USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 63
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" As to drink, they have no good beer in this country : Madeira wines, rum- punch, are the liquors they drink in common. With their victuals the generality of the people drink cider. But there are several brewers in the town that brew for the shipping, and serve some private families with table-beer, which is very cheap, - less .
1 It is curious that Mr. Bennett here brings the very complaint against our oysters which we are wont to charge on those we get in England.
The passage about lobsters, though a little inco- herent, follows the MS.
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LIFE IN BOSTON IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
than half the price we pay at London. But cider being cheap likewise, and the people used to it, they don't encourage malt liquors. They pay about three shillings sterling a barrel for cider.
" Their fuel is altogether wood,1 and is one of the most expensive articles of housekeeping in Boston ; but up the country they have it for cutting.
" As to the several sorts of roots used for sauce to their meats, they have most of the kinds we have in England, which originally came from thence ; besides which, they have several of the natural growth of the country. They have a variety of the fruits, too, of the natural growth of the country, which were all wild when the English
gayon Effun William Bennett John Marston Deborah Cricke
Robert Sanders othes Bayley James Day William. Copp Ann: Pollo Joseph Wilson Eliz: monck
TAVERN-KEEPERS AFTER 1700.2
went first to America, - such as grapes, strawberries, raspberries, huckleberries, cran- berries, and also several sorts of wild cherries, with many other sorts of wild fruits eaten by the Indians. And now they have most of the kinds of fruit we have in England, - apples and pears in great abundance, and also Kentish and several other sorts of cherries ; and plums of various sorts, but not altogether so fine as in England.
1 In the Boston Town Records, under date of March 11, 1717-18, we read : "Voted, that a committee be raised to consider and make en- quiry about encouraging the bringing of sea-coal into this town." But there appears to have been no report made. Later, in 1747, Governor Shirley sent to the town authorities a letter from Commodore Knowles, offering to supply Boston with coal without waiting first to supply the garrison ; and though the offer was not regularly
accepted, the committee appointed recommended free trade in sea-coal between Louisburg and Boston. See Boston Town Records, under date of June 29-July 3, 1747.
2 [These signatures are taken from petitions for licenses on file at the State House. Others are given in connection with historic inns men- tioned in the Introduction to this volume. Ann Pollard and Eliza Monck catered to the public early in the century. Willson kept the Blue
VOL. II. - 59.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
They have fine melons, too, vastly cheap and plenty ; and all sorts of beans and pease and salad herbs. They have run mightily into orcharding in this part of the world. At the latter end of the summer, which way soever we travel, the fruits hang so thick by the wayside that we may gather them from the trees with almost as little trouble as to take them from one's own pocket. There are great plenty of fine peaches, which grow all upon trees, and are the natural growth of America. Some of them are as fine as the best we have in England, which we buy here for about threepence a peck ; the common sort are so little regarded that they feed their hogs with them." 1
The failure of Sir William Phips's expedition to Canada in 1690 brought various tribulations upon Boston, and especially in the quandary in which the Government found itself with regard to payment of the soldiers. It had relied recklessly upon the plunder it expected to bring back from Quebec. There was no money in the treasury and no time to raise it by new taxes. Resort was had to bills of credit, and paper currency was then introduced into New England. The mint which had its short life earlier in the century had been closed, and there was very little coin in the country, business being transacted largely by barter, by orders on tradesmen, and bills on London. When Bennett visited Boston, he found paper money firmly established, and he drew a picture which has some familiar features for us: -
" As to money, they have no sort of coin among them, - nothing but paper bills, which are issued by the Governor and Council ; but, being made current, they answer the same end as money among ourselves. And the people in common had much rather take those bills for anything they sell than gold or silver, notwithstanding many of them are so miserably fractured, that, in passing from one to another, they often fall into three or four pieces ; and many of them are joined together in several places, and are so obliterated with their being often handled that they are difficult to be understood by those that are unused to them. But upon application to the treasury, they change them without any expense. The discount between those bills and sterling is four hundred and fifty cents at present ; that is, five hundred and fifty pounds of this currency is equal to one hundred pounds sterling. But they are variable ; being governed by the rise and fall of bills of exchange. Some of those bills are so low as threepence ; which is something more than a penny sterling. English halfpence are much used here for change, and are very valuable here. They pass current here at three halfpence a piece ; which is twopence in every shilling sterling above the com- mon course of exchange. I have made enquiry among the merchants of the reason
