USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume III > Part 38
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67
INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF SUFFOLK COUNTY.
THE influence of no American city has been more powerfully felt in all avenues of productive industry than Boston. It is the birthplace of a vast number of the most important and successful manufacturing ventures of modern times, while the inventive genius of Boston men has enriched many aventies of industrial progress. The first complete cotton mill in the world was established by Boston capital, and the development of the great factory system of the country, in all of its beneficent features, has also in great measure been the result of Boston capital and enterprise. In the manufacture of paper, textiles, watches and shoes this city has furnished to every community in America the main springs of prosperity. Especially is this true in the making of boots and shoes, in which industry Boston inventions and capital have revolutionized the business throughout the world. In the matter of musical instruments-the piano and reed organ-the ideas and tri- umphs of Boston are well known. The inception of some of the most essential comforts of life can be traced back to Boston invention. Here the first successful sewing machine was made, and modern architecture in great cities has been entirely remodeled through a Boston invention -the elevator. It was in this city that the system of steam heating was first introduced, and here gas, steam and water fittings as a sep- arate industry were first inaugurated. Indeed, few industries in New England could be named that did not first gain headway in Boston.
The development of manufactures in Boston has been remarkable in many ways. Its progress has been on conservative lines, but substan- tial. Almost from the beginning of the city it has been a manufac- turing centre. Before 1650 those industries, which to-day include a large proportion of the entire products of the Commonwealth, were well established in Boston and the immediate vicinity. Ship building, the manufacture of textiles, boots, shoes, rope, paper, brick, glass making
-
INDUSTRIAL HISTORY. 393
and iron working were well recognized industries during the first gen- eration after the landing of the Pilgrims. The year after Winthrop arrived he built on the Mystic a bark of thirty tons burden, to which he gave the name of the Blessing of the Bay. Between 1631 and 1640 other vessels were built on the Mystic, at Marblehead and at Salem. The building of a ship of three hundred tons burden at Salem in 1640, we are told, stirred up the inhabitants of Boston to engage in the busi- ness, and they built one of one hundred and sixty tons in the shipyard of Nehemiah Bourne, who lived in a house not far from Union Wharf. Bourne lived first in Charlestown (1638) and then in Dorchester. " The building of Mr. Bourne's ship," says Mr. Winthrop, "was a work hard to accomplish for want of money, but our shipwrights were content to take such pay as the country could make." In 1642 three more ships were made at Boston, and the same year the author of "New England First Fruits " writes: "Besides many boats, shallops, lighters, pinnaces, we are in the way of building ships of a hundred, two hundred, three hundred or four hundred tons. Five of them are already at sea; many more in hand at this present, we being much encouraged herein by reason of the plenty and excellence of our timber for that purpose, and seeing all the materials will be had there in short time."
In May, 1644, the Assembly granted the shipbuilders an act of in- corporation, which states that: "For the better building of shipping, it is ordered that there be a company of that trade, according to the manner of other places, with power to regulate building of ships and to make such orders and laws among themselves as may conduce to the public good." Captain Johnson says, in 1646: " Many a fair ship had her framing and finishing here, besides lesser vessels, barques and ketches; many a master, besides common sailors, had their first learn- ing in this colony. Boston, Charlestown, Salem, Ipswich, etc., our maritime towns, began to increase roundly, especially Boston-the which, of a poor country village, in twice seven years is become like unto a small city."
"The people of New England at this time," says Hubbard, A. D. 1646-51, " began to flourish much in building ships and trafficking abroad and had prospered very well in these affairs, and possibly began too soon to seek great things for themselves; however that they might not be exalted overmuch in things of that nature, many afflictive dis- pensations were ordered to them in this lustre, which proved a day of
50
394
SUFFOLK COUNTY
great rebuke to New England; for the first news they heard from Europe in the year 1646 was the doleful report of two of their ships that were wrecked the winter before upon the coast of Spain, one of which was built in the country the former year by Captain Hawkins, a shipwright of London, who had lived divers years in the country before, and had with others been encouraged to fall upon such dealings as he had formerly been acquainted with. At the last he had built a stately ship at Boston of four hundred tons and upwards, and had set her out with great ornament of carving and painting and much strength of ordnance. The first time she was rigged out for sea was the 23rd of November, 1645, when they set sail for Malaga with another ship in her company whereof Mr. Karman was master." He then gives a narrative of her loss at sea with nineteen persons on board.
