The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III, Part 17

Author: Jewett, Clarence F; Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897
Publication date: 1880-1881
Publisher: Boston : J.R. Osgood
Number of Pages: 770

USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III > Part 17

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KILBURN

THE WASHINGTON ELM.

(Drake's Landmarks of Middlesex, p. 268.) There are accounts of the tree in Harvard Book, ii. and in the paper on "American Historical Trees" in Harper's Monthly, May, 1862. Christ Church stood then as now, and, except being lengthened, is not greatly changed in outward appearance. A subscription, mainly effected in Boston, had built it about fifteen years earlier, and its parish- ioners were now mostly Tories and absentees. It was accordingly converted into barracks, and some of the Southern riflemen found quarters there, though occasional church services were held in it, a member of Washington's staff con- ducting them. See Dr. Hoppin's Historical Dis- course.

Proceeding into Brattle Street from Harvard Square, the first house beyond the University

proved under the superintendence of a son, Major Thomas Brattle, who had gone to England early in the war, signifying his neutrality, but exerting himself the mean while to alleviate the trials of American prisoners in that country. At the end of the war his return was allowed by the Legislature only on the strong presentation by Judge Sullivan of his claims to consideration. (Amory's James Sullivan, i. 139.) The mansion was early appropriated to the uses of Colonel Mifflin,1 who acted as the quartermaster-general

1 John Adams describes dining at this house Jan. 24; 1776, with General Washington and his lady and other company, among whom were "six or seven sachems and warriors of the French Caghnawaga Indians with several of their wives and children," then visiting the camp. " I was introduced to them by the General,' says Adams, "as one

THE SIEGE OF BOSTON.

of the army, and whose memoranda can be seen on the corner of the plan of the British lines on Boston Neck, in a heliotype given in this chapter.

The grounds of the Brattles extended to those of the Vassalls, whose old mansion is still stand- ing, much shorn of its ancient splendor, and lately the residence of Mr. Samuel Batchelder. The house was at this time a passably old one, seventy- five years or even more having passed since its erection, and its history can be read as written by Mrs. James, Mr. Batchelder's daughter, in The Cambridge of 1775, P. 93, showing how many changes have been made in its appearance. The Vassalls had owned it since 1736, when Colonel John Vassall was in possession. Ile had mar- ried a daughter of Lieut .- Governor Spencer Phips, and in years to come she and others who bore the name of the bluff, illiterate sailor, William Phips, were foremost figures in the old Tory aristocracy of Cambridge; for her three sisters married Judge Richard Lechmere, Judge Joseph Lee, and Andrew Boardman, In 1741 Henry Vassall, the colonel's brother, bought it. He was then living in Boston, but had lately been a planter in Jamaica, though of a Boston family. (See Vol. II. p. 544.) This Henry married a daughter of Isaac Royall, whose fine mansion on the Medford road we have seen in the occupancy

ton's arrival. The story of Church's defection need not be told here. Its growth has been traced in Frothingham's Life of Joseph Warren, p. 225. (Also see Siege of Boston, p. 258 ; Gordon's American Revolution, ii. 134; Loring's Hundred Boston Orators, p. 39; Sabine's American Loyal- ists; and Mr. Goddard's chapter in the present volume.) The letter which he addressed to his brother in Boston, and which was intercepted, was written in cipher; and in the Massachusetts Archives, cxxxviii. 326, is a copy of it as "dle- ciphered by the Rev. Mr. West, and acknowl. cdged by the doctor to be truly deciphered." It is attested by Joseph Reed, secretary. The trans- lation was printed in the New England Chronicle and Essex Gazette of Jan. 4, 1776, at that time printed in one of the college buildings; and is reprinted in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1857, p. 123. Church was brought before a coun- cil of officers September 13, when he did not at- tempt to vindicate himself. Ile was now confined in a front chamber of this house, and the name, " B. Church, Jr.," cut by himself in the panel of a closet door in that chamber, can be traced to-day. The court remanded him to the Provincial Con- gress at Watertown, whither he was taken in a chaise with a guard under General Gates, and the trial took place in the meeting-house, Church

y+ Olomoucis affected but faithful Humbleferrant. Benjuf husch Sun"

