hanover Street, we are sensible that improvement has ploughed a broad furrow through the North End. Away before us stretches a broad avenue, where once vehicles passed each other with difficulty. As the old street was, there were places where it was no great feat . to jump across. This was the old highway from Winnisim- met Ferry to Treamount Street, first called Orange-Tree Lane, from the tavern at its head. Hanover Street extended at first only from Court to Blackstone Streets. Why this name, a per- petual reminder of a detested House, should have been re- tained, when Queen retired before Court, and King succumbed to State, we cannot otherwise answer than by supposing the changes during the Revolution spasmodic, rather than syste- matic efforts of republicanism.
As we look down this street, a little way on our left stands the American House. On the ground it covers lived that early martyr to American freedom, General Joseph Warren, who in 1764, after his marriage, took up his residence and the practice of medicine on this spot. He went to Brattle Street Church, near by. In 1774, while the " Boston Port Bill " was in oper- ation, there was a good deal of suffering in consequence of the
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FROM THE ORANGE-TREE TO THE OLD BRICK.
closing of the port, and at this time Colonel Putnam, better known as " Old Put," came to Boston with a drove of sheep for the inhabitants, and was Warren's guest.
It was Warren who caused the alarm to be given of the British expedition to Concord, by sending Paul Revere on his famous night ride, and gave timely warning to Hancock and Adams. There are many stories of the manner of Warren's death at Bunker Hill, some of them highly colored. He was killed after the retreat began, a little way in the rear of the famous redoubt. General Howe, who knew Warren well, said his death was equal to the loss of five hundred men. Colonel John Trumbull, who, when in England in 1786, painted his picture of the Battle of Bunker Hill, gives the following rela- tion of the fall of Warren by Colonel Small, who was on the field, and is represented by Trumbull endeavoring to save the life of Warren : -
" At the moment when the troops succeeded in carrying the redoubt, and the Americans were in full retreat, General Howe, who had been wounded by a spent ball, was leaning on my arm. He called suddenly to me, 'Do you see that elegant young man who has just fallen ?' I looked to the spot to which he pointed. 'Good God !' he exclaimed, 'I believe it is my friend Warren ; leave me then instantly, - run, - keep off the troops, - save him if possible !' I flew to the spot. 'My dear friend,' I said to him, ' I hope you are not badly hurt.' He looked up, seemed to recol- lect, smiled, and died. A musket-ball had passed through the upper part of his head."
The body lay on the field until the next day, when it was recognized by Dr. Jeffries and John Winslow of Boston, and interred on the spot where he fell. General Howe's solicitude does not seem to have extended to Warren's remains, which, however, received a soldier's burial. After the evacuation the body was disinterred and deposited in King's Chapel, and sub- sequently in St. Paul's, Tremont Street. The ball which killed Warren is now in possession of William H. Montague of Boston. It is a common ounce musket-ball, and does not look at all flattened. It must ever appear unaccountable why General Ward, at Cambridge, did not attempt to recover the body of
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the President of the Provincial Congress. The usages of war must have been well known to him, and Howe was not the man to refuse the request.
Thus died in " the imminent deadly breach " the young hero at the early age of thirty-four. President of the Committee of Safety, of the Provincial Congress, and Major-General, he declined the command at Bunker Hill, taking the place of a common soldier. Deeply hurt by the reflections cast upon the courage of his countrymen, he is said to have exclaimed, "I hope I shall die up to my knees in blood." To the remon- strances of his friend, Elbridge Gerry, who begged him not to go to Bunker Hill, Warren replied, “ Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
Adjoining the American House on the west are Codman's Buildings, covering the ground where stood the famous Earl's Coffee House in bygone days. It was established in 1806, and was the headquarters of the New York, Albany, and other mail coaches.
" Go call a coach, and let a coach be called."
