USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 53
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1 [Cf. The Symmes Memorial. A Biographi- cal Sketch of the Rev. Zechariah Symmes, with a Genealogy. By John Adams Vinton, Boston, 1873. For family alliances, see Mr. Whitmore's chapter in the present volume. - ED.]
2 This monument was placed, not where he
is supposed to have been buried (somewhere about the foot of Town Hill, near the " Square "), but upon the highest ground on Burial Hill, which at the time of its erection commanded a view of the college. Cf. note in Sewall Papers, i. 447, and Budington's Hist. of First Church.
396
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
in 1631, and proceeded A.M. in 1635. He was admitted to the church in Charlestown Nov. 6, 1637. His widow, Ann, married the Rev. Thomas Allen. A monument to his memory was erected in our ancient burial ground by graduates of Harvard College. It was dedicated Sept. 26, 1828, when an address was delivered by Edward Everett, and prayer was offered by Presi- dent Walker, who was at that time pastor of the Second (Unitarian) Church here. The next pastor, the Rev. Thomas Allen, came to New England in 1639; was installed the same year as teacher of this church, and continued as such till 1651, when he was dismissed and returned to Eng- land, where he died Sept. 21, 1673, at the age of 65. During his ministry occurred the troubles with the Baptists, of which there were many in the town. Stephen Fosdick was among the number. He was fincd £20, and May 7, 1643, was excommunicated. But he was restored to mem- bership Feb. 28, 1663-64. Thomas Gould, who was pastor of the First thomas gould 1674 Baptist Church in Boston (which was organized in Charlestown), was likewise a member of this church and, like Fosdick, was excommunicated for his heresy July 30, 1665. Thomas Shepard (H. C. 1653) was ordained April 13, 1659, and died of small-pox Dec. 22, 1677, at the age of 43. He was a man of great learn- ing and influence. Hc preached the Annual Election Sermon in 1672, and after his death Thomas Shepard. President Oakes delivered a Latin oration and composed an elegy upon him. He was suc- ceeded by his son, Thomas Shepard (H. C. 1676), who was ordained May 5, 1680, when he received the Right Hand of fellowship from President Oakes. He was the last minister installed here before the abrogation of the colony charter, and died June 7, 1685, aged 27.1
John Greene was the only ruling elder which the Charlestown church ever had. He was prominent in civil as well as ecclesiastical affairs, being Recorder of the town for several years as well as one of the selectmen. His hand-
John Greene. Recorder. 1657 writing was superlatively beautiful, at a time when chirography was generally very bad. He dicd April 22, 1658, aged 65. Ordinations were celebrated with great hospitality, not to say hilarity ; and the customs of the colonial period permitted much in the way of gas- tronomy and conviviality which in these days would shock the sensibilities of even the " advanced " thinkers among us.
" Lecture day," which was observed for a century or more, was on Friday.
1 The records of the First Church, 1632- 1789, having been in part issued serially in the N. E Ilist, and Geneul. Reg., under the editing of Mr. James F. Hunnewell, were printed separately in ISSo, having in the appendix a paper, "An American Shrine," recounting
the associations of the Church, which had orig- inally appeared in the Register, in July, 1870. Dr. Budington printed an Historical Discourse on the First Church in 1852, besides his valuable History of the First Church, Charlestown, in Nine Lectures, with Notes, which appeared in 1845.
397
CHARLESTOWN IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
The schools were carly an object of solicitudc. As carly as June 3, 1636, " Mr. William Witherell was agreed with to keep a school for a twelve- month, to begin the 8th of the 6th month, and to have £40 for this year." In 1646 a rate was gathered for the support of the school; and another was levied in 1650 for the same purpose. Jan. 1, 1648-49, it was agreed that the selectmen " should see about and order a fit place for a school-house," to be built at the town's charge. May 1, 1650, a school-house and a watch tower were ordered to be built on Windmill Hill. Jan. 2, 1656-57 it was " agreed, that a house be made and set up upon the Windmill Hill, and the bell sufficiently hanged thercon, and a sun-dial there to be set up." This building was probably the one which Dr. Bartlett refers to as having been built for a Town House (and upon which were the town bell and clock), but subsequently was used as a school-house. It stood on the present site of the First Parish meeting-house.
