USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 47
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
I have Suffered near fip Maurer Improfon
me to you very great hours of my health and or
cations nowgary for your support of a great fam.
Gentlemen
pour Humble sent
am
4 ene lo men
4. och.
EXTRACT FROM DUDLEY'S LETTER FROM JAIL.1
1 [This is from a letter in the Mass. Archives. There is also in the Mather Papers, in the Prince Library (now in the Boston Public Library),
an autograph letter of Dudley to Cotton Mather, asking his aid to obtain his release from prison, dated June 21, 1689. - ED.]
334
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
manners acquired the friendship of many considerable persons at court. Sir Richard Steele, his daily companion at this time, acknowledged that he " owed many fine thoughts, and the manner of expressing them, to his happy acquaintance with Colonel Dudley; and that he had one quality which he never knew any man possessed of but him, which was that he could talk him down into tears when he had a mind to it, by the command he had of
fine thoughts and words adapted to move the affections." He recommended himself to the dissenters in England by his serious, grave deportment; and even had the address to reconcile to himself Rev. Cotton Mather, from whom he obtained a favorable letter which he made known to King William III.,
1 [There is mention of various portraits of 1856, p. 342. Another likeness of Joseph Dudley the Dudleys in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., Oct. is in the Mass. Hist. Society's gallery. - ED.]
335
ROXBURY IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
and which removed that monarch's objections to Dudley's appointment as governor, - a post he had long endeavored to secure.
Although on his return to Boston he was received with marks of respect, the past was by no means forgotten, and he never regained his lost popu- larity. He incurred the bitter hatred of the Mathers; but by his great administrative talents and judicious management he succeeded in gradually lessening the odium in which he was held by the body of the people.
No native of New England has ever experienced so many vicissitudes or enjoyed so many public honors and offices as Joseph Dudley. "He was," says a contemporary, " a very comely person, of a noble aspect and a grace- ful mien, having the gravity of a judge and the goodness of a father. In pri- vate life he was amiable, affable, and polite, and courteous in his intercourse with all classes." Less eulo- gistic, but doubtless more cor- S Roxbury rect, is what is said of him by 23.º of august 1710 Judge Sewall, whose daughter was married to Dudley's son. " Often," says Sewall, "the Governor says that if anybody would deal plainly with him he would kiss them. But I (who did so) received many a bite and many a hard word from him." Dudley rendered im- portant services to Harvard College, and was a benefactor of the Roxbury Free School, to which he bequeathed £50 for SELECTMEN, 1710. the support of a Latin master.1
WDudley Sam Ruglos 7 John Mayo Select mary
Strenuous efforts had been made by successive royal governors to obtain a fixed salary from the Province, instead of deriving their support from legislative grants, as had always been the custom. Soon after Governor Burnet's arrival in 1728 the inhabitants of Roxbury voted -
"That it is the mind and desire of this town that the Hon. Wm. Dudley, Esq., our representative, be informed that this town is desirous His Excellency Wm. Burnet, Esq., our governor, should be very honorably supported ; but that it is against the mind and desire of this town that our said representative should consent to the passing any act or acts for fixing a salary on our governor for the time being, or for any limited time."
In the various Indian wars and those in which England and France con- tended for empire in America citizens of Roxbury were actively engaged.2
1 [Other estimates of Dudley are given in the chapters by Mr. Whitmore and Dr. Ellis in the present volume. - ED.]
2 [The general story of these wars is told in Colonel Higginson's chapter in the present volume. - ED.]