Hon " James Wartin -Log!"

of Lee and Sullivan. The husband died in 1769, making a plausible speech. It is well known that and was buried under Christ Church; but the the result was confinement, which was changed for exile ; but the vessel which bore him toward the West Indies was never heard of. The an- widow survived here till the war began, when she suddenly emigrated to Antigua, leaving the old

I will afrist- to the utmost of my ability

in dresing the mounded. I see their (Diftref, feel for them, of will relieve them in every way in my power.

Hustis

house to be occupied by the medical staff of the army, under the 'director-general, Dr. Benjamin Church, who took this position after Washing-

of the grand council-fire at Philadelphia, which made them prick up their cars." - Familiar Letters, p. 131. John Adams's Works, il. 431.

nexed autograph is from a letter which he ad- dressed from this house to the president of the Congress. An early copy of his statement, " From

112

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

my prison in Cambridge, Nov. 1, 1775," is pre- served in the Sparks MSS xlix. i. I.

John Wassen

There is no doubt that the wounded from Bunker Hill were brought here, and were placed

General Joseph Warren, was put in charge of the Cambridge Hospital, June 26, 1775. William Gamage, Jr., was also in attendance on the wounded, both after Lexing- ton and Bunker Hill, from April 19 to Aug. 17, 1775-

Beyond the Vassall house, and on the opposite side of the street, is another, known as the Craigie House, and perhaps the most famous dwelling in America, - at that time the military home of Washington, now the home of Longfellow.

under the spe- cial care of Dr. Eustis and the other sur- geons. There is an engrav- ing of Eustis, after Stuart's likeness, in Drake's Cin- cinnati Society. Eustis had been a pupil of Joseph Warren, who procured for him the appointment of surgeon to the artillery regiment at Cambridge, and later he became the senior surgeon of the camp hospital (Life of John Warren, pp. 24, 50.) It ap- pears from a paper in the Massa- chusetts Archives, cxxxviii., that Dr. John Warren, the brother of

THE CRAIGIE HOUSE.

The annexed cut follows a water-color made by Fenn some years since. When Washington occupied it as his headquarters, his office was the room on the right of the front door, now Longfellow's study. The chamber over it was his bedroom. The present library-room is be- hind the study, and was used as a staff-room by the commander-in-chief, and is doubtless the apartment in which his secretary, Joseph Reed, made the fair draughts of many of the letters dated at these headquarters. Miss E.

William Gamagegur Cambridge france 1h1

113

THE SIEGE OF BOSTON.

S. Quincy writes to me : " The late Daniel Green- leaf, of Quincy, told me that his father was em- ployed (I believe) to furnish the Vassall House; and calling on Washington, his son accompany-

Jos. Tuo

QuantS

ing him, the two were invited to dine, -the meal was taken in the room to the right of the front door, and consisted of four dishes of meat, etc., which the aids carved."

We have a pleasant picture of life at the old house in llorace E. Scudder's " Guests at Head- quarters " in The Cambridge of 1775. The house has been often depicted, - by photography in Stillman's Poetic Localities, and in the Harvard Book, i .; and on steel in Drake's Middlesex, p. 338; etc. The estate at that time was much more extensive than it is at present, and extended northward to include the present Observatory Hill, which at one time bore a summer-house ; and from a spring in its neighborhood water was conducted to the mansion through an aqueduct, whose inlet in the foundations of the house is still visible. It is thought that the house was erected by Colonel John Vassall in 1759, and when Washington occupied it was comparatively a new structure. The colonel had but lately abandoned it and joined his Tory associates in Boston, where he occupied the Faneuil house (depicted in Vol. 1I. p. 523) till he went to England, where he died in 1797. His estate in Cambridge was early con- fiscated. Immediately upon Vassall's leaving, a Marblehead regiment under Colonel (later Gen- eral) Glover, took possession. - a band of fisher-

