USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 70
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
1 See, for an account of this absurd yet fruit- ful episode, Winthrop's New England, ii. 280, and Drake's Hist. of Boston, 260. [Cf. also Mr. Winthrop's chapter in the present volume. - ED.]
2 Which south of West Street was bounded by Mason Street.
3 [See Mr. Whitmore's tracing of the title of this estate in Sewall Papers, i. 59 .- ED.]
4 [5 MMass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. vi. vii. It must be confessed that it is not easy to read this diary without pity and disgust mingling with amusc- ment and with that interest which belongs to
the minute details of history. There seems to have been in Sewall a concentration of all that there was in his age repulsive to our modern education; but his measure is to be taken more exactly, no doubt, in a following volume. A discriminating writer has, on the contrary, spoken of him as " great by almost every meas- ure of greatness, - moral courage, honor, bener- olence, learning, eloquence, intellectual force and breadth and brightness;" but, while one admits much in his favor, the diary can hardly fail to show us his pettinesses. See Tyler's History of American Literature, ii. 99. - ED.]
541
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
the occasions where he advised with the governor touching matters of life and death, and where he gravely admonished a neighbor's son upon the sinfulness of cutting off his hair.
A little south of the Cotton-Vane place dwelt Governor Bellingham in a house which was standing, in a somewhat altered condition, a little more than fifty years ago.1
Two clergymen of note lived at different times upon this side of the street, - one, the Rev. John Davenport, the founder of the city of New Haven, Conn., and subsequently pastor of the First Church here, lived on an estate which long remained the property of his parish; the other, the Rev. John Oxenbridge, also a pastor of the same church, and the fifth 2 in the notable succession of Johns who administered to that con- gregation within the first half-century of its existence, lived farther south near the present corner of Beacon Street, upon the spot previously occu- pied by Colonel Shrimpton.
High above all these worthy and distinguished folk, perched upon the brow of the hill, as it were the presiding genius of the place, dwelt Governor John Endicott, the most stern and uncompromising Puritan of them all, who, we opine, never recovered from his chagrin that he could not make his darling Salem the capital of the colony, although he at length condescended to come to Boston and share the authority with Winthrop. He it was who packed all the Episcopalians home to England; who cut the cross out of the flag in his insensate rage against the old faith ; who had a heated dis- pute with the Rev. John Cotton upon the vital question as to whether ladies should or should not wear veils over their faces; who knew no fear of prince or potentate; who dared do anything, or take any responsibility, for the good of the colony; and who was deservedly one of its most esteemed and respected leaders.
Farther around the northern base of the hill, beyond the entrance to Pemberton Square, lived Captain Cyprian Southack, who afterwards gained repute in the Indian wars under Church, and in honor of whom Howard Street was originally called Southack's Court.
Of the various cross streets leading between Tremont and Washington, beginning with Court Street, the northernmost, we shall find it known first as Prison Lane before it became Queen Street in the loyal provincial days. It was notable for containing the first prison of the colony, - a gloomy, massively-built old pile that stood upon or close to the spot now occupied by the County Court House, the sombre aspect of which latter building might well persuade "an extravagant and erring spirit " of those early days that he had fallen upon the veritable old-time home of colonial evil-doers. Here then, and in later days, were shut up the hapless witches and the notorious Kidd; where, perhaps with less innocent victims, they may have shivered through the freezing winter nights in dungeon cells
1 [See a note to Mr. Whitmore's chapter. - ED.]
2 Wilson, Cotton, Norton, Davenport, Oxenbridge.
542
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
" warmed only by a pan of charcoal." It had a considerable yard about it, as shown at a later day in Bonner's map, and as early as 1642 a "salt peter howse" was built in the yard, thirty by fourteen feet, " set upon posts seven foot high above the ground, with a covering of thatch, and the wall clapboarded tight from the injury of rayne and snow." 1
School Street was early laid out; at first known only as " the way lead- ing up Centry Hill," it was soon called Latin-School Street, from the first school-house built there during the carly years of this period. This build- ing, as we shall see, was subsequently taken down to make room for the enlargement of King's Chapel.