Anchor, near Oliver's Dock, in 1735. Coffin came from New Jersey, and kept a house at the head of Long Wharf. Bayley kept the Blue Anchor in 1752. Deborah Cricke kept the Half Moon in 1705. Bennett was on Minot's Tin 1758. Copp (very likely a son of the old shoemaker) had been a mariner, and was cap- tured by the French; but in 1697 he petitions to keep a house of public entertainment near Charlestown Ferry. Marston, in 1752, kept the Golden Ball, in Merchants Row, near the Dock, which had been a tavern for sixty years. San- ders was a retailer of liquor in 1703. Day kept
the Sun Tavern in 1753. A list, printed in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1877, p. 108, of the inn-holders in Boston in 1714, shows thirty-two, besides four common victuallers, forty-one re- tailers of liquor, two coffee-house keepers, and one retailer of cider. Among the original papers in the City Clerk's office, 1716, is a list of inn. holders, taverners, and retailers without doors, at that date in Boston. In 1752 a committee on licensed houses reported thirty-six inn-holders and one hundred and twenty-six retailers in the town. - ED.]
1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1860-62, pp. 112-114.
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LIFE IN BOSTON IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
of their being without a coin, and they say the balance of trade with England is so much against them that they cannot keep any money amongst them, - of which they have had the experience, having once had a coin of their own, but were soon stripped of it, so that they had not enough left for their necessary uses ; and that obliged them to have recourse to this method of making bills. There is still a great deal of both · English and foreign gold and silver in the hands of the merchants; but they use it only as merchandise, and buy and sell it only by weight, to send to England in return for goods. And the country folks are all of them so averse to any sort of coin that one may as well offer them pebble stones as gold and silver for anything one wants to buy of them ; and they will much sooner credit any stranger that comes from Eng- land than take their money, unless it be halfpence." 1
The change from an isolated and self-contained community of homo- geneous character to one having grades of rank and diversity of fortune and modes of living has already been intimated, and we turn now to some of those features in which Boston, whether Provincial or Colonial, was especially distinguished from English towns. The most noticeable differ- ence is naturally to be found in the prominence of religious interests, as affecting policy and manners. How would the religious aspect of Boston life impress a stranger? Once more we turn to Mr. Bennett's account, and observe what he saw : -
"Their observation of the Sabbath (which they rather choose to call by the name of the Lord's Day, whensoever they have occasion to mention it), it is the strictest kept that ever I yet saw anywhere. On that day no man, woman, or child is per- mitted to go out of town on any pretence whatsoever ; 2 nor can any that are out of town come in on the Lord's Day. The town being situated on a peninsula, there is but one way out of it by land ; which is over a narrow neck of land at the south end of the town, which is enclosed by a fortification, and the gates shut by way of preven- tion. There is a ferry, indeed, at the north end of the town ; but care is taken by way of prevention there also. But if they could escape out of the town at either of these places, it wouldn't answer their end, for the same care is taken, all the country
I Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1860-1862, pp. 123, 124. [Shortly after this account was written, the issue of paper currency was checked by orders from the king, a proceeding followed by much financial confusion; and as ways out of the dilemma the " Land Bank Scheme" and the "Silver Scheme " were brought forward. Ac- counts of these measures can be found in Hutch- inson, ii. 392; Palfrey, iv. 547, etc .; Wells, Samuel Adams, i. 8; Felt, Historical Account of Massachusetts Currency ; and in a contemporary Account of the Rise, Progress, and Consequences of the two late Schemes, commonly called the Land Bank or Manufacturing Scheme, and the Silver Scheme, in a letter from a gentle- man in Boston, London, 1744. The names of the "undertakers" of the Land Bank are given in Drake's Boston, 613. The "Silver Scheme " represented an association of Boston
Merchants and others (Samuel Sewall, Edward Hutchinson, James Bowdoin, Edmund Quincy, Edward Oxnard, Joshua Winslow, Andrew Oliver, H. Hall, James Boutineau, Samuel Welles), who proposed to supply their notes as a circulating medium in opposition to the Land Bank. See N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1860, p. 263. - ED.]
