USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Topographical and historical description of Boston > Part 44
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" The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to have been overlaid with a coat of light- colored paint. A flight of red freestone steps, fenced
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in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron, ascends from the courtyard to the spacious porch, over which is a balcony, with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and workmanship to that beneath. These letters and figures -16 P. S. 79- are wrought into the iron work of the balcony, and probably express the date of the edifice, with the initials of its founder's name. A wide door, with double leaves, admitted me into the hall or entry, on the right of which is the entrance to the bar- room.
"It was in this apartment, I presume, that the ancient Governors held their levees, with vice-regal pomp, sur- rounded by the military men, the councillors, the judges and other officers of the crown, while all the loyalty of the province thronged to do them honor. But the room, in its present condition, cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled wainscot is covered with dingy paint, and acquires a duskier hue from the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick block that shuts it in from Washington Street. A ray of sunshine never visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches, which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most venerable and ornamental object is a chimney-piece set round with Dutch tiles of blue-figured China, represent- ing scenes from Scripture; and, for aught I know, the lady of Pownall or Bernard may have sat beside this fireplace, and told her children the story of each blue tile. A bar in modern style, well replenished with decanters, bottles, cigar-boxes, and net-work bags of lemons, and provided with a beer-pump and a soda- fount, extends along one side of the room. . After sipping a glass of port-sangaree, prepared by the skil-
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ful hands of Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that worthy successor and representative of so many historic person- ages to conduct me over their time-honored mansion.
" He readily complied; but, to confess the truth, I was forced to draw strenuously upon my imagination, in order to find aught that was interesting in a house which, without its historic associations, would have seemed merely such a tavern as is usually favored by the custom of decent city boarders and old-fashioned country gentlemen. The chambers, which were prob- ably spacious in former times, are now cut up by parti- tions, and subdivided into little nooks, each affording scanty room for the narrow bed and chair and dressing- table of a single lodger. The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence. It winds through the midst of the house by flights of broad steps, each flight termi- nating in a square landing-place, whence the ascent is continued towards the cupola. A carved balustrade, freshly painted in the lower stories, but growing dingier as we ascend, borders the staircase with its quaintly twisted and intertwined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have trodden, as the wearers mounted to the cupola, which afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon with several windows, and a door opening upon the roof. From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining, Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker Hill (unless one of the tri-mountains intervened), and Howe have marked the approaches of Washington's besieging army; al- though the buildings since erected in the vicinity,
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have shut out almost every other object, save the steeple of the Old South, which seems almost with- in arm's length. Descending from the cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the ponderous white oak framework, so much more massive than the frames of modern houses, and thereby resem- bling an antique skeleton. The brick walls, the mate- rials of which were imported from Holland, and the timbers of the mansion, are still as sound as ever; but the floors and other interior parts being greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut the whole and build a new house within the ancient frame and brick work. Among other inconveniences of the present edifice, mine host mentioned that any jar or motion was apt to shake down the dust of ages out of the ceiling of one chamber upon the floor of that beneath it.
"We stepped forth from the great front window into the balcony, where, in old times, it was doubtless the custom of the king's representative to show himself to a loyal populace, requiting their huzzas and tossed-up hats with stately bendings of his dignified person. In those days, the front of the Province House looked upon the street; and the whole site now occupied by the brick range of stores, as well as the present court- yard, was laid out in grass plats, overshadowed by trees, and bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now the old aristocratic edifice hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern building. . . Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room."
In 1851, the whole building was changed in appear- ance, its interior having been remodelled for the purpose of accommodating a company of vocalists; and it was at this time that the outside was covered with a coat of
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yellowish mastic. The old Indian chief, the wonder of the small children of by-gone days, has been removed to the town of Brookline, where, perhaps, he will shoot his arrow, as rumor says he formerly used to do, on hearing the clock strike one.