John Glover Bgeneral

men commanded by a fisherman, who had re- ported to General Ward, June 22, - and they ap- pear to have occupied the house till July 7, when they received orders to encamp, the Provincial Congress having directed the furnishing of the mansion for Washington's occupancy. The com- mander-in-chief records an expense for cleansing the quarters, July 15, so that not far from that VOL. 111 .- 15.

time he probably first took possession, and re- mained in it eight months.

Mrs. Washington did not join her husband in this house till December 11. Mrs. Goodwin, the mother of the late Ozias Goodwin, was the housekeeper of the establishment. In the stable, still standing, were the light phaeton and pair with which General Washington had come to Cambridge, beside the saddle-horses of himself and staff.

Later, the house became successively the property of Nathaniel Tracy of Newburyport, who had fitted out the first privateer in the war; of Thomas Russell, the Boston merchant ; and, in 1791, of Dr. Andrew Craigie, late apoth- ecary-general of the Revolutionary army, who had served the wounded at Bunker Hill. The annexed autograph is from a paper dated May

ange Que Gangue

14, 1775, at the hospital in Cambridge. From him the house acquired its name, as did the bridge now connecting Boston and East Cam- bridge, Craigie being prominent in that enter- prise. Later it was the home of Sparks (while editing Washington's Writings), Everett, and Worcester the lexicographer ; and became that of Longfellow in 1837. Drake's Landmarks of Middlesex, ch. xiii.

We must pass hastily by two or three other old Tory houses which marked Brattle Street in the Revolutionary days, and which still stand. First, on the corner of Sparks Street, though now elevated on a new basement story, is the house (owned by John Brewster, a Boston banker) which Richard Lechmere, and, later, Jonathan Sewall, occupied, till he was mobbed and fled to Boston in September, 1774. See Mr. Goddard's chapter in this volume, and Mr. Morse's in Vol. IV., for some account of Sewall. Further on, the residence of Mr. George Nichols was the house of Judge Joseph Lee, a Loyalist of care- ful utterance, who, after wintering in Boston with the British during the siege, was permitted to return to his home, and died here in 1802. And still beyond, hidden by large trees, is the old mansion of the Tory George Ruggles, who lived here up to 1774, when the house passed into the hands nf Thomas Fayerwether, who gave it the name by which it is best known. It is at present the residence of Henry Van Brunt, the well known Boston architect.

Further on. the road to Watertown made a turn to the left and passed in front of another old mansion, now known as " Elmwood," and the home of James Russell Lowell. The room on the left of the front door is the reception

114

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

room, and behind it is his library, though his study is in the third story. At the outbreak of the Revolution, the last of the lieut .- governors, Thomas Oliver, lived here; and it was in this house, " being surrounded by four thousand people," that in September, 1774, " in compliance with their commands," he signed his resignation and fled to the protection of the soldiers in Bos- ton. When Benedict Arnold, with his Connecti-

bridge has recently put up tablets to mark its interesting historical sites. Harvard Register, February, 1881.

South of the Charles, with the defences on the Brookline shore, began the extreme left of the lines of the right wing. The fort at Sewall's farm was partly on the estate of Mr. Amos A. Lawrence, where traces of it remained till a few years ago, and partly across the track of the

ELMWOOD.

cut Company, arrived in Cambridge just after the Lexington fight, they were quartered in this house, but the company remained only three weeks in camp, having been selected in the mean while, as the best equipped company in the army, to deliver within the British lines the body of a royal officer who died of wounds received on April 19. After Bunker Hill the house be- came a hospital, and the dead were buried in the opposite field. There are other views of this house in Drake's Landmarks of Middlesex, p. 317; Stillman's Poetic Localities of Cambridge ; and, with a notice by John Holmes, in the Har- vard Register, June, 1881. The city of Cam-

Boston and Albany Railroad. It was built by Colonel Prescott's regiment, assisted by Rhode Island troops, just after the battle of Bunker Hill. Pres- cott had his headquarters in a house half a mile west on Beacon Street, now distinguished by the large elms about it. Mass. Ilist. Soc. Proc., Octo- ber, 1869, p. 151 ; Woods's Brookline, p. 69.

