USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Topographical and historical description of Boston > Part 47
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The title to this estate commences with the set- tlement of the town. The first owner appears from the records to have been Mr. Henry Symons, who was admitted as a townsman on the thirtieth of January, 1642-3; and, on his decease, which occurred in the following September, his widow Susannah, about the year 1644, married Isaac Walker, a substantial mer- chant, and with him improved the estate until they conveyed it by two separate deeds to their daughter Susannah (born on the third of October, 1646). The first of these deeds, dated on the eighteenth of Septem- ber 1662, conveyed the easterly portion of the estate, which was occupied at the time by the grantee as a shop; the second deed, dated on the twenty-seventh of March, 1666, just as Susannah was about to marry Mr. Thomas Stanbury, a respectable shopkeeper, conveyed the remain- ing portion, bounded by Conduit street on the north, the Dock on the south, and the Highway next to the Dock's side on the west, on which were then two shops. These two conveyances, the record of which is preserved in the fourth and fifth volumes of Suffolk Registry of Deeds, give substantially the same extent of bounds which the
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estate has at the present day. The marriage of Thomas Stanbury and Susannah Walker took place about the year 1668, and on the twenty-sixth of October, 1672, their second child, Abigail, was born. This daughter married for her first husband Richard Franklin, on the twenty-seventh of September, 1697; and he dying on the fourth of December, 1704, she married, for her second husband, William Antram, a distiller, who subsequently removed to Providence. On the third of January, 1710-11, Mr. Stanbury, who had, while he held the estate, erected the building now standing on it, conveyed the same to his son-in-law Antram, by a quitclaim deed, his daughter Abigail having died on the twenty-eighth of November, 1708. The heirs of Antram, two sons and two daughters, by a similar title, and "for divers good causes," deeded the same to Elizabeth, wife of Benja- min Cushing of Providence, hatter, on the twentieth of April, 1764. After the decease of Mrs. Cushing, her husband and children, Benjamin Cushing, and Benjamin Cushing, Jr., of Providence, R. I., hatters, and Ann Rawson, the wife of Dr. Eliot Rawson, of Middletown, Conn., made conveyance of the same property to John Greenleaf of Boston, a noted apothecary in his time, by deed dated on the fifteenth of September, 1766. Mr. Greenleaf died in August, 1778, leaving all his property to his wife, Ann (Wroe), daughter Elizabeth, born on the fifteenth of November, 1765, and son Thomas, born on the fifteenth of May, 1767. The estate near Dock square fell with other property to Elizabeth, who, on the twenty-fifth of May, 1786, married her cousin, Daniel Greenleaf, son of her uncle William. Daniel Greenleaf was a well-known apothecary at the commencement of the present century, and was born on the twenty-ninth
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DESCRIPTION OF BOSTON.
of September, 1762. At his decease, on the twenty- fifth of March, 1853, in the ninety-first year of his age, the property fell to his cousin Thomas, who had also been an apothecary. This last-named gentleman died at his residence in Quincy, on the fifth of January, 1854, at the great age of eighty-six years and seven months, and the estate fell to his children, the present pro- prietors.
As far as can be ascertained at this day, the various parts of the building were occupied as stores. For some years after 1680, the year of building, it was occupied by Thomas Stanbury as a shop and ware- house; in 1708, and some years later, it served William Antram for all the purposes connected with hat making; about 1731 it appears to have been used by James Pitt, subsequently the owner of the adjoining estate; in 1778 it was in the occupancy of Andrew Codnor and Mr. Croswell; in 1784 of Mr. Bush; and in 1789 of Samuel Richards, hardwareman, and Samuel Wallis, dealer in West India goods. A short time previous to 1796, Mr. Daniel Greenleaf took possession of the Ann street part for the sale of medicines, and continued in busi- ness in it until he sold out to Mr. James T. Loring, about the year 1800. Mr. Loring soon vacated the premises, and took the Market square corner of the building, and was followed by Jonathan Phillips in the Ann street corner, who used it as a hardware store in 1803. In 1806, and for many subsequent years, the same part of the building was occupied successively by Mr. Daniel Pomeroy, Messrs. Pomeroy and Simpson, and the sons of Mr. Simpson (John K., Daniel P., and William B., as a feather store),- hence its designation as the "Old Feather Store." Since this time it reverted
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to one of its former purposes, the sale of hats, and was last in the occupation of Mr. Charles J. Lovejoy, dealer in clothing. About the same time that Mr. Pomeroy became tenant, he let a small portion of his part of the store to Mr. William Tileston, formerly one of the Alder- men after the adoption of the city charter, who carried on the indigo trade within its very small limits for about three years.
