MARCH MEETING, 1901.
A Stated Meeting of the Society was held at No. 25 Beacon Street, Boston, on Thursday, 28 March, 1901, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the President in the chair.
After the minutes of the last meeting had been read and approved, the Corresponding Secretary reported that letters had been received from Dr. Ephraim Emerton accepting Resident Membership, and from General Joseph Wheeler accepting Corresponding Membership.
The President announced the death on the fifth of March of Henry Williams, a Resident Member, and paid a tribute to his memory.
Mr. John Noble, having been called upon, said:
Our oldest Resident Member, in point of years, has gone from us at the age of more than fourscore. Seldom failing in attendance, until his health gave way, on the eve of our last Annual Meeting, he has always been one of the most interested and devoted members of the Society. No one marking his erect and vigorous form, his strong personality, his alert and energetic mind, would have set him down as a graduate of over sixty years’ standing and one of the few survivors of the Harvard Class of ’37, two only of whom survive
Mr. Williams’s life was marked by no very striking events. He never held public office, though many private trusts and responsibilities were devolved upon him, as a man of business habits, exact and methodical ways, and of unswerving integrity. Kind, sympathetic and helpful, he was ever ready to do his part whenever duty or occasion called.
There were few dull lines in the features of his make-up. Independent, keen, aggressive, there was seldom a question as to where he stood on any issue. In his opinions he was always sure and decided, and vigorous in his way of expressing them. He knew what he thought, and he stood by it. He was a warm and steadfast friend, where he gave his friendship; and in his dislikes he was no less determined and persistent.
Mr. Williams’s life was spent mainly in teaching, and he was most generally and widely known as a teacher; — first, and for many years, as the head-master of one of the Grammar Schools of Boston, and later as the head of a successful and famous private school for girls. He was singularly fortunate, or rather it should be said, singularly and deservedly happy, in gaining and holding the love and respect of the long line of pupils that, through forty years or more, were under his charge, — a regard evidenced often and in many ways in their after life. A touching tribute to his memory was the bunch of lilies laid upon his coffin by some of the very earliest of his scholars, — the few surviving boys of sixty years ago.
The later years of Mr. Williams’s life were quiet and were spent in leisure among his books and his friends. His habits and tastes were scholarly. He read much, and the best authors. Here too he had his intimates. Scott was an especial favorite; the Waverley Novels he knew almost by heart, and he had read the whole series ten or a dozen times, each new reading coming as a fresh delight. He had gathered from every available source what might illustrate the scenery, character, incident or history of Scott’s works; and the author’s life was almost as real and near to him as his own.
From the early days of this Society Mr. Williams was upon its Committee of Publication, and one of the most efficient and valuable members. His judgment was good, his perception sharp, his taste delicate, his view conservative. Bred under the training of Professor Channing, who set and sustained so long the standard for the English of Harvard, he was a discriminating and severe cri tic. A faithful and single-hearted lover of “English undefiled,” it was rarely that an infelicity or obscurity or impropriety of word or phrase escaped his quick and delicate intelligence, while on the merits of any article, his estimate was usually sound and judicious. His services here were valuable and important, and his place will be hard to fill.
In every way a valued member of the Society, Mr. Williams had, by birth, a somewhat unusual claim to its fellowship. Of one of the oldest families of Boston, coeval almost with the Colony, he was also a lineal descendant of two Colonial Governors, — Thomas Dudley and Simon Bradstreet; was connected with a third, by his descent from Lucy Winthrop; counted as another ancestor the Reverend John Cotton; and, through still another, was allied with the founder of Williams College. Knowing our associate as I have through a friendship of more than half a century his death comes to me as a personal grief.
Mr. Lindsay Swift paid the following tribute to the memory of his venerable friend:
My acquaintance or, as I may truly say, my friendship with Mr. Williams does not run further back than ten or twelve years, when I used to see him occasionally at the Public Library, then in its old and cozier home on Boylston Street opposite the Common. After we had moved into our new palace on Copley Square, he did not come to see me so often, perhaps because of the infirmity of years. I have always fancied, however, that he was not comfortable in the changed surroundings, though he never expressed his feeling to me in the matter. It was always a pleasure to aid him in his quests for books, for he was not one of those vague people who merely are looking for “something to read.” His object was always definite, and he usually brought a list of desiderata ready for his own and my convenience. Soon he would go away satisfied, and as I found out afterwards, through deeds and not words, very grateful for my slight attention. Gradually we came to know each other better, and then almost intimately; as we met, we would talk of books for which we had a mutual sympathy, or of public events, in his judgments of which be held lofty and exacting standards. Now and then I had the pleasure of dining at his quiet home in Concord Square. Those of you who knew Mr. Williams at his own table, will recall what an honest joy he took in making his guest happy in every way, yet even his choice taste in these matters could not give such pleasure as did his spirit of unaffected hospitality. He was indeed an ideal host. After dinner we would go to his “den” at the very top of the house, and then would follow an hour or so over his excellently-chosen cigars, and I would go away refreshed by the companionship of an elderly man’s wisdom, and by his keen, positive opinions. He was so unfeignedly glad to see me whenever it was possible for me to break through routine, and call on him, that I now make it a reproach to myself that I did not force these occasions far oftener, and enjoy more frequently the entire modesty and simplicity of that delightful home.
With the active beginning of the life of The Colonial Society it was my good fortune to see considerably more of our colleague. It has always seemed to me that Mr. Williams’s membership stood for more with him than could easily be guessed. Such things are often a matter of course to men of affairs, but his connection with the Society was of importance in his eyes; his interest in its affairs was incessant; and it appeared to stimulate enthusiasm, usually so inert in mature life. Owing to his friendliness, I became acquainted with Mr. Edes, and with others of the Society, and ultimately had the honor of an election as a fellow-member. It was he who persuaded me to undertake the formidable task of indexing our first volume, and I may now confess to you that my reluctance gave way before his evident belief that I was providentially created for just this piece of work. There were hot disagreements over that index, but they were the differences of honest men, and if war raged it was certainly a civil one. How kind and loyal Mr. Williams was all this time, and how anxious to be just to all sides! This was the more notable, because in abstract questions he was an opinionated man. This matter would really be too unimportant to mention, had it not so fully revealed the staunchness and absolute sincerity of my valued friend. As Mr. Edes said to me on the day of the funeral services, the keynote of Mr. Williams’s character was loyalty. Add to this quality his ingenuousness and you have the leading traits of his strong personality before you. At the least suggestion of possible injury coming to a friend whether by implication or by direct attack, he would leap to the front like a sword from its scabbard. He cared little for his own reputation in such an issue; but on the other hand, did he come to see that this very friend, whose cause he had espoused, was in any way at fault, he would unflinchingly try to set him right. His were the essential courage and directness of a man of nice traditions and firm training.
Our meetings being of necessity infrequent, I used to count much on seeing Mr. Williams at the Cambridge Commencement. It was his habit to stay in Massachusetts Hall till the procession formed and then march with it — this was in his later years — until he reached the outer door of Memorial Hall. There he would patiently stand until all had passed in to the dinner — a loyal son of Harvard, as his careful service in the Secretaryship of the Class of 1837 fully attests. The pathos of Commencement Day, increasing each year, but sweeter and more tender for all that, will be deeper when we fail to see in the future our old friend in his expectant attitude at the entrance to that solemn vestibule dedicated to our immortals.
We shall fail to do justice to the memory of Mr. Williams if we neglect to speak at this time of his admirable fund of humor, — an integral part of his manliness, and an evidence, I fully believe, of the Divine essence in human character. It was so deep, as sometimes to be unconscious. With one instance I may fitly bring to an end these remarks. In a recent Commencement, I missed him from his usual place hard by the voting booths, but after a little delay he appeared and said that he had been lunching at a private house with the few surviving members of his Class who were able to be present. I inquired after the health of this venerable company, no one of whom could have been under eighty years of age. He was able to give a good account of them as a whole, but admitted that he was deeply concerned for the welfare of one classmate who had taken up the habit of smoking cigarettes. “And, Swift,” said our friend, “if he doesn’t stop it, he won’t live out half his days!” Such was the excellent wit of Henry Williams, and now that he is released from an old man’s loneliness and pain, I like to speak of him naturally, as if he were still alive, enjoying life and meeting its joys and sorrows in his own sturdy, well-bred, and quaint fashion.
The Corresponding Secretary announced that the Council had made the following assignments of Memoirs: — That of Samuel Johnson, originally assigned to the late Reverend Edward G. Porter, to President Tucker of Dartmouth College; that of Roger Wolcott to the Reverend Arthur Lawrence; and that of Henry Williams to President Kittredge.
Mr. Henry H. Edes exhibited the gold medal given to Charles Bulfinch, in 1794, by the Proprietors of the first theatre built in Boston, from plans made by him, in recognition of his interest in the undertaking. The theatre stood on the north-westerly corner of Federal and Franklin Streets, now occupied by the Jones, McDuffie and Stratton Company. It was destroyed by fire on the afternoon of 2 February, 1798, and was rebuilt on new plans furnished by Mr. Bulfinch. The façade of this building was much plainer than that of the first building, which is shown, in high relief, on the medal.187
General Charles G. Loring remarked upon the beauty of the medal and mentioned a conversation he once had with Reginald Stuart Poole, of the British Museum, in which that gentleman inquired who made the design of one of the early silver dollars or half-dollars issued by the United States mint. Mr. Poole said that he regarded that piece as the most beautiful of modern coins.