The centre of this wing at Roxbury guarded the only land entrance to Boston. The first de- fence which the Americans threw up was a re- doubt across the main street, where Eustis Street now hranches from Washington Street ; and it became known later, when it was strength- ened, as the Burying-ground Redoubt. When, on August 23, they began an advanced line, they first fortified Lamb's Dam, which was a dike built for keeping out the tide, and extending from near the lead-works, south of Northampton Street, toward the Neck road ; and here, on the

115

THE SIEGE OF BOSTON.

Pewells Point March 23 1776- Am Prefect Colo.

upland, they built a breastwork, and extended entrenchments to the water on the westerly side, completing them September 10.

A redoubt on the corner of Mall Street in Roxbury defended the road to Dorchester, which was pretty much the present Dudley Street.

A regular work was on the estate of Mr. N. J. Bradlee, called the Lower Fort, of which a plan is given in Drake's Town of Roxbury, p. 372. It was planned by Knox.

The strong fort which General Thomas erected on the higher land, where now the Co-

THE OLD PARSONAGE IN ROXBURY.

old house of Governor Dudley (where now the Universalist Church stands) was taken down, and its foundation stones formed part of the de- fence here built. Smelt Brook crossed the street in front of it.

There was a battery on rising ground above the marsh, where Sumner Place enters Cabot Strect.

Where Parker Strect conducts to the site of the old landing place, a battery was held by Colonel Joseph Read's regiment to defend the landing.

A square redoubt on the Ebenezer Francis estate, near Appleton Place, commanding Muddy River, was the most northerly of the Roxbury forts.

A few days after the fight at Bunker Hill, the chituate stand-pipe is, was known as the Up- per Fort. It was begun between July 11 and 14. Drake, Life of Sally Knox, p. IS, says that the Roxbury fort was built by M that officer, then attracting Washing- ton's attention. This earth-work, perhaps the best preserved of all the Revolutionary de- Boston fences, was unfortu- nately, and it would seem needlessly, levelled, in 1869, when the water-tower was built. A small memorial Structure near by now points out the

116

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

spot, and is inscribed : " On this eminence stood Roxbury High Fort, a strong earthwork planned by Henry Knox and Josiah Waters, and erected by the American army, Junc, 1775, crowning the famous Roxbury lines of in- vestment at the siege of Bos- ton." It has been said that the first shot fired from its cannon was on July 1. See Lossing's Field-Book of the Revolution, ii. 24.

The meeting-house of the First Parish, shown in the cut in Mr. Drake's chapter in this volume, was a con- spicuous mark for the royal cannon, and its steeple was the signal-station of this wing of the besieging army. Drake's Town of Roxbury, p. 287.

Close by was the house, now the residence of Mr. Charles K. Dillaway, which is also shown in the view given in Mr. Drake's chapter on Roxbury in the present volume. At the out- break of the war it was occupied by the Rev. Amos Adams of the First Church. It after- ward became the headquarters of General John

Heath's regiment. He commanded some of the raids in the harbor. He served through the war, and returned at the end of it to dic very soon after, Dec. 16, 1783. He is buried in the Rox-

JohnGreaton Col Boston March 1777

bury burying-ground, but his grave is without a stone. Drake's Town of Roxbury, p. 156.

