USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. IV > Part 30
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1 Mr. Alexander withdrew from the service of the company in 1879.
2 The Leyland line began with trips once a fortnight. It was made a weekly line in Jan- uary, 1878.
3 The departures were as follows : -
To Liverpool 196
Glasgow . 47
" London 42
" West Hartlepool 21
Hull 16
Total 322
Of this total the Cunard sailings were 59, all to Liverpool, - being less than one third of the sailings to that port, and less than one fifth of all the sailings to ports in Great Britain.
The port is, at present, almost destitute of facilities for the first-class passenger traffic with Europe, but the Allan Company has given en- couragement to the hope that it will soon send some of its fine mail steamers here regularly. The splendid steamship " Parisian " came to Boston on her first trans-Atlantic voyage, and the " Sarmatian " and others like her are to follow.
233
THE TRADE, COMMERCE, ETC., OF BOSTON.
were likely to be exempted from this tax, which, as it then appeared, would continue to be levied at the port of New York. The company foresaw in this exemption a reasonable promise of compensation for any disadvantages or losses to which it might for the time become liable, in engaging in the export trade between this city and Great Britain, which had been so long neglected ; and in the end it realized all that it anticipated in this respect, and perhaps more. In 1870 the Legislature granted relief from the opera- tion of the tax to such immigrants as immediately on their arrival here proceeded to places beyond the limits of the Commonwealth. At the next session the Board of Trade asked that this relief might be extended to all passengers arriving by regular lines of vessels, whether proposing to leave the State at once, or to take up their abode in it; and a bill to this effect was passed by both branches, but was vetoed by Governor Claflin. In 1872 the Board of Trade was successful, after a long struggle, in secur- ing the abolition of the head-money tax altogether; and, but for the long depression which followed the commercial panic of '1873, the immigration of the port would have continued to increase year by year as the result of this enlightened and liberal legislation. In 1876 the Supreme Court of the United States declared all taxes on immigration levied by State authority to be unconstitutional; and as this decision peremptorily stopped their collec- tion at the port of New York, the advantage which had been anticipated by the Board of Trade for the commerce of Boston from their abolition in Massachusetts was only temporary. It remained long enough, however, to impart an impulse to the steam commerce of the port, when it took a fresh start, the force of which has not yet expended itself.1
But this fresh start could not have been made had it not been for the admirable facilities which were brought into existence for the cheap and speedy transfer of merchandise between the railroad train and the sea- going vessel. Forty years ago the railroads leading from Boston were unequalled in their arrangements for receiving and handling freight, and it is strange that this pre-eminence was not maintained. The great dépôt in Boston (soon to be transformed into a new passenger station) was con- sidered at the time it was built to be one of the wonders of the city; and Mr. Elias Hasket Derby, in his pamphlet Two Months Abroad, in which he describes a trip to Europe undertaken by Mr. Alvah Crocker and himself in 1843, for the purpose of buying iron for the Fitchburg Railroad, says : " I cannot learn that there are any goods stations in Europe to be compared with the principal dépôts of our line from Boston to Albany."2 In 1851 the
1 The immigrant arrivals at the port of Bos- ton from 1869 to 1880 (each year ended Sep- tember 30) were as follows : -
1869
26,414
1875
13,468
1970
30,069
1876
8,118
1871
22,904
1877
5.765
1872
25,957
1878
6,47
1873
31,042
1879
10,895
1874
20,223
1880
33,626
VOL. IV. - 30.
The arrivals for the nine months from Oct .. 1, 1880, to June 30, 1881, were 27,834, mostly by the Cunard steamers.
2 Mr. Derby says further : "The English en- gineers would be surprised on viewing the dépôt at Albany, four hundred and fifty feet long, with its roof overhanging the canal, and a steam-en- gine loading and discharging, both in storm and
234
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Grand Junction Railroad was opened with high anticipations and amid pub- lic rejoicings; 1 but the time was not fully come, as it would now seem, for its profitable use. The property and franchise, which were of immense value to any proprietor who could afford to hold and improve them, came into the possession, in 1865 or 1866, of the Boston & Worcester Railroad Company, and soon afterward they became part of the inheritance of the Boston & Albany Railroad Company. In 1868, as we have said, the con- nection between East Boston and the railroad system of the city was perfected; and Boston was then restored to the position, with regard to freighting facilities, which it enjoyed in the early days of railroad con- struction and management, and which was the aim of the enterprising men of 1851. The establishment of steamship lines to various European ports speedily followed, almost as a matter of course.