In the year 1676, just a century before the Declaration of Independ- ence, the following vessels are said to have been built in Boston and its vicinity and then belonged to this neighborhood :
30 vessels between 100 and 250 tons. 50 " 100 4 300 200 vessels between 30 and 50 tons.
6 " 10 4 200
There were at this time in the colony thirty master shipwrights. The trade of Massachusetts in 1717 employed 3,493 sailors, and 492 ships, whose tonnage amounted to 25,406. In 1731 there were 600 sail of ships and sloops, of thirty-eight thousand tons burden, engaged in the same commerce, one-half of which traded to Europe. From five to six thousand men and one thousand sail of vessels were at the same time employed in the fisheries. The vessels employed in these branches were chiefly home built. The shipyards at that date were actively em- ployed, and many vessels were sold in foreign ports.
The enterprise which had been opened by Winthrop's Blessing of the Bay, steadily grew in importance nntil 1738, when there were built at Boston forty-one topsail vessels of 6,324 tons in all; in 1743 the num- ber had fallen off to thirty; in 1746 there were but twenty, and in 1749 the number was reduced to fifteen, making but 2, 450 tons of shipping. Burke in his "Account of the European Settlements in America," writ- ten in 1738, says: " The business of ship building is one of the most considerable which Boston or the other seaport towns in New England carry on. Ships are sometimes built here on commission, but fre- quently the merchants have them constructed on their own account."
The condition of the manufacturing and commercial interest of Bos- ton at about this time is illustrated by two papers preserved in the Town
-
395
INDUSTRIAL HISTORY.
Records under date of January 1, 1735, and March 16, 1742, both rep- resenting the check the town had received, and calling upon the General Court to take into account the proper apportioning of Boston's share of the provincial expenses. The paper of 1742 declares :
The greatest advantage this town reaped from that trade [London] was by ship building, which employed most of our tradesmen. But that is now so reduced that whereas in 1735 orders might arrive for building forty sail of ships, there has been as yet but orders for two, by which means the most advantageous branch of trade to our mother country, being lessened to so great a degree, must necessarily oblige a great many of our useful tradesmen to leave town, as many have already done; so that this town will suffer exceedingly for want of that branch of trade being properly supported, and thereby rendered much less able to support a large tax, than from the decline of all other branches of trade together, by reason that that branch employed more men than all the rest.
" The ships built at Boston," says Dr. Douglass, in 1746, " exceed all other building yards, the many merchants, and ship masters, good connoisseurs, transiently inspect them; every bad piece of timber or length of plank is censured. Ship building is one of the greatest articles of Boston's trade and manufacture. It employs and maintains about thirty several denominations of tradesmen and artificers." One of the most eminent ship builders in the colonies at this time and at the com- mencement of the Revolution, and among the first in this country to apply the principles of science in the drafting and modeling of ships, was John Peck, of Boston. Peck is said to have been "the most scien- tific as well as the most successful naval architect which the United States had then produced." The ships built by him were so superior to any known, that they attracted the attention of Congress, and he was employed to build ships of war. The success of Mr. Peck as a marine architect, in combining the great essentials, capacity and swiftness, was admitted by intelligent foreigners. The Belisarius, the Hasard, and the Rattlesnake, constructed by him, were known during the War of the Revolution for their fast sailing, a quality to which the Ameri- can cruisers owed their efficiency more than any other. They were also said to carry more than others of the same class. It was a com- mon remark at that period, that " to have a perfect vessel it must have a Boston bottom and Philadelphia sides."
In the train of ship building came the making of rope. In 1641, probably in connection with the building of the Trial, John Harrison was invited to Boston from Salisbury, and set up his rope walk in the field presumably adjoining his house, which stood on Purchase street.
