USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 68
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 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76
524
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
entrance, and that not very broad ; there scarce being roome for three Ships to come in board-and-board at a time, but being once within there is roome for the Anchorage of 500 Ships." I
Of the general shape and size of the peninsula we have conflicting accounts. Wood calls it "in form almost square," while Johnson says " the forme of this Town is like a heart," - comparisons which, as we shall see, were both rather fanciful and wide of the mark. As to its dimensions, the most reliable estimates fix its original area in 1630 at somewhat less than one thousand, and probably about seven hundred, acres, - an area now very much increased by the encroachments upon the sea, made mostly during the present century.
Chief among the natural features of " that plain neck " which Governor Winthrop so wisely chose, were its hills and coves. And of these it may be said the coves of Boston have swallowed up its hills, and this by the law of natural growth and necessity; and however much the latter may once have added to the beauty and picturesqueness of the town, we can scarcely regret their loss when we consider how much they have con- tributed to its material splendor and prosperity. The hills were named at first from convenience or association.
"The building of the Fort," says Wheildon, in his admirable monograph upon Beacon Hill,2 " furnished a name for one of them, the Windmill for a time the name for another, and the central hill, with its three little hills, received the name of Tra- mount, which it retained until it was used as a look-out, - a place of observation and watching, -when it was called Sentry Hill. After the erection of the beacon in 1635 it received the name of Beacon Hill, and lost the name of Tra-mount, or Tremount, which it had conferred upon the town. So that we have had for this hill the names of Sentry, Tra-mount, and Beacon ; and for the settlement those of Shawmut, Tra- mountaine, and Boston."
While Copp's and Fort Hills were single elevations of land standing apart, Beacon Hill embraced the high ridge of land which extended through the centre of the peninsula, from the head of Hanover Street south-west to the River Charles. "It was conspicuous," says Wheildon, "by its height and commanding prospect, and was made more so by its three peculiar summits, all of which - whatever regrets there may be concerning them - have been made so available in the enlargement and improvement of the city."
1 [Wood's idea of the configuration of the harbor and the adjacent coasts is seen in the cu- rious map which appeared in his New England's Prospect, with the title : The South part of New England as it is Planted this yeare, 1634. It is the oldest map known giving any, however inexact, detail of the geography of the vicinity of Boston. A portion of this map is given herewith, in fac- simile, from a copy of the book owned by Mr. Charles Deane. It has been given in fac-simile
in Young's Chronicles of Mass., p. 389, and in Palfrey's New England, i. 360. It was also re- produced in fac-simile by William B. Fowle in IS46. Frothingham, in his History of Charles- town, p. 63, gives a section showing Boston Harbor. - ED.]
2 [Sentry or Beacon Hill, by W. W. Wheil- don, Boston, 1877, - published under the aus- pices of the Bunker-1Iill Monument Association. -ED.]
Lifsaconum Sagamore
pemacooke, LASagamore Maltacomen
Amafkeig
pemtuckett &
qualunque R)
the boreshead 0
Tlands of Shoulds
I gowam
MerimoEk Riuer
Niftick pond
John
Sagamore
Head to Spott pona
north R
ponds
ames
PASagains
marble
C:Am
TIMI Harbor
Harbor
3
Naliant poynt
Charles
pullim poynt
Boston'
Massachusetts Bayo
Roxbury
Stony &R
Dorchestr
Nantafhet
Conehufsett
Charles &
Siticale
Cap Codd
Grecnes Harbor
42
plymouth
Ner Plymouth Baye
Harroganfetts R
Wests harbor
The great Baye
ford
Nahinn kck
Cap. Aım
Maketaquid
waterCrowne
* New town Lo wimmmet
Miudav& A toane
Lor Desre gle
7 Allerton poynt
apon/ett
Mount wollaston &
Menataquid
River
"Chicatabat. Sagamor
to weffagufcus
WILLIAM WOOD'S MAP, 1634
Wondfanom
Horne
525
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
Of these three " little rising hills" the casternmost was called Cotton Hill, from the Rev. John Cotton, who once lived upon its slope, - a name which we may be pardoned for regretting was afterwards changed to Pemberton. Its ancient summit, which is fixed by Drake at the southerly termination of Pemberton Square, rose eighty feet above the pavement of to-day. Beacon Hill, the middle peak, which has been aptly likened to a sugar-loaf, and once soared to a similar height above its present level, or about one hundred and thirty-cight feet above the sea, was formerly flat upon the top "for the space of six rods at least." This plainly appears upon our earliest known plan of the town, published by Bonner in 1722, a section of which is given herewith.