2 [" Bennett," says Dr. Ellis, in some manu- script comments, "was mistaken on this point. A magistrate could give a permit for travel on an emergency, to convey important intelligence in cases of sickness, death, etc. Under date of Saturday, Feb. 1, 17234, Judge Sewall re- cords the suicide of John Valentine, Esq., which he heard of on Sunday morning. He adds : ' I writ a permit for Mrs. Valentine's Negro to ride to Freetown to tell her Son that his Father died last night.'"-ED.]
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
over, to prevent travelling on Sundays ; and they are as diligent in detecting of offenders of this sort, all over the New England government, as we in England are of stopping up of highways, - more; and those who are of the Independent persuasion refrain any attempts of this kind, in point of conscience. And as they will by no means admit of trading on Sunday, so they are equally tenacious about preserving good order in the town on the Lord's Day : and they will not suffer any one to walk down to the water- side, though some of the houses are adjoining to the several wharfs ; nor, even in the hottest days of summer, will they admit of any one to take the air on the Common, which lies contiguous to the town, as Moorfields does to Finsbury. And if two or three people, who meet one another in the street by accident, stand talking together, - if they do not disperse immediately upon the first notice, they are liable to fine and imprisonment ; and I believe, whoever it be that incurs the penalties on this account, are sure to feel the weight of them. But that which is the most extraordinary is that they commence the Sabbath from the setting of the sun on the Saturday evening ; 1 and, in conformity to that, all trade and business ceases, and every shop in the town is shut up : even a barber is finable for shaving after that time. Nor are any of the taverns per- mitted to entertain company ; for in that case not only the house, but every person found therein, is finable. I don't mention this strict observance of the Lord's Day as intended rather to keep people within the bounds of decency and good order than to be strictly complied with, or that the appointment of this duty was only by some primary law since grown obsolete; but that it is now in full force and vigor, and that the justices, attended with a posse of constables, go about every week to compel obedi- ence to this law.2
" As to their ministers, there is no compulsory tax upon the people for their sup- port, but every one contributes according to their inclination or ability ; and it is col- lected in the following manner : Every Sunday, in the afternoon, as soon as the sermon is ended, and before the singing of the last psalm, they have a vacant space of time, in which there are three or four men come about with long wooden boxes, which they present to every pew for the reception of what every one is pleased to put into them. The first time I saw this method of collecting for the parson, it put me in mind of the waiters at Saddler's Wells, who used to collect their money just before the beginning of the last act. But notwithstanding they thus collect the money for the maintenance of the clergy in general, yet they are not left to depend entirely upon the uncertainty of
1 [See Vol. I. 516, note. - ED.]
2 [I find various entries of such service in a diary of the time : -
" March 24, 1742. Mr. Hall and Tyler, and Walley and I went out as soon as the notes were read and we carried Tool and wife and son to Bridewell, and went to many places ; we did not go into meeting again.
"July 25, 1742. Dr. Colman preached. Cap- tain Downe and I walked with Mr. Phillebrown, the constable.
"June 10, 1744. Mr. Tyler, Major Hench- man, and I and the constable went out after the short prayer and reading, and walked in my ward, etc., all the afternoon.
"July 1, 1744. Mr. Hall, Mr. Tyler, and others and I went out and walked about the town at the same time.
" Nov. 4, 1744. Mr. Hall, Colonel Down, and I went out after contribution and stood by ye Townhouse."
These items and others elsewhere given in this volume are gathered from the diary of Colonel John Phillips, who was born in 1701 and died in 1763. He was son of Samuel, of Salem, and great grandson of George, of Watertown. The manuscript has been kindly placed in my hands by Wendell Phillips, Esq., of Boston. Like a great many of the note-books of the same period it consists mostly of an enumeration and abstracts of sermons the colonel had heard from Colman, Cooper, and others after 1720. These reports are interspersed with memo- randa of gloves and rings received at wed- dings and funerals, and when he had "watched." - ED.]