When the great change came over the building, there was a great exertion in procuring relics of the " old Governor's house"; and parts of it were eagerly sought for and obtained by savers of memorials of the past. The old iron fence, which formed a balcony over the principal entrance to the mansion, and which was pronounced by competent judges - as well by amateurs as by connoisseurs -to be the most beautiful specimen of wrought iron work in the country, was removed. A large part of the wainscoting was purchased by B. Per- ley Poore, Esq., and removed to Indian Hill, in New- bury, where it has been used for the finish of one or more rooms of the famous antiquarian palace, which he is constructing there from the noted buildings which the ruthless hand of "improvement " is so fast removing; so that what the late eminent scholar Hawthorne has pre- served in legend, an antiquarian, with a fervid interest in the past, will strive to reproduce in reality.
On Tuesday evening, the twenty-fifth of October, 1864, this noted building was destroyed by fire, leaving the walls standing, but all else consumed, except a portion of the wood work, which in its scorched and smoked condition was of little value. The fire origina- ted in an upper story of the building, and was supposed to have been the work of an incendiary. For some time previous it had been used as a place of amusement. The loss of this old landmark of the olden time is much regretted by the lovers of antiquity. Would that the
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old relic of the days of our fathers could have been al- lowed to remain; and that the walls with a rejuvenated interior could have passed down to many successive generations, as a memorial of the days that tried men's souls! Although the building has been repaired since the fire, it has been so altered, and covered with exter- nal coatings of mastic, as to be entirely different from what it was so late as 1864, not a feature of the old house being left for recognition.
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CHAPTER L.
THE GREEN DRAGON TAVERN.
The Green Dragon Tavern, a noted Landmark in the early days of Boston .. . Used in the American Revolution for Private Meetings . . . Its Site, and the History of the Estate . . . In possession of James Johnson in 1643 . . . Sold to Thomas Hawkins, baker, in 1662 . . . Forfeited to Sampson Sheafe in 1672 ... Conveyed to Lt. Gov. William Stoughton about 1676 . . . At the death of Stoughton, in 1701, title passed to Mrs. Mehitable Cooper ... Sold to Dr. William Douglass in 1743 . . . Death of Dr. Douglass in 1752, and the title vested in Mrs. Catherine Kerr . .. Sold to St. Andrew's Lodge in 1764 . . . Description of the building . .. The Old Green Dragon . . . Its loss in 1828, and substitute in 1855 . . . Uses and occupants of the Building . . . Lodge data ·· · Tea Party of 1773 · ·· Building used as a Hospital in 1776 .. . Its Destruction in 1828.
BUT a few steps from Hanover street, in that portion of Union street which leads towards the site of the old mill-pond, formerly stood an ancient building of con- siderable notoriety, known in the olden time as the Green Dragon Tavern, and even until quite recently retaining this distinctive name. It was early a noted landmark even in the first century of Boston's history; and, as time wore on, it became as famous as any private edifice-if such it could be called, considering the pub- lic uses to which it was frequently put - that could be found upon the peninsula. If its early occupancy and use brought it into notice, so also was new fame added to that which it had already acquired by the patriotic gatherings held within its sombre walls during the dark- est days of the American Revolution, when Samuel Adams, James Otis, Joseph Warren, Paul Revere, and other true sons of liberty in their secret councils planned
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the deliverance of their country from thraldom and the grievous oppressions of Great Britain.
This old relic of ancient times disappeared from its lot near the close of the last year of the mayoralty of the elder Quincy; and its appearance is fast fading out of the remembrance of those who in their early years were well acquainted with its most hidden recesses. The estate on which it stood now belongs to St. Andrew's Lodge of Freemasons, and its history can be traced back to the first settlement of the town. It is a portion of the three-quarters of an acre of marsh and upland orig- inally granted to James Johnson, a glover, who settled in Boston as early as the year 1635, and who was distin- guished among his contemporary townsmen as a deacon of the church, and as captain of the Artillery Company in 1656,- a company which by its age and ancient renown has acquired the designation of the " Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company." The property is first mentioned in 1643, in the Book of Possessions of the first settlers of the town, on the twentieth page, and is there described as " three-quarters of an acre of marsh & upland, bounded with the Cove on the North & the East, John Smith West, & John Davies South." The Cove is elsewhere, in the volume quoted, called the " Cove or Mill Pond "; and the contiguous estate on the south, which separated Mr. Johnson's estate from the street (now Hanover street), was the original grant made to John Davies, a joiner, consisting of a house and garden. Davies, on the twenty-eighth of June, 1645, conveyed his house and garden to John Trotman, whose wife Katherine, as the attorney of her husband, sold the same on the same day to Thomas Hawkins, of Boston, at that time a noted biscuit baker, but subse-
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quently an innholder, and on this lot was a few years afterwards built the "Star Inn," probably kept in those early days successively by Mr. Hawkins and his good- wife Rebecca, John Howlet and his wife Susanna, and Andrew Neal and his wife Millicent. The Neals died in possession of the corner about 1709, having purchased of Howlet's widow, who bought it of Hawkins; and the estate passed from their heirs by sale to John Borland, who in his turn passed it down to Francis Borland, Esq.
