USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 2
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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 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76
1 The principal of these are here enumerated : On the First Church,-Foxcroft, 1730; Emerson, 1812; N. L. Frothingham, 1830, 1850; Rufus Ellis, 1868, 1869, 1873. Second, or Old North, - Ware, 1821 ; Robbins, 1844, 1845, 1850, 1852, IS58. Third, or Old South, - Austin, 1803; Wisner, 1830; Armstrong, 1841; Blagden, 1870; and Manning; a history of the meeting-house by Burdett, 1877. New North, - Eliot, 1804, 1822; Parkman, 1814, 1839, 1843, 1849; Fuller, 1854. Manifesto, or Brattle Square, Church, - Thacher, 1800 ; Palfrey, 1825 ; Lothrop, 1851, 1871. King's Chapel, - Greenwood, IS33; Foote, 1873. Christ Church, - Eaton, IS20, 1824; Burroughs, 1874. First Baptist, -Neale, 1865. West Church, - Lowell, 1820, 1831, 1845; Bartol, 1867, IS77. Federal and Arlington Street, - Davis, 1824; Gannett, 1860, IS64 ; the lives of Channing and Gannett. Essex Street Church, - Sabine, IS23, and the memorial volume, 1860. Second Baptist, - Baldwin, 1824, 1841. Hollis Street, - Chaney,
1877. Trinity, - Brooks. South Congregational, -Hale. Twelfth Congregational,-Barrett, IS50; Pray, 1863. Park Street, - Semi-centennial, 1861. Bulfinch Street, -Alger, 1861. First Universalist, - Silloway, 1864. New South, - Ellis, 1865. Church of the Advent, - Bolles, IS60, &c. Coggeshall's discourse on the intro- duction of Methodism into Boston. Cf. articles in the Amer. Quarterly Register, vii., and Boston Almanac, 1843 and IS 54.
2 The Congregationalism of the last three hun- dred years as seen in its Literature, New York, ISSo. In an appendix there is a bibliography of the subject, giving 7,250 titles, arranged chronologically, - a most valuable contribution, showing most of the books one must consult on the early history of Boston.
3 It was first printed in Hartford in 1790, from a copy collated with the original but in- complete, as the third volume of the manuscript was not then known to be in existence, though
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INTRODUCTION.
best be supplemented by the convenient group of contemporary writings which the Rev. Alexander Young, D.D., gathered in his Chronicles of Mas- sachusetts Bay, 1623-36, and by a part of the documents which Hazard printed in his Historical Collections, and Hutchinson published in 1769 in his Collection of Original Papers,1 to fortify his history. Of the carly accounts by Wood, Lechford, Johnson, Josselyn, and others, and of such diaries as Hull's and Sewall's, mention is elsewhere made. Although some of these were in print when Hubbard wrote his History of New England, it was from the manuscript of Winthrop's Journal that this old historian filched pretty much all that was valuable in his narrative; and for the thirty years that he continued it beyond Winthrop's death, Dr. Palfrey, following Hutchinson's judgment, calls his book " good for nothing,"- a decision, perhaps, too denunciatory. Every historical student, however, recognizes the great importance of Hubbard for the period before Win- throp took up the story, and for which Hubbard must have had material at first hand .? Before the printing of Winthrop, Hubbard was looked upon as an original authority, but the recovery of his preface shows that he urged no claims but those of a compiler of "the original manuscripts of such as had the managing of those affairs," &c.
First among the books whose authors were indebted to Hubbard comes
Prince is supposed to have had the three volumes in his keeping in 1754, and to have used them in his Chronology. This third volume, covering the last four years of Winthrop's life, was dis- covered among the Prince manuscripts about 1815, and was shortly after surrendered to the Winthrop family, in whose custody the other volumes were. Savage used it, however, in preparing his valuable edition of the entire manuscript (cf. Mr. Hillard's " Memoir of Sav- age," in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, IS78, p. 135) ; but while the volumes were in his hands, the fire occurred in Court Street in 1825, in which the second volume was burned. The first and third volumes are now in the cabinet of the Historical Society. See their Proceedings, June, 1872. The original letters of Winthrop and others, which Mr. Savage printed in his ap- pendix, have recently become the property of the same Society. These and other letters and papers of the early Winthrops, brought to light of late years, and printed in the Society's Collec- tions, as noted elsewhere, were used in the Hon. R. C. Winthrop's Life and Letters of John H'in- throp, which, with the papers, have been the subject of numerous reviews : No. Amer. Rev., January, 1864, and January and October, 1867 ; VOL. I. C.