General Ward, while commanding the right wing after Washington had reorganized the army, had his headquarters in the Datchet or Brinley house, which stood near the present church of the Redemptorists, and of which there

Head Quarters at Roxbury July 7. 175 By aorder of The General The have Mayor Hos rig

Thomas, of Kings- ton, who, having led hither a regi- ment from Ply- mouth at the first summons, was made a provincial brigadier, Feb. 9, 1775, a rank con- firmed June 22, by Con- gress, which also made him a major-general, March 6, 1776. Thomas was a physician by occupation, and was born in 1725, of the old Marshfield stock, and had served in the French war. He did not sur- vive long enough to gain much distinction, dying on the Sorel River, in Canada, in the following June, having taken command of the army which had been repulsed before Quebec. Ilis portrait has been engraved in the illustrated edition of Irving's Washington. There was a short ac- count of The Life and Services of Major-General John Thomas, by Charles Coffin, published at New York in 1844. Of Thomas's camp James Warren wrote to Samuel Adams, June 21, 1775: "It is always in good order, and things are conducted with dignity and spirit, in the military style."

General Greaton was a Roxbury man ; had been an active Son of Liberty; was at Lexington ; and July 1, 1775, was commissioned colonel of

are views in Lossing's Field-Book of the War of 1812, p. 250, and in Drake's Town of Roxbury, p. 327, but which hardly represent the magnificence said to have belonged to it in its palmy days, and which is rather extravagantly set forth in Mrs. Lesdernier's Fannie St. John. The Dear- borns, both generals, father and son, later oc- cupied this house. A journal of Captain Henry Dearborn, kept during Arnold's Kennebec expe- dition, is preserved in the Public Library. The Connecticut regiments of Spencer, Huntington, and Parsons were encamped on Parker Hill.

1 The order to which this signature is attached is in- dicative of the resorts to which the forces were put to make up for the want of bayonets, the absence of which had been of such signal disaster to them, a month earlier, at Bunker Hill. It is addressed to Ezekiel Cheever, at Cambridge, and calls for two hundred and fifteen spears for the use of the camp. See Life of Nathanael Greene, i. 115.

117

THE SIEGE OF BOSTON.

General Greene, when with the right wing, had his headquarters in the Loring-Greenough house,

Bothlunes

(near the Soldiers' Monument), of which a view is given in Vol. II. p. 345.

The headquarters of Colonel Learned's regi- ment were in the Auchmuty house, of which a

Ebeneser Lunner 73g

view is given in Vol. II. p. 343. The mansion of Governor Bernard on Jamaica Pond, later oc- cupied by the younger Sir William Pepperell, was the quarters of the Rhode Island Colonel Miller for a while, and later it was used as a camp hospital. The Hallowell house, which is shown in Vol. 11. p. 344, was also used as a hospital. The Peacock, a famous tavern, stood on the westerly corner of Centre and Allandale streets, in West Roxbury, and was the resort of British officers from town before the siege. More than once it was the resting place of Washington during the siege ; and finally it became the residence of Sam Adams during his term as Governor. Drake's Town of Roxbury, p. 435.

The extreme right was protected by the line of breastworks which guarded the entrance to Dorchester Neck. These are shown on Trum- bull's and Pelham's maps.

The extension of the American lines within Dorchester Neck had been long contemplated when, on February 26, Washington wrote : " I am preparing to take a post on Dorchester Heights, to try if the enemy will be so kind as to come out to us." On Saturday evening, March 2, 17/6, Washington notified General Ward of his determination to occupy Dorchester Heights on Monday. At eight o'clock on the night of March 4, the intrenchments were begun there. On that night the Americans fired one hundred and forty-four shot and thirteen shells into Boston from their various defences, -chiefly from Lamb's Dam. The rapidity with which the defence was formed on the Heights was owing to the employment of fascines, which had been prepared during the winter in Milton and vicinity. They were first carted to Brookline, to deceive the enemy in regard to the point where they were to be used; and from this deposit a train of wagons, under the charge of Mr. James Boies, conveyed them after dark to the hill. See the statement of Mr. Jeremiah Smith Boies, - who died in 1851, aged eighty-nine, and who was with his father, riding behind his saddle, that

night, - printed in the Boston Daily Advertiser, March 17, 1876.