Mr. James T. Loring, with whom our respected fellow-citizen, Daniel Henchman, served his apprentice- ship, died in 1805, and was succeeded in his store, on the market-place corner, in the same business, succes- sively by Thomas Weld in 1805, Pardon Brownell in 1810, William Kidder, who left in the fall of 1817, Nathaniel R. Holden, who left in 1827, and by Mr. Thomas Hollis, the well-known druggist in Union street, who had possession of the business during the absence of Mr. Holden from the fall of 1821 to the fall of 1824. In 1827 Mr. Samuel Leeds took the store for the transaction of the shoe business, the same having been used for a few months previous by a clothing dealer; and after doing business for some years, he took into partnership Mr. William W. Allen, to whom he relinquished business about the year 1850. When the old building was taken down in July, 1860, a substantial brick building, five stories in height, was erected on its site; but, notwithstanding the neat appearance of the new edifice, there will be found very few persons who will not sincerely regret the disappearance of the old feather store, whose familar appearance was always agreeable to their sight, and was considered a good type of the warehouses of the olden time, almost the latest relic of the colonial period.
CHAPTER LIV.
THE JULIEN HOUSE IN MILK STREET.
The Julien House, a noted Restaurant, 1794 to 1823 . .. Book of Possessions - 1643 . . . Possessions in Milk street, 1643 . . . Estate of John Spoor . . . Spoor's Mortgage to Nicholas Willis, 1648 . . . The Estate in the possession of Henry Bridgham, 1655 . . . Condition of the Estate when acquired by Mr. Bridg- ham · · · Deacon Bridgham's Death, in 1671, and the Division of his Estate in 1680 . . . The Milk-street Estate fell to Dr. John Bridgham, of Ipswich, who died in 1721 . . . The Estate given to Joseph Bridgham, and by him sold in 1735 to Francis Borland ... Death of Mr. Borland, in 1763, and Division of his Estate in 1765 . . . Sale of the Estate to Thomas Clement in 1787 . .. Estate purchased by Mons. Julien, in 1794, and the establishment of the Restaurant ... Death of Mons. Julien in 1805, and of his wife Hannah in 1815 ... Restaurant kept by Frederic Rouillard till 1823 . .. Old House demolished in 1824 .. Tenants of the Old House . .. Description of the Julien House . .. Mons. Julien and his wife.
FRONTING southerly on Milk street, and situated on the westerly side of Congress street, there formerly stood an ancient building quite noted during the first twenty-four years of the present century. It was a quaint-looking old house, and was universally known by Bostonians, in its latter years, as Julien's Restaurant, - deriving the name from an individual very much distinguished by his accomplishment in his humble, but useful, calling in life; for few of the silver-haired Boston boys of seventy summers will be willing to acknowledge being ignorant of the person or the fame of Mons. Jean Baptiste Gilbert Payplat dis Julien, the very worthy and attentive keeper of the famous restaurant at the angle of the streets opposite the Milk-street openings
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into Congress and Federal streets, where the creature comforts were so liberally dispensed.
The old building shared the fate of almost all of the ancient landmarks of Boston soon after the adoption of the city charter, and was taken down to make room for modern improvements, in July, 1824 ; and, unques- tionably, its disappearance was more grievous to the epicures of Boston than that of any other that has been demolished during the last century.
In the olden time, great inconvenience having arisen from the want of a proper record of the grants of land that had been made by the town authorities throughout the colony, the General Court, on the ninth of Septem- ber, 1639, passed an order "to record all mens houses & lands, being certified vnder the hands of the men of every towne, deputed for the ordering of theire affaires." In consequence of this important, as well as prudential, provision of the early legislators, an inventory, some- what imperfect, was taken of the ownership of the real estate in Boston. A considerable portion of this has been carefully preserved with the town records, and the volume containing the valuable minutes has been usually designated as the "Book of Possessions," because each man's real estate was set down in it as "the Possession of - within the Limits of Boston." From the dates given in this interesting volume, it appears that the facts were collected and recorded about the year 1643; yet later dates of transfers are entered upon its leaves. It is much to be regretted that a second volume, which is supposed to have contained records of the earliest conveyances of some of these possessions, has been lost, not having been remembered as among the old records by any person conversant with
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the town archives. A simple casual reference to this second volume is all that is known of it, tradition even failing in pronouncing its former existence. By the dis- appearance of this record, the connecting link of title between the original grant and the present possession has been lost.