Atlantic Monthly, January, 1864, and February, 1867 ; Harper's Monthly, November, 1876; Black- wood's Magazine, August, 1867 ; Annual Register, 1867 ; Revue Britannique, &c. Additional refer- ences are given in Allibone's Dictionary.
I This was reprinted by the Prince Society in 1865, under the care of W. H. Whitmore and W. S. Appleton. Other papers of Hutchinson are printed in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. x., and third series, vol. i. The Proceedings, February, 1868, and January, 1874, of the Society contain ac- counts of the controversy which preceded the transfer of these papers to the State Archives. Cf. also, ibid. ii. 438.
2 It was not printed till IS1 5, and again in IS48, in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll. v. and vi. Savage, Winthrop, i. 357. The Historical Society has the rough draft and the corrected copy of Hubbard's man- uscript, and has recently printed some opening and concluding pages of it, which had long been missing, until procured from England by Dr. F. E. Oliver. It would seem that the Society's copy, when perfect, had been copied by Judge Peter Oliver, and it is from his transcript that the text is completed. Mass. Ilist. Soc. Proc., August, 1814, and February, 1378. Sibley, Har- vard Graduates, p. 56.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana : The first book of the New- English History, reporting the Design whereon, the Manner wherein, and the People whereby, the several colonics of New England were planted. This book is an anomaly, even in those times of anomalous books. It was pub- lished in London in 1702, in a huge folio, but the introduction bears date Oct. 16, 1697. While there is much that is valuable in its hetero- gencous contents, there is not a little that is absurd and irrelevant. It is largely made up of earlier separate publications of its author, and gives us the chief accounts we have of the lives of several of the Boston ministers, - Cotton, Wilson, Norton, Davenport, and others.
Next, there is a similar acknowledgment to Hubbard due from Thomas Prince, the pastor of the Old South, for the use he made of him in his Chronological History of New England? This work, as published, ex- tends only over the earliest years of Boston's history, not going beyond 1633, as the author, seeking a start, began with the Flood. In his pre- face he enumerates the mantiscripts he had used, and his paragraphs are credited to their sources.
1 It has since been reprinted in this country, in 1820 and in 1853. Mr. Deane has indicated the light thrown upon it by Mather's diary in Mass. Ilist. Soc. Proc., December, 1862. Cf. Mr. Winthrop's apt characterization of the book in his lecture of the Lowell Institute course, p. 21. Dunton, the London bookseller who came to Boston, says of Mather and his book: " Ilis library is very large and numerous, but had his books been fewer when he writ his history, 't would have pleased us better; " and again he speaks of Mather's library as " the glory of New England, if not of all America. 1 am sure it was the best sight that I had in Boston." Some part of this library, as is well known, is now in the possession of the American Anti- quarian Society at Worcester, and fragments of it even to this day occasionally find their way into public sales or dealer's catalogues. The Mather manuscripts in the library of that Soci- ety are described in their Proccedings, April 30, 1873, p. 22. The papers known as the Mather manuscripts, belonging to the Prince Library, have been fully calendared in the catalogue of that library, and the best part of them printed in 4 Mass. Ilist. Coll. viii. Some part of the diaries of Increase and Cotton Mather are pre- served in the llistorical Society's cabinet. - Proceedings, March, 1858, and April, 186S. Other portions are in the library of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. It does
not seem likely that they will be printed until men are better pleased with confessions of short- comings and with the display of self-debase- ment. Drake, in his introduction to Increase Mather's History of Philip's W'ar, speaks of the Mather library as the product of the care of four generations, and refers to some letters of Sam- uel Mather, D.D., the last of the four, which were a part of a MS. volume afterwards noted in the Brinley Catalogue, No. 1,329. Accepting the statements of these letters, it appears that Samuel Mather furnished Hutchinson "with most of the material of which his history was composed." His son says of the library, that it was " by far the most valuable part of the family property. In consisted of 7,000 or S,ooo volumes of the most curious and chosen authors, and a prodigious number of valuable manuscripts, which had been collected by my ancestors for five generations." A considerable portion, if not the whole, of Increase Mather's library is said to have been burned in the destruction of Charlestown in 1775.
2 The first volume was published in 1736, and a second volume was begun in 1755, of which only three serial numbers were issued before the author's death. The completed vol- ume is not a scarce book, but the subsequent parts had become so rare that it was decmed desirable to reprint them in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll. vii.
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INTRODUCTION.
