USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 71
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Besides these principal thoroughfares running lengthwise there were va-
4 See for a list of its various occupants, and for a more detailed account, Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, ch. liii ; Drake, Landmarks, p. 133.
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TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
rious cross streets which date back to the carliest times. Union Street, de- scribed later as " the way Leading from Platt's Corner North-westerly passing by the Green Dragon to y" Mill Pond," was from the first an important and much-frequented street ; the presence in it of "The Green Dragon," per- haps the most famous of all the old-time taverns, and of Franklin's boyhood home and disputed birthplace are enough to invest it with lasting historic interest. Of these two places we shall in due order make further mention. Cross Street, as its name indicates, was a " way Leading from the Mill Pond South-easterly by ye late Deacon Phillips's stone house extending down to ye sea." This old house alone seems to have given the street character and importance ; it was a gloomy, massive building of rough stone undoubtedly dating back to the colonial period, as it is estimated to have been nearly two centuries old when it was taken down in 1864. The singularity of its con- struction and the uncertainty as to its origin and purpose have surrounded it with peculiar interest. There are suggestions that it may have been in early times a jail or a watch-house, as mention is made of loop-holes found in the walls. . It is described as consisting " of two wings of uniform size, joining each other and forming a right angle. Each wing was forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and two stories high, the wings fronting the south and west. There was one door in the end of each wing on the first story, and a single circular window in the second story over the doors; there were also two circular windows in each story of each wing in front, but neither door nor window in either wing in the rear. The foundation walls were four feet thick or more : the walls above ground were two feet in thickness, and built entirely of small quarried stones unlike anything to be seen in this neighbor- hood, and were probably brought as ballast from some part of Europe." 1
"The Street Leading North-westerly from Morrell's corner in Middle Street pass-in by Mr. David Norton's, Extending to ye salt water at Ferry- way," was Prince Street, which with Hanover still curiously retains the name once given it out of compliment to royalty. It was formerly called Black Horse Lane from the old " Black Horse" inn, which was destined to become notorious in after years as a refuge for British deserters. Charter, Snow- Hill, and Lynn streets, if existing, had attained no prominence in colonial times. Hull Street ran from Snow Hill to Salem Street, and formed the southern boundary of the burying-ground. It was laid out through the field of old John Hull, whose name it bears, and whose daughter, wife of Judge Sewall, conveyed it to the town. This is no other than that Mistress Hannah Hull who upon her marriage with Samuel Sewall is said to have re- ceived for a dowry her own weight in pine-tree shillings. It was her father who coined these famous shillings ; and whether the story be true or not, it is certain that worthy John Hull, who was a man of substance, might easily have indulged himself in the whim if he had chosen .? He was a silversmith,
1 Savage, Police Records and Recollections,
294; Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, p. 666; Drake, Landmarks, p. 155.
" For a delightful imaginary account of this famous wedding, see Hawthorne's Grandfather's Chair, p. 39.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
and set up at his own house in Sheafe Street the first mint in the colony, where he and his assistant bound themselves with an oath to make all their money " of the just alloy of the English cojne; that every shilling should be of due weight, namely, three-penny troj weight, and all other pieces proportionably, so neere as they could."
But it was in and around a little open space hedged about with substan- tial-looking buildings, lying upon the south-east declivity of Copp's Hill, that our interest with regard to the North End centres in these early colonial days, and in fact for a long time subsequent. Here was a spot which rivalled the famous precincts of Washington and State streets as a social centre. This was Clark's Square, afterwards, as we shall find, to be known by other names. But before entering the Square the early colonist beheld, fronting him on the corner of North and Richmond streets, a substantial brick building, which was a well known resort of the choice spirits of two centuries ago. This was the old " Red Lyon Inn," kept in the middle of the seventeenth century by mine host Nicholas Upsall, who seems to have been one of the solid men of the town, for he owned a wharf just below his ordinary, besides considerable real estate. But, alas! poor man, he was a Quaker, and was persecuted along with his fellows, at length dying a martyr to his faith and his philanthropy ; his first recorded offence was that of trying to bribe the jailer to feed a couple of starving Quakeresses in his custody.1 Here, facing the square, stood the " Old North," put up in 1650, burned in 1676, and at once replaced. This was the church of the Mathers, and all three lived hard by, - Increase in North Street, Cotton in Hanover, and Samuel on the corner of Moon Street Court.