We have been obliged to compress this record of Boston's commercial history for a century within very narrow limits. To sum up in a single sentence : the town of less than twenty thousand inhabitants has become a metropolitan centre with half a million of people within and around its municipal limits; its banking capital has increased from $200,000 to more than $50,000,000; its export trade has grown from $500,000 to $60,000- 000; and the amount of its imports from less than $1,000,000 to nearly $70,000,000.
sunshine, six or seven canal boats at once with perfect facility, the packages of goods descend- ing as the flour rises."
1 [See the chapter by Mr. James M. Bugbee, on "Boston under the Mayors," in Vol. III. -ED.]
Special Topics.
CHAPTER I.
EDUCATION, PAST AND PRESENT. THE RISE OF FREE EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
BY CHARLES K. DILLAWAY.
O UR Puritan fathers who came from the mother country to establish a colony in Massachusetts, had a right appreciation of the great task before them, and they had too the energy, intelligence, and Christian man- liness so necessary to accomplish it. Palfrey says of them : -
" They were men of eminent capacity and sterling character, fit to be concerned in the founding of a State. In all its generations of worth and refinement, Boston has never seen an assembly more illustrious for generous qualities, or for manly culture, than when the magistrates of the young colony welcomed Cotton and his fellow-voy- agers at Winthrop's table."
Religion was the dominant element in their characters. Its inspiration brought them here, and its influence was seen in every act of their lives. It was the rock on which the State was founded.1 In the records of the Court for May 3, 1654, we read : -
" Forasmuch as it greatly concerns the welfare of this country that the youth thereof be educated, not only in good literature but sound doctrine, this Court doth therefore commend it to the serious consideration and special care of the officers of the college and the selectmen of the several towns, not to admit or suffer any such to be continued in the office or place of teaching, educating, or instructing of youth or children, in the college or schools, that have manifested themselves unsound in the faith, or scandalous in their lives, and not giving due satisfaction according to the rules of Christ."
1 " Necessitie," said one of the Massachu- setts company, " may presse some ; noveltie draw on others; hopes of gaine in time to come may prevail with a third sort ; but that the most sin- cere and godly part have the advancement of
the gospel for their main scope I am confident." "The propagation of the gospel," the company write in 1629, "is the thing we do profess above all to be our aim in settling this plantation." Massachusetts Archives.
236
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
They knew that in such a community as they were forming public opinion would have a controlling influence, and should therefore be an en- lightened one. For this reason they gave early and earnest attention to the establishment of free schools. Indeed, it has always been characteristic of New England that she adopted and maintained the principle, that it is the right and duty of Government to provide for the instruction of the young; that every man should be subject to taxation in proportion to his property for the support of free schools, whether he himself have children or not. Popular education lies at the basis of the free institutions of New England.1
In 1642 the General Court of the Colony required the municipal author- ities to see that every child within their jurisdiction should be educated, and that this education should not be narrow or superficial. The select- men of every town were required to " have a vigilant èye over their breth- ren and neighbors; to see first that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families as not to endeavor to teach, by themselves or others, their children and apprentices so much learning as may enable them to read the English tongue and obtain a knowledge of the capital laws, upon penalty of twenty shillings for each neglect therein." Such was the idea of " barbarism " entertained by the colonists of Massachusetts Bay more than two centuries ago.
We cannot forbear quoting once more from the Colonial laws (Nov. II, 1647) :-
" To the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, it was ordered in all the Puritan colonies that every township, after the Lord hath in- creased them to the number of fifty households, shall appoint one to teach all children to write and read ; and when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof to be able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University ; provided that if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year, that every such town shall pay five pounds to the next school, till they shall perform the order."