After Mr. Hawkins had come in possession of the Davies lot, he became desirous of obtaining the Johnson lot also; and subsequently purchased it of Mr. Johnson, through the intervention of his cordwainer, Thomas Marshall, on the tenth of October, 1662. Hawkins soon began keeping an inn upon his newly acquired estate, and probably put additional buildings on the lot, as he subsequently mortgaged it to Rev. Thomas Thacher, the future pastor of the Old South Church (just establish- ing), on the sixth of December, 1667; and, on the twenty-ninth of May, 1671, Thacher, who had married the widow of Jacob Sheafe, the most opulent Bostonian of his day, assigned the mortgage to Sampson Sheafe, Esq., who had married Elizabeth, one of the daughters of his wife. Mr. Hawkins put a second mortgage on his estate on the fifteenth of June, 1671, to secure money borrowed of Mr. Sheafe, and died in the latter part of the year 1671; and his widow Rebecca (his second wife) relinquished her right of dower on the six- teenth of January, 1671-2, the estates having been for- feited to Mr. Sheafe for non-fulfilment of the payments. Some time previous to the fifteenth of June, 1676, the Green Dragon Tavern estate passed into the possession of William Stoughton, a man having excellent traits of
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character, although in a judicial capacity, which he held before his appointment as Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, he was most wickedly intolerant in the trials of the miscalled witches; for which cruelty and barba- rism his gift of Stoughton Hall to Harvard College will not in the slightest degree compensate.
Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton, the son of Israel Stoughton of Dorchester, was a person of considerable ability. He was educated at Harvard College, gradu- ating in 1650, and he passed some time in studying for the ministry, but relinquished the design of becoming a preacher after having delivered the annual election ser- mon in 1668, preferring the field of politics to that of religion. In May, 1692, he entered upon the duties of Lieutenant-Governor, having been appointed to the po- sition under the second Massachusetts charter establish- ing the Province, at the same time that Sir William Phips was commissioned as Governor. In November 1694, on the return of Governor Phips to England, he became acting governor, performing the duties until the arrival of the Earl of Bellomont in May, 1699; and suc- ceeding him in the same capacity in July, 1700, and so continuing until the seventh of July, 1701, when he died at the age of about seventy years. He died possessed of a large landed property in Boston, comprising in part the Green Dragon Tavern estate, the Star Inn estate, and the Old Blue Ball estate, where the father of Frank- lin resided after the birth of the great Bostonian, -the last-named estates being at the opposite corners of Han- over and Union streets. He devised this property to his nieces, the Green Dragon Tavern and Franklin corners falling to Mehitable, the wife of Captain Thomas Cooper, the father of Rev. William Cooper, one of the
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early pastors of Brattle Square Church. Mrs. Cooper was a very distinguished person. She was the daughter of James Minot of Dorchester, by his wife Hannah, the sister of Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton, and was born in Dorchester on the seventeenth of September, 1668. Captain Cooper, her husband, died at sea in 1705, and she married for her second husband Peter Sargeant, Esq., him who built for his mansion house the old Prov- ince House. On the death of Mr. Sargeant in 1714, she married her third husband, Simeon Stoddard, Esq., who died in 1730, leaving her a third time a widow in her sixty-second year; and she died, a widow, on the twenty-third of September, 1738. At the time of Mr. Cooper's death in 1705, the Green Dragon estate was valued at £650.