From this old record the early owners of the estates in Milk street are easily ascertained. On the northerly side of the street commencing at the High street to Roxbury (now known as Washington street), and running to the water side of the town, were the "Possessions" of Governor John Winthrop, Mr. Wil- liam Hibbens, one of the Assistants, and John Spoor. These extended from Milk street (then known as the "Way to the Fort," or the "Fort street") to Spring Lane (the ancient Springate) and "the creek" that ran through the present Water street, easterly to Oliver's Dock. Two other small estates, those of Richard Sherman and Atherton Hough, wedged into that of Mr. Hibbens on the Milk street side. On the southerly side of the Fort street, and fronting towards the north, were, in course, the estates of the following persons: Robert Reinolds, cordwainer; John Stevenson, shoemaker; Nathaniel Bishop, currier; Nicholas Parker; Elder James Penn, at one time the beadle; John Kenrick, yeoman; William Dinsdale; Robert Rice, and William Pell, tallow-chandler. The last of these was by the water's edge, bounding easterly upon the cove; and crossed over northerly so far as to form also the east- erly boundary of Mr. Spoor's large lot.
Of the lots on the northerly side of Milk street, Governor Winthrop's is very nearly the same as the "Old South Church's" estate; the Governor's house
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having stood on the site of the stores comprised in South row, while the meeting-house covers what was anciently known as the "Governor's Green." The Hib- bens lot extended to Devonshire street (formerly known as Jolliffe's lane, because John Jolliffe, Esq., an ancient town recorder, dwelt upon one of its corners). The Spoor lot included the site of Julien's building, and extended to the water as aforesaid, taking in, of course, the square now bounded by Congress street and Bath street, in old times the tan-yard of the Bridghams of three generations, and subsequently of Joseph Calef.
On the fourteenth of October, 1648, John Spoor mortgaged his "Possession" to Mr. Nicholas Willis, of Boston, for £66, and the estate was described as his dwelling-house in Boston, together with one acre of land thereto belonging, next adjoining unto the house of Mr. William Hibbens. The mortgage record exhibits no proof that the instrument was ever cancelled, nor is there any evidence of any conveyance from Spoor, either by deed or by the settlement of his estate. In all probability the lot fell, on account of non-fulfilment of the terms of the mortgage, to Mr. Willis, or was given to Henry Bridgham in exchange for another lot. Mr. Willis died about 1650; for in June of that year power of administration of his estate, with a will annexed, was granted to Peter Oliver, Elder James Penn and James Johnson. Mr. Willis was a mercer, and was admitted, together with his wife Ann, to the fellowship of the First Church of Boston, in July, 1634. What became of him after acquiring the mortgage of Mr. Spoor's land is not known; but it is very evident that the estate passed to Deacon Henry Bridgham, soon after he obtained it, as Mr. Bridgham was in possession of the
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lot in 1655, when poor Anne Hibbens sold her late husband's lot (he died on the twenty-third of July, 1654) just about ten months before she was inhumanly hung for pretended witchcraft. Mr. Bridgham, before he obtained possession of the Spoor lot, had a house and land on the westerly side of Washington street, a short distance south of School street, which he sold on the twelfth of January, 1648-9, part to Mr. Spoor, and the remainder to Richard Tappan; and, unless he had then become the owner of his Milk street acquisition, he would have been houseless, and at the mercy of others for a home. On the twelfth of May, 1648, Willis sold his ancient possession (not the Spoor lot) to Christo- pher Clarke; and this is the last that is heard of him, except a mention of the appointment of administrators for the settlement of his estate, which there is no recorded evidence of having been performed. Perhaps this evidence may have been lost with the second Book of Possessions, which may have also contained the conveyance of Spoor's lot to Bridgham, either from Mr. Spoor or the mortgagee Mr. Willis. This loss of ancient records is very grievous to antiquaries, although con- veyancers are sometimes satisfied that their old titles are sufficiently protected by the law of limitation.