Mr. Albert Matthews read a paper on Yankee and Yankee Doodle.188 Mr. William Watson Goodwin, President Kittredge, and Dr. William Watson participated in the discussion which ensued.
Edward Charles Pickering, LL.D., and Mr. Arthur Richmond Marsh, both of Cambridge, were elected Resident Members.
1 At a meeting of the Council, held 5 November, 1900, Mr. Samuel Wells was appointed to fill the vacancy in the Nominating Committee caused by the death of Dr. Everett.
2 The text of this Commission will appear in Volume ii. of these Publications, which is reserved for the Royal Commissions.
3 Mr. Goodell’s Remarks at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society in November, 1899, printed in its Proceedings (Second Series), xiii. 290, 291
4 Publications of this Society, v. 58–77.
5 Of Preston himself little is known. He received a commission as Captain of the 29th Regiment on 7 December, 1764 (British Army List for 1772, p. 83). The 29th Regiment came to America in 1766 (W.C. Ford’s British Officers serving in America), and was one of the two regiments which arrived at Boston in September, 1768. Capt. Preston was present at “a genteel dance” given 21 February, 1770, by John Rowe, a Boston merchant, for his adopted daughter Susanna Inman, who, by her marriage two years later with Capt. John Linzee, became the ancestress of Prescott the historian (2 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for March, 1895, x. 33). John Rowe himself said, on the following fifth of March, that “Capt. Preston bears a good character,” and on the ninth of March Rowe wrote: — “I went and paid a visit to Capt. Preston in goal, who I found in much better spirits than I expected” (Ibid. x. 73, 74). On the sixth of the same month Andrew Oliver, Jr., said that Capt. Preston “bears the most amiable character of any one in the Army” (Diaries of Benjamin Lynde and of Benjamin Lynde, Jr., pp. 227, 228). On the thirteenth of March, William Palfrey wrote: —
I cannot leave this subject without doing justice to Capt Preston so far as to inform you that before this unfortunate event, he always behav’d himself unexceptionably & had the character of a sober, honest man & a good officer, — but Influence, fatal influence! (1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for March, 1863, vi. 483).
And on the twenty-eighth of June following the Rev. Dr. Andrew Eliot declared that —
Capt. Preston, who commanded the party that fired on the unarmed inhabitants, had the character of a benevolent, humane man; he insists on his innocence, and that his men fired without his orders (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv. 451).
When one remembers the bitter feelings engendered here by the presence of the troops, and how easily the inhabitants took offence, it must be admitted that these extracts bear strong testimony to the high estimation in which Preston was held. He sailed for England from Boston on Thursday the sixth1 of December, 1770. For four years he continued to be Captain of the 29th Regiment, but his name appears in the Army Lists for the last time in 1774. In the Gentleman’s Magazine for November, 1781, is recorded the death, at Harwich on the twelfth of that month, of “Capt. Preston, of the W. Middlesex militia” (li. 543); but it hardly seems likely that this could have been our Capt. Thomas Preston.
1 In the Massachusetts Gazette of Friday, 7 December, 1770, No. 3505, it is stated that “His Majesty’s Ship Glasgow sailed Yesterday for England: In her went Passengers, Hon. James Murray, Esq; Capt. Preston of the 29th Regiment” (p. 3/2). Mr. Noble quoted (Publications, v. 68 n.) the Boston Gazette of 10 December as showing that the Glasgow sailed on Wednesday, the fifth of December; but Wednesday appears to have been a mistake for Thursday, as three other Boston papers agree in stating that the ship sailed on Thursday.
6 This was brought to Boston by Capt. James Scott, who arrived here 13 September, and an abstract from it was printed in the Boston Gazette of Monday, 24 September, 1770, No. 807, p. 2. In the Massachusetts Gazette of Thursday, 13 September, No. 3492, we read: —
TWELVE o’clock at Noon arrived the Ship Lydia, James Scott, Master, from London (p. 2/3).
7 In the Massachusetts Gazette of Thursday, 22 March, 1770, No. 3468, is the following: —
Friday last [16 March] sailed for London the Captains Robson and Miller; in the former went the Hon. John Robinson, Esq; one of the Commissioners of the Board of Customs (p. 3/2).
In a pamphlet printed in London in 1774, we read: —
Mr. Robinson, one of the Commissioners who attempted to assassinate Mr. Otis, was dispatched [On the 16th of March] to England immediately after the Affair of the 5th of March, with a Case said to be that of Captain Preston, though directly repugnant to what be had published under his own Hand. This Case had been secretly drawn up, and was as secretly transmitted. The Purpose of it was to throw the Charge of being the Aggressors upon the People, and that the Soldiers fired upon them in their own Defence, and to save the Custom House from being plundered (A True State of the Proceedings In the Parliament of Great Britain, and in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, p. 11).
This pamphlet was reprinted at Philadelphia in the same year, and in 1777 was included in Almon’s Collection of interesting, authentic Papers, relative to the Dispute between Great Britain and America (usually called Prior Documents), where it is stated to have been “Drawn up by Dr. Benjamin Franklin” (p. 255). Sparks reprinted the Pamphlet in his edition of Franklin’s Works (iv. 466—515). Sabin, quoting Sparks, says that it was chiefly drawn up by Arthur Lee from materials furnished by Franklin. The real author was Lee, as appears from what he himself wrote not later than 1792: —
In the spring of 1774, I sat out with Mr. and Mrs. Izard to make the tour of France and Italy. But previous to my going I drew up a piece entitled, “A True State of the Proceedings in the Province of Massachusetts Bay,” which has been attributed to Dr. Franklin because it was left with him as agent to have it printed (R. H. Lee’s Life of Arthur. Lee, 1829, i. 262).
8 The Bostonians hired a vessel for this purpose, as appears from these extracts: —
A prime sailing Schooner, owned and commanded by Capt. Andrew Gardner, has been hired by this Town, to carry to England, a full Representation of the tragical Affair on the Evening of the 5th of this Month (Massachusetts Gazette Extraordinary of Friday, 23 March, 1770, p. 1/3).
The Schooner Betsey, Capt. Andrew Gardner, employed to carry Home the Representation of the late Massacre, lays ready for sailing (Massachusetts Gazette of Thursday, 29 March, No. 3469, p. 2/1).
The Schooner Betsey Packet, Capt. Gardner, sailed from hence for London last Sunday, and proceeded immediately to Sea (Massachusetts Gazette Extraordinary of Friday, 6 April, p. 2/1).
9 They were brought by Capt. Hall. In the Massachusetts Gazette of Thursday, 21 June, 1770, No. 3480, it is stated that “Monday last arrived here Capt. Hall from London” (p. 3/2).
10 In a letter written 7 July, James Bowdoin said: —
The latest intelligence from England was recd here last evening by Capt. Gardiner, who was sent thither express with the town’s dispatches on ye subject of the late massacre (6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 194).
11 In the Massachusetts Gazette of Monday, 16 July, 1770, No. 673, it is stated that “Last Saturday the Brig Paoli, Captain Hall, sailed for LONDON” (p. 3/3).
12 Boston Gazette of Monday, 12 March, 1770, No. 779, p. 3/1.
13 This statement is alluded to by the late C. F. Adams, in his Life of John Adams, but without indicating where Preston’s statement can be found (Works of J. Adams, i. 98).
14 The word “lobster,” as applied to a British soldier, was not necessarily one of contempt. The word was used in England by the middle of the seventeenth century, and it was occasionally employed in this country between 1750 and 1776 to distinguish a regular from a. provincial.
15 Massachusetts Gazette Extraordinary of Thursday, 21 June, 1770, p. 1. The document was also printed in the Supplement to the Boston Gazette of Monday 25 June, No. 794, and in the Supplement to the Boston Evening Post, of Monday, 25 June, No. 1813.
It should be remembered that in 1770 there were two papers published in Boston each called the Massachusetts Gazette. The full title of one was “The Massachusetts Gazette: and the Boston Weekly News-Letter.” This was published on Thursdays and was printed by Richard Draper. The full title of the other was “The Massachusetts Gazette, and the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser.” This was published on Mondays and was printed by Green and Russell.
In Wells’s Life of Samuel Adams (i. 315, 316), the document in the text is twice cited as “Preston’s Case,” but no indication is given as to where it can be found.
16 Boston Evening Post of Monday, 9 July, 1770, No. 1815, p. 3/2.
17 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xviii. 34.
18 As already stated, Capt. Gardner reached Boston the sixth of July.
19 Massachusetts Gazette of Thursday, 12 July, 1770, No. 3483, p. 2/1.
20 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xviii. 34.
21 In the Massachusetts Gazette of Thursday, 5 July, 1770, No. 3482, it is stated that “Tuesday last the Brig Lydia, Capt. Hood, sailed for London” (p. 3/2).