On the eighteenth of August, 1743, about five years after the decease of Mrs. Stoddard, her son, Rev. Wil- liam Cooper, sold the Green Dragon Tavern estate to Dr. William Douglass, not only a noted physician, but also the author of the very celebrated "Summary " of New England History. Dr. William Douglass was born in Gifford, in the county of Haddington, a short distance from Edinburgh, Scotland, and died in Boston the twenty-first of October, 1752, aged, as nearly as can be ascertained, about sixty years. He came to Boston in 1716, but did not make a permanent settlement here until the year 1718. He first dwelt in Hanover street, near Mr. Welstead's meeting-house; but at his decease the house in Green Dragon Lane was styled his mansion house, and was the only one on the estate not let by him to tenants. His father George was a portioner (distributor of tithes) in Gifford, near Edinburgh, and the factor of John, Marquis of Tweeddale. His father's
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children were: Cornelius (a surgeon and portioner), who had a son Cornelius (a joiner), who removed to Boston after the decease of Dr. Wm. Douglass; Dr. William, the second child; George, who died in youth; and Cath- erine, who married a person named Kerr (sometimes written Carr), and who came to Boston with her nephew, and afterwards married a Mr. Robinson. Catherine Kerr, the sister, and Cornelius Douglass, the nephew of Dr. William Douglass, shared his property equally by a division made the twenty-seventh of September, 1754, and recorded with Suffolk deeds, Lib. 88, fol. 76. Dr. Douglass left about £3,185. Over twenty dozen gloves were bought for his funeral.
In this noted old house Dr. Douglass wrote his fa- mous books, and in it he died. By an agreement of his heirs, made the twenty-seventh of September, 1754, and recorded with the Suffolk Records, the old mansion- house fell to Catherine Kerr, and she, a widow, by deed dated the thirty-first of March, 1764, conveyed it, for the consideration of &466 13s. 4d., to Moses Deshon and others, members of St. Andrew's Lodge of Free- masons. Since this date the estate has been in the possession of the Lodge.
The old tavern stood on the left side of the street, formerly called Green Dragon Lane, now the northerly portion of Union street, leading from Hanover street to the old mill-pond, now filled up and built upon. It was built of brick, and in its latter days was painted of a dingy color. In front it showed only two stories and an attic; but in the rear, from the slope of the land and the peculiar shape of the roof, three stories, with a base- ment, were perceptible. It covered a piece of land fifty feet in front and thirty-four in depth, and had connected
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with it a large stable and other out-buildings. In re- cent times the lower story was used as the common rooms of a tavern, while in the second, on the street front, was a large hall used for public as well as for Ma- sonic purposes. The attic story afforded ample accom- modations for sleeping apartments. The chimneys were substantially built in the side walls, and were of the style usually found in houses built at the close of the seventeenth century. The attic windows on the front part of the roof, and the walk railed in on the upper part, added much to the appearance and comfort of the building, which, in its best days, must have been com- modious, and comfortably arranged.
The whole estate comprised a large lot of land, the main portion being situated back of Green Dragon Lane, with other estates in front, and extending north- erly to the old mill-pond. The extensive yard was much used by the boys who dwelt in the neighborhood, as a playground; and here it was, undoubtedly, that the youthful Franklin first essayed his mechanical feat of building his stone wharf, alluded to in his autobiogra- phy. The old tavern-stable became in its latter days a well-known convenience; and served many years as a livery stable kept by men well acquainted with their business.