Beacon Street was at first curiously enough "the way leading to the Almshouse," that institution being for a time indeed the sole or principal building it contained. Built in 1662, it stood for twenty ycars on the corner of Beacon and Park streets, and having been burned in 1682, like so many other of the early public buildings, it was replaced a few years later by a structure of brick.2
Park, then called Centry or Sentry Strect, was at the time of which we write but a foot-path over the hill. West and Winter streets, although mentioned and defined in the list of 1708, thirty or forty years earlier were nothing but grass-grown by-ways, the latter of which was known variously as Blott's, Bannister's, and Willis's Lane; while Boylston Street was a short cross-way ending abruptly in the marsh, and was called, doubtless with good cause, "Frog Lane." It was not, as now, the south- erly limit of the Common, for Robert Walker had a house and garden on the corner opposite the Hotel Pelham ; William Briscoc, a tailor, lived adjoining, where the deer park is; while on the site of the burial- ground Cotton Flacke, a laborer, had a lot granted him in 1640, which was occupied a few years later by William Blantaine; John Serch had a lot still further west.
On the other side of the main street, the cross-ways leading south from State and east from Washington streets were cut short or turned aside from " the direct forthright " in many cases by the various marshes, creeks, and inlets there abounding. Starting at the southern end of Washington Street, and taking them in order, we find that Essex Street was a path towards the Windmill. Bedford, or as then known Pond, Street turned and followed nearly the line of Kingston Street to the shore, which it reached a little dis- tance north-west of the United States Hotel. It passed a small pond known as the town's " watering place," almost opposite the old English and High School-house, where we may imagine the thirsty cattle stopping to drink at sundown, on their way home from the hilly pastures of the Fort Field. Summer Street, which in early times was known as "Ye Mylne street," appears in the list of 1708 by its present name, where it is described as
1 Second Report of Record Commissioners, p. 70. gory, a separate House of Correction was set 2 Early in the next century, when the town fathers had discovered that poverty and vice do not necessarily belong to the same moral cate-
up in Park Street, to which later was added a workhouse. See First Report of the Record Commissioners, 78.
543
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
" leading easterly from Doctor Okes his corner in Newberry Street,I passing by the dwelling-House of Cap! Tim Clark extending to ye sca." It was one of the earliest of the old highways, having been laid out in 1644; but all that distinguishes the street, even the reputed residence of Sir Edmund Andros, belongs to a later day. In the colonial period it was so near the extreme south end of the town as to be socially out of the world.
High Street once led from Summer to the top of Fort Hill, and as long as the grassy hillside yielded abundant pasturage its old name of Cow Lanc was doubtless a most apt one ; but to-day, when the last vestige of the old hill has been swept into the sea, its present has no more significance than its former name.2
One of the most important and interesting by-ways branching off from the main street was the ancient Fort, now Milk, Street, which led from Gov- ernor Winthrop's green (Old-South lot), and turning on the line of Battery- march Street led by the shore to the old Sconce or South Battery; but, as in the case of the other South-End highways above mentioned, the many interesting associations to which its name gives rise belong to a later page, and will be noticed in due order.
Of Spring Lanc Drake has given a delightful picture. It recalls, hie says, " the ancient Spring-gate, the natural fountain at which Winthrop and Johnson stooped to quench their thirst, and from which no doubt Madam Winthrop and Anne Hutchinson filled their flagons for domestic use. The gentlemen may have paused here for friendly chat, if the rigor of the Gov- ernor's opposition to the schismatic Anne did not forbid. The handmaid of Elder Thomas Oliver, Winthrop's next neighbor on the opposite corner of the Spring-gate, fetched her pitcher, like another Rebecca, from this well; and grim Richard Brackett, the jailer, may have laid down his halberd to quaff a morning draught."
But in our hasty march through the street we have passed the most noted landmark of the period. Turning back a few rods towards the south, on the opposite side of the way nearly fronting the head of Milk Street, we come upon the most interesting of all the colonial buildings which remained standing down to a very recent period, and is still freshly remembered by people now living, - the famous Province House. This fine old mansion was originally a private residence, built by Peter Sergeant, Esq., a wealthy merchant formerly of London, who bought the land in October, 1676, of Colonel Samuel Shrimpton, the great real-estate dealer of the day, for the handsome sum of £350, by which the Colonel doubtless turned a pretty penny, inasmuch as the land came into his hands shortly before very much encumbered on the death of worthy Thomas Millard, its pre- vious owner.