22 Boston Gazette of Monday, 16 July, 1770, No. 797, p. 2/3.
23 If another letter was sent, I have been unable to find any trace of it.
24 These depositions were printed in A Short Narrative of The horrid Massacre in Boston, &c., Boston, 1770, Appendix, pp. 1–77.
25 Doubtless this is a reflection on the depositions which were printed in the Fair Account, &c., Appendix, pp. 1–22.
26 For the depositions of Greenwood, see the Short Narrative, Appendix, pp. 75–77; and the Fair Account, Appendix, pp. 12, 13.
27 On the twenty-second of June, Gov. Hutchinson wrote: —
I will take every precaution which is in my power, which I wish was greater than it is.
On this letter was indorsed the following note: —
In answer to a letter informing him that the towns-people of Boston, since seeing Cap. Preston’s printed case, threatened his life (1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for January, 1862, v. 361).
In the Narrative and Critical History of America, Justin Winsor said: —
In June, 1770, it would seem that Hutchinson’s life was threatened because of the passions aroused by the massacre, and there is in the Mass. Hist. Soc. library (Misc. MSS., 1632–1795) a brief note of his written on being advised to protect himself, dated June 22, 1770, at Milton (vi. 88).
From the document given in the text it seems clear that the person whose life was threatened was not Hutchinson but Preston.
28 The trial of Capt. Preston, as appears from the following extracts, began on the twenty-fourth of October, and the jury returned a verdict on the thirtieth. See also Publications of this Society, v. 64, 65, 82.
I.
Last Friday [7 September] Capt. Preston, with the Soldiers and others who were indicted for the Murders committed in Kingstreet on the Evening of the 5th of March last, were arraigned at the Bar of the Superior Court and Court of Assize, &c. now sitting here, and severally pleaded not Guilty: but their Trial, we hear, is put off till the 23d Day of October next (Boston Evening Post of Monday, 10 September, 1770, No. 1824, p. 3/2).
II.
The Superior Court of Judicature, &c. met at the Court-House in this Town on Tuesday [23 October] last, according to Adjournment, for the Trial of Criminal Cases — The Trial of Capt. Preston began next Morning about Nine o’Clock, and is not yet finished (Boston Gazette of Monday, 29 October, 1770, No. 812, p. 3/1).
III.
In our last we mentioned that at the Superior Court held here, on Wednesday began the Trial of Capt. Thomas Preston, of the 29th Regiment, . . . The Examination of Evidences and the Pleas, were continued from Wednesday, each Day, (Lord’s Day excepted) until Monday; when the Judges summed up the Evidences, and gave the Charges to the Jury. The Jury went out about five o’Clock, and it is said agreed by eight: — The Court was adjourned till the next Morning at 8 o’Clock, at which Time they brought in the Verdict, “NOT GUILTY;” and Capt. Preston was dismissed (Ibid. of Monday, 5 November, 1770, No. 813, p. 2/3).
29 It is not known to how many persons in England this Statement was sent, but among them were Pownall and Franklin. No doubt it was through Pownall himself, either directly or indirectly, that the Statement appeared in the Political Register. See Pownall’s letter of 11 May, 1770, p. 213, below.
30 Concerning Joseph Otis, see Publications of this Society, v. 61—63, 264.
31 The Political Register for October, 1770, vii. 221–228. The only allusion I have found to this document is in Wells’s Life of Samuel Adams, where we read: —
Among Samuel Adams’s papers are found detached portions of a letter in his handwriting to Benjamin Franklin, prepared for a committee, of which he was one, appointed by the town to disabuse the minds of influential persons in England of the false statements sent on by the crown officers as to the Massacre and subsequent events. It is dated in Boston on the 13th of July, and Franklin is urged to exert himself and obtain a suspension of public opinion, until the town could have an opportunity of knowing what was alleged against it and of answering for itself. It protested against the determination of Parliament to admit garbled extracts from such letters as were received from America by the administration and to conceal the names of the writers (i. 345).
Wells then goes on to quote twenty-five lines which, with a few slight differences, agree with the corresponding lines in our text, beginning with the words “How deplorable then must be our condition.”
The feeling against Preston and the soldiers was intensely bitter, and had their trials taken place soon after the riot it would probably have gone hard with them. John Adams complained that for years the people of Boston did not forget or forgive his share in the defence of the accused (Works, ii. 229–236, 307, 317, ix. 352, 551, 617, x. 162, 166, 201, 203); and the verdicts rendered, however much they may now be commended, caused great discontent at the time. This was voiced by Samuel Adams in a series of articles which, under the signature of Vindex, were printed in the Boston Gazette of 10, 17, 24, 31 December, 1770, and 7, 14, 21, 28 January, 1771, Nos. 818–825. It is in the last three of these articles that Adams pays special attention to the Case of Capt. Preston.
32 The reference is probably to Edmund Gardner (see Felt’s History of Ipswich, Essex and Hamilton, pp. 11, 97).
33 The statement referred to by Mr. Davis is to be found in The Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1661–1668, No. 45, pp. 15, 16, as follows: —
Capt. Thos. Breedon to the Council for Foreign Plantations (March 11) 1661. Relation of the state of affairs in New England at his coming from thence in 1660. Having been summoned to appear before the Council this 11th of March 1661 to give information of the condition and Government of the several Colonies of New England, he herewith presents in the first place this book of laws of the Massachusetts Colony.
He then refers to the letter1 of the Colony to his Majesty of December last, concerning which he says: —
Has not seen their petition, but questions their allegiance to the King, because they have not proclaimed him, they do not act in his name, and they do not give the oath of allegiance, but force an oath of fidelity to themselves and their Government, as in Book of Laws, pp. 62, 63, 68, and 84.
The date, the eleventh of March, 1661, in this abstract is new style. Breedon refers to events in the Colony as late as December, 1660, and he may have been here in January. This 1660 edition was issued in October. Three of the page references can be easily identified in this edition. This reference cannot be reasonably connected with the original edition of the book of laws.
1 Dated 19 December, 1660 (Massachusetts Colony Record, iv. Part I., 449–453).
2 The communication is printed in full in Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, iii. 39, 40.
34 History of Massachusetts Bay, 1764, i. 437.
35 Poole’s edition, p. 206.
36 Two Voyages to New-England, 1674 (Boston, 1865), p. 200. Josselyn’s entry is after 30 January, 1648–49, from which it may be inferred that the laws were printed between 30 January and 24 March, 1648–49. Hence, 1648 and 1649 may each be correct, the particular year being dependent upon whether the writer is using Old Style or New Style.
37 Cf. Corey’s History of Malden, p. 176 and note.
38 Edition of 1899, p. 403.
39 See Paige’s History of Cambridge, pp. 404, 405, 409, 485, 486; Cutter’s History of Arlington, pp. 191, 192, 262; and Wyman’s Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, i. 68, 69.
40 Paige’s History of Cambridge, p. 485.
41 Susanna, daughter of John and Susanna (Payne) Wilson, was born 8, baptized 14, April, 1771 (Cutter’s History of Arlington, p. 323).
42 Samuel Abbot Smith’s West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775, pp. 40, 41.
NOTE.
In the Case of Capt. Thomas Preston there is an error which, though slight, it is perhaps worth while to correct. In one place (p. 7), Preston speaks of a fracas which took place on the second of March at “one Gray’s Rope — Walk,” while a little later (p. 9) he states that on the fifth of March “three unhappy Men instantly expired, in which Number was Mr. Gray, at whose Rope-Walk the prior Quarrel took place.” The owner of the rope-walk was John Gray, while the person killed on the fifth was one of his workmen, Samuel Gray.
43 Messrs. Louis Cabot, Samuel Swett Green, Edward Griffin Porter, and Robert Noxon Toppan.
44 The Society was represented at Governor Wolcott’s funeral by Messrs. S. Lothrop Thorndike, Andrew McFarland Davis, and Edward Hale.
45 The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ii. 116. See also 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 248.
46 See the Publications of this Society, iii. 86–90.
47 British Museum, Harleian MS. 388, fo. 186.
48 Brampton Gordon of Assington was High Sheriff of Suffolk, his seat being near the ancestral home of Gov. Winthrop. Gurdon’s daughter Muriel married Richard Saltonstall (1610–1694) of Ipswich, Massachusetts, a son of Sir Richard Saltonstall.
49 The Rev. John Rogers of Dedham, England, died 8 October, 1686. See 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 47, 412, 413, vii. 8.
50 British Museum, Harleian MS. 388, fo. 188.
51 Capt. Nicholas Trerice, an early inhabitant of Charlestown, was a man of substance and prominent in the commercial affairs of the Colony. See Winthrop’s History of New England (1853), ii. 436, and W. Aspinwall’s Notarial Records (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxxii.), passim.
52 British Museum, Harleian MS. 388, fo. 189.
53 For further references to these two William Hammonds, see 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 395, 396.
54 British Museum, Harleian MS. 388, fo. 191.
55 Sir Thomas Bowes, of Much Bromley, County Essex, whose wife was a sister of Sir Simonds D’Ewes.
56 British Museum, Harleian MS. 385, fo. 92. Edmund Browne is stated to have arrived in Boston in October, 1638, and to have become first minister of Sudbury, Massachusetts, in August, 1640.