In 1652 and 1657- and probably meanwhile- Mr. John Morley was the schoolmaster. He came from Brain- tree, and died Jan. 24, 1660-61, devising John Morley by his will estate at Lucas and at Ches- hunt Leyes in the county of Hertford,
Ezekiel Cheever England. Nov. 26, 1661, the famous Ezekiel Cheever took charge of the school at £30 per annum. In 1670 Cheever went to Boston, and we find record of a certificate 1 signed by Governor Leverett, that Benjamin Tompson2 (H. C. 1662) might accept the offer of Charlestown to take charge of its school, without giving offence to Boston, which had pre- viously asked him to be an usher in its grammar school. Mr. Tompson accordingly came to our service, upon which he entered in January, 1670- 71. He resigned Nov. 7, 1674, and was succeeded, on the eighteenth of the same month, by Mr. Samuel Phipps (H. C. 1671), who was Town Clerk for a Samle Phipps 1688 single year (June 1688 to June 1689), and subsequently Register of Deeds for Middlesex.3 In 1678 " the ministers complained in their sermons of the general decay of the schools, and an effort was made to restore them." March 10, 1678-79, a free school was established by the town voting £50 per annum for its maintenance " and a convenient house for a schoolmaster." March 30, 1682, a school-house was arranged for, which was to be twenty feet square and "8 feet stud within joints," with flattish roof and a turret for a
1 Printed in N'. E. Hist. and Gencal. Reg., xxxiii. 172, where also may be read an elaborate notice of Ezekiel Cheever, by Mr. John T. Hassam.
2 Cf. Kettell's Specimens of American Poetry, i. xxxvii., et seq. The same who acquired repu- tation as a poet. See the chapter on "Colonial Literature," in the present volume.
3 May 10, 1643, the colony was divided into four counties,- Suffolk, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Essex. Cambridge has always been the shire- town of Middlesex ; but the judicial courts were statedly held in Charlestown till the Revolution. Dr. Bartlett says the court-house was on the east side of the Square. [See Mr. Smith's chapter on " Boston and the Colony." -ED.]
398
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
bell; also a mantletree twelve feet long. This building is believed to have occupied the site of the Harvard school-house on Harvard Street. "July 17th. 1684, Mr. Samuel Miles did then enter on the keeping of the Free School of this Towne," - reads the record. He was to have $50 per annum for his services. Mr. Myles (for this was the proper orthography) had graduated at Harvard College only a few days before this (July 1). He soon went to England, where he took orders in the Establishment. Return- ing to Boston, he was inducted to the rectorship of King's Chapel, June 29, 1689, as the successor of Ratcliffe; and in 1693, during a second visit to England, he received a master's degree from the University of Oxford. He died in Boston March 4, 1728-29.1 Savage says he was a son of the Rev. John Myles, the Baptist minister of Rehoboth and Swansea, who came to New England from Swansea in Wales about 1662, and died Feb. 3, 1682-83.
The town evinced its interest in the college as early as 1644, when "it was agreed that one peck of wheat or 12 pence in money shall be paid by every family towards the maintenance of the college at Cambridge."
The fortification of the town was begun as early as 1630, when a fort was built on the top of Town Hill, "with palisadoes and flankers made out, which was performed at the direction of Mr. Graves, by all hands of men, women, and children, who wrought at digging and building till the work was done." This fort was maintained by the town at large expense, and was fostered by the Colony because of its importance. In 1670 (Sept. 25), it was ordered that the guns mounted on Town Hill should not be fired in future " unless the militia see just cause," because of endangering " Mr. Shepard's and the Town-House glass." The works were soon afterwards abandoned.
The Battery 2 on Sconce Point was built by order of the General Court in 1634. In 1631 the town voted to mount the six guns left on the beach by Governor Winthrop, on his removal to Boston, on Moulton's Hill; but the project was abandoned when it was discovered that the channel lay so far off as to be beyond range. The Battery was maintained till Septem- ber, 1774, when its guns were secretly removed in the night to a place of safety, by some of the young men in the town. In May, 1672, the town bought of Benjamin Moore "one sarsnet flag for the Battery, being the King's Colors. For which he is to be free as to his own proper estate from the town rate for five years ensuing, this year 1672 inclusive. The country, county, and church rates are not included in the town rate above named."
In 1637 Charlestown furnished sixteen men for the Pequot war, twelve of whom, under Sergeant Abraham Palmer, rendered efficient service in Captain Mason's command. And in 1675 fifteen men were impressed from
1 For many interesting particulars concern- ing him see the Andros Tracts, published by the Prince Society, 1868-74, ii. 25, 32, 39, 72, and the forthcoming History of King's Chapel,
by the present minister, the Rev. Henry Wilder Foote.
