USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 49
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1 [See Dr. Ellis's and Colonel Higginson's chapters in the present volume. - ED.] VOL. II. - 45.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
but declined the office. Honest, upright, and patriotic, as a general Heath was over-cautious, and he was employed by Washington in administrative duties for which he was naturally fitted rather than for field service.
Joseph Warren, the earliest and perhaps the most illustrious of the victims of the Revolutionary war, was born at the family mansion on the street in Roxbury bearing his name, June 11, 1741. His father, who was a farmer, and who had filled several Jos Warren Pust town offices with credit, was killed by a fall from an apple-tree in 1755. The son graduated at Harvard Col- lege in 1759, taught the Roxbury Grammar School one year at a salary of £44 16s., and then entered upon a successful career as a physician. The political agitation of the day, how- ever, soon drew him into its vortex. He wrote for the public journals, worked zealously in the public and private meetings of the patriots, and soon became a leader whose fervid oratory and tireless activity, together with his personal popularity, made him the peer of Samuel Adams and Josiah Quincy, Jr., as well as the idol of the people. His oration, March 5, 1775, commemorating the " Boston Massacre," delivered in defiance of the threats of British officers that it would be at the price of the life of any man to speak on that anniversary, evinced Warren's fearlessness, at the same time that it afforded proof of his great oratorical powers. At Lexing- ton, where he was said to have been the most active man on the field, a musket ball took off a lock of hair close to his ear. On that day he united the characters of the general, the soldier, and the physician, animating his countrymen in battle and fighting by their side, and also administering to the wounded. Three days before the battle of Bunker Hill he was made a major-general by the Provincial Congress. He opposed the plan of occupying Charlestown Heights, but when the step was determined on resolved to share its dangers. Declining the command, he took his station in the redoubt which he was one of the last to leave, and fell near it while slowly retiring. At the time of his death he was president of the Provin- cial Congress and chairman of the Committee of Public Safety, being thus virtually at the head of the new commonwealth.1
John Greaton, a brigadier-general in the Revolutionary army, was born in Roxbury, March 10, 1741. His father was the last landlord of the famous Greyhound Tavern. A prominent "Son of Liberty," Greaton was active in the Lexington battle, and was successively major, lieut .- colonel, and colonel of Heath's regiment. During the siege of Boston he led several successful expeditions to the islands in the harbor, bringing off live-stock and destroying the fodder and other supplies destined for the British fleet and garrison. He took part in the unfortunate invasion of Canada in 1776; shared in the glories of Trenton, Princeton, and Saratoga, serving in Nixon's brigade in the decisive campaign of 1777; and as senior officer at Albany,
1 [A further account of Warren will be given in the next volume. - ED.]
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in 1779, was for a time in command of the Northern department. After commanding his regiment throughout the whole war, he was made a briga- dier-general on the continental establishment, Jan. 7, 1783. Returning home in October of that year, worn out in the service, he died there on the 16th of December following. His son, Richard H. Greaton, a captain in the army, was wounded in St. Clair's battle with the Indians. His brother, Rev. James Greaton, also a native of Roxbury, was rector of Christ Church, Boston, in 1759-67.
Some of the doings of the town during the provincial period, and its general condition at its close, now claim attention. In 1688 and later, when coin was scarce, taxes were received in what was called "country pay,"- that is, wheat at 4s. per bushel; rye or barley, 3s .; peas, 3s. 6d .; or at fixed rates frequently revised in town-meeting. One third was abated for money. The pay of a deputy to the General Court was 3s. per day. For killing a wolf Ios. was paid. In 1696 the town decided that " the voat of every particular person shall hang altogether, being written in one list, single voates to be cast by as insignificant." A by-law in 1723 prohibited forestalling: "No person nor slave to buy up any provisions going to Boston market except for their own use, under penalty." In 1724 the town voted to fine any person who " runs or gallops a horse in a calash, chaise, chair, cart, or sled in the town, or from Boston line to Mr. Jarvis's, or round the square," as the usual pleasure drive through Roxbury, Bartlett, Dudley, and Eustis streets was then called. In 1768 the town voted not to prevent football playing in Roxbury Street.