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LIFE IN BOSTON IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
what people shall happen to give, but have a certain sum paid them every Monday morning, whether so much happens to be collected or not ; and no one of them has less than a hundred pounds sterling per annum, which is a comfortable support in this part of the world." 1
The impression created by Bennett's account is fully confirmed by the legislation of the period. The close observance of the Lord's Day was the last stronghold of the Puritan idea. Whatever inroads might be made on a polity which concerned the conduct of life as well as commercial enterprise and political integrity, the most vigilant care was exercised over the observ- ance of Sunday. That was the last stronghold to be relinquished ; and it may be said that the unwritten law has been more powerful than the written, and that in no element of life in Boston has the Puritan tradition lingered longer than in this. The General Court took occasion from time to time to renew the covenant, so to speak, which the people kept with the Lord's Day. By an act passed Oct. 22, 1692, it declared -
"That all and every person or persons shall, on that day, carefully apply them- selves to duties of religion and piety, publicly and privately ; and that no tradesman, artificer, laborer, or other person whatsoever shall, upon the land or water, do or exercise any labor, business, or work of their ordinary callings, nor use any game, sport, play, or recreation on the Lord's Day, or any part thereof (works of necessity or charity only excepted)."
It suffered no travel. Public houses were not to entertain any other than strangers and lodgers "on Saturday night after the sun is set, or on the Lord's Day or the evening following." The act concludes : -
" And all and every justice of the peace, constables, and tithing-men are required to take effectual care, and endeavor that this act in all the particulars thereof be duly observed. As also to restrain all persons from swimming in the water ; unnecessary and unreasonably walking in the streets or fields in the town of Boston, or other places ; keeping open their shops, and following their secular occasions or recreations in the evening preceding the Lord's Day, or any part of the said day or evening following." 2
Living and dead were both to observe the day. In town-meeting, May 12, 1701, it was ordered -
" That no person shall dig any grave or make any coffin on the Lord's Day without the approbation and allowance of two of the selectmen for the time being, on pain of forfeiting the sum of twenty shillings ; nor shall any person keep open their shop or cellar that they manage or keep their callings in, on the evening preceding the Lord's Day, or on the Lord's Day, on pain of forfeiting the sum of five shillings for every such offence, to be paid by the occupier of such shop or cellar."
Nor were any funerals to be solemnized on the Lord's Day, because the solemnizing " ofttimes occasions great profanation thereon, by servants and
1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., pp. 115, 116.
2 Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, sub die.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
children gathering in the streets, and walking up and down, to and from the funerals, and is the means of many disorders and irregularities then com- mitted." 1
This legislation required to be frequently renewed and emphasized. There was a fresh act in 1716; and eleven years afterward additional acts were passed, with heavier penalties. In the Boston News-Letter for June 12, 1746, due notice is given with all solemnity that offenders will be prose- cuted : -
" Boston, June 9, 1746. By order of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace in the town of Boston : Whereas there appears a growing negligence of duly observing and keeping the Lord's Day, the Justices in the town of Boston have agreed to walk and observe the behaviour of the people of said town of Boston on said day ; and they judge it proper to give this public notice thereof, and all persons profaning the Lord's Day by walking, standing in the streets, or any other way breaking the laws made for the due observation of the Lord's Day, may expect the execution of the law upon them for all disorders of this kind." 2
With this strict observance of Sunday went naturally a special respect for the clergy; they were an aristocratic order recognized by the people with an unhesitating loyalty, not so easily given to men of rank who were in government service. They were an order in part created and wholly sus- tained by the people; and the prerogative of the class was jealously main- tained, as was also the privilege of the people in their relations to their spiritual advisers. When the General Court, in an act passed Feb. 17, 1693, provided for the choice and settlement of ministers, there was added the proviso, " that nothing herein contained is intended or shall be construed to extend to abridge the inhabitants of Boston of their accustomed way and practice as to the choice and maintenance of their ministers." Sewall, under date of Aug. 20, 1685, refers to a sermon by Mr. Moody upon the death of Rev. William Adams, upon the words, "There is no more any prophet": "With respect to four ministers taken away in less than twice so many moneths; shewed that 't was a peculiar Aggravation to all other Afflictions and Fears."3 In 1735 the town of Boston, in reckoning its expenses, de- clared that " the support of the ministry of the Town, by a moderate compu- tation, amounts to £8,000 per annum."4 In 1742 the amount had risen to £12,000, but probably the reckoning was in old tenor in both instances, and the nominal sum was swelled by the depreciation of the money.