2 Gage's Wharf, No. 85 Water Street, marks the site at the present day.
399
CHARLESTOWN IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
Charlestown for service in Philip's war. In 1676-77 "The Irish Donation," 1 in aid of the sufferers by the late Indian war, was received by the colonies. The proportion of this town was £15: 6s. distributed among twenty-nine families, consisting of one hundred and two persons.
Besides the train-band, which was divided March 16, 1680-81, into two com- panies, under the command of Captain Laurence Hammond and Captain Rich- ard Sprague, Charles- town boasted, about 1649, of a "very gallant horse troop,"-the only one in 1675
the colony. On Friday of each week there was a general " exercise " of the train-band, "at a con- Richard Sprague 694 venient place about the In- dian wigwams," which began one hour after noon. This was in 1631. Major-General Robert Sedgwick, a friend of Cromwell's, and the ancestor of a distinguished family, and Captain Francis Norton, also a man of Loft Sedgwickg military ability, commanded the train-band at different times during the first twenty years.
frances Norton
Sedgwick was one of the most distinguished men ever resident here. His house occu- pied a site in the Square, near the Bunker- Hill Bank.
Both Sedgwick and Norton were prosperous merchants. Deputy-Gover- nor Francis Willoughby 2 was another. His wharves were upon either side of the ferry to Boston; and his ship-yard was where the Fitchburg freight-station now stands. Sedgwick's wharves were near the Town Dock. The Hon- orable Richard Russell, the progenitor of a very distinguished family Richard Russell: Story: long resident here, was also much en- gaged in commerce, which, with agri- culture, chiefly engaged the energies of our people. The trades, too, were well represented. Mr. Frothingham says: "In 1640 there were in town tailors, coopers, rope-makers, glaziers, tile-makers, anchor-smiths, collar- makers, charcoal-burners, joiners, wheelwrights, blacksmiths; there was a brew-house, a salt-pan, a potter's kiln, a saw-pit, a wind-mill, a water-mill near Spot Pond, and (certainly in 1645) the old tide-mill at the Middlesex canal landing." In 1636 five hundred acres of land were " reserved to further a flax trade," if such should be found useful; but I find no men- tion of the land ever having been improved for this purpose.
1 The best account of " The Irish Donation," written by Mr. Charles Deane, was published in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., ii. 245, 398.
2 Cf. N. E. Hist. and Gencal. Reg., xxx. 67 et seq., and xxxiv. 301, for notices of the Wil- loughby family.
400
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Captain Edward Johnson, an carly inhabitant of Charlestown, and the father of Woburn, thus describes this town in his curious Wonder-working Providence, about 1650: "It hath a large market-place near the water side built round with houses, comely and fair, forth of which there issues two streets orderly built with some very fair houses, beautified with pleasant gardens and orchards. The whole town consists in its extent of about 150 dwelling-houses. Their meeting-house for Sabbath assembly stands in the market-place, very comely built and large. The officers of this church arc, at this day, one pastor and one teacher, one ruling elder and three deacons. The number of souls are about 160. . . . Their corn-land in tillage in this town is about 1,200 acres." The same writer adds: "In the depth of winter, 1650," a "most terrible fire . . . by a violent wind blown " about consumed "the fairest houses in the town," notwithstanding the stringent measures regulating the sweeping of chimneys which were adopted by the town at a very carly date.
The colony was prosperous, and so was the town. The more wealthy inhabitants kept one or more slaves, and were enjoying the luxuries as well as the comforts of life at the time of the vacating of the Charter. Con- siderable wealth had been accumulated, during half a century, by thrift and forcign commerce.1
The small-pox raged through the winter of 1677-78 and many deaths from it are recorded,-among them that of the Rev. Thomas Shepard. The disease was introduced from English ships. It had previously prevailed to an alarming extent during the winter of 1633-34 ; but at that time it attacked only the Indians.
As carly as 1634 it was ordered "that none be permitted to sit down and dwell in this town without consent of the town first obtained." This law was far from being a dead letter. Even hospitality was an expensive vir- tue; for the town and colony laws alike prohibited the entertainment of strangers except upon stated conditions ; and guests could not be enter- tained more than one week, except by permission of the selectmen, without a fine being incurred by their hosts.
Henry JK. Edes
1 A description of the town in 1686 is given in John Dunton's Letters from New England, pp 149-153, published by the Prince Society.
CHAPTER XII.