Negro slaves employed in domestic service were found in Roxbury towards the end of the seventeenth century, gradually increasing in number with the progress of wealth and luxury in the town. In 1739 some of the principal slave-owners, - Edward Ruggles, John Holbrook, James Jarvis, Noah Perin, Jr., Ebenezer Dorr, Nathaniel Brewer, John Williams, Ebenezer Weld, Ebenezer Gore, Thomas Baker, Jonathan Seaver, and Joseph Williams, - petitioned the town to prevent or punish negro servants "abroad in the night at unseasonable hours." Upon this petition no action was taken by the town. This and another of the distinctive phases of social life in Rox- bury in this period, -an aristocracy of wealth and official station which had grown up under the royal government, - were swept away by the Revolu- tion; and as the colonial epoch had ended with an emigration that with- drew from her borders many of her enterprising citizens, so the close of this period of her history witnessed a loyalist emigration smaller, indeed, in numbers, but making up what was lacking in this respect by its character, its influence, and its possessions.
Externally, few changes had been made during the century. Though agriculture continued to be the preponderating interest of the town, the tanning business had gradually assumed extensive proportions, while her two landing-places, one on either side of the Neck, gave her for a time a
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
certain commercial importance. The growth of the town in numbers had been slow. The census of 1765 gave a population of 1,467, - about double what it was a century before. During the siege the eastern part of the town was almost depopulated, and ten years later her numbers had not perceptibly increased. Two additional churches had been established, a workhouse built, and two new burial-places laid out, -the Westerly on Centre Street in 1690, and the Peter's Hill, or Central, on Walter Street about 1722. . The lower part of Warren Street and a few other needed thorough- fares had been opened; the Neck had been paved, fenced, and protected by a dike on the south and a sea-wall on the north, from Dover nearly to Waltham Street; and the highway from the Boston line to Meeting-house Hill had, in 1758, been paved by means of a lottery, -a common.expedient in those days for the prosecution of public works. On the whole, notwith- standing the siege which had borne heavily upon her, and the general depression caused by the war, some progress had undoubtedly been made by the town at the close of the period just considered.
Francis Drake
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CHAPTER XII.
DORCHESTER IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
BY THE REV. SAMUEL J. BARROWS, Minister of the First Parish.
I
IN the month of May, 1689, the following entry appears on the town records : -
" According to the order of the councill for safety of the people and conservation of the peace, may the 2ª, 1689, directed to the Captain and select men of the town of dorchester, - the inhabitants of the town being warned, met together on the 7th instant, may, and made choice of Samuel Clap and Timothy Tilston to convene at boston upon thursday, the ninth instant, at two o'clock afternoon, fully impowrd, then and there, to consult, advise, joyn, and give their assistance with the councill now sitting."
This short record furnishes the bridge from the Colonial to the Provincial period. The Revolution had taken place in England. The news of the proclamation of William and Mary had reached the colony; Andros had been deposed in New England, and the towns were called upon to send delegates to the general convention to establish a temporary government. At a town-meeting held June 4, the same persons were chosen representa- tives to the gathering held in Boston on June 5 ; and it is presumed that they represented the town in the convention on May 22. By vote of the town they were allowed six shillings a week for their attendance at the General Court. . On July 25 the church at Dorchester observed a public fast, ap- pointed by the Council and Representatives "in behalf of the troubles and unsettledness of the government; and in regard of the Indians plotting against us, and doing mischiefs in some parts of the country, killing and plundering; and in behalf of our native country ; that God would bless our new king and queen and nobles, and the church of God in other parts of the world."
Dorchester is brought into prominence in the beginning of the Provincial period through the important trusts which were laid upon two of her sons, - Increase Mather and William Stoughton. Mr. Mather, then pastor of the
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Second Church in Boston, and, as Palfrey says, "the most eminent among the clergy of Massachusetts," had been sent to England in 1688; and in the opening chapter of this volume the reader will find a record of the distinguished ability which he manifested in this mission. When, on Mather's recommendation, Sir William Phips was made Governor, the burden of the second place in authority fell upon another of Dorchester's sons, - William Stoughton. The recall of Phips, and the delay in the arri- val of Bellomont, made Stoughton acting Governor for several years.