1 One of the early names of Washington Street.
2 [As you left Summer Street, Benjamin
Gillom lived on the left, and on the right beyond Richard Gridley came John Harrison, likewise with a shore front. - ED.]
544
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Withdrawn from the street, raised above the level of the pavement, and standing in the midst of a well-kept green, the house formed a conspicuous feature of the neighborhood. It was built of brick imported from Holland, three stories in height, surmounted by a lofty cupola. Before the door was a handsome portico supported by wooden pillars, and crowned by a bal- cony formed by an iron balustrade of intricate pattern, into which, just over the entrance, were interwoven the owner's initials and the date of the building : "16. P. S. 79." Leading down from the door was a flight of massive red freestone steps, while along the front of the lot, separating the garden from the road, stood an elaborate iron fence, at either end of which were small porters' lodges.
But one house does not make a neighborhood; and despite his fine walls and fences, his greensward and jealously-guarded gates, we may imagine the aristocratic Londoner's occasional disgust at his surroundings, as standing upon his stately balcony he gazed over at honest Francis Lyle, the barber, his next-door neighbor on the north, sitting in the midst of a family group upon the door-step in the cool of the evening; or turned his eyes southward and beheld Goodman Grubb, the leather-dresser, his nearest neighbor in that direction, smoking an evening pipe in not very immaculate shirt-sleeves at the garden gate; or, fleeing for consolation to the rear, found nothing more comforting than the cross-legged figure of Arthur Perry, the town drummer and tailor, straining his eyes to put the last stitches to the waistcoat or small-clothes of some impatient customer, by the waning light.
But Peter Sergeant in due time went the way of all the living, and was gathered in 1714 to his fathers; his widow1 married again and sold the grand old mansion to the State, whereupon it was fitted up for an official residence. These were the days of its glory and magnificence. Fain would we linger to lift the curtain upon the busy scene, to have a peep at the household economy of Shute, Burnet, Shirley, Pownall, Bernard, and the rest! But this, as well as Hawthorne's quaint description of the " old Governor's house " in its decay, belong to a later chapter.
On the opposite side of the way, a little to the south, down a narrow passage leading out from the main street, stood, towards the close of the period, another of the old taverns, -" The Blue Bell and Indian Queen." We may imagine its droll and gayly-colored sign, which doubtless pro- truded into Washington Street, and the queer appearance of the inn itself, hemmed into the narrow passage on both sides of which it was built.
We have now come again to the Market Place, where, directly facing us and standing in the middle of the street, is an old landmark not to be
1 The bewildering snarl of widows and third also a widow, and even becoming his widowers suggested by Peter Sergeant's name widow, and lastly the widow of her third hus- band." - Topog. and Hist. Desc. of Boston, 595. [See also Mr. Whitmore's chapter in the present volume and Mr. Savage's Genealogical Diction- ary .- ED.] is thus clearly unravelled by Shurtleff : "He was as remarkable in his marriages as in his wealth ; for he had three wives, his second having been a widow twice before her third venture; and his
545
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
omitted. This is the Town Pump, the water of which does not come from a natural fountain as at the Spring-gate, but from a well, the first known to have been dug in the colony. The old pump stood a great many years, for as late as 1760 we find an order leaving to the discretion of the select- men the question of repairing or discontinuing it. We are told that it became a nuisance 1 and gradually fell into disuse. It stood in the middle of Washington Street, a little north of the north-west corner of Court Street.
Continuing now our progress through the highways, and proceeding down State Street, we find branching off thence to the southward, instead of the three long streets lined with stately buildings of marble and stone of the present day, but three insignificant lanes which are quickly lost in the creek or marsh. Devonshire, Congress, and Kilby streets, known in early times as Pudding, Leverett's, and Mackerel lanes, had previous to 1684 no features of interest. The first, as has been said, "is suggestive of good cheer ; " but it is not clear to what it owes its name, as none of the famous inns with which the neighborhood of King Street afterward abounded seem to have properly belonged to it.
Congress Street was named in the first instance after Elder Thomas Lev- erett, the father of the governor, who owned the land thereabout, who was from the first one of the solid men of the colony, and had been a civic dignitary in old Boston in England. Kilby Street, known first by the unsavory name of Mackerel Lane, was very narrow, and indeed little more than an alley along the shore extending from State Street to Liberty Square, crossing the creek by a bridge.