ROXBURY IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
BY FRANCIS S. DRAKE.
T' HE settlement of Roxbury, coeval with, if not anterior to, that of the Boston peninsula, was made by some of Winthrop's company, under the lead of William Pynchon, as early as the first week in July, 1630; its first birth-record, that of John, son of Griffin Craft, bearing date July 10 of that year. Untoward circumstances compelled that company "to plant dispersedly," says one of their number, at Charlestown, Boston, Medford, Watertown, Dorchester, and Lynn ; “ others of us two miles from Boston, at a place we named Rocksbury." Mention of the town first oceurs in the records of the third Court of Assistants, held Sept. 28, 1630, as one of the plantations on which a part of the general tax of $50 was levied, and that day has therefore been fixed upon as the official date of its settlement. Rox- bury was the sixth town incorporated in Massachusetts, and until transferred to Norfolk County, June 20, 1793, constituted a part of the County of Suffolk.
Its Dorchester boundary was settled in 1632 ; that between Roxbury and Boston in 1636, when it was also ordered by the Court, "that all the rest of the ground between Dorchester bounds and Boston bounds shall belong to the town of Roxbury easterly of Charles River, except the property of the aforesaid towns which they have purchased of particular persons; Roxbury not to extend above eight miles in length from their meeting-house." Re- specting the Dedham boundary there was much controversy, and it was not finally adjusted till 1697. For a period of two hundred and twenty years the limits of Roxbury remained essentially the same. It extended eight miles from east to west, and two from north to south, and contained an arca of 10,686 aeres. On the east was Boston, partly separated from her by a shallow bay ; Muddy River (now Brookline) and Newton made her northern boundary ; Dedham lay on the west, and Dorchester on the south.
The first comers settled chiefly in the easterly part of the town next to Boston, with which it was connected by a narrow strip of land a mile in length, called the "Neck,"-the only avenue of communication between Boston and the main-land for more than a century and a half. From the town street, subsequently known as Roxbury Street. the settlers gradually VOL. I. - 51.
402
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
extended themselves in various directions towards the neighboring towns. Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury, the latter called Spring Street as early as 1690, were settled later.
The natural surface of Roxbury is uneven and rocky: hence its name, which, in the carly records, is usually spelled Rocksbury or Rocksborough. Of its numerous elevations the highest are Muddy-Pond Hill, now called Mount Bellevue, in the west, and Parker Hill in the cast. The soil is rich and productive. One of its principal features is the conglomerate or pud- ding-stone with which it abounds.1 Originally well wooded, the town suffered from the presence of the besicging army during the winter of 1775-76, who left little that could be used for fuel, sparing not even the orchards. Water was plenty. Besides Muddy River, Stony, Smelt, and Dorchester brooks, Jamaica, Muddy, and other smaller ponds, there were also numerous springs. Stony Brook, the most considerable of its streams, took its rise in Muddy Pond, near Dedham. Though now insignificant, its proportions were such in 1825 that it was proposed at that time as the source of sufficient water- supply for Boston.2 Of Smelt Brook, not now in existence, John Dane, who was in Roxbury in 1638, says: "Weary and thurstey I came by a spring in Roxbury street, and went to it and drank again and again manie times, and I never drank wine in my life that more refresht me, nor was more pleasant to me as I then absolutely thout." Jamaica Pond, a beautiful sheet of water in Jamaica Plain, covers an area of nearly 70 acres, with a depth in some places of from 60 to 70 feet, and is a principal source of the ice-supply of Boston.
Although an occasional arrowhead or other relic has been uncarthed, no distinct traces of aboriginal occupation have ever been observed in Roxbury, not even an Indian name remaining to mark the locality of mountain, stream- let, pond, or other natural feature of the landscape. The English settlers found their nearest Indian neighbors at some distance from their borders, inhabiting two small villages on the Neponset and on the Charles, whose waters supplied them with fish. Vagrant Indians infested the settlement, and were occasionally employed as servants, but these aboriginal tramps were oftener driven from the town by the constable. The chief sachem of the territory embracing Roxbury was Chickatabut, whose grandson, Charles Josiah (Wampatuck), the last of his race, in 1686 deeded 3 the native right to the territory of Roxbury to its agents, Joseph Dudley and William Stoughton, for £10. This purchase, as well as that of Dorchester, Medfield, and other places at this time, shows the anxiety of the land-owners to strengthen their titles, which had been placed in jeopardy by the abrogation of the Colonial charter. The slight esteem in which Indian signatures to land-titles were held is scen in the contemptuous remark of Governor Andros, that he re- garded them as " of no more worth than the scratch of a bear's paw." The
1 [The reader cannot fail to remember Dr. Holmes's " Dorchester Giant " and his pudding, Hung over the Roxbury Ilills, -
" The suet is hard as a marrow-bone,
And every plum is turned to a stone, But there the puddings lie." - ED.]