Great value must confessedly be put upon Governor Hutchinson's IIis- tory of Massachusetts Bay. No one before his day, and perhaps no one since, has had reflected on him more credit as a local historian. His first volume was published in 1764, and was the subject of a correspondence, preserved to us,1 between the author and Dr. Stiles. His second volume was nearly ready for the press when his house was sacked by a mob, Aug. 26, 1765. He left the manuscript to its fate, as he bore off a daughter from their fury; thrown into the street, it was saved by the interposition of the Rev. Dr. Andrew Eliot, and was not so much injured but that the author readily repaired the loss : it was printed in 1767, bringing the story down to 1749. A third volume - detailing events preceding the Revolution with a surprising fairness when we consider the treatment he had received, and of course without sympathy for the patriot cause - was not published till long after its author's death (1780), when a grandson, at the instigation of some Boston gentlemen, gave it to the world in 1828.2
It is not worth while to enumerate here a long list of histories, all more or less general as regards our State and country, but all throwing light in considerable sections upon our own Boston history, and which the eager student of lier fameful annals will not neglect, - the histories of New England by Neal, Backus, Palfrey (hardly to be surpassed), and Elliott ; those of Massachusetts by Barry (the completest), Minot, and Bradford, not to mention other works. Of the foreign writers, who in days not recent have visited Boston and left accounts of the town, there are enumerations in Shurtleff's Description of Boston, and in Henry T. Tuckerman's America and her Commentators, with extracts from such narratives.
The Commonwealth has done its work nobly in causing the printing of those early records,3 to which the historian of Boston must constantly resort. In our State House, too, are tier upon tier of volumes, labelled " Massachusetts Archives," so arranged, indeed, in an attempted classifi- cation,4 that it is irksome and unsatisfactory to consult them. They are rich, however, to the patient inquirer in the evidences of Boston's power and significance in our colonial history. The city has, fortunately, estab-
I N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1872.
2 Charles Deane has traced the bibliography of Hutchinson's historical writings in the Hist. Mag. i. 97, or with revision in the Mass. Ilist. Soc. Proc., February, 1857. Hutchinson, in his preface, speaks of his efforts to save records and papers from destruction, and of their repeated loss by fire ; and in the preface of his second vol- ume he recounts his own losses by the riot.
8 Records of Mass. Bay, 1628-86, edited by N. B. Shurtleff, Boston, 1855-57, in six volumes. The transcription for the printer was made by David Pulsifer. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc., Lowell Lectures, p. 230.
4 Set forth in N. E. Ilist. and Geneal. Reg., 1848, p. 105. See Dr. Palfrey's condemnation of it in the preface to his New England, ili. p. vii.
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
lished of late years a Record Commission. Under the supervision of the gentlemen who have thus far constituted it, Messrs. William S. Appleton and William H. Whitmore, three reports have been printed. The first consists of various lists of early inhabitants, and the second, third, and fourth are mentioned below.
Of the records and papers in the office of the City Clerk, the following statement is furnished by SAMUEL F. MCCLEARY, Esq., the present clerk :
The Town Records, 1634 to 1821, in ten volumes. Also a copy on paper of vol. i. (1634-60), by Charles Shaw, made in 1814. Also a copy on parchment of vol. i., and fully indexed, made by S. B. Morse, Jr., in 1855. [This first volume is now in print in the Second Report of the Record Commissioners. ]
The City Records, from 1822 to 1867, in forty-five volumes ; from 1868 to 1880, in twenty-six volumes, two for each year.
The Original Papers forming the foundation of the Town and City Records, from 1634 to 1880. [Those from 1634 to 1734 (1716 missing) are bound in two vol- umes ; the rest are in files. ]
The Book of Possessions, being the original entries of the earliest recorded division of land within the town, written about 1643-44, in one volume. Also a copy made on parchment in 1855 by S. B. Morse, Jr., in one volume. [The volume is now in print in the Second Report of the Record Commissioners. Its probable date is discussed elsewhere in this history.]
Minutes of Meetings of the Selectmen, 1701-1822, inclusive, in twenty-four volumes. Selectmen's Memoranda, being the original entries from which the above " minutes " were made up, 1732 to 1821, in ninety-four memorandum books.
Record of names of the inhabitants of the town in 1695, in one volume. Records of strangers not inhabitants of the town ; also of bonds furnished by sundry persons as sureties that certain other persons therein named shall not become a charge to the town, 1679-1700, in one volume.
Permits to build with timber in the year 1707. Account books of the town and records of the committee on finance, 1739 to 1821. Records of committee on rebuilding after the great fire of 1760. Subscriptions for sufferers by the great fire of 1794. Lists of persons who arrived by sea during the years 1763-69. Memorandum book of selectmen for the year 1772.