When Mr. Bridgham became possessed of the Milk- street estate, there were upon it the buildings probably erected by Mr. Spoor. These were sufficient for the purposes of the good deacon and his wife Elizabeth, and his six sons until they became grown up. Then the deacon considered it prudent to set his house in readi- ness for his departure, and he commenced in the year 1670 to build a new mansion-house a little farther down the street, and nearer to his tan-yard, in which his
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worldly affairs had met with so much success, and which was bounded easterly by a narrow lane, in his day known as Tanners' Lane, but since called Bath street, on account of the bathing establishment which was conducted there for many years. Mr. Bridgham's will, executed on the eighth of November, and proved on the thirteenth of the succeeding April, exhibits his prudence and foresight. By this instrument he be- queaths to each of his six sons the sum of one hundred pounds, and devises his real estate to his wife, to be improved by her during her life, she and her son Jonathan to carry on the tan-yard, and to see to the education, and instruction in the trade, of her sons Joseph, Benjamin, Samuel and James. The oldest son, John, had been educated at Harvard College, and was settled as a physician in the town of Ipswich. He further provided that (in his own language), "the new house that I have raised & proceeding in the building of itt, my will is that out of the estate it be finished, made habitable, at the discretion of my wife & overseers." He also gives his wife power to devise the estate, if she dies his widow; and allows her to choose which of the two houses to live in and improve, if she sees fit to marry again, namely, the one "I now live & dye in," and the new house. Mr. Bridgham died on the twelfth of March, 1670-1, and his widow Elizabeth in Septem- ber, 1672; and on the twentieth of July, 1680, their real estate was divided between three sons, John, Jonathan and Joseph, the other three having died. To Dr. John Bridgham was allotted the portion upon which the new house stood. This extended so far east as to include the westerly portion of the present Congress street. This street was laid out and opened about the year
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1763, under the name of Dalton's lane; and the por- tion of the present Devonshire street, lying between Milk and Water streets, was very early laid out by John Jolliffe, at one time town recorder.
On the eighth of October, 1719, Dr. John Bridg- ham, who inherited the estate on the corner of Congress street, executed a deed of gift, to take effect at his decease, conveying the estate to his nephew, Joseph, the son of his brother Joseph, the Elder of the First Church, whom he calls "student," probably forgetting that he had graduated at the preceding commencement at Harvard College. Dr. Bridgham died at Ipswich on the second of May, 1721, therefore the estate fell to Joseph, who, after leaving College, became an apothe- cary, keeping his store in Boston. On the twenty- fourth of February, 1734-5, Mr. Joseph Bridgham sold the estate to Francis Borland, of Boston, merchant, for the sum of £1,200. At the time of its conveyance it measured one hundred and six feet southerly on Milk street; seventy-six feet easterly on the estate set off in 1680 to Mr. Bridgham's uncle Jonathan; one hundred and twenty-eight feet northerly on the land set off to his father, the Elder; and westerly by three lines running southerly forty-three feet, then easterly eighteen feet, and lastly, southerly thirty-four feet to Milk street, the estates of the widow Bridge and Joseph Russell, lying west thereof. To this Mr. Borland added a small strip, measuring ninety-five by eight and a half feet, on the north side of the estate, by purchase of James Dalton, on the thirteenth of August, 1763. This addition reached the whole length of the lot, which had been abridged by the laying out of the new street from its east side a short time previous,
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Francis Borland died on the sixteenth of September, 1763, at his house in Boston, in the seventy-second year of his age, having been born in Boston, on the twenty- eighth of December, 1691. He was a noted merchant of Boston, and married, on the twenty-second of September, 1726, Jane, daughter of Hon. Timothy Lindall, formerly of Boston, but at that time of Salem. Mr. Borland inherited a large landed estate from his father John, who died on the thirtieth of March, 1727, aged sixty-eight years, and by his mother Sarah, a daughter of Andrew Neal, the keeper of the famous old Star Tavern which stood at the corner of Hanover and Union streets two hundred years ago. To his patrimony he added much by purchase, and was the owner of much land in the centre of the town, a considerable tract of which was situated at the corner of Milk street, extending southwardly into Congress street. By his will, dated on the seventh of March, 1763, he devised the estate in Milk street, at the corner of Congress street, to his son, Francis Lindall Borland, who was absent, and feared to be dead, and gave other property to his wife Phebe, his son John, and the children of his daughter Jane Winthrop, deceased. His daughter Jane, who had married John Still Winthrop on the fourth of September, 1750, had died on the fifth of April, 1760, leaving a family of young children. On the death of Mr. Borland's widow, as well as of his son Francis Lindall Borland, the real estate lapsed, and fell to John and the Winthrop children, and was divided in September, 1765, among the heirs.