We can scarcely realize as we look upon the little circumscribed tri- angular enclosure now known as North Square, with its narrow entrance, how large a part it once played in colonial life ; that here and closely herea- bout lived the men of wealth and consequence who directed public policy and had the conduct of affairs. Yet it is evident that even at this day it retains something of its old look. Drake 2 has given a graphic and spirited description of the whole neighborhood, from which we make room for a short extract : -
"Standing before an entrance still narrow. the relics of demolished walls on our right show that the original opening was once even more cramped than now, and scarce permitted the passage of a vehicle. The point made by North Street reached consid- erably beyond the present curbstone some distance into the street, both sides of which were cut off when the widening took place. This headland of brick and mortar jut- ting out into old Fish Street, as a bulwark to protect the aristocratic residents of the square, was long known as ' Mountford's Corner' from the family owning and occu- pying it.
"Within the compass of a few rods we find buildings of undeniable antiquity.
1 [See Dr. Ellis's chapter on " The Puritan spell his name Upshall, but his own signature Commonwealth " and Mr. Whittier's Poem, in gives it as in the text. - En.]
the present volume. The Quaker historians 2 Landmarks, 157.
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TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
some extremely ruinous, with shattered panes and leaky roofs, while others, improved upon to suit more modern tenants, have the jaunty air of an old beau in modern habiliments. One patriarch stands at the corner of Sun Court and Moon Street. Its upper story projects after the fashion of the last century ; the timbers, which tradition says were cut in the neighborhood, are of prodigious thickness, while the clapboards are fastened with wrought nails."
A visitor to the neighborhood may still find a number of buildings and parts of buildings of undoubted antiquity, concerning which, however, it cannot now be ascertained which, if any, date back to the period we are discussing.
MILBURITS! !
AN OLD HOUSE IN SALEM STREET.1
One old house, which until a few years ago ( 1866) stood upon the corner of North and Clark streets, happily does not belong to this category: we mean the old Ship Tavern, or "Noah's Ark," as it was often called from the
1 [This house is still standing, and seems to belong to the late colonial or early provincial period. - ED ]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
rough representation of a ship over the door. This old house is supposed to have been built previous to 1650; its first known owner was Captain Thomas Hawkins, a busy, restless ship-builder, who owned a ship-yard near his house, made many voyages, was cast away three times, and at length, as if determined to show that he was not born to be hanged, lost his life by shipwreck. In the apportionment of his estate " his brick house and lands" were set out to his widow, from whom indirectly it passed to one John Viall, or Vyal, by whom it was kept as an inn or ordinary as far back as 1655. It was in a room in this inn that Sir Robert Carr, the royal commissioner, assaulted the constable and wrote the defiant letter to Gover- nor Leverett.1 The house was built of English brick, laid in the English bond; it had deep, projecting jetties, Lutheran attic windows, and floor timbers of the antique triangular shape; it was originally only two stories high, but a third story had been added by a later occupant. A large crack in the front wall was supposed to have been caused by the earthquake of 1663, " which made all New England tremble." 2
Besides these various streets and highways there remain certain other im- portant topographical features of Boston still to be described, the first and principal of which is the Common. No street, section, or neighborhood of the city is so intimately connected with its life, so closely associated with all that is most sacred and glorious, humiliating and painful, in its history as this fifty acres of green-sward in its midst. While no quarter of the town has changed less perhaps in outward appearance (the same hills and valleys, the same slopes and curves appearing now as aforetime upon its sur- face), there is yet a vast difference between the beautiful park of to-day - with its arching elms and flowering lindens, with its fountains, its statues, its malls, and mimic lake- and the uninclosed waste, the stubbly cow-pasture, the bleak hill-side of two hundred years ago, when the wild roses bloomed upon its summit and the frogs croaked in the marshes at its base.
Yet the Common is the Common still. The park of the nineteenth century is as much the heritage and property of the people as was the cow pasture of the seventeenth ; and though we may no more drive our cattle 3 to feed upon its herbage, we may feast our eyes upon its verdure, we may escape from the hot and dusty streets and wander among its shady and fragrant paths, and our sons may still coast down its glassy sides in winter, to the imminent peril of their own necks and to the terror of every passer-by.