List of donations to the town of Boston from all parts of the country, north and south, at the time of the enforcement of the Boston Port Bill in 1774. Records of the donation committee of the town in 1774. Lists of persons aided in the several wards by gifts of food or money, in eighteen memorandum books, for the years 1774-75. Cash-book of donation committee for 1774-75.
The shoemakers' book, 1774. Spinning and knitting-book, 1774. Brickmakers' book, 1774. Wood-account book, 1774. "Departing money " receipt-book, 1774. Petty ledger of donation committee, 1774.
1 There is a printed index of city documents, 1834-74, compiled by J. M. Bugbee.
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INTRODUCTION.
Records of Committee of Safety, after the evacuation of Boston by the British troops, 1776.
Then, of the records of adjacent towns, now a part of the metropolis by annexation, there are the following; and for the enumeration I am indebted to JOHN T. PRIEST, Esq., the Assistant City Clerk : -
Charlestown. - Town Records, 1629-1847, in fourteen volumes. Selectmen's Re- cords, 1843-47, in one volume ; previous to 1843 these records were kept in the Town Records. Mayor and Aldermen's Records, 1847-73, in ten volumes. Common Coun- cil Records, 1847-73, in seven volumes. [These and other records and papers have been rearranged by Mr. Henry H. Edes, acting under orders of the city of Charles- town, 1869 and 1870. See Third Report of the Record Commissioners, where the " Book of Possessions," 1638-1802, is printed in full. One of the other volumes in this series is " An estimate of the losses of the inhabitants by the burning of the town, June 17, 1775." The volumes so far arranged make sixty-nine in number, and the papers yet to be arranged, few of which are earlier than 1720, will fill fifty or sixty volumes more.]
Roxbury. - Town Records, 1648-1846, in six volumes [the records were burned in 1645, and of those remaining there are but few before 1652. Ellis, Roxbury, p. 7; Drake, Roxbury, p. 260]. Selectmen's Records, 1783-1846, in four volumes ; pre- vious to 1783 these records were kept in the Town Records. Mayor and Aldermen's Records, 1846-67, in seven volumes, 1652-54. [The " Ancient Transcript," so-called, is the Roxbury Book of Possessions, and was made about 1652-54. It has been copied for the Record Commissioners and will be printed].
West Roxbury. - Town Records, 1851-73. in two volumes. Selectmen's Records, 1851-73, in two volumes.
Dorchester .- Town Records, Jan. 16, 1633-1869, in twelve volumes. [These are the oldest original records in the office ; a portion of the first volume will consti- tute the Fourth Report of the Record Commissioners ]. Selectmen's Records, 1855-69, in two volumes ; previous to 1855 these records were kept in the Town Records.
Brighton. - Town Records, 1807-73, in five volumes ; the first volume contains the records of the " Third Precinct of Cambridge on the South side of Charles River," beginning in 1772. Selectmen's Records, 1807-73, in four volumes.
The following statement of the records in the keeping of the City Regis- trar has been kindly furnished from that office: -
Boston. - Births, Marriages, and Deaths (County Records), 1630-60, in one volume, with a transcription made in 1856: Births, 1644-1744 (complete, over 20,000), in one volume, with a transcription made in 1874: 1726-1814 (imperfect), in one volume ; 1800-49 (imperfect), in one volume ; 1849-79 (complete), in six- teen volumes. Marriages, 1651-1879, in twenty-seven volumes, with a gap from 1662 to 1689 ; marriages out of the city, but recorded here, in one volume. Deaths,
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
1 800-79 (complete from 1810), in twenty-one volumes ; of persons buried here but who died elsewhere, in one volume.
Charlestown. - Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1629-1843, in two volumes, including marriages out of town before 1800, and indexes : Births, 1843-73, in three volumes. Marriages, 1843-73, in three volumes. Deaths, 1843-73, in three volumes. Indexes, 1843-73, in three volumes.
Roxbury. - Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1632-1849, in three volumes : Births, 1843-68, in four volumes. Marriages, 1632-1868, in four volumes ; marriages out of the city but recorded here, in one volume. Deaths, 1633-1868, in three volumes.
Dorchester. - Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1631-1849, in four volumes : Births, 1850-69, in one volume. Marriages, 1850-69, in two volumes. Deaths, 1850-69, in one volume.
Brighton. - Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1771-1873, in one volume.
West Roxbury. - Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1851-73, in one volume.