A review of his administration has fallen to another writer in this vol- ume.1 We can only speak here of his general career as a resident, citizen, and one of the most influential leaders of the town. He was a son of Israel Stoughton, mentioned in the first volume, and was born Sept. 30, 1631. Whether he was born in England or in Dorchester is not known, as the date of his father's arrival in this country is involved in uncertainty. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1650, studied afterward at New College, Oxford, but returned to New England in 1662, having lost his fellowship on the restoration of Charles II. His name appears frequently on the Dor- chester records as assisting Mr. Mather in the public services. At the death of Mr. Mather he was invited six times to become the pastor of the Dorchester church, but persistently declined the invitation, and was never settled as a minister. He preached the annual election sermon in 1668, which is said to have been " one of the most powerful and impressive that had been delivered before the General Court."
From 1671 until the time of his death, thirty years later, he took an active part in the political affairs of Massachusetts, serving as assistant to the Governor; as messenger to England with Bulkley in 1676; member of Andros's Council; Judge of the Superior Court; and, as already mentioned, Lieut .- Governor and acting Governor of the colony under Phips. But per- haps he is most widely and most unpleasantly remembered as Chief-Justice of the Court commissioned for the witchcraft trials.
Governor Stoughton lived at the corner of Savin Hill Avenue and Pleas- ant Street. Judge Sewall, his warm friend and associate in the witchcraft trials, often visited him here, no doubt to talk over the exigencies of those troublous times. The solitary stone and the large elms which once marked the spot where his house stood have but lately succumbed to the changes which annexation has produced in Dorchester. Stoughton died in 1701, and was buried in the Dorchester cemetery. The elaborate Latin inscrip- tion on his tomb, which for that time was quite costly, is supposed to have been written by Cotton Mather, modelled after that of Pascal. Modern historians of Massachusetts have declined to echo the eulogy of his epitaph. Palfrey speaks of him as a " rich, atrabilious bachelor, one of those men to whom it seems to be a necessity of nature to favor oppressive and insolent pretensions, to resent every movement for freedom and humanity as an im- pertinence and affront." He elsewhere describes him as " hard, obstinate,
1 [See Dr. Ellis's chapter on the Royal Governors. - ED.]
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DORCHESTER IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
narrow-minded; " and again reproaches him for a " bulldog stubbornness that might in other times have made him a St. Dominic." Quincy, on the other hand, in his History of Harvard University, credits the charge that he was one of those " having more of the willow than the oak in his constitu- tion; " " one of those politicians who change their principles with times, and shift their sails so as to catch every favorable breeze." By another historian he is called " pudding-faced, sanctimonious, and unfeeling." But, in mitigation of this harsh judgment, Palfrey admits that he was " not uncon- scientious after his own dreary way." Hutchinson and Barry both commend his administration as Governor. Judge Sewall in his Diary tells us that he " prayed excellently ; " and we have ample evidence that he was liberal in the use of his wealth. It is somewhat difficult to believe that one so decided and conscientious in his opinions was a time-server, and his course in the witchcraft trials seems most easily explained on the theory that his conscientiousness was equal to his superstition. His mind was not an en- lightened one; but there seems no reason to believe that he did not strive to act in accordance with the dim and very blue light which he had.
Three years before his death he gave to Harvard College a building costing one thousand pounds, Massachusetts currency. It was taken down in 1780, but the present "Stoughton Hall " preserves the memory of the gift. In his will he also made a bequest of land to the college, "which nursery of good learning hath been of inestimable blessing to the church and people of God in this wilderness, and may ever continue to be so if this people continue in the favor of God." The income of this land and part of the income of Stoughton Hall was given by him for needy students. He also made gifts to the churches of Dorchester and Milton, and to the poor of the town.
Blake, in his Annals, makes no mention of the witchcraft trials ; and Dor- chester's part during that tragic excitement seems to have been confined to supplying the stern and inexorable judge who presided. Rev. John Hale, of Beverly, in his Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, published in 1697, after mentioning the execution of the women in Charlestown in 1647 or 1648 for witchcraft, says : -
" Another that suffered on that account sometime after was a Dorchester woman. Upon the day of her execution Mr. Thompson, minister at Brantry, and J. P., her former master, took pains with her to bring her to repentance. She utterly denied her guilt of witchcraft, yet justified God for bringing her to that punishment."