It was further required that religious instruction should be given to all children ; and also, -
" That all parents and masters do breed and bring up their children to some honest, lawful calling, labor, or employment, either in husbandry or some other trade profitable for themselves and the Commonwealth, if they will not or cannot train them up in learning to fit them for higher employments."
1 President Dwight, in 1790, said : “ A stranger travelling through New England marks with not a little surprise the multitude of school- houses appearing everywhere at little distances. Familiarized as I am to the sight, they have ex- cited no small interest in my mind, particularly as I was travelling through the settlements re- cently begun. Here, while the inhabitants were still living in log huts, they had not only erected
school-houses for their children, but had built them in a neat style, so as to throw an additional appearance of deformity over their own clumsy habitations. This attachment to education in New England is universal, and the situation of that hamlet must be bad indeed, which, if it contains a sufficient number of children for a school, does not provide the necessary ac- commodations."
237
EDUCATION, PAST AND PRESENT.
When we consider the period in which this system of instruction was in- augurated, the small number of the population of Massachusetts, the dangers which surrounded them from the Indians, the scattered settlements and their poverty, the boldness of the measure which aimed at universal education through the establishment of free schools, - we cannot but admire the good sense, energy, and indomitable courage of our Puritan ancestors.1
The records of the town of Boston " 1634, 7th month, day I," relate to the absolute necessities of an infant settlement. In 1635 (April 13) we find this entry in the handwriting of the venerable elder of the First Church, Thomas Leverett: "Likewise it was then generally agreed upon that our brother Philemon Pormort shall be intreated to become scoolemaster for the teaching and nourtering of children with us." He accepted the trust, and was supported partly by donations of liberal friends of education, and partly by the income of a tract of land assigned to him at Muddy River.2
This being the only public school in the town for about half a century, it is reasonable to infer that the elementary as well as the higher branches were taught. Its principal object, however, from its establishment to the present time has been to prepare young men for college. "Out of small beginnings," says Bradford, " great things have been produced; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea in some sort to our whole nation." He must have had in his mind the first Boston school, which has been perpetuated in the present Latin School. Its origin was simple and unpretending; its advantages as an educational institution in its early days hardly to be compared with those of the humblest country school of the present time; and yet what a burn- ing and shining light it has become! For nearly two and a half centuries it has been training statesmen whose wisdom has guided our nation. It has given us such men as Benjamin Franklin, whose statue3 stands on the spot 4 where his brief school-days were spent; Samuel Adams, the distin- guished patriot, whose statue has been recently erected; Cotton Mather, one of the best scholars of his time; Judge Hutchinson; Governor Leverett
1 "The education of the people," says Mac- aulay, " ought to be the first concern of a State. . .. This is my deliberate conviction ; and in this opinion I am fortified by thinking that it is also the opinion of all the great legislators, of all the great statesmen, of all the great political phil- osophers of all ages and of all nations. . . . It is the opinion of all the greatest champions of civil and religious liberty in the old world and in the new ; and of none - I hesitate not to say it - more emphatically than of those whose names are held in the highest estimation by the Protes- tant Nonconformists of England. ... These men, illustrious forever in history, were the founders of the Commonwealth of Massachu- setts."
2 See Vol. I. p. 123. When Mr. Pormort ended his labors is not stated, but in 1650 is the
following record : " It is also agreed on that Mr. Woodmansey, the schoolmaster, shall have fiftye pound p. ann. for his Teaching ye Schollers, and his proportion to be made up by ratte." In 1666 the town " agreed with Mr. Dannell Henchman for £40 per ann. to assist Mr. Woodmansey in the Grammar Schoole, and teach Children to wright, the Yeare to begine the 4th of March, " ?. " In March, 1670, " upon the request of Mrs. Mar- garet Woodmansye, widdowe, to provide her a house to live in, if she removeth from the schoole house, it was granted to allow her eight pounds per ann. for that end during her widdowhood." [See further on Woodmansey and Henchman, Vol. I. pp. 313, 317 ; II. p. xxxiii. - ED.]
3 [See Vol. II. p. 290. - ED.]