In front of the building there projected from the wall an iron crane, upon which was couched a Green Dragon. This peculiar mark of designation was very ancient, perhaps as old as the building itself. It was formed of thick sheet copper, and had a curled tail; and from its mouth projected a fearful looking tongue, the wonder of all the boys who dwelt in the neighborhood. When the building was taken down, this curious relic
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of the handiwork of the ancient mechanics of the town disappeared, and has never since been found, although most searching inquiries and diligent examinations for it have been made among workmen and in the collections of the dealers in old material. In 1854, a committee of St. Andrew's Lodge was appointed to put in the new building, that stands upon the site of the old one, a me- morial to commemorate the old house, and they inserted in the wall, on the first of November, 1855, a stone effigy, elaborately carved in sandstone in a most skilful and artistic manner, by a workman in the employ of Mr. Thomas J. Bailey, of this city; and this magnificently sculptured emblem now proudly supplies the place of the old weather-beaten dragon, which had for nearly a century and a half withstood the storms and tempests of the hard New England seasons, and outlived the vio- lence of political mobs and the rudeness of inimical sol- diery in the time of the war, - a fit object to perpetuate in some degree the remembrance of the old hall, in which the patriots of the American Revolution used to meet, and also to designate the Masons' Hall of by-gone days.
The old mansion-house must have been erected not far from the year 1680, when many substantial buildings of a similar kind were put up. In 1695, and perhaps earlier, it was used as an inn by Alexander Smith, who, and his widow also, died as its occupants in 1696. Han- nah Bishop had a license in October, 1696, for keeping a tavern in it; and she was succeeded by John Cary, a brewer, in October of 1697, who certainly was its occu- pant as late as 1705, although Samuel Tyley appears to have been the tenant of Lieutenant-Governor Stough- ton, at the time of his decease in July, 1701. In 1734,
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Joseph Kidder, who came from the Three Cranes in Charlestown, was the keeper. It would not be surpris- ing if Thomas Milliken, a member of St. Andrew's Lodge, was also at some time a landlord of the Green Dragon Tavern; for he was a victualler by occupation, and was mainly instrumental in its purchase for the Lodge, being chairman of the committee authorized on the eleventh of January, 1764, to buy it. On the thirty- first of the month, of the same year, the deed was passed by Mrs. Catherine Kerr to Moses Deshon and others; and on the thirteenth of April the Lodge held for the first time a monthly meeting in the hall. On the fourteenth of June, 1764, the hall was formally named "Freemasons' Hall," and from that time, for a long series of years, was the regular place. of meeting of the Lodge. It would be useless, were it even possible, to name the various persons who carried on this famous tavern; suffice it to say, that at times it was the most popular of the old houses of "entertainment for man and beast" in the town, and was noted for being a favorite hall for festive as well as political occasions. Undoubtedly the famous "Tea Party" of 1773 had its origin within the walls of this old mansion; for it is known that several of the most active spirits engaged in it were members of the Masonic Lodge that held its meetings there monthly. A Lodge meeting called for the thirtieth of November, 1773, being St. Andrew's Day, was closed without the transaction of business in consequence of the fewness of the brethren present, and the following words in a distinct hand were entered on the page with the record, " (N. B. Consignees of Tea took up the Brethren's time.)" The meeting which was to have been held on the sixteenth of December -
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the day of the destruction of the tea - was also given up for the same reason.
From the following document, signed by the Lieu- tenant Governor, it appears that in the Revolutionary war the building was sometimes used for other pur- poses : -
BOSTON, Feb. 24th, 1776.
To the Rev'd Doc'r Caner, Col. Snelling, Maj. Paddock, Cap. Gore, & Cap. Gay.
Gentlemen - Having occasion for a large commo- dious House for the Purpose of a Hospital in which the poor - Infirm and Aged can be lodged upon the Charity in which you are appointed Stewards - and having the Consent of the Proprietors in Town of the House Com- monly called the Green Dragon to apply that to this Purpose, you are hereby required to take possession of said House and prepare it as a Hospital for the Reception of such objects as shall require immediate Relief, for which this shall be your authority. THOS. OLIVER.
In October, 1828, as the travel from Charlestown had much increased, and as the filling up of the mill-pond had given room for many buildings, and therefore re- quired the widening of Green Dragon Lane, the old building was taken down by order of the city authorities, and a considerable part of its site taken for the proposed widening; and then passed almost from remembrance the appearance of one of the most noted and interesting landmarks of the early days of the town. On its site, and covering the whole estate, a large warehouse has been erected by the Lodge, which is now, in 1870, occupied as a carriage depository.
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