USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 41
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The Old Colony Trust Company was organized in 1890. The state- ment of the company, dated October 31, 1892, made to the savings banks commissioners, showed, that in addition to the capital stock of $1,000,- 000 and surplus fund of $500,000, undivided earnings of 8180,046.34 had been accumulated, while the company held deposits of $6,825, 427.78, and had total resources of $8,505, 414.15. A regular banking business is transacted in all of its departments, the approved accounts of corpo- rations, firms, and individuals being received, and interest allowed on all daily balances subject to check, loans made on acceptable security, and approved collateral on time and demand, and special attention is given to accounts with ladies. In addition to the usual banking de- partments the company acts as transfer agent, registrar and trustee
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TRUST COMPANIES.
under mortgages, and also conducts safe deposit vaults, which afford a convenient and secure place for the care of money and valuables. The president of the company is T. Jefferson Coolidge, jr., who, in addition to his position at the head of this company, is also a director of the Na- tional Bank of Commerce, the Bay State Trust Company, and the Chi- cago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. C. S. Tuckerman, the vice- president, is also a well known and prominent financier, and formerly connected with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. Mr. George P. Gardner, the other vice-president, is also a director of the Bay State Trust Company ; and Mr. E. A. Phippen, the secretary, is a gentleman of extended financial experience. The board of directors, in addition to the president, includes Frederick L. Ames, John F. An- derson, John L. Bremer, Martin Brimmer, T. Jefferson Coolidge, George F. Fabyan, George P. Gardner, Francis L. Higginson, Henry S. Howe, Walter Hunnewell, W. Powell Mason, George von L. Meyer, Laurence Minot, Richard Olney, Henry R. Reed, Lucius M. Sargent, Nathaniel Thayer, John I. Waterbury, Stephen M. Weld, and Henry C. Weston.
The State Street Safe Deposit and Trust Company was chartered April 13, 1891, with a capital of $300,000 and a reserve liability of $300,000. It is authorized by law to serve as trustee under will and legal depository of trust funds, and of money paid into eourt, while it acts as registrar or transfer agent of stocks and bonds, and as trustee for railroad and other corporations. Deposits are also received subject to check and interest allowed, and exchange is bought and sold on London, Paris, Berlin and other leading cities of the continent. Busi- ness is transacted in the lower floor of the Exchange Building, where are located the largest and best fire and burglar proof safe deposit vaults in New England. The officers of the company are Moses Williams, president; Charles Lowell, treasurer and actuary; Frederic J. Stimp- son, William L. Chase and Francis B. Sears, vice-presidents. The directors are Moses Williams, Edward Atkinson, Joseph B. Russell, Royal E. Robbins, Thomas O. Richardson, William L. Chase, Freder- ick J. Stimson, Francis B. Sears and Eliot C. Clark. The statement made by the officers of this company to the commissioners of savings banks, October 31, 1892, shows that the paid up capital amounted to $300,000; undivided earnings, $10, 605.89 ; while it held deposits aggre- 980,062.21, and had total banking resources of $1, 291, 959. 99.
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
The Mattapan Deposit and Trust Company was incorporated March 6, 1891, with an authorized capital of $100,000, and commenced busi- ness May 16, 1892. The officers are R. J. Monks, president; William Hidden, jr., actuary; and W. S. Fretch, jr., secretary. The assets, October 31, 1892, were $384, 115.31 ; deposits, $268,042.36.
The following table, made up from the reports of the various trust companies to the commissioners of savings banks, for the year end- ing, October 31, 1892, shows the condition of each institution at that time:
NAME OF COMPANY.
Capital.
Surplus or Guaranty Fund.
Undivided Earnings.
Deposits.
Trust Funds.
American Loan and Trust Com- pany, Boston ..
$1,000,000,00
$400,000,00
$148,824.97
$4.544,970.7
Bay State Trust Company, Bos- ton
200,000,00
25,000,00
36,728.73
1,512,264.09
Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company, Boston.
1,000,000.00
800,000.00
104,226.80
6,299,984.11
3-533,145.97
International Boston
Trust Company,
1,000,000.00
800,000.00
142,071.17
5,693,279 00
1,052,151.29
Massachusetts Hospital Life In surance Company, Boston
500,000.00
66,599.58
1, 137,740.41
10,962,670.08
Massachusetts Loan and Trust Company, Boston
1,000,000,00
175,000,00
80,657.12
2,096,254.30
Mattapan Deposit and Trust Com- pany, South Boston
100,000,00
6,133.01
278,042.36
-
Mercantile Loan and Trust Com- pany, Boston
250,000,00
9,406. 13.