The third or westernmost peak was called at different times West Hill, Copley's Hill, Mount Vernon, and other names less generally known. This hill, although wisely chosen by Blackstone for his residence, seems afterwards to have been of less interest and importance than the others. It was occupied by the British in 1775, and has, in the march of events, been dug down and thrown into Charles River to extend the city in that direction.
THE TRAMOUNT.1
The Tramount has been compared, not inaptly, to the head and shoulders of a man ; and this left shoulder, as we face the north, is said to have risen to its highest point somewhere between Mount Vernon and Pinckney streets ; and we are told that " on the top directly opposite Charles Street mecting-house there was a boiling spring open in three places, at a height of not less than eighty feet above the water."
Of Copp's Hill and the many associations clustering about it we have abundant records. Less high than Beacon Hill, less regular in shape than Fort Hill, it had an cqual value in the general outline and configuration of the town. Rising precipitously from the water on the north-cast to a height of fifty feet, it swept away in a long gentle slope toward the south and west, leaving its summit almost level. Here was set up the first windmill used in the colony, which "was brought down from Watertown in August, 1632, because it would not grind there except with a westerly wind;" hence the
1 [This is the outline of the three summits of the central ridge of the peninsula as given by Snow, the point of view being the Charlestown peninsula. History of Boston, pp. 46, 112. He calls it as "exact a representation as we have been able to obtain," but it is probably drawn
from old descriptions. Between the two east- erly summits, intersected or bounded by Somer- set and Bulfinch streets, was a tract called " Valley Acre," which stretched down the hill towards Howard Street. Cf. W. H. Whitmore in Sewall Papers, i. 63. - ED.]
526
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
ground obtained the name of Windmill Hill.1 It is said also to have been called Snow Hill before it received its present name of Copp's Hill. Of William Copp, from whom its name came, we read that he was a worthy
RopeWalk
DavissL
Beacon St
Burying Place
Treamount Sr
Common St
EBE
School
Prison
Winter St.
RAWSon'S L
School St
Church Saume
Governowsty
OLÒ
con
Cornhill
SECTION OF BONNER'S MAP, 1722.2
1 [The second windmill was erected the next year (1633) in Roxbury, by Richard Dummer, on Stoney Brook, where a dam existed till within a few years, not far from the Roxbury Station, on the Providence Railroad; or it is possible a mill erected this same year at Neponset was the second within the present municipal limits. - ED.]
2 [In Burgiss's map, made a few years later,
in 1728, and reproduced in full in Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, the hill is given a rounder outline. The late Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch, who remembered the hill before it was cut down, spoke of it as of "a very peculiar conical shape, . . . a grassy hemisphere," so steep that the boys could with difficulty mount the perfectly regular curve of its side. Accounts of its cutting down will be given in a later volume. - ED.]
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
527
Derne St.
Reservoir
Temple St.
Hancock Sc.
Site of
Monument
Mt. Vernon St.
State House
L
Site of hancock House
Beacon St.
THE SUMMIT OF BEACON HILL.1
1 [This cut shows, in the dotted line, the bounds of the original reservation of six rods square made by the town on its summit, the bea- con occupying the portion later held by the monu- ment. Mr. N. I. Bowditch traced the first grant of land about this reservation in his "Gleaner " articles, published in the Boston Evening Tran- script, in 1855, and is quoted in Wheildon, p. 90, and in Sumner's East Boston, p. 194. Robert Turner, a shoemaker, who is found in the colony as early as 1637, seems to have grad- ually extended his pasture up the slopes of the hill, so that he owned eight acres near the sum- mit at his death, his land stretching westerly
nearly to Hancock Street. The oldest deed from the town to him bears date 1670. His son John sold to Samuel Shrimpton, in 1673, a gore of what is now the State-House lot, bounded east on the way leading from the Training-field (Common) to the Sentry Hill ; and this way, then thirty feet wide, makes the beginning of that part of the present Mount Vernon Street, which on the modern maps bends at a right angle and joins Beacon Street. John Turner dying in 1681, his exec- utors sold his land to the same Shrimpton, who thus acquired "all Beacon Ilill." See Introduction to Vol. II. - ED.]