57 Enclosed with the preceding letter and addressed “To the Right Worḷ my much esteemed friend Sir Simonds Dewes, delivr this at Stowlanctoft hall, Suff:”
58 See also Winthrop’s History of New England, i. 261–263, and Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574–1660, p. 259.
59 There is no signature, but the handwriting is that of the preceding letter.
60 See John Leigh of Agawam (Albany, 1888), pp. 47, 48 and note.
61 Bristol Deeds, xxxii. 353.
62 Ibid. xliii. 430.
63 In a subsequent letter, Mr. Crane places the date of Thomas Baylies’s settlement at Attleborough in 1738, on the authority of Emery’s History of Taunton (ii. 3, 4), which refers incidentally to Richard Clarke’s connection with the Iron works in Attleborough.
64 But see Bristol Deeds, xli. 211 and xlv. 326, in which he is described as of Attleborough, iron-master.
65 The Suffolk Deeds (liv. 210) record a conveyance, for £125, from Robert Sanderson1 and William Bollan, to William Clarke of Boston, since of Attleborough, physician, of the Iron Stone in lands situated in Wrentham, Massachusetts, and Smithfield, Rhode Island, also the hill called “Iron Rocky Hill.” The deed is dated 12 January, 1736.
Another conveyance (Ibid. lxii. 67a) runs from William Bollan, gentleman, Robert Sanderson, merchant, and Henry Laughton, shopkeeper, all of Boston, who, for £1000, sell to Richard Clarke of Boston, merchant, and William Clarke of Attleborough, in the county of Bristol, physician, several tracts and parcels of land in Wrentham, and one parcel in Attleborough described as follows:
Also one Third Part of Two small parcells of land purchased by the said Bollan, Laughton and Wood of Gideon Tower, William Hancock and Ichabod Peck situate in the Township of Attlebourough in the County of Bristol as Particularly described and Bounded by a Deed from the said Hancock and Tower dated Decr 31, 1734 And by the said Peck’s Deed dated March 12, 1734,
one of said parcels containing two acres and twenty-eight rods, the other four acres and one hundred and fifty-eight rods. The conveyance also includes a tract of about twenty-four acres bought by the said Bollan, Laughton and Amos Wood, all of Boston, of Samuel Bartlett, Jr., of Attleborough by his deed of 4 April, 1735; and all interests of the grantors in mines, etc., on the granted premises. This deed is dated 15 July, 1736, and recorded under date of 13 November, 1741. Endorsed upon it (Ibid. lxii. 68) is a conveyance, for £500, from William Clarke and his wife Sarah Clarke, to Joseph Lee of Boston, merchant, of —
all our Right and Interest in the within written Deed and in all the Lands, Tenement, Hereditaments, Oar Mines, Minerals, Estate, Priviledges and appurtenances thereby Granted and Conveyed to the said William Clark.
This deed is dated 19 May, 1740, and was recorded 13 November, 1741.
Other lands in Wrentham were conveyed by Bollan and Laughton, for £l400, to Richard and William Clarke 19 July, 1737, and on 19 May, 1740, William and Sarah Clarke, for £700, convey to Joseph Lee their half interest therein. Both of these conveyances were recorded 13 November, 1741 (Ibid. lxii. 68–70).
1 In all of Sanderson’s conveyances recorded with Suffolk Deeds which I have examined, his name is spelled without the “u,” which some writers have injected into the spelling of his name. Different members of this family in Boston spelled their names Sanders, Saunders, Sanderson or Saunderson, as appears in the Town and Church Records, Suffolk Probate Files and Suffolk Registry of Deeds. Robert Sanderson, tanner, was born in Boston 16 January, 1696–97, and baptized at the Old South Church on the following day. He was the son of Robert, goldsmith, and Esther (Woodward) Sanderson of Boston, and grandson of Robert Sanderson of Hampton, Watertown and Boston, who was ordained a Deacon of the First Church in Boston 14 (12) 1668. He is believed to have been identical with Robert Sanderson, Esq., formerly of Boston, who died at Hammersmith, England, 11 December, 1789, aged 84 (Musgrave’s Obituary, v. 210; Independent Chronicle, Boston, of Thursday, 3 February, 1791, No. 1162, p. 3/3), a typographical error, 84 for 94, having, perhaps, been made in stating his age. See Suffolk Probate Files, Nos. 2082, 2279, 3686, 4107, 4108, 5965; Suffolk Deeds, xxxiii. 211, xxxvi. 211, xxxviii. 183, xxxix. 220, xli. 194, 199, xliii. 195, 266, xliv. 61.
66 See Bliss’s History of Rehoboth, p. 133.
67 Bristol Deeds, xxii. 353.
68 Ibid. xxxix. 390.
69 Nicholas Brown and Company, of Providence, which became, in 1796, Brown and Ives, under which name the firm still continues.
70 The second paragraph, with slight differences, was printed in the Supplement to the Courant (Hartford, Connecticut) of Saturday, 12 December, 1846 (xi. 199/3), preceded by the following remark:
“Brother Jonathan. — The origin of this term as applied to the United States, is given in a recent number of the Norwich Courier. The editor says it was communicated by one of the most intelligent gentlemen and sterling Whigs in Connecticut, now upward of eighty years of age, who was an active participator in the scenes of the Revolution. The story is as follows.”
In 1848 Bartlett, in his Dictionary of Americanisms, pp. 49, 50, printed the passages from the Supplement to the Courant, but without indicating the source. In 1859 Stuart printed the passages from the Supplement to the Courant in his Life of Jonathan Trumbull, Sen., pp. 697, 698 note. A file of the Supplement to the Courant is in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, and I am indebted to Mr. Edmund M. Barton for allowing me to consult it. After a long search, a file of the Norwich Evening Courier for 1846 was found in the office of the Norwich Bulletin. The passages in the text are copied from the original, to which an exact reference is now given for the first time. An examination of the Norwich Evening Courier for November and December, 1846, fails to disclose any further allusion to the subject.
71 Historical Estimate of Connecticut, in Work and Play, 1864, pp. 214, 215.
72 History of Connecticut, 1855., ii. 425, 426. In a note Hollister refers to Bushnell’s address, already quoted.
73 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xii. 60, 61. The evidence fails to show that Brother Jonathan was a sobriquet applied particularly to New Englanders.
74 Americanisms, p. 251.
75 The Congressional Globe, 29 April, 1872, Second Session, Forty-Second Congress, p. 2902.
In his address, A Revolutionary Congressman on Horseback, delivered in 1877, Col. T. W. Higginson remarked:
“Gov. Trumbull was revered as the only colonial governor who took the patriotic side; and is also likely to be held in permanent fame as the author of the phrase ‘Brother Jonathan’” (Travellers and Outlaws, 1889, p. 63).
In making Governor Trumbull the author of the phrase, Col. Higginson has departed widely from the usual story.
76 History of Connecticut, p. 234.
77 The Lebanon War Office, 1891, pp. 27, 32, 55, 71, 75, 91. See also Early Lebanon, 1880, p. 91.
78 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlix. 148. Amid the all but universal acceptance of the Trumbull story, it is pleasant to record at least one instance of caution. The late Alexander Johnston, in 1887, said that Trumbull “was the trusted associate of Washington, and the latter’s familiar way of addressing him when asking his advice is said to have been the origin of the popular phrase ‘Brother Jonathan’” (Connecticut, p. 287). The italics are mine.
79 As Governor Trumbull had no fewer than three brothers and four sisters, it is highly probable that he may have been called “Brother Jonathan” by some if not by all of them. But that he was so called by his “friends, and acquaintances generally,” is a statement in support of which no proof is offered. See post, p. 100 note 3.
80 This sentence recalls a skit which, under the title of Authenticated American Etymologies, appeared in the Massachusetts Magazine for March, 1792, iv. 161, 162:
“When the seamen on board the ship of Christopher Columbus, after a series of fatigues, came in sight of St. Salvador, they burst out in exuberant mirth and jollity. ‘The lads are in A MERRY KEY,’ cried the commodore. AMERICA is now the name of half the globe.”
Mr. Stuart seems to have been one of those mortals who, in the words of Lowell, “have been sent into the world unfurnished with that modulating and restraining balance-wheel which we call a sense of humor.”
81 Life of Jonathan Trumbull, Sen., 1859, pp. 696–698. Of this work, Mr. Henry C. Robinson has recently said that “were it written in a simpler style, [it] would doubtless be found in more libraries . . . But the days of bloated rhetoric are past” (Jonathan Trumbull, 1898, p. 4). It need scarcely be added that Mr. Robinson himself accepts the Trumbull story:
“Washington was wont to speak of Governor Trumbull as ‘Brother Jonathan.’ This pet description of Trumbull by the ‘Father of his Country’ has been well transferred to the personification of the investigating, progressive, liberty-loving nation which Washington and Trumbull did so much to create” (Ibid. p. 21).