18,851.95
514,230.36
30,983.61
New England Trust Company, Boston
1,000,000,00
1,000,000,00
345,697.59
13,867,834.50
1,761,555.98
Old Colony Trust Company, Bos- ton
1,000,000.00
500,000,00
180,046.37
6,825,427.78
State Street Safe Deposit and Trust Company, Boston
300,000,00
-
10,605.89
982,491.81
30.246.76
-
.
$7,350,000 00 $3,776,005.71, §2,272,483.01 §62,577,389.56 $6,408,083.61
THE POSTAL SERVICE IN BOSTON, FROM 1439 TO 1895,
WITH \ CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, AND A HISTORY OF THE STATIONS.
C. W. ERNST, A. M.,
ASSISTANT POSTMASTER AT BOSTON, 1891-1893.
NOTE .- The Postal Service at Boston has no bibliography. The office records ap- pear to have been destroyed in the fire of 1872. The Massachusetts Archives contain valuable papers up to 125, published in part by the Massachusetts Historical Society. For 1774 we have the " Collection of the Statutes relating to the Post-Office," New York: 1971, 174 pp., and the " Journal kept by Hugh Finlay " in 1723-74 (Brooklyn: 1867). A few papers for the period from 175 to 1789 are in the Department of State at Washington. From that time forward the records of the Post-Office Department are the best authority. But they are not complete ; and after 1835 the accounts of the Post-Offices were kept by the Treasury. The period of the Postal Service throughout the country from 1789 to 1833 is covered by vol. XV of the " American State Papers." edited by Lowrie and Franklin. Since then the annual reports of the Post-Office Department are the chief authority. With these the Postal Laws and Regulations, issued periodically since 1998, should be consulted; also the Statutes at Large, being the backbone of our publie history : the Official Register, issued biennially since IST ?; the lists of Post Offices, issued at intervals up to 1873; and the Postal Guide, published by the Department since 1874. Postmaster-General Hall wrote the first history of the Post-Office Department; it was published in 1852 as a " Report on Postal Affairs," 2 pp. General Corse first gathered and published a brief history of the Boston Post-Office (see his Annual Statement, 1890). Fame and something better await him that will write the true history of the American postal service from the Neale patent in 1691-2 to the present time.
Fuk history of the Post-Office combines in a peculiar union a history of the people and their supreme government. The Post-Office carries the secrets of the people, and exercises the highest prerogative of a sovereign power. Were it possible to recount all the Post-Office has done in Suffolk County, it would tell the business and personal affairs
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SUFFOLK COUNTY.
of our people as nothing else can; at the same time it would reveal the political history of our general government, and lay open a long and interesting chain of political evolution. For the Post-Office is simul- taneously the confidential agent of every business firm and private letter writer, a vast business conducted on business principles, and a government institution of the highest type. It indicates with fair pre- cision the character of government and the civilisation of the people at large. And the work of postal officers and clerks is far more technical than is generally thought. The payment of letter postage implies a contract, for the due execution of which the postal force is under heavy bonds to the government, and liable at law to the sender or receiver of the letter. Nor is it clear who watches the service more jealously-the government, which in theory is omniscient and all-powerful. or the private citizen who demands perfection.
During the greater part of its history Suffolk County has been a postal unit, with one postal administration. With few exceptions the territorial and administrative changes of the County have not touched the unity of its postal service. The history of the Boston Post-Office is almost coextensive with that of Suffolk County. And the salient points in this history are equally prominent in our history as a Colony, as a Province; and as a Nation. These points are the age of ship letters mainly, in Colony times; the Neale patent of 1691-2; the reign of the British Post-Office Act from 1411 until 1414, when Franklin was re- moved from his office of American Postmaster-General; the Confeder- ation period, illustrated in the Post-Office Act of 1282; and the National period, beginning with the adoption of the Constitution and the appoint- ment of Samuel Osgood as Postmaster-General in 1289. The history of the Post-Office under the Constitution turns largely upon the great Post-Office Acts of 1792, 1825, 1836, 1845 and 1812: but hardly less upon a long line of honorable Postmasters-General. For until 1836 the Postmaster at Boston was simply the agent and servant of the Post- master-General at Washington; and since 1836 the Postmaster-General is still the master of the mails in Boston and all Suffolk County, limited only by the law of the land and the appropriations voted by Congress.