528
THE MEMORIAL IHISTORY OF BOSTON.
shoemaker, and an elder in Dr. Mather's church. His .title to the neigh- boring lot is sufficiently shown in the following extract from the town- records : -
"The possessions of William Copp within the limits of Boston : One house and lott of halfe an acre in the Mill-field, bounded with Thomas Buttolph south-east : John Button north-east : a marsh on the south-west : and the river on the north-west." 1
The third and last hill, of which no trace is now left, once formed, to the stranger sailing up the harbor, perhaps the most prominent feature of the town; placed as it was in the very foreground, near the shore, and rising to a height of eighty fect above the level of the sca. First called Corn Hill from having been one of the carly planting grounds of the col- onists, it afterwards received the name of Fort Hill from the defensive works built upon it about May 24, 1632. Like Copp's Hill it was rough and steep on its northerly and easterly sides, but declined in an casy slope towards the south and west. The approaches to it are shown on the map in this volumc.
WEST HILL FROM BEACON HILL, 1775.2
Besides these there was formerly a small hill in the marshes at the bottom of the Common, of which we find frequent mention in the early records under the name of Fox Hill, which, however, like its loftier brethren, long ago fell an inevitable prey to the ravenous maw of the sea, and was dug down and flung into the marslı.3
1 [This puts his lot just south-east of where Charles-River bridge bends into Charlestown Street. See the note on Copp's family in Sewall Papers, ii. 408. - ED.]
2 [This cut follows a sketch made by Lieu- tenant Williams, of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, during the siege of Boston, -- a date nearly one hundred and fifty years indeed after the settle- ment ; but during that interval probably nothing had been done by man to change the outline of the eminence. Beyond is seen the Back Bay and
the mouth of the Charles. The scarped char- acter of the northern side of the hill is shown distinctly. Towards the water it sloped sharply to a bluff, at the foot of which among boulders the waves washed, even within the memory of a generation but just gone. - ED.]
3 [Leonard Buttall burned lime upon it in the early days, and in 1649 Thomas Painter was allowed "to erect a milne " there. Rec- ord Commissioners' Second Report, 56, 59, 66, 97 .- ED.]
529
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
Only inferior in topographical value to its hills were the coves of Boston. These deep inlets, worn by the sea wherever the yielding nature of the soil permitted, were, in 1630, fast changing the character of the place; and as the waves at high tide poured over the lowlands lying between Copp's Hill and the Tramount, and washed to a thinner and thinner thread its frail hold upon the continent, the peninsula already began to take on the semblance of two islands.1 At this point man steps in to arrest the progress of natural forces; modern enterprise has achieved what the vain words of the old Danish king were impotent to effect. The course of the sea has not only been stayed, but turned back upon itself; and with immense effect. Noth- ing has so changed the outward aspect of Boston as filling up its coves; no longer like two islands, no longer like a peninsula, Boston appears to-day firmly welded to the main land as part and parcel of the continent.
Of these coves the most casterly, and from its position the most impor- tant, was the Town Cove; stretching from a point near the base of Copp's Hill on the north to Fort Hill on the south, it swept inward almost to the foot of Brattle Street. The shape of this inward sweep, which was first known as Bendall's Dock, and then as Town Dock, is shown in the map in the present volume.
The North Cove or Mill Pond, as it was afterwards called, once covered a large part of the area enclosed between Copp's and the point of upland that extended north-west from Beacon Hill, and is now one of the most busy and thriving districts of the North End. Divided from the sea on the north-west by a narrow causeway, - said to have been first used by the In- dians as a pathway across the marsh, - the course of which may in part still be traced in the general direction of Causeway Street, its southerly margin ran some distance inside of Merrimac Street ; on the west it followed a little outside the line of the lower part of Leverett Street, and on the east it swept somewhat beyond the line of Salem and Prince streets. When the Second Baptist Church was located in Baldwin Place, it stood in part over the water, and candidates for baptism are said to have been immersed at the rear of the church. "The station house of the Boston and Maine Railway," says Drake, " stands in the midst of this Mill Pond; while the Lowell, Eastern, and Fitchburg occupy sites beyond the causeway rescued from the sea." Altogether the cove occupied an area a little larger than the Common.
The third or South Cove, which, starting from Windmill Point very nearly at the junction of Federal, Cove, and East streets, swept away towards the South-Boston bridge and washed the eastern sands of the Neck, was of less interest and importance than the others, and has been more slowly filled up.