1 Acts and Resolves, Dec. 27, 1727.
2 [There are some characteristic notices of Sunday observances in Sewall's Diary, ii. 101, 420; iii. 82 : " 1704. Lord's day, April 23. There is great firing at the town, ships, Castle, upon account of it being the Coronation day, which gives offence to many. Down Sabbath, up St. George !" See also Drake, Boston, 577. The sermon which Increase Mather preached on the great fire of 1711 gave as one reason for it : "Has
not God's holy day been profaned in New Eng- land ? Has it not been so in Boston this last summer ? Have not burdens been carried through the streets on the Sabbath Day ? Nay, have not bakers, carpenters, and other tradesmen been employed in servile works on the Sabbath Day? When I saw this, my heart said, Will not the Lord for this kindle a fire in Boston ?" - ED.]
3 Sewall's Diary, i. 93.
4 Boston Town Records, Jan. 1, 1735.
471
LIFE IN BOSTON IN THE PROVINCIAL PERIOD.
The great preponderance of Congregationalists over all other religious societies gave to the ministers and churches of that order all the appear- ance of an establishment; besides that there was an actual commingling of Church and State. The Church of England was of course so identified with the representatives of the Crown in Boston, that all the instincts of self- preservation made Boston people look with alarm and jealousy upon the growth of Episcopacy. The narration of the events connected with the establishment of King's Chapel, Christ Church, and Trinity belongs else- where; 1 but no account of life in Boston at this period should omit men- tion of that effect upon society which was created by the setting up of the English Church in visible and permanent shape. The reader of Sewall's Diary sees there the unaffected grief and apprehension of a good man at the progress of what he regarded as inimical to all that he held dear. His alarm was shared probably by a large part of the older members of the community. It seemed to them that what their fathers had come to establish, and they were prepared to defend, was now suffering an insidious attack which they were powerless to avert. Among the younger members there was a curiosity to see a spectacle which they had vaguely understood to be a spectre to their fathers.2 Probably the men and women now in middle life, who in childhood were taken to services in the Roman Catholic Cathedral, experienced some of the sensations which assailed the children at the end of the seventeenth century, - and grown people, too, - when they crowded about the Town House at the hour of divine service on Sunday, and especially on festival days, much to the grief of the staid men and women of the Congregational order. Sewall records in his Diary with satisfaction the steadfastness of his son Joseph, afterward minister of the Old South, who refused to go to church on Christmas Day when the other boys did. But all of Sewall's observations on this subject are so interesting, that it is worth while to collect the various passages, as one can in no better way catch at the spirit in which this usurpation of America by England - for such it seemed to them - was regarded : -
" Dec. 25, 1685. Friday. Carts come to town and Shops open as is usual. Some, somehow, observe the day ; but are vexed, I believe, that the Body of the People profane it, - and, blessed be God ! no Authority yet to compell them to keep it.
" Dec. 28, 1685. Cous. Fissenden here. Saith he came for Skins last Friday, and [there ] was less Christmas-keeping than last year, fewer Shops Shut up.
" Friday, Aug. 20, 1686. I was and am in great exercise about the Cross to be put into the Colours, and afraid if I should have a hand in 't whether it may not hinder my Entrance into the Holy Land.
"Sabbath-day, Aug. 22. In the Evening seriously discoursed with Capt. Eliot and Frary, signifying my inability to hold, and reading Mr. Cotton's Arguments to them about the Cross, and sayd that to introduce it into Boston at this time was much,
1 [See Mr. Foote's chapter in Vol. I. and the stage in 1686 had never seen a Church of Dr. Mckenzie's in this volume. - ED.]
2 " Most of the inhabitants who were upon 355.
England assembly." - Hutchinson, History, i.
472
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
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