She confessed that she had been guilty of a great sin, but " owned nothing to the crime laid to her charge."
In the unfortunate expedition against Canada, in 1690, Dorchester fur- nished a company of seventy-four men, under command of Captain John Withington. Forty-six of these, with the captain, were lost at sea. In recognition of this service, the General Court, in 1735, granted to the survivors of the expedition, and to the heirs of those who were lost, a
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
township of land in the northern part of Worcester County, which was called Dorchester-Canada. In 1765 this was incorporated into a town and called Ashburnham. In addition to this loss of forty-six soldiers, Dor- chester suffered heavily about the same time from an invasion of small-pox and fever. We learn from a memorandum made by the father of James Blake, that " from first of April, 1690, unto the last of July, 1691, - that is, one year and four months, - there died in Dorchester 57 persons ; 33 of them of small-pox, the rest of fever; most of them of middle age." This loss by disease is larger than we find on the bill of mortality for any year in the period from 1749 to 1792. When we add the forty-six soldiers, making a total of 103, we may safely say that in no year since its founding has death cast so much gloom over the town. From 1657 to 1734 inclusive, -a space of seventy-eight years, -there were 2,416 births and 921 deaths ; which show, as James Blake remarks, " that many of the people that were born in the town moved out and died not here." Noah Clapp, for many years town clerk, gives a record of births and deaths and marriages from the year 1749 to 1792, a period of forty-three years, from which it appears that there were 1,891 births, 991 deaths, and 463 marriages.
After sending its soldiers to the north in 1690, Dorchester was soon engaged in the more congenial work of sending the gospel to the South. In 1635-36 it had planted the first church in Connecticut. It was now to spread the table of the Lord in the groves of Carolina. On Oct. 22, 1695, the usual Lecture day, a meeting was held in the old church at Dorchester to ordain the Rev. Joseph Lord to this missionary work. In the following December, nine men from Dorchester and neighboring towns, having first organized themselves into a church, embarked for the South. Mr. Dan- forth of Dorchester preached the sermon at the time of their departure. The little company landed on the shores of South Carolina, and made their way to the Ashley river. In the wilds of the unbroken forest they partook of the first sacrament of the Lord's Supper ever held in Carolina. A meeting-house was erected, and the new settlement was called Dorchester. The unhealthfulness of this locality, however, caused the colony to remove, some fifty-seven years later, - in 1752, - to Georgia, where they founded the town of Midway, and the earlier settlement fell into decay. It was this little settlement in Georgia, forming a large part of the parish of St. John, which took a bold and early stand for liberty in the war of the Revolution. When Georgia was holding back and declining to join in the general move- ment, the parish of St. John subscribed, on its own account, " the General Association," and sent one of the members of the Dorchester-Midway Church to represent the parish in the Congress at Philadelphia.
Earnest and zealous in sending the gospel to distant regions; generous in relieving by ample contributions the necessity of the saints in England, or the destitution of some poor captive among the Turks, - the town did not forget to illustrate a gospel of charity and justice to the Indian tribes around them. It was mentioned in the first volume of this History that
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the town of Dorchester in 1657 set aside six thousand acres of land for an Indian reservation, "where they might have the gospel preached to them by the Rev. Mr. Eliot." About fifty years after, some differences arose between the Indians and the English in the vicinity of Ponkapoag concern- ing the control of a portion of this land. The Indians, therefore, sent a deputation to Dorchester, acknowledged the town to be the donor of the land, and requested that it would choose three men, to join with two men whom they should choose, to adjust the difficulty. The town accepted the proposition, and, after binding the Indians not to dispose of this land without consent of the town, passed the following resolution: "And the town of Dorchester do promise and engage that the committee chosen shall from time to time take care that the English there do not by any means wrong the Indians; but if it appear that they or any of them do, they shall see them righted." The action of Dorchester was so satisfactory to the Indians, that they sent a letter in 1708 thanking the town for its mediation, and stating that the differences had been composed.