These heirs, among whom were the mother of Hon. David Sears and the father of Hon. R. C. Winthrop, by deeds dated on the fifteenth of May, and the twenty-sixth
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of June, 1787, for £600, conveyed the Congress-street corner to Thomas Clement, of Boston, housewright; and Mr. Clement, in turn, for £2,000 of the then depreciated lawful money of the country, sold the same on the twenty-first of July, 1794, to Jean Baptiste Gilbert Payplat dis Julien, of Boston, restorator. The mes- suage and land conveyed to Mons. Julien was the same bought by Francis Borland of Dr. Joseph Bridgham in 1734, and of Captain James Dalton in 1763, with the exception of the strip of land, about thirty-two feet wide, taken from the estate for laying out that portion of Congress street, formerly called Dalton's lane.
Mons. Julien, undoubtedly, took possession of his estate at the time of his purchase; but did not live long afterwards, for he died on the thirtieth of June, 1805, leaving his property to his widow Hannah and to his two daughters Charlotte and Harriet, both of whom were then under fourteen years of age. On the twen- tieth of March, 1815, dower was set off to the widow; and on the fifteenth of December following, she died, and the estate passed to the two daughters, who, on the twenty-eighth of June, 1823, both being single women and residing in Charlestown, conveyed it to the Com- mercial Insurance Company in Boston, for the sum of $12,160; since which time it has been divided into two lots, and sold again.
It has been shown that the Julien estate was originally in the possession of Mr. John Spoor, a husbandman, at least as early as the year 1643. He may have had it earlier, as he and his wife Elizabeth were admitted to the fellowship of the First Church in Boston, on the fourteenth of April, 1639. This Spoor (or Spurre, as his name was sometimes spelled ) was an
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unruly fellow; for by the records of the church, neatly kept in the handwriting of good old Elder Thomas Leverett, it appears that "John Spurre, for his insolent bearing witness against Baptisme and singing and ye church covenant as noe ordinances of God, was with ye consent of ye church admonished the 1. 4mo., 1651." This admonition was of little avail, as on the thirteenth of the following month, July, he was excommunicated. What became of him subsequent to this church disci- pline does not appear. He had parted with his land lying between the old Fort street and the Springate, and it was then, undoubtedly, in the possession of Mr. Henry Bridgham, a noted tanner, and the respectable deacon of the church from which Mr. Spoor had been so summarily ejected for being as free in his religious opinions as his late associates had been in theirs a few years previous in England.
Deacon Henry Bridgham, when he was admitted to the membership of the church in Boston, on the thirty- first of March, 1644, upon letters from Dorchester, was a single man; and he was a tanner by trade, as were in subse- quent times his children and grandchildren. He dwelt on the estate, and carried on his business on the easterly por- tion of it, as did afterwards his posterity, and after them Mr. Joseph Calef. Soon after his settlement in Boston, he married his wife Elizabeth, by whom he had a large family of children, six sons of whom grew up, although three only lived to inherit their father's estate. He un- doubtedly built the Julien house in the year 1670, and his widow moved into it the next year, and died in it in 1672.
The Bridgham heirs undoubtedly dwelt in the house until it was sold out of the family to Mr. Francis Borland; and about this time the Calefs, who were also
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tanners, took the house and the tan-yard. While Mr. Joseph Calef was the tenant, in the spring of the year 1760, that terrible series of fires occurred in the town which proved so destructive to property. On the twen- tieth of March occurred by far the greatest that had taken place since the great fire of 1679. This began in the morning in a dwelling-house in old Cornhill, on the east side of the street, now No. 100 Washington street, and destroyed almost all the houses and shops east of it to the water-side. By a singular providence the old Julien house, with a few others, escaped the conflagration. During this occupancy Congress street was laid out from Milk street to Water street.
Mr. Thomas Clement, a housewright, occupied the old house a few years before he purchased it in 1787 of the Borland heirs, and retained possession of it until he sold it to Mons. Julien in 1794.
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