82 See ante, p. 95 note.
83 From our associate Mr. Charles K. Bolton, who has kindly allowed me to read the manuscript of a book he is about to publish, — The Private Soldier under Washington, — I learn that many of the recruits were mere boys, some at the opening of the war being under sixteen. It is possible, therefore, that the gentleman from whom we get the story, even if only nine in 1775, might have served towards the close of the war. However, the age of the gentleman is of as little importance as is the assurance that in 1846 he was one of the most “sterling Whigs in Connecticut.”
84 A letter written by Washington, 1 October, 1785, to Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., contained this sentence: “A long & well spent life in the service of his Country, justly entitled him to the first place among patriots.” See post, p. 183.
85 Before taking leaving of the Trumbull story, attention may be called to several passages. Soon after the origination of that story, an amusing variation was suggested. In 1852 an unknown person wrote from La Valette, Malta, as follows:
“The Agnomen of ‘Brother Jonathan’ of Masonic Origin.
“George Washington, commander-in-chief of the American army in the revolution, was a mason, as were all the other generals, with the solitary exception of Arnold the traitor, . . . On one occasion, when the American army had met with some serious reverses, Washington called his brother officers together, to consult in what manner their effects could be best counteracted. Differing as they did in opinion, the commander-in-chief postponed any action on the subject, by remarking, ‘Let us consult brother Jonathan,’ referring to Jonathan Trumbull, who was a well known mason, and particularly distinguished ‘for his sound judgment, strict morals, and having the tongue of good report’” (Notes and Queries, First Series, v. 149).
In a letter written 19 February, 1776, by Jedidiah Huntington to Governor Trumbull, occurs this sentence:
“The bearer, whom I should have mentioned in the beginning of my letter, is Mr. Hooper, of North Carolina, one of the delegates of Congress, an old and particular acquaintance of brother Jonathan’s” (5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 514).
Jedidiah Huntington married Faith Trumbull, the oldest daughter of Governor Trumbull; and the “brother Jonathan” alluded to was Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., the second son of Governor Trumbull. In a letter written 27 April, 1775, Huntington said that he “expected to have seen Brother Joseph by this time,” meaning Joseph Trumbull, the oldest son of Governor Trumbull. In letters written 21 September, 1775, 14 January and 29 March, 1776, Huntington mentioned “brother David,” referring to David Trumbull, the third son of Governor Trumbull. In letters written 17 August, 21 September, 1775, and 1 April, 1776, Huntington spoke of “Brother John” or “brother Jack,” alluding to John Trumbull, the fourth and youngest son of Governor Trumbull, and the future artist (5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 496, 499, 504, 509, 514, 516, 517).
It was of course natural for Huntington to call these four men “brothers,” because they were his brothers by marriage. If any one, not a near relative, ever alluded to Governor Trumbull as “Brother Jonathan,” the fact could hardly have escaped contemporary record; and if Governor Trumbull had been so referred to by Washington, surely the honorable mark of distinction would have excited comment. It is reasonable to expect to find some allusion to the designation in the History of Jonathan Trumbull, the present Rebel Governor of Connecticut, from his Birth, early in this Century, to the present Day, — which, unfriendly and valueless, appeared in the Political Magazine for January, 1781, ii. 6–10; in the Rev. Z. Ely’s Sermon Preached at the Funeral Solemnity Of His Excellency Jonathan Trumbull, and in the obituary notices which appeared, in 1785; in the Rev. Z. Ely’s Discourse, in President T. Dwight’s Discourse, and in the Biographical Sketch of the Character of Governor Trumbull (attributed to John Trumbull, a nephew of the first Governor Trumbull, and the author of M’Fingal), all occasioned by the death of Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., also Governor of Connecticut, in 1809; in the sketch of the first Governor Trumbull printed in 1839 in J. B. Longacre and J. Herring’s National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, iv.; and, most of all, in the Autobiography, Reminiscences and Letters which John Trumbull, the artist, and son of the first Governor Trumbull, published in 1841. But we search in vain for any trace of the story until 1846.
Finally, even if it can be shown that Washington did at some time allude to Governor Trumbull as “Brother Jonathan,” the fact would not necessarily indicate the origin of our present expression. In this very note it has been shown that Jonathan Trumbull, Jr., actually was called “Brother Jonathan:” yet surely no one will be rash enough to assert that such a designation has the remotest connection with the term Brother Jonathan as applied to Americans.
86 History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America, i. 481, 482.
87 New Monthly Magazine, ii. 213 note.
88 Notes and Queries, Second Series, xi. 263, 326, xii. 274.
89 The full title is: THE REFORMADO, Precisely Charactered by a Transformed Church-warden, at a Vestry, LONDON. The first sentence in the above passage was quoted by a writer in Notes and Queries, 1859, Second Series, vii. 444; but as, apart from the context, it was utterly inexplicable, I sent to the British Museum for a copy of the pamphlet, and from this the passages in the text are printed. There is no date on the title-page, but in the British Museum Catalogue it is dated 1643.
90 Church-History of Britain, Book x, ¶ 12, pp. 4, 5.
91 First published in 1598, other editions appeared in 1603, 1618, and 1633, the last with large additions by Anthony Munday and Henry Dyson. It was not again reprinted till 1724, when Strype brought out his edition. The 1618 edition does not mention these “monuments,” but the edition of 1633 records “all the Monuments of Queene Elizabeth, as they are in every Church” (p. 819).
92 In addition there was one church, St. Mildred, Bread Street, where —
“Betweene these two [Windows], at the upper end of the Church, is a faire Window full of cost of beauty, which being divided into five parts, carries in the first of them a very artfull and curious representation of the Spaniards great Armado, and the battell in 1588. In the second, of the Monument of Queen Elizabeth” (p. 859).
93 A single extract, towards the end, will sufficiently indicate its character in this respect:
“These, with some other things (I know not well what) are the Compendium of my thoughts, leaving nothing materill to the care of my Successors, but the subversion of the Crosse-Ile, the demolishing of the Arches, (if without danger it bee feisable) and the turning of the maine structure North, and South, (which now most offensively stands East and West) or taking it all asunder for a purer Edification. Now onely remaines, that in a pretty Diminitive Vote, you please to give your Brotherly assent unto the premises” (p. 15).
94 In Worcester’s Dictionary of 1860 will be found the following:
“JONATHAN, n. . . . 2. A sportive collective name applied to the people of the U. States.”
Worcester refers to Johnson; but no edition of Johnson’s Dictionary previous to 1860 that I have seen contains the word.
The passage in the text was written in January, 1901, and in July following appeared the section of the Oxford English Dictionary containing the word Jonathan. Dr. Murray’s earliest example is dated 1816.
95 In H. Niles’s Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America, 1822, p. 372.
96 C. A. Gérard was the French Minister.
97 The letters and squibs of this time frequently allude to the Americans as “feeling bold,” and the Loyalists appear to have regarded it as a huge joke; but the exact significance of the phrase is obscure. Perhaps an extract from “Observations on the Government account of the late action near Charles Town,” which appeared in an English magazine soon after the battle of Bunker Hill, may give a clue to the origin of the phrase. The writer, it need scarcely be said, was friendly to the Americans:
“But, ‘this action has shewn the superiority of the King’s troops.’ — Has it indeed? How? — ‘Why, they (with a proportion of field artillery, and with the assistance of ships, armed vessels, and boats, and with the encouragement of certain and speedy reinforcement if necessary) attacked and defeated above three times their own numbers.’ — What three times their own numbers? Of whom, pray? Of French or Spanish Regulars? — No, of the Americans — Of the Americans! What, of those dastardly, hypocritical cowards, who (Lord Sandwich knows) do not feel bold enough to dare to look a soldier in the face!” (Almon’s Remembrancer, 1775, i. 126/1).
98 Royal Gazette, 3 October, 1778, No. 210, p. 3/2. The song consists of twelve stanzas.
99 Royal Gazette, 14 July, 1779, No. 291, p. 3/1.
100 Ibid. p. 3/1. By Joseph and his Brethren are meant the famous Joseph Brant and his Indians. At the celebration of the King’s birthday, on the previous 4 June, the twenty-third toast drunk was to “Joseph and his Brethren” (Ibid., 5 June, 1779, No. 280, p. 2/4). By Mr. O’Sullivan is apparently meant General John Sullivan. According to a later account, the attack by Brant was not near Wyoming but near Oneida Lake:
“The action between Capt. Brant in person with the Loyalists and Indians, and the rebel commander Clinton, happened near a fortnight ago, about thirty miles above Fort Stanwix, near the east end of Oneida Lake” (Ibid., 17 July, 1779, No. 292, p. 3/2).
As a matter of fact, the report of the action appears to have been false. Gen. James Clinton was not at Wyoming in June or July; neither Clinton nor Sullivan was at Oneida Lake; and Brant, who was about midway between Clinton and Sullivan, did not attack either at the time of the alleged battle. See an article by our associate Mr. A. McF. Davis in the Narrative and Critical History of America, vi. 639; W. L. Stone, Life of Joseph Brant, 1838, i. 396–422, ii. 1–52; F. W. Halsey, Old New York Frontier, 1901, pp. 265–267; and Journals of the Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779, passim.