In 1726 Dorchester suffered another change in her boundaries. Ponka-
...
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HOUSE ON WILLOW COURT.1
poag, or the south precinct, with the lands beyond it in the town, was set off as a township by itself under the name of Stoughton.
From the records of the town and those of the church, and the brief
1 This house was raised May 15, 1750. It Revolutionary struggle soldiers are said to have was built by Ebenezer Clapp (father of Colonel been quartered in it. The house is now occu- Ebenezer Clapp). During the early part of the pied by James T. Howe.
VOL. II. - 46.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
jottings of James Blake, we get many details of daily life, unimportant though they may be.
In 1707 it was voted to pay twelve-pence a dozen for all the old black- birds killed within the town and brought in to either of the constables; and threepence for all the young ones. A few years after another bounty of twopence per head was offered on " crow or stare blackbirds." These votes were repeated annually for a great many years. In 1735 the town declared war against striped squirrels, and offered a bounty of twopence for every head. In 1736 it was " voted that whosoever shall kill brown rats so large grown as to have hair on them, within the town of Dorchester, the year en- suing until our meeting in May next, and bring in their scalps with the hairs on unto the town treasurer, shall be paid by the town treasurer fourpence for every such rat's scalp." And in 1785 a bounty of one shilling and six- pence a-piece was offered for the killing of rattlesnakes. In 1734 the town ordered that the bell be rung at nine o'clock every night, and the custom was followed for about a hundred years. The severe winter of 1740, when the harbor was frozen; the earthquake of 1744, which shook the meeting- house and threw down some stone walls; the scorching drouth of 1749, - are all faithfully entered in Blake's Annals. He mentions the five hundred soldiers who went from the Province to assist in the war against Spain, and describes at some length the expedition of 1745 against Louisburg. In this expedition three thousand went from Massachusetts. And Blake adds: " Most that went from hereabouts, that I knew, either died there or in their passage home, or soon after they came home. It is said there died of our New England forces about 1,500 men."
From a census taken by the selectmen in 1765 we learn that there were 204 houses and 245 animals. Of males under 16 years of age there were 292 ; females, 284. Of males above 16 years of age, 343; females, 404. Negroes and mulattoes, males 23; females 14. Total, 1,360.
The Revolutionary record of Dorchester is one of vigilant and un- compromising patriotism, of bold and concerted action, of persistent and determined sacrifice in the cause.
Leaving the military movements -which at the outbreak of the war rendered Dorchester Heights conspicuous - to be told by another hand in a later volume, the present chapter must be confined to the local action of the town rather than to the general story of those perilous days. When the action of the Albany Congress of 1754, which sought to secure a union of the colonies against the French aggressions, was discussed in the Massa- chusetts Legislature, Robert Spur, the Dorchester delegate, held off with the majority from perfecting a union for which the times were not yet ripe. At the next session, in 1755, Colonel Estes Hatch was sent to represent Dorchester, and the town voted -
" That the representative of this town be and hereby is instructed to use his utmost endeavor to prevent the plan for the union of the governments that has been under the consideration of the General Court from taking effect ; and that he also oppose any
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other plan for a union that may come under the consideration of the General Court whereby he shall apprehend - the liberties and privileges of the people are endangered."
The resolution embodies the suspicion in which any movement was held which threatened to surrender any of the privileges they then enjoyed. And it is worthy of note that the plan of the Albany commissioners was rejected by all the legislators of the several provinces, no one of them wishing to yield so much power to any general government.
Ten years later, when the Stamp Act was passed, the town declared that some of their " most valuable rights " were "very sensibly affected; " and at a meeting held Oct. 31, 1765, the people instructed their representative, Colonel John Robinson, to use the utmost of his endeavors "with the Great and General Court of this Province, to obtain a repeal of the late Parlia- mentary act, always earnestly asserting our rights as free-born Englishmen," and to use his best skill "in preventing the use of stamped paper in this government." At the same time they manifested their " utter abhorrence of all riots, tumults, and unlawful assemblies," and urged their representa- tive to assist in making such laws as would serve to prevent them.
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