On the north corner of Hanover Street was the Orange-Tree Tavern, which designated the northerly end of Treamount Street in 1732, and beginning of Hanover Street in 1708. It contin- ued a tavern until 1785, when it was advertised to be sold. The name was from the sign of an orange-tree, and the inn was noted for the best well of water in the town, - never dry nor known to freeze. Here was the first hackney-coach stand we have an account of, set up by Jonathan Wardwell, keeper of the Orange-Tree, in 1712. He was succeeded by Mrs. Ward- well, who kept the house in 1724.
Concert Hall, of which a considerable moiety is now in the street, was on the southerly corner, and was also a tavern, kept, in 1792, by James Vila. The site was first known as Houchin's Corner, from a tanner of that name who occupied it. The building was of brick, though it underwent various alterations until torn down in 1869, to make way for the widening of Hanover Street. Concert Hall was owned by the family of Deblois until 1679. Before the Revolution it was a resort of the
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FROM THE ORANGE-TREE TO THE OLD BRICK.
Friends of Liberty, and as early as 1755, after the installation of Jeremy Gridley as Grand Master of the Masons in North America, it was used by the Grand Lodge for occasions of meeting or festivity, and continued to be so used until the present century. Here have met Gridley, the Warrens, Revere, Tomlinson, Oxnard, Webb, and others. Here Captain Preston was dallying on the evening of the fatal 5th of March, 1770, when he was summoned in hot haste to begin the first act of the great conflict of the American Revolution. The American prisoners captured at Bunker Hill are said to have been tried by a military court in Concert Hall. In 1768 the obnoxious Commissioners of Customs ventured to return from the Castle, while the town was under the control of the newly arrived British troops, and had an office here, with a sentinel at the door. And here came Samuel Adams and James Otis to re- monstrate with them.
According to the "News Letter," concerts were held in the old hall as early as January, 1755, when "a concert of musick " was advertised to take place there, tickets at four shillings each. Governor Hancock gave, in 1778, a grand ball in Concert Hall to the officers of D'Estaing's fleet, at which three hundred per- sons were present. The Society of the Cincinnati also held meetings in this hall, and the Massachusetts Mechanic Char- itable Association had their first meetings therein. Peter B. Brigham was for about forty years mine host of Concert Hall.
A little east of Concert Hall on Hanover Street lived William Cooper, Town Clerk of Boston for nearly half a century. His term embraced the Revolutionary period, during which he was an ardent friend of the Whig cause. He was a brother of the patriotic pastor of Old Brattle Street Church.
Brattle Street was opened in 1819, from Court Street to the Church. Before this it was a narrow way, known first as Hil- lier's Lane, and sometimes as Belknap's, and as Gay Alley. Looking towards the ruins of the old church we notice, on the north side of the street, a continuous row of fourteen buildings, uniform in their general appearance. This was the first block
of stone buildings erected in Boston.
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LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.
At the head of Brattle Street lived Samuel Gore, elder brother of Christopher, afterwards governor of the Commonwealth. Gore was a painter, and was one of those stout-hearted mechanics who furnished the muscle of the Revolution while Adams and Otis supplied the brain. One of the Tea Party of 1773, Gore was one of those who seized the two brass guns, Hancock and Adams, from the gun-house in Tremont Street, and conveyed them to the American lines under the very eyes of the British. These two guns are now in Bunker Hill Monument.
The celebrated Scotch painter, John Smibert, owned and occupied the premises between Brattle Street and Cornhill in : 1743, having acquired part through his marriage with Mary Williams of Boston, and part by purchase. The biographers have but little to say about this pioneer of the fine arts in America. He was before West or Copley, and is said to have influenced the works of the latter, as well as those of Allston and Trumbull.
Smibert must have had a large and lucrative custom, for he was possessed of property in Boston and Roxbury, which he bought from time to time, and at his decease left in his studio thirty- five portraits, valued by the appraisers at £ 60 5s. 8d. Thirteen " landskips " were estimated at the moderate sum of £ 2 13s., while four historical pieces, "and pictures in that taste," were considered worth £ 16. Two conversation pictures, whatever they may have been, were thought worth £ 23 6s. 8d. His negro girl, Phillis, went for £ 26 13s. 4d. He kept his horses and chaise, in which he used to take his wife, Mary Smibert, to Lynde Street Church to hear good Dr. Hooper.