101 Royal Gazette, 27 May, 1780, No. 382, p. 2/4. Byron Bridge is an error for Byram Bridge.
102 Royal Gazette Extraordinary, 8 June, 1780, p. 2/3.
103 Royal Gazette, 5 July, 1780, No. 393, p. 3/1. In the same paper of 22 July, No. 398, p. 3/2, occur these two lines, apparently having no connection with what goes before or comes after:
“Jonathan these babies of thine
Are not all Children genuine.”
104 The Loyalists constantly poked fun at the depreciated American currency.
105 Gates is said to have hardly paused in his flight until he reached Hillsborough, North Carolina.
106 Royal Gazette, 27 September, 1780, No. 417, p. 3/1.
107 Ibid., 28 December, 1782, No. 653, p. 2/3. There are 12 stanzas.
108 And also, perhaps, by the British serving in America. Still I have noted no instances of the employment of the term in such diaries, journals, and letters of British officers as I have read.
109 Why should Tom, Dick, and Harry be brought together in collocation? Why, when speaking to a strange boy in the street, do we address him as Johnny? Why is a sailor called Jack? Why is Old Harry regarded as a particularly appropriate designation for the Devi!? Apparently all we can do in such cases is to state the fact.
110 In the Royal Gazette of 14 June, 1780, No. 387, p. 3/2, will be found the following:
“Extract of a letter, dated Middletown, May 23. ‘Governor Trumbull received an express from General Washington yesterday, desiring him to forward a large quantity of provisions to New-London immediately, as a fleet might be expected there in a few days, . . . Charles town was safe the 4th instant, but since that a bloody battle has been fought there, but can’t get the particulars.’
“[Master Jonathan ecce the Capitulation and Lincolnade of the 12th ultimo, published by the Printer last Thursday.”
The words in italics were doubtless written either by James Rivington, the publisher of the Royal Gazette, or by some one in the office of the paper; but whether they are to be understood as an apostrophe to Gov. Trumbull or to Americans in general, is not clear.
The word Lincolnade requires explanation. The surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777 gave rise to the verb “to Burgoyne” and to the noun “Burgoynade,” instances of which occur, on both sides of the Atlantic, for several years after the catastrophe at Saratoga. “When General Lincoln was obliged to capitulate at Charleston, the Loyalists, doubtless remembering the terms just mentioned, coined the word Lincolnade. The following extracts are in point:
“The LINCOLNADE was acted on the 12th [May]. . . . An entire regiment of militia, (secretly well affected to Government,) inhabiting the back parts of South-Carolina, . . . no sooner heard of the Lincolnade at Charlestown than they seized their Colonel (Thomson) their Lieutenant Colonel, Major, and Several other officers devoted to the Congress, brought them to Charlestown, [and] delivered them to the Commander in Chief . . . This repetition is inserted by way of convincing the Infidels without our lines, that the town [i. e. Charleston] is taken, and their army LINCOLNADED.” (Royal Gazette, 8 June, 1780, p. 2/3; 17 June, 1780, No. 387, p. 2/4; 1 July, 1780, No. 392, p. 3/2.)
111 The Contrast was first performed at the John Street Theatre, New York, 16 April, 1787, was first printed at Philadelphia in 1790, and was reprinted at New York in 1887 by the Dunlap Society. The character called Jonathan was the servant, or the waiter, — “Servant! Sir, do you take me for a neger, — I am Col. Manly’s waiter,” — of Colonel Manly, a hero of the Revolutionary war from Massachusetts. In the third act there is an amusing scene in which Jonathan relates how he was taken to the theatre without his knowing it. Some passages follow:
Jenny.
So, Mr. Jonathan, I hear you were at the play last night.
Jonathan.
At the play! why, did you think I went to the devil’s drawing-room?
Jenny.
The devil’s drawing-room!
Jonathan.
Yes; why an’t cards and dice the devil’s device; and the play-house the shop where the devil hangs out the vanities of the world, upon the tenter-hooks of temptation. . . . Oh! no, no, no! you won’t catch me at a play-house, I warrant you.
Jenny.
Well, Mr. Jonathan, though I don’t scruple your veracity, I have some reasons for believing you were there: pray, where were you about six o’clock?
Jonathan.
Why, I went to see one Mr. Morrison, the hocus pocus man; they said as how he could eat a case knife. . . .
Jessamy.
Well, and did you see the man with his tricks?
Jonathan.
Why I vow, as I was looking out for him, they lifted up a great green cloth, and let us look right into the next neighbour’s house. Have you a good many houses in New-York made so in that ’ere way?
Jenny.
Not many: but did you see the family?
Jonathan.
Yes, swamp it; I see’d the family. . . .
Jenny.
Well, Mr. Jonathan, you were certainly at the play-house.
Jonathan.
I at the play-house! — Why didn’t I see the play then?
Jenny.
Why the people you saw were players.
Jonathan.
Mercy on my soul! did I see the wicked players?
(The Contrast, 1790, pp. 39, 40, 41, 43.)
The following contemporary notice of the play may not be without interest:
“On Monday evening last, for the first, and last evening for the second time, was performed, at the theatre in this city, amid continued roars of applause, a COMEDY (composed by an American) called the CONTRAST. Novelty, says a correspondent, is ever pleasing: an American comic production is a novelty — therefore it was pleasing. . . . The striking Contrast, in this piece, is, between a person who had made his tour of Europe, studied the bon ton, with his galloned attendant . . . and an heroic, sentimental American Colonel, with his honest waiting-man” (New-York Journal, 19 April, 1787, No. 2111, p. 3/3).
112 The Nightingale; or Rural Songster, Dedham, 1800, pp. 117, 118.
113 The Country Lovers; or, Mr. Jonathan Jolthead’s Courtship with Miss Sally Snapper: An excellent New Song, said to be written by it’s Author; And really founded on fact. Tune — ‘Yankee Doodle.’ In Original Poems, Philadelphia., 1806, pp. 69–85.
The word Jolthead itself, it need scarcely be said, means either a large head, or a dunce or blockhead. In the former sense it was used in 1664 by J. Wilson in the Cheats, v. i.; and in the latter sense in 1623 by Shakspere in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, iii. i. 290, and in the Taming of the Shrew, iv. i. 169, and in 1767 by Sterne in Tristram Shandy, vol. ix. chap. xxv.
114 Jonathan Postfree, or the Honest Yankee. A Musical Farce. In Three Acts. New York, 1807. In a prefatory note it is said that the play “was written in the beginning of the year 1806, was intended for representation on the stage; but was not presented to the managers until it was too late for that season;” and that “it is not now probable that the piece will ever have the honor to be played.”
115 This was found in a collection of Songs, Ballads, etc., in three volumes, in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society. Again I am indebted to Mr. Barton for calling my attention to the volumes. The genesis of this collection is stated in a note written by Isaiah Thomas:
“Purchased from a Ballad Printer and Seller, in Boston, 1813. Bound up for Preservation — to shew what the articles of this kind are in vogue with the Vulgar at this time, 1814. . . . Presented to the Society by Isaiah Thomas.
Augt. 1814.”
Thomas does not say of whom he bought the collection; but as many of the ballads have the imprint of Nathaniel Coverly, Jr., Milk Street, Boston, it seems not unreasonable to conclude that he was the “Ballad Printer and Seller” referred to by Thomas. Our associate Mr. Worthington C. Ford informs me that such ballads are a desideratum in Americana.
116 The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan, New York, pp. 4–8. In a little piece written in 1821, in which “Jonathan” represents the North and “Mary” the South, James Madison gives us a slight variation:
“Jonathan Bull and Mary Bull, who were descendants of old John Bull, the head of the family, had inherited contiguous estates in large tracts of land. As they grew up and became well acquainted, a partiality was mutually felt, and advances on several occasions made towards a matrimonial connection” (Jonathan Bull and Mary Bull, 1856, p. 3).
117 Edinburgh Review, xxxiii. 77.
118 Vision of Judgment, Stanza lix. This, quoted in the Encyclopædic Dictionary, was apparently the only example of the term known to lexicographers until the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary. See ante, p. 105 note 2.
119 The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at that time was Marquis Wellesley. He married, 29 October, 1825, for his second wife, Marianne, widow of Robert Patterson, eldest daughter of Richard Caton of Baltimore, and granddaughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton. An account of this marriage will be found in R. R. Pearce’s Memoirs and Correspondence of Marquess Wellesley, 1846, iii. 387–390.
120 Familiar Letters, 1894, ii. 382.
121 History of the American Stage, p. 85.
122 Poetical Works, 1891, ii. 35, 36.
123 Maine Woods, 1894, pp. 17, 18.
124 In Littell’s Living Age, xxii. 86/1.
125 United States Review, iv. 106 (Democratic Review, xxxv).
126 United States Service Magazine, iv. 27.
127 In Life, Letters, & Friendships of R. M. Milnes, 1891, ii. 323.
128 Suspecting that the word “Jonathans,” as given by Sparks, might be an error for “Jonathan’s,” I wrote to Washington to ask to have the passage copied from the original letter in the Department of State. To Mr. Andrew H. Allen, chief of the Bureau of Rolls and Library, I am indebted for the following transcript:
“Virtue & Patriotism were the Motto of our Banners when we entered this Contest, where is virtue, where is Patriotism now? when almost every Man has turned his thoughts & attention to gain & pleasures, practicing every artifice of Change Ailey or Jonathan’s — when Men of abilities” etc.