Our title to the Common is easily traced ; it originally formed part of the possessions of William Blackstone, the first white settler, whose ownership was acknowledged and confirmed by an entry in the Town Records as carly as 1633, by which it was " agreed that William Blackstone shall have fifty acres set out for him near his house in Boston to enjoy forever." The next
1 [Sce the chapters in the present volume by Mr. Charles Deane and Colonel Higginson. - ED.]
2 Drake, Landmarks, p. 174.
8 Cattle were pastured upon the Common for two or three years after the town became a city.
553
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
year, 1634, Blackstone sold the whole parcel of land to the town, excepting only six acres immediately adjoining his house.1 The land thus coming into the possession of the town as public property was directly committed (Dec. 18, 1634) to the care of Winthrop and others to divide, and to leave " such portions in common for ye use of newe comers and y" further bene- fitt of ye towne, as in theire best discretions they shall think fitt;" and six years later we find its alicnation or appropriation to other purposes guarded against by an order passed March 36, 1640, to the following effect: -
" Also agreed upon yt henceforth there shalbe no land granted eyther for house- plott or garden to any pson out of y" open ground or Comon ffeild wch is left betweene yª Centry Hill and Mr. Colbron's end ; except 3 or 4 lotts to make vp ye street from bro. Robt Walker's to ye Round Marsh." 2
Upon Bonner's map, which, although published in the next century, affords the earliest satisfactory view of the town, there appcar but three trees on the Common, -two of medium size at the upper or northern end, and the Great Elm so well remembered by all of this generation.3
Standing in the midst of the "Centry," or "Century," or "Training Field," as the Common was variously called, the Great Elm was unquestion- ably the most conspicuous feature in the field, and the rallying point upon all occasions of public business and pleasure. Here Winthrop may have paused in the shade that August day in 1630, when he came over from Charlestown at the bidding of Blackstone to explore the spot; here John Wilson may have preached his first sermon upon the peninsula; here the dusky ancestors of Obbatinewat and the Squaw Sachem may have held many a savage feast and solemn pow-wow; here, we have reason to believe, swinging from the sturdy branches, early culprits suffered the stern penalty of the law, and the hapless victims of bigotry met with a cruel martyrdom.4
The area of the Common has been both enlarged and curtailed since the first purchase from Blackstone. In June, 1757, on the petition of various cit- izens showing the need of a place of interment at the South End, the town bought the land covered by the burying-ground - since diminished by tak- ing off the Boylston Street Mall - from Andrew Oliver, who held it in the right of his wife, a daughter of Colonel Thomes Fitch. In October, 1787, onc William Foster conveyed to the town " a certain tract of land contain- ing two acres and one eighth of an acre, situated, lying, and being near the Common, and bounded E. on the highway 324 ft .; North on the Common
1 The price paid by the town for the land as well as the fact of its purchase are sufficiently shown by the following extracts from the Town Records : " The 10th daye of the 9th mo. 1634. Item : yt Edmund Quinsey, Samuel Wilbore, Will™. Boston, Edward Hutchinson the elder, Willm. Cheesbrough the constable, shall make & assesse all these rates, vizte a rate of £30 to Mr. Blackstone," &c. [See also the note to Mr. Adams's chapter. - ED.]
VOL. I. - 70.
2 These three or four lots reserved were be- tween the Common and Frog Lane or Boylston Street, as explained in an earlier note to this chapter.
3 [Concerning the age of this noble trec, see the note to Professor Gray's chapter on the " Flora of Boston."- ED.]
4 It is supposed that all the early execu- tions took place upon the Common. In many cases it is known that they did.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
295 ft. 5 in .; W. on the new burial-ground 302 ft. 3 in; S. on Pleasant St. 281 ft. 9 inches," which embraces the land now used for the deer-park.1
On the other hand, the ancient Centry Field once extended as far north as Beacon and as far cast as Mason Street, the Granary Burying-Ground and Park Street having been taken from it on the one side, while a goodly slice was shorn off to form Tremont Street on the other. North-west of it a high ridge - the West Hill described in the early part of this chapter, subse- quently cut down to form Charles Street - extended from near the junction of Beacon and Spruce strects, till it sloped to the beach near Cambridge Street. The lower part of the Common bordered upon the water; and a part of the parade ground and all the Public Garden was nothing but a marsh, where in the next century extensive rope-walks were laid out.