One of the devices for defence had been a . row of casks in front of the works, and these, filled with earth and stones, were to be rolled down the declivity as the enemy approached. General Heath records that this device was sug- gested by a Boston merchant, Mr. William Davis ; and Stedman admits that it was a curious provision, which would have swept off whole columns at once. " It was therefore," he adds as if a consequence, "determined to evacuate the town." A monument on Dorchester Heights bears this legend: " Location of the American redoubt on Dorchester Heights which com- pelled the evacuation of Boston by the British army, March 17, 1776."

Beside the maps already referred to as useful in tracing the positions of the different works on this extensive line of circumvallation, the ear- liest account which we have of them, after they had begun to disappear, is that of J. Finch, pub- lished in Silliman's Journal in 1822, and re- printed in Frothingham's Siege of Boston, p. 409. Various later writers have attempted to trace them in detail. Chief among such are Lossing, in his Field-Book of the Revolution ; S. A. Drake, in his Landmarks of Middlesex ; and F. S. Drake, in his Town of Roxbury. Some aid will be de. rived from Woods's Brookline, and the histories of Dorchester and South Boston.

THE LITERATURE OF THE SIEGE. - This has been enumerated in Winsor's Readers' Hand- book of the American Revolution. The most ex- tensive accounts, apart from the general his- tories, are Richard Frothingham's Siege of Boston, and Dr. Ellis's, in the Evacuation Memorial. Of contemporary material, the most important sources are Sparks's Washington's Writings ; Life of Joseph Reed ; Life of General Greene; Gordon's American Revolution ; Colonel John Trumbull's Autobiography ; Thacher's Military Journal ; HIcath's Memoirs ; with additional mat- ter in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., May, 1859; and papers in Almon's Remembrancer, and Force's American Archives. There are letters in the Life of Dr. John Warren ; in the Life of George Read ; in Abigail Adams's Letters ; etc. Various camp diaries are in existence : David How's, New York, 1865; McCurtin's, published by the Seventy-six Society; Dr. Belknap's, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., June, 1858 ; Ezekiel Price's, in Ibid., Nov., 1863; Paul Lunt's in Ibid., Fch., 1872; Samuel Bixby, in Ibid., March, 1876; Sam- uel Sweat's letters, Ibid., December, 1879 ; diary in Hist. Mag., October, 1864 ; Aaron Wright's diary in Boston Transcript, April 11, 1862; Craft's journal in Essex Institute Collections, vol. iii. ; letters in N. E. Ilist. and Geneal. Reg., April,

118

THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.

1857, etc. Also, a number of orderly-books, - William Henshaw's, April 20 to Sept. 26, 1775, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., October, 1876,- and printed separately, 1881, with additional matter (there are later ones of Henshaw in the Amer. Antiq. Soc.); Israel Hutchinson's, in Ibid., Oc- tober, 1878; Glover's, in Essex Institute Col- lections, v : and among those not printed, -that of John Fenno, secretary to the commander-in- chief, April 20 to Sept. 6, 1775, in Massachusetts Historical Library ; one kept at Cambridge, in the Pennsylvania Hist. Soc. Library ; Jeremiah Fogg's, in Harvard College Library; and Wil- liam Lee's, in the Historical Society's Library. An order-book of the Continental army, June 21, 1775-Oct. 9, 1775, the property then of Asahel Clark, of Woodstock, Conn , is noticed in Daily Advertiser, Nov. 11, 1880.

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The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880, Vol. III, Part 17

Author: Jewett, Clarence F; Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897 Publication date: 1880-1881 Publisher: Boston : J.R. Osgood Number of Pages: 770

Author: Jewett, Clarence F; Winsor, Justin, 1831-1897
Publication date: 1880-1881
Publisher: Boston : J.R. Osgood
Number of Pages: 770