4 [See Shurtleff's Description of Boston, 250 ; and Drake's Landmarks, 57. - ED.]
238
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
and his grandson, a President of Harvard College; Wm. Stoughton, Chief- Justice of Massachusetts ; James Bowdoin, and many others whose eminent public services are on record.1
Dec. 12, 1670, we find the first mention in the town records of the famous " Master Cheever," who for thirty years had such an important influence upon the education of the people of Boston. Cotton Mather, who was his pupil, calls him the civilizer of his country. He died Aug. 21, 1708, “ ven- erable," says Governor Hutchinson, "not merely for his great age (xciv), but for having been the schoolmaster of most of the principal men who were then upon the stage." Upon the decease of his master, Mather preached one of the good long sermons in which he most delighted, - de- vout rhapsodies, which in our days seem to be a mass of dogmatism, fervor, and italics.2
The law of 1642 enjoined universal education, but did not make it free ; nor did it impose any penalty upon municipal corporations for neglecting to maintain a school. The spirit of the law, however, worked energetically in the hearts of the people. Says Governor Winthrop : -
" Divers free schools were erected, as in Roxbury (for maintenance whereof every inhabitant bound some house or land for a yearly allowance forever) and at Boston, where they made an order to allow fifty pounds and a house to the master, and thirty pounds to an usher who should also teach to read and write and cipher ; and Indians' children were to be taught freely, and the charge to be by yearly contribution, either by voluntary allowance, or by rate of such as refused, etc .; and this order was con- firmed by the General Court. Other towns did the like, providing maintenance by several means." 3
1 In our time it has given us such men as Robert C. Winthrop, Charles Sumner, Charles Francis Adams, Wm. M. Evarts, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, and Edward Everett Hale. It has given us three Presidents of Harvard, including Charles W. Eliot, its present head, whose vigorous administration is making our University a model institution. [See H. E. Scudder's paper on " Classical Schools," in Harper's Monthly Magazine, 1877, ii. p. 712; H. F. Jenks's Boston Public Latin School, re- printed from The Harvard Register, 1880; G. B. Emerson's "Education in Massachusetts," in the Lowell Institute Lectures of the Mass. Hist. Soc .; Latin School Prize Book, No. iv, reprinted in the American Journal of Education. An improved catalogue of the graduates of the school is in preparation, under the auspices of the Boston Latin School Association. - ED.]
2 In a poetical essay on his memory, Mather ascribes the learning of New England to him and to Corlett, an eminent teacher in Cam- bridge, who is celebrated in the Magnalia :
"'Tis Corlett's pains and Cheever's we must own
That thou, New England, art not Scythia grown."
In the following description we see the char- acteristics of the writer as well as the master :
" He lived, and to vast age no illness knew,
Till time's scythe waiting for him rusty grew : He lived and wrought, his labors were immense, But ne'er declin'd to preterperfect tense." .
See Vol. I. pp. 397, 461 ; II. xxxiii, 420. Mr. Cheever having died in 1708 (See Sewall Papers ii. 230), was succeeded by Nathaniel Williams in 1710, and he in 1734 by the celebrated " Master Lovell." In 1710 five inspectors of schools were appointed, but little is known of their objects or duties. [This movement of the town was frowned upon by some of the ministers, who had . grown to think that they had a prescriptive right to control the schools. See letters of Increase Mather and Sewall, in Mass. Ilist. Soc. Proc , Feb. 1873, where will be found a paper by R. C. Waterston on the early schools. - ED.] It ap- pears from the records that originally the schools were under the supervision of the selectmen, in whose care they continued until 1789.
8 " Ioth day of ye 11th month, 1641. It is ordered that Deare Island shall be improoved for the maintenance of a Free Schoole for the Towne
239
EDUCATION, PAST AND PRESENT.