Smibert came over to America in 1728 with the Dean, after- wards Bishop Berkeley, settling in Boston in 1730. The largest known work of Smibert's in this country is his picture of Berkeley and family, in which the portrait of the artist is intro- duced. This painting is now in the possession of Yale College. His portrait of Jonathan Edwards is said to be the only one extant of that learned and eminent divine.
Nathaniel Smibert, son of John, took up the profession of his father. He went to the Latin School, under Master Lovell,
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FROM THE ORANGE-TREE TO THE OLD BRICK.
in his early youth, but soon turned to his father's brush and easel, with the promise of making a finished artist, but died at the early age of twenty-one, deeply regretted by all who knew him.
Colonel John Trumbull, aide-de-camp to Washington during the siege, retired in disgust from the service in 1777, on account of the date of an appointment to the rank of colonel, by Gates, being rejected by Congress. He then resumed his study of painting in Boston, amidst the works of Copley, and in the room which had been built by Smibert, and in which remained many of his works. Governor Hancock sat for his portrait to Trumbull while the latter was in Boston. Hancock was presi- dent of the Congress which ignored Trumbull's rank, and had also spoken rather slightly of his family being well cared for by the government, on seeing the latter at the headquarters of Washington. Trumbull was stung by the ungenerous remark, and when, after having served as a volunteer in the expedition to Rhode Island in 1778, he fell ill on his return, he at first re- pelled the advances of Governor Hancock, who, by considerate attentions, repaired his original offence. Trumbull was a histor- ical painter. The Trumbull Gallery at Yale contains fifty-seven pictures by him. An engraved likeness of Governor Yale, for whom the college was named, is one of the first you see on entering the gallery. The following is his epitaph in the churchyard at Wrexham :-
" Born in America, in Europe bred, In Africa travel'd, and in Asia wed, Where long he lived and thrived ; at London dead. Much Good, some Ill he did ; so hope all 's even, And that his soul through Mercy 's gone to heaven."
Trumbull exhibited, in 1818, in Faneuil Hall, his picture of the Declaration of Independence, and the venerable John Adams was prevailed upon to visit it. He approved the picture ; and, pointing to the door next the chair of Hancock, said, " There, that is the door out of which Washington rushed when I first alluded to him as the man best qualified for Commander-in- Chief of the American Army." *
* Miss Quincy's Memoir.
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LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.
Colonel Trumbull's historical paintings in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington have gained him a world-wide reputa- tion ; his " Sortie from Gibraltar" is now in the Boston Athe- næum. He was a fellow-student with Stuart, under West.
The paint-room of the Smiberts and of Trumbull continued to be improved by various artists of lesser note until 1785. At this time Mrs. Sheaffe occupied the abode of the Smiberts as a boarding-house. This lady has acquired celebrity through her children. In those days painters sometimes styled themselves limners. One of Mrs. Sheaffe's boarders varied the monotony of portrait painting by doing hair-work in the neatest manner. Part of the Smibert estate went to make the present Brattle Street.
This locality, after having served the New England Museum, was, in course of time, appropriated by the Adelphi Theatre. John Brougham was, in 1847, associated with Mr. Bland as manager, with Mrs. Brougham and Mr. Whiting in the corps dramatique. The Adelphi was a side-splitting affair, defying the conventionalities of the modern stage. An open bar stood in the rear of the auditorium, to which the audience were in- vited to repair upon the falling of the curtain.
One of the greatest changes that has occurred in Boston is the transformation of the over-crowded thoroughfares around what was known as " Scollay's Buildings" into the spacious, pleasant area we now call Scollay Square. All of the original is gone except the distinctive appellation, and what has existed in some form for two centuries has vanished
" Like the baseless fabric of a vision."