2 [ It will be noted as a considerable stream in a " View of the country towards Dorchester," given in the Revolutionary period of this work. - En.|
3 [A similar deed of the Boston peninsula is mentioned by Dr. Ellis in his chapter on the " Indians of Eastern Massachusetts " - ED.]
403
ROXBURY IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
opportune revolution of 1688, and the consequent overthrow of Andros, happily averted what might have been a serious conflict.
In Wood's New England's Prospect, the earliest topographical account of the Massachusetts colony, published in 1634, is this first printed description of Roxbury : -
" A mile from this town [Dorchester] lieth Roxberry which is a faire and handsome countrey town, the inhabitants of it being all very rich. This town lieth upon the maine so that it is well wooded and watered, having a cleare and fresh brooke running through the towne ; up which, although there come no alewives, yet there is great store of smelts, and therefore it is called Smelt Brooke. A quarter of a mile to the north side of the town is another river called Stony river upon which is built a water milne. Here is good ground for corne and meadow for cattle. Up westward from the town it is something rocky, whence it hath the name of Roxberry ; the inhabitants have faire houses, store of cattle, impaled corne fields and fruitful gardens. Here is no harbor for ships because the town is seated in the bottom of a shallow bay which is made by the necke of land on which Boston is built, so that they can transport all their goods from the ships in boats from Boston, which is the nearest harbor."
Seventeen years later Edward Johnson tells us Roxbury was " filled with a very laborious people, whose labors the Lord hath blessed, that in the room of dismall swampes and tearing bushes they have very goodly fruit trees, fruitful fields and gardens, their heard of cows, oxen and other young cattell of that kind about 350, and dwelling houses neere upon 120. Their streets are large and some fayre houses yet they have built their house for church assembly destitute and unbeautified with other buildings. The Church of Christ here is increased to about 120 persons." According to the Record of " Houses and Lands in Roxbury," there were, in 1654, between seventy and eighty homesteads, the owners of lands numbering ninety. The population was about seven hundred souls.
Generally speaking we find the emigrants to New England originating in various parts of Old England and coming together here, for the most part, strangers to one another. The Roxbury pioneers were less heterogeneous, many of them belonging in Nazing, a rural village in Essex county, Eng- land, situated on the River Lee, about twenty miles from London, and forming the northwest corner of Waltham Half-hundred. £ Its old parish church, which may be regarded as the parent of the Roxbury church, stands on the side of a hill overlooking parts of Hertfordshire and Middlesex. Its parish records contain the familiar names of Eliot, Curtis, Graves, Heath, Payson, Peacock, and Ruggles. Some of the Roxbury men were from London and vicinity, a few were from the West of England. They were people of sub- stance, many of them farmers, skilled also in some useful handicraft, none, it is said, being " of the poorer sort." They struck root in the soil imme- diately, and were enterprising, industrious, and frugal. Among them are found names still borne in Roxbury by their descendants, such as Brewer, Crafts, Curtis, Dudley, Gore, Heath, Payson, Seaver, Weld, and Williams. Outside of Boston no New England town can show such a roll of distin- guished names as have illustrated the annals of Roxbury.
404
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
The first Nazing pilgrims came over in the "Lion," William Peirce, master, in November, 1631, after a passage of ten weeks. In her came John Eliot, with William Curtis and Sarah his wife ( Eliot's sister), and their children, in company with the wife of Governor Winthrop. William Heath, with his family, and other Nazing worthies came in the year following ; John Graves, with his wife and five children, came in 1633; and in 1635 a large number came over in the "Hopewell," stimulated by the great movement in England among the friends of religious liberty, which in that year sent 3,000 persons to New England.
william Pynchon
William Pynchon,1 the principal founder of the church and town, "a gentleman of learning and religion," was one of the Assistants or magistrates who came over with Winthrop. In 1636 he led a party
1 [This likeness follows the steel engraving of Pynchon's portrait, given with a memoir in the N. E. Hist. and Gencal. Reg., October, 1859. Cf. Drake's Town of Roxbury, pp. 12, 298. - ED.]
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