Other minor features are necessary to complete our picture of the carly Training Field. There was Flagstaff Hill, which offered a vantage point to the British artillery during the Revolution, now crowned by the Soldiers' Monument ; there were the three ponds, Frog, Cow, and Shechan ponds, - the last two, and very likely the first, nothing but marshes which have long since disappeared, which, however, were once sufficient to furnish a watering place for the cattle ; there, too, was the Wishing Stone, near the junction of Beacon-Street Mall and the path leading to Joy Street, and, we are told, " the young folks of by-gone days used to walk nine times around this stone, and then standing or sitting upon it silently make their wishes." 2
That the town was, from the first, jealous of any abuse of the right of com- monage by the inhabitants, and watchful that the public domain should be kept in decent order and condition, appears from several entries in the Town Records. An order was passed in May, 1646, that all the inhabitants should have equal right of commonage, while at the same time it was voted that no one coming into the town subsequently to this date should be entitled to this privilege. Milch kine to the number of seventy were allowed pastur- age, but " no dry cattill, younge cattill, or horse shalbe free to go on yª comon this year; but one horse for Elder Oliver."
It was also strictly forbidden to throw any stones, trash, or other offensive matter upon the field ; and that these various orders were effectual in accom- plishing the desired end is evident from the account of Josselyn.3
Other open spaces devoted to public use were the burying-grounds, of which previous to 1687 there were three, - the " Chapel," the " Granary," and " Copp's Hill." The former was the first place of interment used in the town, and its origin and history may be called coeval with those of Bos- ton. Here, we are told by Chief-Justice Sewall, was buried Mr. Isaac John- son, perhaps the most important man in the infant colony. The story goes, that, after the peninsula had been determined upon as a place of settlement, Mr. Johnson selected for himself the land now occupied by the grave-yard ;
1 Dr. Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, ch. xxi., Sewall (Diary, i. 377, ii. 344), mentions getting gives a very good history of the Common.
out building stones there as late as 1693 - ED.] 2 [The Common seems to have had boulders 3 [See this quoted in Mr. Scudder's chap- and ledges of rock cropping out here and there. ter in the present volume. - ED ]
555
TOPOGRAPHY, ETC., OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
and on his death, which took place in Charlestown, Sept. 30, 1630, he was naturally buried in his own lot. Others dying subsequently requested to be buried near him; and so the place came to be a common burying-ground.
Many doubts attach to this story, inasmuch as the Diary of Chief-Justice Sewall, where it is told, was not written until many years afterwards, and there is no existing account of the burial of Johnson, which in the case of so prominent a man is somewhat remarkable, the rather that on the death in the following February of one Captain Weldon, a young and comparatively unimportant person, both Winthrop and Dudley give particulars of his in- terment. However that may be, there is no doubt that this was the earliest, and for thirty years indeed the sole, burying-ground in the town. After the building of the Chapel it was used chiefly for those belonging to the faith of the Church of England ; but previous to that some of the sternest and most noted of the old Puritans found here their resting place. Here were laid John Winthrop, his son and grandson, all governors; Parsons Cotton, Davenport, Oxenbridge, and Bridge of the First Church, all buried in the tomb of Elder Thomas Oliver, which became afterwards the property of the Church ; Lady Andros, wife of the hated Sir Edmund; Governor Shirley, Captain Roger Clap, Dr. Benjamin Church, and a host of others of the early and later periods less known to fame.