The Scollays were Scotch, from the Orkneys. John Scollay is mentioned, in 1692, as lessee of Winnisimmet Ferry. An- other John Scollay, of the Revolutionary period, was a man of considerable note in Boston. He was one of the first Fire- Wards of the town, and a selectman during the siege. His son, William, is the one for whom the buildings and square were named. The name, however, and his proprietorship only date back to about 1800. William Scollay was a commander of the Cadets, an apothecary at No. 6 Old Cornhill, and resided
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FROM THE ORANGE-TREE TO THE OLD BRICK.
on the site of the Museum in Tremont Street. He was promi- nently identified with Charles Bulfinch and others in the im- provement of Franklin Street.
A long row of wooden buildings at one time extended from the head of Cornhill to nearly opposite the head of Hanover Street. Both ends of this wedge-shaped range of houses, with the point towards Hanover Street, were cut off at various times, leaving only the brick structure of Scollay, lately removed. Scollay's Building was supposed to have been erected by Patrick Jeffrey, who came into possession in 1795. Neither age nor incident render the building an object of special interest.
Opposite to where Cornhill now opens into Court Street was erected, in 1683- 84, the second school-house in the town. The first being styled the Latin School, this was termed the Free Writing School. It is clearly mentioned in 1697, and continued to be used until 1793, when it became private property, the school -then known as the Centre Reading and Writing School - being removed to School Street. The first master here was Samuel Cole.
The preamble to the first law establishing schools reads thus : -
" It being one chief project of Satan to keep men from the knowl- edge of the Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in unknown tongues ; to the end, therefore, that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, in church and Commonwealth, it is enacted," etc.
The school-house is brought into notice in 1744, by a some- what curious affair. It appears that Captain W. Montague, afterwards a British Admiral, came ashore from his ship, the frigate Eltham, then lying in Nantasket Roads, and, accom- panied by a party from his vessel, indulged in a regular sailor's lark on shore. In the course of their rambles the party com- mitted some depredations on the school-house, for which war- rants were issued against some of the offenders.
James Carter was the most famous of the masters of this old school. He was a pedagogue of an extinct type, and after a long term of service, continuing almost to the time of his death,
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LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.
was buried December 2, 1797. His house adjoined the school- house on the west. Turell's Museum once occupied the old school-house, part of which was removed upon the completion of Cornhill, to afford a free passage into Tremont Street.
Green and Russell, one of the old printing houses of Boston, transacted business in an old building that stood on the site of Scollay's, in 1755. Joseph Russell, one of the partners, carried on the business of an auctioneer, in which he was very success- ful, and became the owner of the property. William Vassall, a royalist refugee, in 1776, was the next proprietor, followed by Jeffrey. The Colonial Custom-house stood very near this locality in 1757, but we have been unable to discover its exact site.
Cornhill owes its name, no doubt, originally, to its London prototype. It is the second street which has borne the name in Boston, and was first called Market Street, as it opened a new route to Faneuil Hall Market. The stores erected in this street were the first raised on granite pillars in Boston. Uriah Cotting built the street in 1817. To his genius Boston owes a debt not yet suitably recognized. Mr. Cotting's remains lie beneath an humble tomb in Granary Burying-ground, but we may appropriately apply to him the epitaph of Sir Christopher Wren : -
" Reader, if thou seekest his monument, look around."
Opposite to us, now the premises of the Adams Express Com- pany, was the old Parsonage House of Brattle Square Church, given to it by Mrs. Lydia Hancock in 1765. She was the wife of Thomas Hancock (uncle of the patriot), and resided in the old house, as also did her father, Colonel Daniel Henchman, grandson of the old Indian fighter. Henchman was a book- seller and bookbinder, and Thomas Hancock served his time with him. Colonel Henchman established the first paper-mill in the colony, at Milton. Since their day it was the residence of the pastors of the church, -last, that of Dr. Lothrop. This house has been noted as one of the dwelling-places of James Otis.
The Old Prison stood on the spot where now the massive
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FROM THE ORANGE-TREE TO THE OLD BRICK.
granite Court House is placed. From it the street was very early named Prison Lane, changed to Queen Street in 1708, and to Court in 1784. What the Old Prison was like is left to conjecture, but we will let an old master of the imaginative art describe it : "The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era." The fancy of Hawthorne in locating a blooming rose-bush on the grass-plot beside the prison door is striking. Here were confined the victims of the terrible witchcraft delusion.