Intentions of Marriages : Boston, 1707-1879, in thirty-five volumes ; Charles- town, 1725-1873, in five volumes, with an index volume ; Roxbury, 1785-1868, in two volumes ; Dorchester, 1798-1869, in two volumes.
The editor has endeavored in the map which accompanies this volume, called " Boston, Old and New," to depiet, as well as he could, the physical characteristics of the original peninsula, with the highways and footways of the young town for its first thirty years or more, and to indicate a few of the sites most interesting in its early history. His chief dependence has been the first volume of the "Boston Town Records " and the " Book of Possessions," both of which are now in print in the Second Report of the Record Commissioners. The earliest published maps of the town were not made till eighty or ninety years after the settlement, and after the original water-line had been much obscured by the "wharfing-out " process, which began, so far as the records indicate, in 1634. Ever after that date the town records show that frequent permission was given to wharf out along the front of riparian lots. Still, some help has been derived from Bonner's map of 1722, Burgiss's of 1728, and even from later published surveys. More than one attempt has been made to construct a map of Boston as it was about the middle of the seventeenth century, but none has heretofore been published. Mr. Uriel H. Crocker was led to the study of the subject from his professional calls as a conveyancer, and constructed a map of the lots in the town, which he explained by extracts from the records in an accompanying volume. These he very kindly placed at the editor's service, and they have been of frequent assistance. So has a similar plan on a much larger scale, which was made by Mr. George Lamb of Cambridge, and which is now in the Public Library. Of this latter plan a lithographed fac-simile of full size has been made,
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INTRODUCTION.
under the direction of the Trustees of the Library. If there are other plans existing based on the same sources, they have not come to the editor's knowledge, except a sketch of streets and estates, indorsed "William Appleton, 1866," a copy of which is in the Historical Society's Collec- tion. Any one working up this subject can but derive great assistance, in tracing the bounds of estates and placing the original habitations, from the " Gleaner " articles of the late Mr. N. I. Bowditch, which were pub- lished in the Boston Transcript in 1855-56, and which are to be republished in the near future. They are the key to the greater store of information preserved in Mr. Bowditch's manuscripts. Not a few hints and corrobora- tive statements which have also been of assistance were found in Snow, Drake, and Shurtleff.1
1 The modern map used as a background is a reduced section of a large one recently pub- lished by the Boston Map Company; but it has been found necessary to modify a little the "original shore-line," as indicated by its com- pilers, George F. Loring and Irwin C. Cromack, surveyors and draughtsmen in the City Sur-
veyor's office. The stones of the last previous authentic map of Boston were destroyed in the fire of 1872, and no satisfactory representation of the recent changes in the streets had been given till the issue of this map. The present re- duction of it has been made by the proprietor's kind permission.
NOTE TO THE KING'S MISSIVE.
SAMUEL SHATTOCK, Or SHATTUCK, of Salem, a Quaker, had been whipped in 1657 for interfering while another Quaker was gagged. He was subsequently banished under the law, which provided whipping for a first and second offence (branding was later included), and finally banishment on pain of death. The Quakers in London, whither Shattuck had gone. gaining the ear of the King, procured a royal order, addressed to the authorities here, commanding them to send to England for trial all Quakers detained for punishment. Shattuck was selected to take the mandate to Boston, and a ship was procured, of which another Quaker, Ralph Goldsmith, was commander. Upon their arrival in the harbor, Shattuck, with not a little of the dramatic instinct which directed many of the proceedings of the early Quakers, refused to tell to those who boarded the ship the object of the voyage. On the second day after their arrival, accompanied by Goldsmith, he proceeded through the town, knocked at Governor Endicott's door, and sent word to him that they bore a message from the King. The interview followed, as told in the poem ; but the Governor's determination was not reached till he had gone out and consulted with the Deputy-Governor, Bellingham. The release from jail was tardily ordered, and happily at last there were no Quakers in detention to be sent to England; and none were sent. The persecution had nearly run its course, and the royal mandate proved a happy escape from the dilemma of positive enactments in contravention of previous orders. It is sad to say, however, that though the beginning of the end was come, there were still some whippings at the cart's tail through the streets of Boston before the persecution was over.
The poet, with a fair license, has placed the interview in the Town House, - that picturesque structure, which stood where now the old State House stands, and which was then but newly built, partly with the bequest of Captain Robert Keayne, who had lived opposite on the southerly corner of State and Washington streets. The artist has delineated it according to the descriptions we have of it, - the building standing on pillars, while a market was kept beneath. The view down what is now State Street shows the tide, as was then the case, flowing up to Merchants Row.
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