Besides these large coves, there were numerous smaller inlets or creeks that added greatly to the broken and ragged appearance which the shore-
1 [It may be inferred from an order in the Town Records, granting permission to Nathaniel Woodward to lay "a water channell of timber in one of the causewayes towards Rocksbury,"
that so late as 1644 it was thought to be easier to keep a channel for the water which some- times washed over the Neck, than to dyke it out. -- ED.]
VOL. I .- 67.
530
THIE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
line originally presented. One large creek wound inward from Liberty Square along Water Street nearly to the Spring-gate. A branch extended across Congress Street and beyond Franklin. An aged inhabitant, quoted by Shaw, had seen a canoe sail at different times over the spot which now makes the corner of Congress and Water streets, while the same witness " remembers having heard Dr. Chauncy say that he had taken smelts " at the head of the other creek in Federal Street.
These various inlets left, of course, corresponding headlands, several of which received names and were known as landmarks. We read of Blaxton's (or Blackstone's) Point at the West End, situated near West Cedar Street, between Pinckney and Mount Vernon, said to have been near the residence and not far from the famous spring of William Blackstone; Barton's Point on the north-west, near Craigie Bridge, named from James Barton, a well- known rope-maker in his time, whose name is preserved in Barton Street ; Hudson's Point, where Winthrop landed, and where Anne Pollard leapcd ashore, situated at the extreme north-cast end and named for Francis Hud- son, the Charlestown ferryman, but originally called "Ye Mylne Point" in the grant of the Ferry to Thomas Marshall in 1635 ; Merry's Point, near the Winnisimmet ferry, named for Walter Merry, a neighboring shipwright ; Fort Point, near Fort Hill, or the present Rowe's Wharf, and Windmill Point, before mentioned.1
Not less important than all these coves and hills and headlands was that long narrow strip of land properly called " The Neck," which, begin- ning to narrow just south of Eliot Street, stretched away like a ribbon of varying width to the main land. Vastly different, however, to its present aspect was its condition in those early days when the road which trav- ersed it was well-nigh impassable in the spring, when the horses waded knee-deep in water at full tides, when the only timber upon the whole peninsula grew upon the Neck, and the marshes on either hand were the favorite hunting-ground of the sportsman.
With such great unevenness of surface, with a coast line so abounding in irregularities, with a territory so narrow and circumscribed, it must be confessed that Boston in 1630 presented to the statesman founding a colony destined in time to extend its influence over a continent, or even to the weary band of emigrants seeking a refuge and a home, a place which to our modern eyes seems rich chiefly in possibilities.
Although Blackstone judiciously built his little cabin upon the westerly declivity of Beacon Hill, Winthrop and his associates pitched their tem- porary tents, and afterwards built their log-huts and houses, on the eastern side of the peninsula around what was called afterwards the Town Cove. "It is difficult," says Shaw, "to assign a reason for this, but the first paragraph in the town records establishes the fact that in 1634 this was the chief landing-place.'"
1 [The reader will find a more extended account of these natural landmarks in Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, ch. vii. - ED.]
531
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
It was the chief landing-place, it may be said, evidently because it was the most convenient; while its proximity to the fountain of delicious water in Spring Lane, together with its position, - hedged about as it was by the three hills, and commanding the approach from the harbor, - would seem to afford reason enough for Winthrop's choice.
The first houses were necessarily of the rudest description, and they seem to have been scattered hither and thither according to individual need or fancy. The early streets, too, obedient to the same law of con- venience, naturally followed the curves of the hills, winding about their bases by the shortest routes, and crossing their slopes at the casiest angles.
To the pioneer upon the western prairie it is comparatively easy to lay out his prospective city in squares and streets of unvarying size and shape, and oftentimes, be it said, of wearying sameness; to the colonist of 1630 upon this rugged promontory of New England it was a different matter. Without the power or leisure to surmount the natural obstacles of his new home, he was contented to adapt himself to them. Thus the narrow, winding streets, with their curious twists and turns, the crooked alleys and short-cuts by which he drove his cows to pasture up among the blueberry bushes of Beacon Hill, or carried his grist to the windmill over upon Copp's stceps, or went to draw his water at the spring-gate, or took his sober Sunday way to the first rude little church, - these paths and highways, worn by his feet and established for his convenience, remain after two centuries and a half substantially unchanged, endeared to his posterity by priceless associations.