129 There are no fewer than five or six claimants for the honor. See a note by Mr. Joseph Jacobs in his edition of the Familiar Letters of James Howell, p. 803; J. H. Burn, Descriptive Catalogue of the London Traders, Tavern, and Coffee House Tokens, 1853, pp. 83, 84; W. Boyne, Trade Tokens, edited by G. C. Williamson, 1889, i. 601, 666; E. F. Robinson, Early History of Coffee Houses in England, passim.
130 As Jonathan’s Coffee-House was in Exchange Ailey, it could not have been opposite St. Michael’s Church; but Aubrey may have meant near, not opposite, St. Michael’s; or Jonathan’s may have derived its name from some other person.
131 To Mr. Jonathan Trumbull, Librarian of the Otis Library, Norwich, Conn., I am indebted for calling my attention to an extract which has been printed since the foregoing paper was written. Under date of 21 March, 1776, Ezra Stiles wrote from Dighton, Mass., as follows:
“I saw several Gentlemen who came out of Boston last Eveng. . . . They [the British] left Bunker Hill last Ldsday Morning 17th at Eight o’Clock, leaving Images of Hay dressed like Sentries standing, with a Label on the Breast of one, inscribed ‘Welcome Brother Jonathan’” (Literary Diary, 1901, ii. 2).
This example is earlier by two years than any hitherto known to me, and of course makes necessary a modification of the statement made on page 105 that “it is not until well into the Revolutionary war that we find any trace of the term under discussion, and then it appears in a slightly different form,” and also of the statement made on page 119 that the evidence “seems to indicate that the original term was simply Jonathan.” But while the new example is interesting, it does not appear to affect the conclusions expressed in this paper. Our associate Prof. Franklin B. Dexter, who edits the above work, makes this comment upon the passage:
“The use of this phrase at this date by the British seems to prove that the common explanation of its origin (with reference to Washington’s consultations with Gov. Jonathan Trumbull) cannot be the correct one” (ii. 2 note).
In a work also published since this paper was written, Mr. John F. Weir, Director of the Yale School of the Fine Arts, says:
“Washington in his difficulties and perplexities at critical period of the war, when seeking reinforcements, referred in a letter to Govern or Trumbull as ‘Brother Jonathan,’ thus originating a term since humorously employed in personifying the nation” (John Trumbull and his Works, 1901, p. 4).
Neither Mr. Jonathan Trumbull of Norwich, who is a Lineal descendant of Governor Trumbull, nor Mr. J. Henry Lea, who is related to the Trumbull family, has any knowledge of this alleged letter by Washington, to which there have been so many allusions during the past half century.
132 Congress was about to bring before the British Government the losses of property by citizens of the States at the time of the evacuation of New York. A number of negro slaves and servants had been sent or allowed to go to Nova Scotia and other places, a Joss which concerned more particularly the Southern States. Washington held the papers and correspondence which passed between him and the British commander in chief, the “good” Sir Guy Carleton, and it was to obtain copies of the more important that Mr. Taylor, a clerk in the office of Foreign Affairs, had been sent to Mount Vernon. Washington wrote to Jay on September 27th: —
“Mr. Taylor presented me the honor of your favor of the 25th ultimo, and gave me the pleasure of hearing that Mrs. Jay, yourself, and family were well when he left New York. Upon your safe return to your native country, after a long absence and the important services you have rendered it in many interesting negotiations, I very sincerely congratulate you and your lady. It gave me great pleasure to hear of your late appointment as secretary of the United States for the department of foreign affairs. A happier choice, in my opinion, could not have been made; and I shall always rejoice at any circumstances, that will contribute either to your honor, interest, or convenience.
“Having completed his mission, Mr. Taylor returns to you with the proceedings and report of the commissioners, who were sent into New York to inspect the embarkation, which, by the by, was little more than a farce, as they inspected no more property than the British chose they should be witness to the embarkation of. It will always give me pleasure to hear from you. Mrs. Washington joins me in most respectful compliments, and best wishes for yourself and Mrs. Jay, and I am, dear Sir, yours, &c.”
133 Swedish consul at Boston.
134 A gift from Lafayette.
135 Stuart had married Eleanor Calvert, the widow of John Parke Custis.
136 See letter to Jonathan Trumbull, p. 183, post.
137 William Shaw who served as Washington’s secretary from 26 July, 1785, to the arrival of Tobias Lear in May, 1786.
138 Probably Rev. David Jones, who was appointed, 27 April, 1776, chaplain of the Fourth Pennsylvania Battalion (Colonel Anthony Wayne’s). On 1 January, 1783, he was transferred to the Third Pennsylvania, served as chaplain of the Northern army under Wayne in 1794, and was chaplain in the war of 1812. He died 5 February, 1820, aged 84.
139 Houdon had come to the United States in the vessel with Dr. Franklin, reaching Philadelphia on the fourteenth of September. Franklin wrote to Washington on the twentieth of September: —
“He is here, but the materials and instruments he sent down the Seine from Paris not being arrived at Havre when we sailed, he was obliged to leave them, and is now busied in supplying himself here.”
Washington, in acknowledging Franklin’s letter, wrote on the twenty-sixth: —
“When it suits M. Houdon to come hither, I will accommodate him in the best manner I am able, and shall endeavor to render his stay as agreeable as I can.”
On the same day he wrote to Houdon: —
“By a letter, which I have lately had the honor to receive from Dr. Franklin at Philadelphia, I am informed of your arrival at that place. Many letters from very respectable characters in France, as well as the Doctor’s, inform me of the occasion; for which, though the cause is not of my seeking, I feel the most agreeable and grateful sensations. I wish the object of your mission had been more worthy of the masterly genius of the first statuary in Europe; for thus you are represented to me.
“It will give me pleasure, Sir, to welcome you to this seat of my retirement; and whatever I have, or can procure, that is necessary to your purposes, or convenient and agreeable to your wishes, you must freely command, as inclination to oblige you will be among the last things in which I shall be found deficient, either on your arrival or during your stay. With sentiments of esteem, I am, Sir, &c.”
140 See letter to John Page, p. 184, post.
141 See letter to Richard Henry Lee, p. 181, post.
142 James Rumsey.
143 Hannah Bushrod, daughter of Colonel John Bushrod, of Westmoreland County.
144 Mildred, who married Thomas Lee.
145 Bushrod, married in 1783, Anne, daughter of Colonel Thomas Blackburn, of Prince William County. Died without issue.
146 Corbin, married Hannah, daughter of Richard Henry Lee.
147 Probably the son of Augustine, the half-brother of the General. William married, in 1780, Jane, daughter of John Augustine Washington.
148 John and Burwell.
149 See letter to the Rev. Mr. Balch, p. 185, post.
150 Residence of George Mason.
151 See letter to Sir Edward Newenham, p. 186, post.
152 See letters to James Madison and David Stuart, p. 188, post.
153 See letter to the Count de Rochambeau, p. 190, post.
154 See letter to William Gordon, p. 191, post.
155 James Fairlie.
156 See letters to Alexander Hamilton and General Knox, pp. 192, 193, post.
157 See Washington’s letter to the Trustees, 17 December, 1785, in Sparks, ix. 159.
158 See letters to Governor Johnson and Lund Washington, pp. 194, 193, post.
159 Son of Samuel Washington.
160 A memorandum in Washington’s writing of his agricultural operations during the year.
161 The Potomac Canal Company.
162 Baron Steuben.
163 See Mr. Cunningham’s Note on William Sanford, p. 203.
164 Sanford doubtless made a slip in recording the age. Jeremiah Clark, born 1643, died 16 January, 1729. He was the son of Jeremiah and Frances (Dungan) Clark, who had gone from Boston to Rhode Island and were among the most prominent of the early settlers in Newport. Jeremiah the father was Governor of the Colony and died in 1661. Jeremiah the son was a resident of Newport, where in 1701 he was made a Deacon of the Second Baptist Church, and for many years he was a Deputy. He married Ann Audley (Odlin) and had nine children, the second of whom, Frances, born 1669, married in 1689 John Sanford, the brother of the writer of the entries. (Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, p. 44; Rhode Island Historical Magazine, vii. 297.)
165 Thomas Durfie was the son of Thomas Durfie (1643–1712) of Portsmouth. He was a Deputy from Portsmouth in 1707, 1709 (when he was called “Jr.”) and 1713, and in 1717 he got relief from the Assembly by the passage of an Act obliging the Town of Portsmouth to lay out a highway to his farm, commonly called Common Fence Point. He married Ann Freeborn (1669–1729) and had a son Thomas, who was admitted a freeman of Portsmouth 6 May, 1729, and whose marriage to Sarah Briggs is recorded in the almanac under date of 15 June. To them was born on 20 March, 1729–30, a daughter Sarah, and on 2 May, 1737, Sarah (Briggs) Durfie died. Thomas Durfie, who died in 1729, had a brother Robert who married Mary, daughter of John and Mary (Gorton) Sanford. Mary (Sanford) Durfie was a first cousin of the writer of the entries. (The Durfie Chart in Austin, Ancestry of 33 Rhode Islanders; Portsmouth Records, i. 120, 121; Rhode Island Colonial Records, iv. 28, 67, 147, 219, 420.)