336
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Of thirty-nine soldiers who went from Roxbury and Brookline under Cap- tain Andrew Gardner, in the ill-fated expedition to Canada in 1690, Samuel Newell was the sole survivor. A tract of land was in 1735 granted to their widows and children, called Roxbury, or Gardner's Canada, now Warwick, Massachusetts. Captain Joseph Heath, grandson of William the Joseph Heath emigrant, commanded at Fort Richmond, York County, Maine, from 1724 to 1730. He was long in the provincial service on the eastern frontier, and in 1725 led an expedition across the country from the Kennebec to the Penobscot, and destroyed a French post and village at Fort Hill, near Bangor. For many years and until 1742 Captain John Gyles, of Rox- bury, commanded suc- cessively at Fort George John Gyles Interquetu (Brunswick, Maine), and at St. George's River (Thomaston). His Lieu- tenant William Heath and his Ensign Ebenezer Seaver being also of Rox- bury, it is not unlikely that his soldiers were from the same place. Gyles, who died here in 1755, at the age of seventy-seven, had in his youth passed some years (1689-1698) in Canada, and was often employed as an interpreter for the English, as he had been captured by and lived with the Indians.1
In the Louisburg expedition in 1745 were two Roxbury companies, com- manded respectively by Nathaniel Williams and John Ruggles. Ebenezer Nathe William . Newell was lieutenant of the com- pany commanded by Estes Hatch. Notwithstanding the alacrity shown in volunteering for this expedition,
Governor Shirley was compelled by the exigency to employ force in order to man the vessels that were to accompany it, and orders were issued to Colonel Brinley, commanding the Suffolk regiment, to impress twenty Erter Match men from Roxbury. Among those thus forced into service from the town were Obadiah Davis, John Wood, Jr., Joseph Mayo, Jr., and Samuel Chamberlain. Colonel Joseph Williams, Captain Jeremiah Richards, Jr., and Lieutenant Ephraim Jackson, of Roxbury, served in the Canada campaigns of 1758-60. Captain Richards's company included many Roxbury men.
In the memorable contest resulting in American Independence, as well as in the preliminary movements that brought it on, Roxbury went
. 1 At the request of his wife, Hannah Heath, text is from a paper dated in 1727. See Gyles he published in Boston, in 1736, an account of Family, by John A. Vinton, p. 122. N. E. Hist. his life called Memoirs of Odd Adventures, and Geneal. Reg., Jan. 1867, p. 49; Oct. 1867, Strange Deliverances, etc. His autograph in the p. 361.
337
ROXBURY IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
hand in hand with Boston as she had done eighty-six years before when colonial liberty was imperilled by Andros, and as she was yet to do eighty- six years later when the great Rebellion began. Boston took the lead in opposition to the acts of Parliament, and Roxbury nobly seconded her.
Samt Heath John Davis Increase Summer 1 Selectmon
William Healthy June, 41. 1756
SELECTMEN, 1756.
Dr. Warren, William Heath, Colonel Joseph Williams, and others of her leading men were in constant communication with Samuel Adams and other master spirits of what was then the " hub" of revolution, co-operat- ing with them in counsel and in action. The town-meetings were held in the old meeting-house of the First Parish. Looking over her records of Sam. Heath Ebenezer Newell Thomas Dudley Elinser Pierpont this period one is not surprised that Lord Dartmouth, his Majesty's secretary for the colonies, should have written to Governor Hutchinson that the resolves of Roxbury, Marblehead, and Plymouth contained very extraordinary doctrines. Many of these papers were written by Heath, and are vigorous and forcible presentations of the views and feelings SELECTMEN, 1762. of the people at large.
The first of these, dated Oct. 22, 1765, instructs the representative of the town, Colonel Joseph Williams, to urge the repeal of the Stamp Act; to declare the town's unwillingness to submit to internal taxes other than those imposed by the General Court; and recommends a "clear, explicit, and spirited assertion and vindication of our rights and liberties as inherent in our very natures and confirmed to us by charter."
This Act, repealed in 1766, was followed in 1767 by that levying duties upon glass, paper, painters' colors, and tea. This new aggression was promptly met by resolutions to stop importation, and at the same time to
VOL. II. - 43.
338
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
create and develop domestic manufactures, -a course generally adopted by the colonies. Dec. 7, 1767, it was resolved that -
"This town will take all proper and legal measures to encourage the produce and manufactures of this Province, and to lessen the use of superfluities from abroad, pro- vided that Boston and the neighboring towns will come into it. And as it is the opinion of this town that divers new manufactures may be set up in America to great advantage, and some others carried to a greater extent, - therefore, Voted, that the town will, by all prudent ways and means, encourage the use and consumption of glass and paper made in the colonies of America, and more especially in this province, and also of linen and woollen cloths."
A large and influential committee was appointed to procure signatures to the non-importation agreement. At a subsequent meeting the names of those who continued to import contrary to its tenor were read, and it was voted that they be annually read at " March meeting."