And so the town, growing at first after no plan and with no thought of proportion, but as directed and shaped by the actual needs of the inhabi- tants, became a not unfitting exponent of their lives, -the rough outward garb as it were of their hardy young civilization. Convenience was the first consideration ; and we accordingly find that starting from the castern cove the settlement gradually moved north and south, following the ins and outs of the sea-banks, and clinging so closely to the shore-line that for many years there was no building upon the sides of the hills. In all early views of the town, even down to a time long subsequent to the colonial period, this is apparent; and the houses are seen crowded thickly along the water's edge, while Beacon Hill rises bare and blank in the background.
To prove, however, that the early settlers were not without any care or consideration for the looks of their new home, we find that at a meeting of the overseers held in 1635 it was ordered : 1-
"That from this day there shall noe house at all be built in this towne neere unto any of the streetes or laynes therein but with the advise and consent of the overseers of the towne's occasions for the avoyding of disorderly building to the inconvenience of streets and laynes, and for the more comely and Commodious ordering of them,
1 See also other orders to the like effect, made at the same and subsequent meetings for the year 1636.
532
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
upon the forfeyture, for every house built Contrarie to this order, of such sume as the ouerseers shall see fitting." At a subsequent meeting in the same month it was further provided : " Item : that John Gallop shall remove his payles at his yard's end within fourteen days, and to range them even with the corner of his house for the preserving of the way upon the sea-banke."
Three public structures of a peculiar character, placed respectively upon each of the three hills, early combined to give character and variety to the little settlement. These were the fort, the windmill, and the beacon; all of which gave names more or less enduring to the sites they occupied. The fort placed upon Cornhill and begun May 24, 1632, was a joint work, - Charlestown, Roxbury, and Dorchester taking part in its construction, each town working a day in turn. The windmill, as before stated, was brought down from Watertown and set up at the North End, where it will be safe to assume it soon found something other than "westerly winds " to set its huge clumsy wings whirling; while the origin of the beacon may be found in the following resolution of the Court of Assistants dated March 4, 1634 :
" It is ordered that there shalbe forth with a beacon sett on the Centry hill at Boston to give notice to the Country of any danger, and that there shalbe a ward of one pson kept there from the first of April to the last of September ; and that upon the discovery of any danger the beacon shalbe fired, an allarum given, as also messengers presently sent by that town where the danger is discov'ed to all other townes within this jurisdiccon."
The beacon, as seen in the usual engravings of it, was simply a tall pole furnished with wooden rungs for climbing, with an iron pot filled with tar depending from a crane at its top.
It is not known that the combustibles were ever fired. Flaming from a height of sixty-five feet from the ground, and over two hundred above the tide, the beacon would have furnished a conspicuous signal in case of alarmı.2
It is unfortunate that the only description we have of the town in its first decade is that of Mr. John Josselyn, a young Englishman who, although of sufficient intelligence and education, thought more of telling strange and curious things for his readers at home than of leaving reliable matter for history. On his arrival here in 1638 he says: "Having refreshed myself for a day or two upon Noddle's Island I crossed the Bay in a small Boat to Boston which then was rather a Village than a Town, there being not above twenty or thirty houses." The editor of Winthrop's New England very properly reflects upon this statement, and accuses the author of having omitted a cipher from the end of his figures or of scorning to count the log-cabins in his estimate.2
In the early days before the settlement took form we find the different districts of the town called " fields,"-as " The Neck Field " or " The Field
1 The lantern of the State House is about two hundred and twenty feet above the sea level.
2 [Barry, Hist. of Mass., i. 214, and others have made similar comments. - ED.]
533
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
towards Roxburic " on the south, beyond Dover Street; "Coleborn's Field," lying about the present Common Street; "The Fort Field" on the cast, " The Mylne Field " on the north, and " The New Field" on the west; to- gether with "The Centry Field," which last alone still remains to us in substan- tially its ancient form, being in part the land now embraced by the Common. But this was only in the beginning; streets and highways were rapidly formed and named. At the North End there were very soon three princi- pal thoroughfares, - Fore, Middle, and Back streets, now known as North, Hanover, and Salem. In June, 1636, we find in an order of the Court which provides for " a sufficient footway to be made from William Coleborn's field,1 and unto Samuel Wilborc's field next Roxbury," the origin of our present Washington Street, in the part south of Castle Street, not for many years, however, to be known by its modern name. In "ye Mylne Street," a highway laid out in 1644 and conducting towards Windmill Point, we recognize the Summer Strect of the present day. We learn furthermore from the Town Records that in March, 1640, a street was laid out to lead up over the hill, which followed the line of the present School Street. Statc Street was " a primitive highway" of very short extent, which led into the flats at Merchants Row, and was usually spoken of as the Water Street.
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.