On the opposite side of State Street, branching off northward, there was, besides Wilson's Lane already noticed, Exchange Street, a by-way once so narrow that a cat could almost have jumped across it in the days when it was known as Shrimpton's Lane, - so called from Colonel Samuel Shrimpton mentioned above; while below this on the same side ran Merchants Row, one of the very few of the old streets which have retained their old-time names. It was once the front or water street, and followed the shore-line to the Town Dock.
This brings us to Dock Square. The very first entry in the Town Records, written in the hieroglyphic hand of Governor Winthrop, is an order appointing an overseer of this the town's chief landing-place, and directing the removal of timber, stones, and other obstructions about it.2 Here vessels were loaded and unloaded ; here was brought for awhile every-
1 [Cf. Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, ch. xix. The statements in Shurtleff regarding the early pumps seem to be erroneous in confounding them. The order of March, 1649-50, authorizing Mr. Venner and neighbors to put a pump near the shop of William Davis, instead of referring to the pump on Washington Street, opposite Court Street, pointed to one in State Street, just below Exchange Street, where William Davis, Jr., lived; and near this pump, in 1653, William Franklin and neighbors were allowed to make a
cistern, twelve feet deep or deeper, "at the pumpe which standeth in the hie way neare to the State armes Tavern, for to howld watter for to be helpfull in case of fier unto the towne." Now the States Arms (not the King's Arms, as Shurtleff gives it) was on the lower corner of State and Exchange streets, the next lot to Davis's, and the order clearly refers to the pump already existing there. - ED. ]
2 [A facsimile of this entry is given in Mr. Winthrop's chapter. - ED.]
VOL. 1 .- 69.
546
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
thing that came into or went out of the town, and it at once became one of the chief centres of interest. It is hard for a modern citizen to realize the appearance of the old Town Dock. We have already described how the cove originally made in to the foot of Brattle Street and covered nearly all the district east of Union Street. But this carly aspect of things soon changed when a swing-bridge was thrown across the dock, nearly in the line of Merchants Row, wharves were built on either side by private parties, and a market-place was set up.
In 1657 we find a committee appointed " to gaine liberty in writing of Mr. Seaborne Cotton and his mother to bring water down from their hill to the conduit intended to be erected." This conduit was a reservoir of water, with raised and sloping sides and covered top, which stood in the midst of the market; and originally built for use in case of fire, it seems to have served little other purpose than to afford a counter or trafficking place for the merchants upon market days.1 The building of the conduit was doubt- less occasioned by the "great fire" as it is called of 1654, concerning which, strangely enough, not much is known save that it was very destruc- tive.2 There had been previously several small fires which had caused no great alarm, but the extensive damage done by this first "great fire" seems to have created general concern, as is evidenced by entries in the Town Records, and precautions taken against the like danger in the future. Ladders, swabs, and a fire-engine were ordered, and measures taken to have the buildings of less combustible material.3 Two other "great fires" occurred during the colonial period, - one in 1676, " which began an hour before day, continuing three or four; in which time it burned down to the ground forty-six dwelling houses, besides other buildings, together with a meeting-house of considerable bigness." This was the Mather church, the Old North. It burned Mather's house as well as his church, but spared his library. It would seem that Cotton Mather came naturally enough by the " bce in his bonnet," when we read that the Rev. Increase had had a premonition "that a fire was coming which would make a deplorable desolation." 4
The other " great fire" in 1679 was even more terrible in its ravage. "It began," says Hutchinson, "at one Gross's house, the sign of the Three Mariners, near the Dock. All the warehouses and a great number of dwelling houses, with the vessels then in the dock, were consumed, - the most woful desolation that Boston had ever seen." "Fourscore of thy dwelling-houses and seventy of thy warehouses in a ruinous heap " is the estimate of loss made by the Rev. Cotton Mather in an apostrophe to Boston in the Magnalia.5
1 Cf. Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, 401, and p. 233 of this volume.
2 See Winthrop. Papers in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 155.
3 [See Mr. Scudder's chapter in the present volume. - ED.]