On May 26, 1769, Roxbury took the important step of recommending through her faithful representative, Colonel Williams, a correspondence be- tween the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the Assemblies of other provinces. She also instructed him to inquire " why the King's troops have been quartered in the body of the metropolis of the Province, while the barracks provided heretofore have remained in a manner useless," and not to comply with any requisitions for payment therefor; to inquire why criminals have not been prosecuted and punished ; to strive by every con- stitutional method to obtain the repeal of the revenue acts; and, finally, she enjoins frugality with respect to grants of the public moneys, -" the load of debt remaining on the province and the great scarcity of cash," say the resolves of the town, " is a loud call to this."
To: Williams ~ Joseph Mayo Eleazer Well John Williams Satt Ruggles
SELECTMEN, 1771.
Three days after the Boston Mas- sacre, a committee chosen at a full town-meeting - consisting of Colonel Joseph Williams, Eleazer Weld, John Williams, Jr., John Child, Captain Wil- liam Heath, Nathaniel Ruggles, and Major William Thompson - waited on Lieut .- Governor Hutchinson with a petition of the inhabitants of Rox- bury, praying for the removal of all the troops out of the town immedi- ately. Hutchinson returned an answer the same day disclaiming any authority to order the troops from their present post. He quailed, however, before the iron will and inflexible temper of
Samuel Adams; and with the removal of the troops quiet was restored. The bells of Roxbury were tolled in honor of the victims whose funeral took place on the same day the petition was presented.
339
ROXBURY IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
At a town-meeting held Nov. 16, 1772, to consider " the late alarming report that the judges were to receive their salaries direct from the crown," a committee was appointed who at a subsequent meeting reported in favor of instructing Captain William Heath, their representative, to propose an act appropriating a sufficient fund to support the judges and render them independent of the crown so far as possible, provided their commissions were during good behavior, and that they might be removed on application to the two Houses. A letter from the town of Boston requesting "a free communication of sentiments on our common danger " was then considered, and a committee chosen to report thereon. The result, reported December 14, in the language of the record " made great uneasiness in the meeting and very difficult to understand the true state of the vote, and numbers of the inhabitants withdrew from the meeting." This report was probably drawn up by the chairman, Isaac Winslow, Esq., whose conservative views finally led him to cast in his lot with the Tories. The Boston Gazette gives full par- ticulars of this stormy meeting, at which the conservative element in the town made a strenuous and well-nigh successful effort to check the popular movement. It appears that, after several fruitless attempts to ascertain the vote, the House was divided, and a majority rejected the report of the com- mittee; whereupon those gentlemen and their friends withdrew. Moder- ator Heath then read the minority report prepared by himself, which was accepted. A committee of correspondence was then chosen consisting of Captain William Heath, Nathaniel Patten, Nathaniel Felton, Samuel Sumner, Ebenezer Dorr, David Weld, and Captain Ebenezer Whiting.
Roxbury sent her committee to Faneuil Hall to meet those of the other towns, Nov. 22, 1773, to consider the final attempt of the British ministry to raise a revenue in America, by permitting the East India Company to send their tea hither free of duty. ' At the town meeting, held December 3, to dis- cuss the subject, after voting to pass over in silence the patrolling of soldiers about the streets of the town with their arms, " equipt in a warlike posture," a series of patriotic resolutions was passed, declaring among other things that " the purpose for which the tax is laid - namely, for the support of govern- ment, the administration of justice, and the defence of America - has a direct tendency to render assemblies useless and to introduce arbitrary gov- ernment and slavery; and that whoever shall aid or abet in unloading or receiving the tea is an enemy to America, and that those who refuse to resign their appointments to receive and sell said tea discover a temper inimical to the rights, liberties, and prosperity of America, and that in such light they will be viewed by this town, from whom they may not expect the least protection." Several of the young men of Roxbury were members of the famous " tea party," and lent a hand in making a "teapot" of Boston harbor on the evening of Dec. 16, 1773.
William Heath and Aaron Davis were delegates to the Provincial Con- gress convened Oct. 5, 1774, and also to that held in the following February. December 28 the town voted to adopt one fourth of its militia as minutemen,
340
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
and "for their encouragement" voted them one shilling for every three hours duty. The companies were subsequently reorganized, so that there was one in each of the three parishes. One hundred pounds were appro- priated for their pay, which was increased to sixpence an hour. General Heath tells us that Roxbury was, the first town to raise a company of minutemen in America, in 1775.