396
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
He seems to have been the sole rope maker in Boston until 1663, when John Heyman, of Charlestown, had permission to engage in the busi- ness, but only for making fish lines,
The making of salt was also an early industry. The General Court, in 1695-6, gave to the Boston merchants, Elisha Cooke, Elisha Hutch- inson and John Foster, the monopoly of making salt, "after the man- ner as it is made in France," for fourteen years. They set up their works on the marshes of the Neck toward Roxbury, beyond the gate and on both sides of the road. In 1716 they admitted as associates Wait Still Winthrop, Samuel Sewall, Eliakim Hutchinson, Penn Town- send, Nathaniel Byfield, Samuel Shrimpton, John Eyre, Simeon Stod- dard, John Mico, Joseph Parson, and Edward Hutchinson. In 1:30 the plant and business were sold to Henry and Samuel Gibbon.
As a motive power water was employed much earlier than wind. It is said, however, that the first mill in New England was a wind mill, near Watertown in Massachusetts, which was taken down in 1632, and rebuilt in the vicinity of Boston. This first corn mill was removed from its original site in August of that year, and set up at the north end of the city of Boston on the hill previously called Snow Hill, and afterward Copp's Hill and "Wind Mill Hill," by which name it is men- tioned in the Records of 1635. This mill was doubtless a conspicuous object throughout the settlement, as being the first attempt to super- sede the mortars and hand mills previously used by the people. Crops of grain were gathered from the fields adjacent to the mill which are now covered by the solid masonry of the present city of Boston. Wind mills were soon after erected, and in 1636 two more wind mills were built, one at Boston and one at Charlestown. The last was blown down in 1648. Edward Holyoke, who took the Freeman's Oath in 1639, owned a wind mill on Purchase street, in Boston, near Fort Hill, which he afterwards sold to Richard Woodward. In 1701 John Arnold requested liberty to place a wind mill on Fort Hill, and was allowed to place one there "on the Town's land," paying such quit rent as the selectmen should order. A wind mill was, in 1740, removed from Roxbury and placed on the same hill.
Printing and bookbinding were among the very earliest avenues of the useful and industrial arts engaged in by the first settlers of Boston and vicinity. It is honorable to the intelligence of the first colonists and shows a commendable regard for the welfare of their posterity, that among their earliest cares they provided for the interests of education
392
INDUSTRIAL HISTORY.
and the diffusion of knowledge. Only eighteen years of the life in the wilderness had elapsed, when, in 1638, permanent provision was made for the first printing press at Cambridge. The history of the earliest achievements in printing in the United States is so closely allied with Boston that no excuse is necessary for following somewhat in detail the progress of these pioneer printers. For the following interesting facts we are chiefly indebted to the admirable work of J. Leander Bish- op in his " History of American Manufacturers":
The press erected at Cambridge in 1638, and which went into opera- tion in the beginning of the following year, was brought from England by Rev. Mr. Glover, 1 who had engaged in England a printer named Daye, to conduct it for him. Mr. Glover died on the passage out, but the press was set up by Daye at Cambridge, where, in 1639, he printed the "Freeman's Oath," which was the first issue of the Colonial press. The first product of Daye's press, it is said, exhibited much want of skill and practical knowledge in the printer. The next thing printed was an Almanac for the year 1639, " by William Peirce Mariner." In 1640, "the Psalms, newly turned into metre," which had just been translated from the Hebrew, by the Rev. Mr. Weld and Rev. John Eliot, was printed by Daye, and was the first production of the Ameri- can press in book form. It is said to have gone through no less than seventy editions in about one hundred and fourteen years, during which it maintained its popularity in England and America. The original American edition was a crown Svo. of 300 pages, bound in parchment, and was by no means creditable to the skill of the printer. Daye was supposed to have been a descendant of John Daye, one of the most eminent and wealthy of early English typographers, the original publisher of Latimer's Sermons, Fox's Book of Martyrs, and of Stern- hold and Hopkins's Version of the Psalms.
Daye? was superseded in the management of the press in 1649 by Samuel Green, who, with his parents, came from England to Cambridge
1 Of Jos. or Jesse Glover, to whose instrumentality the country owes the introduction of the press, little is known beyond the fact that he was a wealthy non-conformist minister and that he was the principal purchaser and owner of the apparatus and stock for printing and bookselling, which he intended to carry on at Cambridge. The other names mentioned as patrons of the Cam- bridge press are those of Major Thomas Clark, Captain James Oliver, Captain Allen, Mr. Stod- dard, Mr. Freake and Mr. Hoes.