The area within the jurisdiction of the Boston Post-Office includes all Suffolk County, beside the cities of Cambridge and Somerville in Mid- dlesex County, and the Town of Brookline in Norfolk County- a total of about sixty-three square miles, with a population on June 1, 1890, of 604,063. Of these totals Suffolk County has an area of about forty-
445
HII POSTAL SERVICE.
seven square miles, with a population of 181150. The area named excludes the islands not served by the free delivery of mail matter. The annual increase of population is nearly three per cent., but differs with the state of prosperity. The bulk of the annual increase is due to immigration from the rural districts and from abroad. The present Postal District, exceeded in area by that of Philadelphia only, was sub- stantially completed in 18;5. In that year the Postal District assumed in a measure the same or similar proportions it had held from the earliest days until about 1516. An official list of Post-Offices for ISIS mentions those at Boston, Cambridge, Brighton, Charlestown and Mil- ton as established, but no others in the present Postal District. In 1:59, when Washington became President, the only Post-Offices in Mas sachusetts were Boston, Salem, Ipswich, Newburyport, Worcester and Springfield, although the Province Congress of 1:15 had ordained that there should be Post-Oficesalsa in Cambridge, Georgetown, Haverhill, Great Barrington, Sandwich, Falmouth, and Plymouth, that at Cam- bridge standing really for Boston, which at that time was occupied by British troops. With the exception of the period from 1816 to 1815, the Boston Post-Office served, speaking roughly, the present District.
To form an idea of this Postal District in the past, the national C'en- sus reports should be used with some caution, mainly on account of the changes in Town and County lines, and in some names, In 1880 the population of the Postal District was 473,586; in 18;0, when West Ros- bury was still in Norfolk, and Charlestown, like Brighton, in Middle- sex, the population of the District was 813, 141. In 1850, when Dor- chester and Roxbury were still in Norfolk, the present Postal District had 221,693 inhabitants; against but $8, 351 in 1830; 49,651 in Isto; and 25,002 in 1190. The Province Census of 1265, sufficiently accurate to convey a general idea, reports the population of the present Postal District at 22,200. In 1942 Boston alone is supposed to have had a population of 16.382; in 1;20 about 11,000; in 1645 about 1,000; and when Fairbanks was appointed Postmaster of Boston in 1639, the Town proper was a small village, with one church, and a hundred houses. The church stood in State Street, on the site of the present Brazer's Building, and was a structure of mud walls with a thatched roof. The foreign element that has helped to increase the present population has come very largely from the United Kingdom and British North Amer- ica. The original stock was mainly English; the present stock is chietly British, the term including Ireland and the Maritime Provinces.
446
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
One might add that the settlement of New England was due to Inde- pendence in religion, attracted by fish, sustained by agriculture and commerce, and made great by manufacturing, commerce, and true in- dustry. Boston owes much, also, to its magnificent harbor, which is never icelocked. Nor is it unfair to add that the Postal District of Boston attracts what is best in the character and ambition of New Eng- land, except from Rhode Island and Connecticut, whose tendency is toward New York.
The first Postmaster at Boston was' Richard Fairbanks, appointed Nov. 5, 1639, by the General Court, which had charge of government affairs in the infant colony. The quaint order is as follows: " For pre- venting the miscarriage of letters; and it is ordered that notice bee given that Richard Ffairbanks his house in Boston is the place appointed for all letters which are brought from beyond the seas, or are to bee sent thither; are to bee brought unto, & he is to take care that they bee de- livered, or sent according to their directions, & hee is alowed for every such letter a ld & must answere all miscarriages through his owne neg- lect in this kind; provided that no man shalbee compelled to bring his letters thither, except hec please." Fairbanks was made a freeman of the Colony in 1634; in 1631 he was " disarmed ;" in 1631-8 he was al- lowed to sell " wine & strong water " in Boston; in 1652 he bought a house and six acres in " Fort Field " (about Fort Hill), Boston ; in 1653 his daughter Constance married Samuel Mattock ; and in 1654-5 " Rich- ard Fairebank " signed a marriage contract for Alice Dynely. He kept the most frequented house in Boston, and appears to have had the con- fidence of his fellow townsmen. His place of business and home occu. pied the present site of the Advertiser and Globe buildings in Washing- ton Street. It will be noticed that his postal duties were confined to sca letters; there was no occasion for a domestic mail. In 1639 Eng- land had but a feeble beginning of a postal service, and that was not conducted by the government. The English Post-Office as a govern- ment institution, with a Postmaster-General, began in 1660. In 16;2 New York ordered a " post to go monthly from New York to Boston, " postage to be prepaid ; but the order was not carried out very well.