In the anxious days of preparation preceding the commencement of hostilities, Roxbury, like a faithful sentinel at the outpost of liberty, kept a vigilant eye on the movements of the soldiery in Boston, while her own streets were patrolled by a British guard at all hours of the night. Within her borders couriers stood ready to convey into the country at a moment's warning the earliest notice of impending danger. Arms and ammunition skilfully secreted in the wagons of her farmers were smuggled out of the town through the guard stationed on the Neck, and loads of straw on their way to the garrison in Boston were intercepted and made a bonfire of by her citizens.
Three companies of Roxbury minutemen, commanded respectively by Moses Whiting, William Draper, and Lemuel Child, responded to their country's call on the 19th of April, 1775, and did good service on that memorable occasion. Their lieutenants were Jacob Davis, Moses Draper, Thomas Mayo, John Davis, Lemuel May, and Isaac Williams. Dr. Warren, General Heath, and Major Greaton, were actively occupied during the day in assembling the scattered guerilla parties of minutemen and posting them advantageously, - Heath, on account of his rank, exercising command, or so much of it as the impromptu nature of the affair would admit. Moses Whiting's company afterwards made part of Greaton's regiment, serving through the campaigns of 1775 and 1776. Moses Draper led a company of Gardner's Middlesex regiment at Bunker Hill. Edward Payson Wil- liams, a corporal at Lexington, died in the service in 1777, with the rank of Major. Lieutenant Samuel Foster became a captain in Greaton's regiment, with Jonathan Dorr as his second lieutenant. At the close of the day the tired Roxbury minutemen rested on their arms on Meeting-house Hill, after placing a guard at the Neck. On the following day at least 10,000 men had assembled in arms around Boston, and the siege was immediately begun.
The American right was at Roxbury, its main post being Meeting-house Hill. Its first commander was General John Thomas, an excellent officer, whose headquarters were in the parsonage house, yet standing, opposite the church. Giving place in July to General Ward, he commanded a brigade under him, and led the successful movement on Dorchester Heights that terminated the siege. Ward's headquarters were in the Brinley House, afterwards the residence of General Dearborn. Meeting-house Hill com- mon was the grand parade of the army. Here the guards for the advanced lines on the Neck, for the main guard in Roxbury Street, for Lamb's Dam, Mill Creek, and for the other posts, and the fatigue parties employed on the fortifications were formed every morning, and inspected by Thomas, Spencer,
341
ROXBURY IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
or Greene. The Rhode Islanders were stationed at Jamaica Plain, the Con- necticut brigade was on Parker Hill, the Massachusetts men at the lines, on Meeting-house Hill, and in its vicinity. The best furnished troops were the Rhode Islanders, whose tents and equipments, in the newest English style, gave them the appearance of the regular camp of the enemy. The vacated estates of the loyalists, Loring, Auchmuty, Hutchinson, Bernard, and Hallo- well, were all in military occupation, and many of the houses vacated by the inhabitants were used as barracks by the soldiers. The "Burying- Ground redoubt," the first defensive work constructed, protected the road to Dorchester as well as the entrance to the town itself. The Roxbury Lines, erected later, constituted an advanced line of defence crossing the highway just north of the Boston boundary, and extending from Lamb's Dam on the east to Brookline on the west. Strong earthworks were thrown up on the site of the Dudley mansion and on two eminences southwest of Meeting-house Hill.
" About noon of the memorable 17th of June," wrote a soldier in Colonel Learned's regiment, "we fired an alarm and rang the bells in Roxbury, and every man was ordered to arms, as an attack was expected. Colonel Learned marched his regiment up to the Meeting-house and then to the burying-ground, which was the alarm-post, where we laid in ambush with two field-pieces placed to give it to them unawares should the regulars come. About six o'clock the enemy drew in their sentries, and immediately a heavy fire was opened from the fortification. The balls whistled over our heads and through the houses, making the clapboards and shingles fly in all direc- tions. Before the firing had begun, the General ordered some men down the street to fell some apple-trees across the street to hinder the approach of their artillery. Bomb- shells were thrown hourly into Roxbury during the night."