2 The General Court of Massachusetts, in October, 1641, showed its appreciation of the services of Stephen Daye by granting him three hundred acres of land, as " being the first that sett upon printing." He had not obtained possession, however, in 1665, when the grant was confirmed to him. He died in 1668, at the age of fifty-eight.
398
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
at the age of sixteen with Governor Winthrop's company, eight years before Daye arrived No reason is known for the transfer of the press to the charge of Green, whose first essays exhibit no improvement upon the work of Daye. From the general similarity in faults and work- inanship, it is presumed he was not a printer by trade, and that he was assisted occasionally by Daye. It seems probable, however, that, being a youth whom he educated, he may have acquired his knowledge and style from Daye previous to his taking control. One of the first works printed by him was the Cambridge Platform, which was badly executed both in press and case work. A new edition of the Psalms, revised and improved by President Dunster and Mr. Lyon, was printed in 1650, which became the standard edition of the work.
The second press was designed exclusively for printing the Bible and other books. To assist in this labor Marmaduke Johnson, of London, was sent to Cambridge. In 1661 the New Testament was issued. In 1663 the entire Old and New Testament, with the New England Psalms in Indian verse, all translated by the Rev. John Eliot, minister of Rox- bury, into the dialect of the Nipmuck or Natick Indians, was printed in quarto with marginal notes, and issued with the joint imprints of Sam- 11el Green and Marmaduke Johnson, and a dedication to King Charles II. In the execution of the work, which took three years, Green was assisted by an Indian, whom he had taken as an apprentice in 1659 and named James Printer. Printer was afterwards of much service in the Indian publications, and was employed by Green as pressman. In 1:09 an edition of the Psalter was issued with the imprint of B. Green and J. Printer in the English and Indian languages. A second edition of two thousand copies of the Bible, revised by Mr. Eliot and Rev. Mr. Cotton, was printed in 1685 by Green. 1
The first law securing the benefit of copyright in this country was enacted in 1642, when the General Court of Massachusetts granted to John Usher, a wealthy bookseller of Boston, the privilege of publish- ing, on his own account, a revised edition of the laws of the colony. At this time Hezekiah Usher had been a bookseller of Boston for about twenty years. Several of Green's works had been printed for him. One of the earliest of these was an edition of the Psalms, printed about the year 1664 or '65. It was printed on a handsome-faced nonpareil type,
1 Green continued printing to an advanced age, and died in 1702, aged eighty-seven. He was much esteemed in Cambridge, where he held civic and military offices. He had nineteen children, and his descendants were printers in different parts of the country for over a century after his death.
2. si pones
399
INDUSTRIAL HISTORY.
and is the only specimen of a book printed either at Cambridge or Bos- ton in that type previous to the Revolution. Even brevier type was seldom used by the printers of Boston previous to 1760.
About the year 1644 John Foster, a graduate of Harvard, received permission to establish a second press at Boston. The same year the General Court added to the former licensees two additional ones. These were Increase Mather and Thomas Thacher, both learned divines. The latter wrote and published, in 1672, a treatise on small pox and measles, the first medical work published in Massachusetts, and probably in America. The first book known to have been printed in Boston was issued by Foster in 1676. He also printed almanacs and a few other small works. Sewall succeeded him in 1681. The printing was ex- ecuted for him by James Glen, and Samuel Green, a son of the Cam- bridge printer. He was a bookseller and a magistrate, and subsequently filled the highest judicial offices in the colony. In 1684 Richard Pierce opened a printing establishment at Boston. He is chiefly entitled to notice as the printer of the first newspaper sheet ever published in the New World. It was started at Boston in 1690, and was suppressed by the Legislature, because it was alleged "it came out contrary to law and contained reflections of a very high nature." The first number of this sheet bears the following date and imprint: "Boston, Thursday, September 25, 1690, printed by R. Pierce for Benjamin Harris, at the London Coffee House, 1690." The publisher announces that the coun- try " shall be furnished once a month (or if a Glut of Occurrences hap- pen, oftener), with an Account of such considerable things as have oe- curred under our Notice : to give a faithful relation of all such things; to enlighten the public to the occurrents of Divine Providence; the cir- cumstanees of public affairs at home and abroad; to attempt the cur- ing, or at least the chaining of the spirit of lying, then prevalent; and to aid in tracing out and correcting the raisers of false reports." It gives a summary of current events, as the departure of about 2,500 troops, and thirty-two sail of ships for Canada, under Sir William Phipps, the ravages of the small-pox, and of a malignant fever in Bos- ton. It informs us that a fire broke out between the 16th and 12th, which destroyed several houses, and that besides the loss of one life, the " best furnished Printing Press of those few we know of in Amer- ica was lost; a loss not presently to be repaired." It gives an account of the capture of St. Christopher from the French, and of the landing of King William in Ireland with 140,000 foot and horse, as well as
400
SUFFOLK COUNTY.