When Richard Fairbanks was appointed Postmaster of Boston, Henry Vane had left the Colony, William Bradford was Governor of Plymouth, and John Winthrop once more of Massachusetts. The boundary between the two colonies, established by the last Plymouth patent, was a straight line from "Cohasset rivulet" to the Seekonk
44%
THE POST.IL SERVICE.
river, being still the southern boundary of what is now called Norfolk County, except that Hingham and llull were not in Plymouth. At that time counties had not been established in Massachusetts, and Town officers were not yet called Selectmen. Boston extended all the way from Weymouth and Plymouth Colony to Lynn; Braintree was called Mount Wollaston, or simply the Mount, which reached south as far as Plymouth, and west to the top of the great Blue Hill, being a part of Boston as much as were Brookline, then called Muddy River; East Boston (Noddle's Island), Breed's Island ( Hog Island), Chelsea (Winnisimmet), Revere (Rumney Marsh), and Winthrop (Pullen Point). The bulk of this territory had been divided among the inhab- itants, Edmund Quincy having a generous allotment at Wollaston, Winthrop at Pullen Point, whence the present names. The Book of Possessions did not exist. After the land had been given away, it was found necessary to make some provision for streets, lanes and high- ways. What trees there stood in Boston proper had been cut down, and fresh supplies were taken from the harbor islands, Muddy River, and even South Boston, which belonged to the Town of Dorchester. There was no church bell in Boston, but a court with jurisdiction over all Boston, together with the independent towns of Roxbury, Dor- chester, Weymouth and Hingham. Charlestown, also independent, had its court in Cambridge. Boston Common had just been recog- nised; at the same time the Town gloried in a drummer, a gunner and a fort. Every Thursday a market was held, on the principles of medieval law and custom. A regular ferry plied between Boston, Charlestown and Winnisimmet.
The Latin School and Harvard College were established, and Stephen Day had set up his printing press. Boston proper contained about a hundred houses, mostly built of wood or mud walls, and cov- cred with thatched roofs. It had one church. When Town meeting's were to be held, notice was sometimes given from house to house, No street had a name, and most streets were about what the abutters chose to make them. The constable did police duty in daytime, and watchmen in the night, there being great danger from fire. The Town was overrun by cattle, swine and goats, and Richard Fairbanks was the poundkeeper. There was but one lawyer in the town, and he had been disbarred. Nominally the Town and the Colony were a demoe- racy; in truth they were a political and social aristocracy, watching with pardonable anxiety that disturbing elements be kept out of the
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
infant settlement: for the existence of the colony was more important than the individual with interesting notions as to liberty, faith or gor- ernment. The people lived by trade, especially with England; by farming in Wollaston, Muddy River and Winnisimmet; and by the fisheries that had helped to attract the original settlers. When the Town meeting or the General Court were unable or unwilling to decide matters, it was customary from the beginning to appoint committees or commissioners. Fort Hill was built by commissioners. Richard Fairbanks was selected to receive and despatch all letters that might be exchanged between the people of the Colony and of Great Britain. Perhaps such an arrangement was proper. When Boston had a town hall, that became the exchange and a sort of informal post-office, for the handling of ship letters.
On January 6, 1678 1, the General Court of the Colony passed the following: " Whereas the publick occasions of the country doe fre- quently require that messengers be sent post, and, as yet, no stated al- lowance setled in such cases, it is ordered by this Court & the authority thereof, that from henceforth euery person so sent vpon the publicke service of the country shallbe allowed by the Treasurer after the rate of three pence a mile to the place to which he is sent, in money, as full sattisfaction for the expence of horse & man ; and no inholder shall take of any such messenger or others travayling vpon publicke service more than two shillings p bushell for oates, and fower pence for hay, day & night." This is the first allusion to a domestic post in New England ; but before the American Post-Office was established in 1693, the mer- chants and others of Boston caused John Hayward, in 1611, to be ap- pointed by the General Court for the place first held by Richard Fair- banks. The petitioners complained that " many times the Letters im- ported are throwne upon the Exchg, so that who will, may take them up; no person (without some satisfaction ) being willing to trouble their houses therewith ; so that Letters of great moment are frequently Lost." Hayward was appointed June 1, 16;1, and, at his own request, reap- pointed in 1680. He appears to have died in 1981, though Sewall states on February 26, 1691 2, "Jno Hayward brings me a letter." But Sewall states expressly, " Dec. 2, 1681. About 10 at night Mr. Jno Hayward dies. " Hayward's will is dated July 8, 1684, and was admit- ted to probate on February 23, 1081-8. He had two sons, Samuel and John, and the latter may have continued his father's work. Hayward, the Postmaster, was a notary in good standing. . He had a house in
440
THIE POSTAL SERVICE.