One of the first orders issued by Washington on taking command of the army was for the removal of a number of houses on Roxbury Street, - a military necessity. Roxbury bore the brunt of the conflict during the eleven months of the siege, and suffered severely from the enemy's can- non as well as from the devastation caused by military occupation. An estimate of her losses in the siege, made by the Selectmen and the Com- mittee of Correspondence, foots up £24,412, shared among some two hun- dred individuals, about forty of whom were damaged to the extent of £200 and upwards. So serious was the injury inflicted upon the town, that it petitioned the General Court for an abatement of its Province tax, two ninths of which was accordingly taken off. The historian Belknap, writing in October 1775, says, -
" Nothing struck me with more horror than the present condition of Roxbury. That once busy crowded street is now occupied only by a picket-guard. The houses are deserted, the windows taken out, and many shot-holes visible. Some have been burnt and others pulled down, to make room for the fortifications."
On May 22, 1776, the town instructed her representatives, Dr. Jonathan Davies, Increase Sumner, and Aaron Davis, that, " if the honorable Con-
342
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
gress shall for the safety of the said colonies declare them independent, they the said inhabitants will solemnly engage with their lives and fortunes to support them in the measure." A year later she again instructs them to favor the adoption of a constitution for the State; but it was not until May, 1780, that the instrument finally adopted was accepted by the town. The articles of Confederation of the Thirteen United Colonies were adopted by her Jan. 30, 1778.1
Several fine old mansions yet remaining in Roxbury serve as memorials to the present generation of the Tory gentry who built and occupied them, and who at that time constituted the aristocracy of the town. The loyalists of Roxbury were without exception men of high character, who abandoned valuable estates for the sake of principle. Three of them, Sir William Pepperell the younger, Isaac Winslow, and Commodore Loring, were mem- bers of the Governor's Council. Their houses and lands were leased by the selectmen until the passage of the confiscation act of 1779 made them Fra Bernard the property of the State, for whose benefit they were eventually sold. Governor Bernard's mansion, on the southwest side of Jamaica Pond, occupied after his departure by the younger Sir William Pepperell, was long ago taken down, as also was that of Governor Dudley, the home for many years of Isaac Winslow, Esq.
Shirley Place, on Shirley Street, the grandest of these old residences, built by Governor Shirley about 1748, became in 1764 the property of Judge Eliakim Hutchinson, Shirley's son-in-law. Long afterward it was the home of Governor Eustis. Washington, Franklin, Lafayette, Webster, Clay. Calhoun, and Burr were numbered among its distinguished guests.2 Allachmuy Rol" Auchnuly Another of these relics of colonial days stands at the corner of Cliff and Washington streets. It was built about 1761 by the younger Judge Auchmuty, who resided here until the breaking out of the Revolu- tion. It was afterward the home of AUTOGRAPHS OF THE ELDER AND YOUNGER Governor Increase Sumner. Here, as AUCHMUTY. a convenient halting-place between the Province House and the Governor's country seat at Jamaica Plain and the Lieutenant-Governor's residence at Milton, met the secret conclave of Crown officers who plotted the overthrow
1 [The present outline sketch of the connec- tion of Roxbury with the political commotions and the succeeding military movements which led to and accompanied the War of Independence, seems properly placed here for the local associa-
tions; but the full story of these days will be told in the next volume of this History. - ED.] 2 [A view of this mansion is given elsewhere in this volume, in connection with a portrait of Governor Shirley .- ED.]
343
ROXBURY IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
of colonial liberty. Here Bernard, Hutchinson, Auchmuty, Hallowell, and Paxton discussed the proposed alterations in the charter, and the bringing over British soldiers to overawe the people. The younger Robert Auch- muty died in London, an exile from his native land, in November, 1788. His father, a distinguished lawyer and judge, also a resident of Roxbury, was a man of extraordinary talent, and famous for wit and shrewdness. The
THE AUCHMUTY HOUSE.1
son became a successful advocate, and was the colleague of Adams and Quincy in the defence of the British sol- diers tried for participation in the "Boston Massacre."
The mansion at the corner of Boylston and Centre streets, built about 1738, was hastily vacated by Captain Benjamin Hallowell, its loyal owner, early in April, 1775. During the siege it was a hospital for the camp at Bent Hallowell Roxbury. The estate was in 1801 regained by his son, Ward Nicho- las Hallowell, who claimed it in the right of his mother and assumed her name of Boylston. Captain Hal- lowell commanded the Province 20-gun ship "King George," during the French war, rendering essential service at the retaking of Newfoundland.
1 [This house, the present residence of man. F. S. Drake, in his Town of Roxbury, Charles F. Bradford, Esq., is delineated from p. 352, enlarges upon its historical associations. a photograph kindly furnished by that gentle- - ED.]
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.