In 1645, only ten years after the establishment of the Boston school, another quite similar in character and origin was begun in Roxbury. The town had then but few inhabitants, and these widely scattered. Amidst all their trials and sufferings they never lost sight of the great fact that the moral and intellectual training of their children was a matter of the first importance. To secure this they established a school, and mortgaged their estates for the payment of an annual sum to support it. One of the most earnest advocates of this enterprise was John Eliot, familiarly known to us as the Apostle Eliot, - clarum et venerabile nomen, - whose labors and sacrifices in Christianizing the Indian population of the neighborhood will never be forgotten by those who appreciate Christian heroism and the heartiest philanthropy.1
In 1671 Thomas Bell, one of the early settlers in Roxbury,2 who had been a liberal benefactor to the school, returned to England and died there. His will is a long document of fifteen pages, from which we make the fol- lowing extract : -
"Imprimis, I give unto Mr. John Eliot, Minister of the Church and people of God, at Roxbury in New England, and Isaac Johnson, whom I take to be an officer or overseer of and in the same church, and to one such other Godly person now bear- ing office in said church, and their successors, . .. all those my messuages or tene- ments, lands, and hereditaments, with their and every of theit appurtenances, scituate, lying, and being at Roxbury in New England, aforesaid, in parts beyond the seas, to have and to hold to the said Minister and officers of the said Church of Roxbury for the time being, and their successors from time to time for ever, in trust only, notwithstanding, to and for the maintenance of a schoolemaster and free schoole for the teaching and instructing of poore men's children at Roxbury, aforesaid, for ever, and to and for no other use, intent, or purpose whatsoever."
The property received from this liberal bequest consisted of various pieces of real estate scattered over the town of Roxbury. Soon after the act of incorporation was passed, the board of trustees appointed under it thought it expedient to raise a fund which would be more productive than these tracts of land had been, and resolved to dispose of them on long leases. They were probably influenced in some degree by the conviction that it would better comport with the views of the testator .; and partly also by a belief that lands were safer for permanent charitable institutions, and that such lands in a new country, in which they had risen in a little more than a century from the price of a few blankets to a great pecuni-
and such other occasions as ye Townsmen for the time being shall think meet, the sayd Schoole being sufficiently Provided for." In 1649, Long and Spectacle Islands were assigned to the use of the school, and the selectmen were directed to take order that they be leased for the use of the school, at a yearly rent of six pence on every acre. In 1654 "it is ordered that the ten pounds left by legacy to ye school of Boston by
Miss Hudson, deceased, shall be lett to Capt. James Olliver, for 16s. per annum, so long as he pleases to improve itt." [Christopher Stanley left an early bequest, 1646, to support the town school. See Vol. II. p. vi, x; and Shurtleff's Description of Boston, 160 .- ED.]
1 [See chapters by Dr. Ellis and F. S. Drake, in Vol. I .- ED.]
2 [See Vol. I. p. 420.]
240
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
ary value, would go on increasing in the same ratio perhaps to a higher one; and partly, if not principally, from a belief that it is improvident in any present generation to grant away from posterity property which was designed for that posterity. Whatever their motives might have been, they resolved to retain the fee simple of the lands for the institution. Their decision time has shown to be a wise one. The lands leased at auction for one hundred and twenty years appear to have brought nearly or quite the prices that would have been paid for the fee simple. The amount received was $9,888, the income of which in those days was sufficient to support a school of thirty boys and one teacher. Sixty years later, so valuable had the lands become that the trustees deemed it expedient to sell a portion in order to enlarge the capacity of the school. From this sale they received an amount sufficient to maintain permanently a school of one hundred and thirty boys, with six teachers, and to pay salaries liberal enough to com- mand the best talent.1 The course of studies is substantially the same as that of its contemporary, the Boston Public Latin School, both having for their object the fitting of boys for a college education. By the act of in- . corporation the number of trustees must not be more than thirteen, nor less than nine. In case of vacancies in the board the trustees are required to " elect by ballot one or more persons, being respectable freeholders in the town of Roxbury, to supply such vacancy or vacancies. Provided always, that the minister and the two oldest deacons of the First Church of Christ in the said town of Roxbury shall always, by virtue of their said offices, be members of the said corporation."
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Thus has private munificence provided for us an educational institution possessing rare advantages owing to the liberal course pursued in its man- agement, and still more to the mode of electing its trustees, as prescribed by the constitution.2
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