" Who is he ? one that for lack of land Shall fight upon the water."
This heavy oaken door stood between the notorious pirate, Wil- liam Kidd, and liberty. He arrived in Boston in June, 1699, with his sloop, and was examined before the Earl of Bellomont and the Council of the province. On the 6th of June Kidd was seized and committed to prison with several of his crew, and his vessel taken possession of. When arrested, Kidd attempted to draw his sword and defend himself. By order of the king, he was sent to England in a frigate, and arrived in London April 11, 1700. He was examined before the Admi- ralty, and afterwards before the House of Lords, where great efforts were made to implicate the Earl of Bellomont and other of the lords in Kidd's transactions. The pirate, after a long confinement, was finally hung at Execution Dock. He died hard. The rope broke the first time he was tied up, and he fell to the ground ; a second trial proved more successful.
It has been claimed that Kidd was not a pirate. He was an officer in the British navy prior to 1691, married in this coun- try, and had commanded a merchant ship owned by Robert Livingstone, a wealthy New York merchant. When, in 1695, the coast of New England was infested with pirates, Living- stone proposed to the Earl of Bellomont to employ Kidd to go in pursuit of them, and offered to share the expense of fitting out a vessel. Application was made to the home gov- ernment for a thirty-gun ship, and a commission for Kidd for
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LANDMARKS OF BOSTON.
this purpose; but, the government being then unable to furnish a vessel, the Earl of Bellomont, Lords Halifax, Somers, Rom- ney, Oxford, and others contributed, with Livingstone, to fit Kidd out in the Adventure Galley. He received a commis- sion from the Court of Admiralty in December, 1695, author- izing him to cruise against the king's enemies.
Once at sea, Kidd turned pirate, reversing the adage "Set a rogue to catch a rogue," and made several captures ; but his ex- ploits preceded him, and on his return to New England he was arrested. The search after the pirate's hidden treasure has continued ever since. A pot of dollars was dug up in 1790 on Long Island, supposed to have been Kidd's. The fate of the freebooter has often been lamented in the melancholy ditty, -
" My name was Captain Kidd, as I sailed," etc.
The Old Prison, ugly and uncouth, gave place to a new in 1767, designed by Governor Bernard. This was, two years later, destroyed by fire, the prisoners being with difficulty rescued ; some of them were badly burned." The site was then appro- priated by a Court House built of brick, about the Revolution- ary period, three stories high, with a cupola and bell. Before the erection of the County Court House (City Hall), in 1810, this building was used by all the courts of law held in the county.
At this time the County Jail was in an old stone building situated between the Old Court House, just described, and the New. On the ground where it stood was formerly an old wooden building called the Debtor's Jail. The County Jail and Municipal Court House were, in 1822, situated in Lev- erett Street.
In 1851 the keys of the Old Prison in Court Street were found under the office of the Leverett Street jail, where they had lain since 1823. They were three in number ; were from twelve to eighteen inches in length, and of a most primitive construction. The keys weighed from one to three pounds each, and when attached to the jailer's girdle, must have been
* Drake's History of Boston.
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FROM THE ORANGE-TREE TO THE OLD BRICK.
weighty arguments to his wards. These keys, when found, were over a hundred years old. What a tale they could tell !
In September, 1833, the corner-stone of the present Court House was laid, and it was completed in 1836. The building is massive and unattractive. Within its granite walls the fugi- tive slave cases were tried, and here also Professor John W. Webster received the death sentence for the murder of Dr. Parkman.
The little alley which enters Court Street opposite the east- erly side of Court Square is not unknown to fame. It is to- day Franklin Avenue, but has been Dassett's, or Dorsett's Alley, and in 1722 was a part of Brattle Street. Daniel Webster's first office was on the northerly corner of this alley. On the corner where now stands the Advertiser building Samuel Knee- land began the printing business in 1718, in quite another fashion. Thomas, in his History of Printing, says : -
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