other veritable occurrences in Europe and America. It is to all in- tents and purposes a newspaper, and, as such, the first of its kind in America.
Harris, at the date of the above publication, kept a bookstore in Bos- ton at the London Coffee House in King street, but removed two or three years after to Cornhill, where he engaged in printing chiefly for booksellers. He had a commission from Governor Phipps, in 1692, to print the laws. He was from London, where he had been a printer and bookseller, and as Dunton, the eccentric English bookseller, who was at this time in Boston, states, had, " as brisk asserter of English liber- ties," incurred by his publication the displeasure of the authorities in such a form as to induce him to travel to New England, "where he followed bookselling, and then coffee selling, and then printing, but continued Ben Harris still, and is now both bookseller and printer in Grace Church street, as we find by his London Post; so that his con- versation is general (but not pertinent) and his will pliable to all in- vention."
Bartholomew Green, another son of the Cambridge printer, com- menced printing in Boston in 1690, after the death of his brother Samuel, who died in the small-pox epidemic of that year. B. Green was for about forty years printer for the government, and the leading publisher in Boston. He was assisted by John Allen, another London printer, who commenced about the same time, and in 1707 established an independent business. In 1704 Green commenced the printing of The Boston News-Letter, the first successful attempt to establish a periodical in the colonies. It was printed weekly and published " by authority " for John Campbell, postmaster, who was the proprietor. It became the property of Green eighteen years later, during fifteen of which it was the only one in the colonies. From 1707 to 1711 it was printed by Allen, whose premises being burned in the great fire, it was again printed by Green. The publication continued in the Green family until the year 1766.
James Franklin, an elder brother of Benjamin Franklin, was another of the early printers of Boston. He had learned the art in England, and in 1713-14 brought thence a press and types, with which he printed for a time the Boston Gasette. It was in this office that Benjamin Franklin learned the first elements of the printing art.
About the year 1752 an edition of the English Scriptures was pri- vately carried through the press at Boston. It was printed by Knee-
401
INDUSTRIAL HISTORY.
land Green. This first American edition of the Bible in the English language was chiefly made for Daniel Henchman, of Boston, the most enterprising bookseller of British America before the Revolution. His place of business was on Cornhill, at the corner of King street, where he furnished much employment to the Boston printers and even those of London. He built also the first paper mill in New England.
Down to 1740 more printing was annually executed in Massachusetts than in all the other colonies. Massachusetts continued to lead in the publication of books for about twenty-five years longer. In 1769 the publishing business of Philadelphia had become nearly equal to that of Boston, and this equality was maintained until about the beginning of the War of the Revolution. To these two cities belongs the credit of having led the enterprise of the country in one of the most important of the arts, and they also divide the honor of having produced the greatest ornament of the profession in this or any other country- Benjamin Franklin. Born in Boston, where the earliest years of his life were passed, and where he acquired his first knowledge of his craft, he later conferred upon Philadelphia the benefits of his industry, in- ventive talent, and maturer wisdom.
At the beginning of the War of the Revolution there were seven papers published in Massachusetts, of which five were at Boston, one at Salem, and one at Newburyport. During the progress of the Revo- lution the press shared in the general insecurity and depression which interrupted nearly every form of industry. It did its full share in arousing the spirit of resistance in the hearts of the colonists, and in sustaining the fire of patriotism throughout the struggle. "Writers and printers," says Dr. Ramsey, "followed in the rear of the preach- ers, and next to them had the greatest hand in animating their coun- trymen."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.