4 [See also Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, 403, 640; Snow, Boston, 165. Mr. William H. Whit- more printed in 1872 an Historical Summary of fires in Boston. - ED.]
5 [See Snow, Boston, 164; Drake, Land- marks, 169; Sewall Papers, i. 28. - ED.]
547
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD).
But to return to the conduit; from this point branched off Elm, Union, and North streets, the latter of which was, along a short part of its course, once known as Conduit Street. The Mill Creek, as before described, con- nected the Mill Cove with the Town Dock. From the list of 1708 we learn that later, if not at this time, the Fish Market was "The way from Mr. Antram's corner nigh the sd Conduit, leading from thence North-East1 by ye side of ye Dock as far as Mr. Winsor's warehouse ; " and Drake says: " All the north side of the Dock seems to have been known at one time as the Fish Market." Corn Market and Corn Court were on the south side.
-
1 MOL
THE OLD FEATHER STORE.1
Facing Dock Square at the corner of North Street stood until a few years ago (1860) one of the most remarkable buildings in the town, known variously as the "Old Feather Store," the " Old Cocked Hat," &c. Luckily there was no doubt as to its age, for it bore the date of its construction, 1680, imprinted in the rough-cast wall of its western gable. The build- ing was of wood, covered with a kind of cement stuck thickly with coarse gravel, bits of broken glass, old junk bottles, &c. The lower story was rather contracted after a usual fashion of the time, and it may have been owing, perhaps, in this case to the limitations of the lot, which on the south and south-west abutted upon the dock; but above this were jet- ties, that is, projecting stories, and a roof whose gables gave it the fancied resemblance to an old cocked hat. The house was designed for two tene-
I [This cut follows a picture painted in r$17, ously represented by engravings. There is one given to the Historical Society by Mr. William H. Whitmore. The old building has been vari-
in Snow's Boston, and nearly all the later books describing Boston give it. - Et.Į
548
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
ments, and had separate entrances. It was used for many purposes in its long career.1 At one time there was kept here the principal apothecary's shop of the town, while from 1806 for a long series of years it was occu- pied as a feather store ; hence one of its names.
These were the principal streets in the more southerly parts of the town ; north of the Mill Creek we shall find many others of interest and importance. There can be no question that during the last years of this period the North End deserved for many reasons to be, as Josselyn calls it, " the most elegant and populous part of the town ; " and it must always be regretted that this portion of the peninsula - so beautifully situated, so admirably adapted for fine residences, with its casy slopes, its commanding view both scaward and landward, and its naturally-guarded precincts-should have been the soon- est deserted by fashion and given over in large part to poverty, squalor, and decay.
Hanover Street, which has been twice widened, until now it forms one of the finest thoroughfares in the city, was in colonial days little more than a narrow lane. It is described in provincial times, in the list of 1708, as " the street from between Houchen's corner and ye Sign of ye Orange-tree, Leading Northerly to ye Mill-bridge." Houchen's, or Houchin's, was the southerly corner of Hanover and Court streets, named for a worthy tanner who had his pits in the neighborhood. The "Orange-tree " was an old hostelry on the opposite corner, where early in the next century the first public coach ever known in Boston was set up. Thence traversing the narrow neck across which, as Johnson says, the Mill Creek "was cut through by industry," Hanover Street extended northward to the water, forming the highway to the Winnisimmet Ferry.
On each side of this main thoroughfare, called from its position Middle Street, Fore and Back streets branched off to the right and left like the fingers upon a man's hand. All three streets bore at different times other names, frequently being called variously along different parts of their course. Thus Hanover was dubbed Middle Street in one place and North in another ; Back, now Salem, Street was once known as Green Lane; while Fore Street, which, as its name signifies, was originally laid out along the water front, and was wharfed out as the town grew and need required, soon lost this early name, and in the list of 1708 we find it called as follows: Ann Street being " the way from the Conduit in Union Street Leading Northerly over ye Bridge to Elliston's corner at ye lower end of Cross Street; " Fish Street being " the street from Mountjoy's corner at the Lower end of Cross Street leading Northerly to ye sign of the Swan by Scarlett's Wharfe ; " and Ship Street being "the street Leading Northerly from Everton's corner nigh Scarlett's wharfe to the North Battry," - all together forming the one con- tinuous highway now known to us as North 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.