" Condit" Street, now North Street. He was the first to be called "Postmaster," in 1680, and his office the "post-office." In 1686 he took a room in the town house, where the exchange was kept. The room was less than five by ten feet.
An Act of Parliament having settled the revenue of the Post-Office upon the Duke of York, an attempt was made to establish an American Post-Office for the special benefit of the Duke. The attempt was appar- ently confined to New York. In 1684 Sir John Werden wrote to Gor- ernor Dongan: " As for setting up Post Houses along the coast from Carolina to Nova Scotia, it seemes a very reasonable thing, and you may offer the priviledge thereof to any undertaker for ye space of 3 or 5 yeares by way of farme: reserving wt part of ye proffit you thinke fitt to the Duke (not less than one-tenth), the farmers to acct to ye Duke either upon oath or by inspection into their bookes, or any other way weh you shall judge convenient & safe for the Duke, to know the true value thereof. And we thinke you were much in the right when you asserted that the Dukes title to the proffitts of all Post Offices wthin his Majts dominions was not to be doubted, but is intended over all the forreigne plantations as well as in Europe."
The attempt could not succeed. There was not enough correspond- ence along the line from Carolina to Nova Scotia to support a weekly mail, and the arrival of Andros added to the natural difficulties of the proposition, though he found Post-Offices in the larger ports from New Hampshire to Philadelphia. Edward Randolph is thought to have acted as a sort of Postmaster-General for New England. Boston im- prisoned him together with Andros, on June 11, 1689, and soon after Richard Wilkins was appointed Postmaster at Boston. Like his prede- cessors, he received one penny for every letter he took or delivered. But as late as February 26, 1691-2, Sewall wrote: " Jno Hayward brings me a letter." A few weeks later Andrew Hamilton was appointed American Postmaster-General. The Colony period really ended; the Province period began. A permanent Post-Office was established. Wilkins was a bookseller. His office was opposite the town hall. On May 31, 1690, John Knight, of Charlestown, was appointed " a Post for the Country's service, as Occasion may be," and on July Ht of the same year the General Court voted "that a Post be setled for Speedy Intelligence between this place [ Boston] and Road island."
Until Hamilton was appointed Postmaster-General, neither the office nor the name had existed in America. England had no Postmaster-
150
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
General until the Act of 1660 established the office. And England borrowed the name, if not the office, from the European continent. The Netherlands had a Postmaster in 1543; the German Empire had a Postmaster-General in 1615. But the Empire took the term " post " from the French, who inherited it directly from the later Latin; and even the term "master" was simply a translation or adaptation of the word Maître applied by Louis XI to the chief of his post riders. The term "mail" came later, also from the French, and looks Celtic. With the post came the newspaper, preferentially called " Post," at least in carly days. And our folk-speech calls a well-informed person " posted." Recent days have given us the " poster, " and a club member neglecting to pay his dues is " posted." "Post haste " is a term used by Ascham. To post a letter means to mail it. Thus a variety of uses attaches to the plain word that came to us from Caesar's positi cquites. It came to us through England, which took it from the continent oppo- site, and the people there inherited it from classical Rome. But our American Post-Office, as a Government institution, was not fully estab- lished without great struggles in politics, law, and society. The Bos- ton Post-Office reflected all these interesting movements. The word post was first applied to regular post riders, by the French, in 1487. In 1401 John Dunton published the " Post-Angel," a periodical.
The English Post-Office Act of 1660 authorised the Crown to grant the Office of Postmaster-General for life or a term of years not exceed- ing twenty-one, and the establishment of Post-Offices "in England, Scotland and Ireland, and other of His Majesty's Dominions." An Act of 1685 gave the Post-Office revenue to the King, who was the same person that as Duke of York had received this revenue since 1663. On the strength of this authority Sir Robert Cotton and Thomas Frank- land were appointed Postmasters-General on March 11, 1690-1, and Frankland was in office as late as 1716. The office is said to have yielded the king some 660,000 a year, or more. With a view to fut- ure receipts, a commission or patent for America was given to Thomas Neale. It was to run for twenty-one years, from February 12, 1691, to February 14, 1712 (O.S.), and under this patent Andrew Hamilton was commissioned American Postmaster-General on April 4, 1692. He is indeed the Father of the American Post-Office, gratefully remembered also by East Jersey, of which he was Governor. Before he came to this country, where he was greatly beloved, he was a merchant at Edin- burgh. The Andros middle led him to England, where he received
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