" Copp's Hill," at first called the " Old North Burying-Ground," comes next in point of time, the original parcel comprising the north-castern part of the present lot having been bought by the town in 1659-60. This was the extent of the ground in the colonial period ; other parcels have since been added. In 1711 Samuel Sewall and his wife Hannah conveyed a part of what had once been the pasture of old John Hull the mint master ; in their deed there was a reservation of " one rodd square in which Mrs. Mary Thatcher now lyeth buried," which "rodd square" had pre- viously (in 1708-9) been conveyed by them " with no right of way except across the old burying-place," to Joshua Gee, -so that now, strangely enough, there exists a small parcel of private estate in the very midst of the ground upon which for all restrictions to the contrary the owners might erect a light-house or a cider-mill! Situated upon the summit of one of the ancient hills, this cemetery occupies one of the most commanding and delightful spots in the town. The oldest inscription it contains is dated Aug. 15, 1662; those purporting to commemorate the death of John Thwing in 1620, and of Grace Berry in 1625, both some years before the founding of the colony, are thought to have been altered by a mischievous youth with his jack-knife. Of the many interesting associations that cluster around this cemetery and of the famous folk, not a few, buried within it, none belong to the colonial period. Of the humbler sort Drake gives the following droll list in his Landmarks of Boston : -
" The singular juxtaposition of names strikes the reader of the headstones in Copp's Hill. Here repose the ashes of Mr. John Milk and Mr. William Beer ; of Samuel Mower and Theodocia Hay; Timothy Gay and Daniel Graves ; of Elizabeth Tout
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
and Thomas Scoot. Here lie Charity Brown, Elizabeth Scarlet, and Marcy White ; Ann Ruby and Emily Stonc."
" The Granary,"1 known in colonial times as the South Burying-Ground, was nearly contemporancous in origin with the "Old North," having been established in 1660. It was originally, as has been said, a part of the Com- mon, from which it was very soon shut off by the erection along the line of Park Street of a row of public buildings, -the Bridewell, the Almshouse, and House of Correction already mentioned, to which afterwards the Granary was added, from which it took its present name. In carly times the ground, like the Common, was bare of foliage, the trees within the inclosure, as well as the more celebrated elms of the Mall, having been set out long years after- ward. The oldest stone in the yard bears date 1667, and like the Old North all its more noted monuments belong to a later day. The most distinguished persons buried there previous to 1684 were John Hull, the mint master, and Governor Richard Bellingham. An incident connected with the Bellingham tomb would seem to prove that in carly times the place was ill-chosen for a cemetery. The Bellingham family having become extinct, the tomb was given to Governor James Sullivan, who, on going to repair it, found it partly filled with water, " and the coffin and remains of the old governor floating around in the ancient vault," - and this after being buried nearly a century.
Such in brief was the outward physical aspect of the town of Boston in the colonial period. Such were its streets and buildings, in so far as our narrow limits give us scope to set them forth. The men were not yet born, the events had not yet come to pass, by association wherewith many of them were to become in after years illustrious. Wanting all these interesting details, which belong to succeeding epochs, we must rest content with such meagre descriptions as are to be found in the earlier writers, and rely upon an awakened imagination to fill out the picture.
And yet we trust enough has been said to bring to mind a tolerably clear impression of the busy, thriving town of two hundred years ago with its windmills and batteries, its crowded meeting-houses, its bustling dock and market place, its stately mansions, its gloomy prison, its queer old taverns, its curious hanging signs, its crooked streets paved with pebble, its beacon, its whipping-post, - all the outward features of a town " whose continuall inlargement presages some sumptuous city : the wonder of this moderne age that a few years should bring forth such great matters by so meane a handfull." 2
Corin Lassetten Syner
1 It was not called "The Granary" until nearly the middle of the next century.
2 Johnson, Wonder-working Providence.
CHAPTER XX.
BOSTON FAMILIES PRIOR TO A.D. 1700.
BY WILLIAM H. WHITMORE. Chairman of the Boston Record Commissioners.
[T will, of course, be understood that the first settlers of Boston were animated by the current opinions of their time in regard to social distinctions. New England was constructed socially on the same system as Old England, with the fortunate exception that it lacked both extremes of the scale. We had here neither royal personages nor members of the titled aristocracy of England as colonists; we were equally free from any considerable admixture of that poorest and most ignorant class which then tilled the fields of the mother country, and which is even yet but a few degrees above the serfs of other lands. The expense of emigration at that date, to say nothing of the comparative enterprise of mind and soul required to create a willingness to emigrate, was enough to prevent any undesirable elements from intermingling. On the other hand, there was no inducement held out for the members of the aristocracy to come hither. There were no laurels to be gained by war, no garnered wealth to repay the freebooter, no possibility of a life of ease amid tropical Edens. Life here was to be a constant toil, removed from the splendors of a court or the charms of civilization. The dangers were constant, but ignoble; the rewards scanty and prospective.
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