166 Ruth Sanford was named after her father’s sister Ruth (1706–1709).
167 Richard Sanford married at Portsmouth 21 February, 1722–23, Elizabeth, daughter of John Coggeshall. He lived for some years at Dartmouth, and later removed to Chilmark. (Portsmouth Records, i. 217; Bristol County, Massachusetts, Deeds.)
168 The identity of this Jashub Wing has not been proved, but he was doubtless the son of Daniel and Anna (Ewer) Wing of Sandwich, Massachusetts. He was born 30 January, 1674, and married in 1701–02 Anna, daughter of Ludovick Hoxie. Jashub Wing was admitted a freeman of Sandwich in 1700, and in the list of freemen in 1702 is found the name of Shearjashub Wing. The records of Sandwich give the death of the wife of Jashub Wing on 16 December, 1721, after which no trace of Jashub Wing is found in the records of that town. (See an article on the Hoxie family in the April, 1901 number of a genealogical magazine called The Owl, published by George Dikeman Wing of Kewaunee, Wisconsin; C. P. Wing, Wing Genealogy, p. 40; Genealogical Advertiser, iv. 13; W. H. Whitmore, in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxix. 192.)
169 Amie Akin was the daughter of James Akin of Dartmouth and Amey (Fish) Akin of Portsmouth, who were married 31 October, 1728. (Portsmouth Records, i. 60.)
170 In Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island under Hazard is found the birth on 2 November, 1702, of Benjamin, son of Thomas and Susanna Hazard; and under Nichols the marriage in 1707 of Jonathan of Newport to Elizabeth Lawton, and the birth of their daughter Hannah 21 September, 1709.
171 Stephen Austin of North Kingstown and Mary Fish of Portsmouth. (Portsmouth Records, i. 72.)
172 See previous note under date of 11 February.
173 In the Portsmouth Records, i. 233, is found the above marriage, and also the marriage on 19 October, 1737, of “Thomas Shearman of Swansey (2nd marriage) and Mary Sanford of Portsmouth,” who was a daughter of the writer.
174 The Rev. Nathaniel Cotton, son of the Rev. Rowland Cotton of Sandwich and Elizabeth, daughter of Col. Nathaniel Saltonstall of Haverhill, was born 13 June, 1697. He graduated from Harvard in 1717, was settled at Bristol in 1721, and not long after married Grissel Sanford, daughter of — Sylvester of Shelter Island, New York, and widow of William Sanford of Newport, a first cousin of the writer. (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, i. 165; Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iii. 326; Munro, History of Bristol, p. 220; Bristol Records, i. 16.)
175 Ann Kay was the sister of Nathaniel Kay, who was appointed Collector of Her Majesty’s Customs for Rhode Island at the accession of Queen Anne, and took up his residence and lived at Newport until his death in 1734. He was a public spirited citizen and a generous benefactor to Trinity Church, of which he was a member. (G. C. Mason, Reminiscences of Newport, p. 314, and Annals of Trinity Church, Newport; Rhode Island Colonial Records, iv. 246, 422.)
176 Margaret Sanford, daughter of John and Ann (Weeden) Sanford, who were married 15 December, 1713, was born 15 July, 1727. John Sanford, the birth of whose son Peleg is noted under date of 1 September, was the nephew of William Sanford, the writer of the entries.
177 Giles Lawton was the son of Adam Lawton, Jr., of Portsmouth and Martha Slocum of Newport, who were married 24 October, 1727. (Portsmouth Records, i. 110.)
178 Hezekiah Hoar, the son of Hezekiah and Rebecca Hoar, was born 10 November, 1678. He was for many years a resident of Newport and married Sarah, daughter of Henry and Joan Brightman of Portsmouth, Newport, and Freetown. Hezekiah the father was for a short time in Scituate. In 1659 he was an inhabitant of Taunton, and in 1675 lived on Dean Street in that town, and his name appears in the list of purchasers of both the North Purchase and the South Purchase (1672). On 11 October, 1708, he signed a petition to the Governor and General Court as one of the inhabitants of the Taunton South Purchase to be set off into a. separate town (Dighton). (Deane, History of Scituate, p. 285; S. H. Emery, History of Taunton, pp. 93, 119, 121, 130, 150; Emery, Ministry of Taunton, i. 61; Taunton Proprietors Records, iv. 232; Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, p. 26.)
179 Enoch Cook, born 25 July, 1726, was the son of William Cook and Susannah Briggs (daughter of Enoch and Hannah Briggs), who were married 9 April, 1724. William Cook was the son of Joseph and Susannah Cook. (Portsmouth Records, i. 92, 93.)
180 Peleg Slocum’s identity is not known with certainty, but he was perhaps the son of Giles Slocum, who was born at Newport in 1707 and married 14 November, 1728, Avis, daughter of Benjamin and Martha Stanton of Newport. (C. E. Slocum, History of the Slocum Family in America.)
181 See previous note under date of 31 July.
182 On 12 July, 1728, a public reception was given at Newport to Burnet, who passed through Rhode Island on his way from New York to Massachusetts.
183 Joseph Card of Newport, born 1648, was the son of Richard Card, an early settler. He was a member of the Sandwich Baptist Church. (Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, p. 270, and One Hundred and Sixty Allied Families, p. 56.)
184 Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv. 14; Rhode Island Historical Magazine, vii. 293; Vital Records of Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
185 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, x. 179.
186 Portsmouth Records, i. 84, 85.
187 The medal is described and engraved in the Memorial History of Boston, iv. 473; Mr. Bulfinch’s portrait appears in Ibid. iv. 472; and a view of the theatre may be seen in Ibid. iv. 363. See also Ellen Susan Bulfinch’s Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch.
188 This paper is reserved for publication at a future time.
189 The originals are owned by the Boston Public Library. These letters were printed by the Library in the Monthly Bulletin for July, 1901, vi. 270–273.
190 With these letters compare the communication made by Mr. Matthews at the meeting in April, 1901, vii. 2–21.
191 This Bibliography will be printed in volume iv. of the Publications of the Society.
192 This is a curious instance of a mistake in regard to one’s own age. The Town Clerk of Weymouth, Massachusetts, certifies that Joshua, the son of Joshua and Tirzah Bates, was born 10 October, 1788. Hence Mr. Bates, when he wrote the above letter, was not sixty but sixty-two.
193 Mr. John Sturgis, a younger brother of Mrs. Joshua Bates, was a bookkeeper in the Boston house of William Ropes and Company.
194 Joseph Green Cogswell (H. C. 1806) was Tutor in 1814–15, Librarian in 1821–23, and Professor of Mineralogy and Geology in 1821–23.
195 John Appleton Haven (H. C. 1813) was the son of John Haven of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Sarah Sherburne Langdon, granddaughter of the Hon. Woodbury Langdon of Portsmouth; and the grandson of the Rev. Samuel Haven (H. C. 1740) of Portsmouth and Mehitable Appleton, daughter of the Rev. Nathaniel Appleton (H. C. 1712) of Cambridge. Mr. Carter was a tutor in Mr. Haven’s family.
196 Stuart’s unfinished portrait of Webster, painted at this time, is now owned by Mr. Henry Parkman of Boston, who has kindly permitted it to be engraved to accompany this communication.
197 Miss Searle was born in Amesbury or Newbury, Massachusetts, 11 August, 1783, and died in Brookline 3 May, 1851.
198 Mr. Searle was born 21 May, 1751, and died in Philadelphia, 10 January, 1796. He married, 21 March, 1779, Mary Russell Atkins, daughter of Dudley Atkins of Newburyport, Massachusetts. See Francis Higginson Atkins’s Joseph Atkins, The Story of a Family (1891), folding pedigree between pp. 72, 73. This volume also contains other folding pedigrees showing the connection of the Eliot, Searle, Tyng, and Higginson families.
199 Margaret (Searle) Curzon was born in Newbury 23 January, 1787, and died in Newburyport 28 June, 1877.
200 Samuel Curzon was born in Baltimore 2 February, 1781. He was the son of Samuel Curzon and his wife Elizabeth Burling, daughter of Thomas Burling of New York. As the marriage was contracted according to the form of the Society of Friends, Mrs. Curzon’s brother, Walter Burling, denied its validity and, on his return to New York, challenged Mr. Curzon, and killed him in a duel fought 24 April, 1786, in the rear of the New York Hospital in the lower part of New York.1 The young widow married (2) Richard Whittell of London. The child was reared under the name of Burling, and in 1786, immediately after his father’s death, was brought to Boston by Mr. James Perkins,2 who had been associated in the West India trade with Walter Burling, and placed in his mother’s family, in which he was tenderly nurtured. Col. Joseph May, also, had great interest in the child and brought him up as his own. On the twenty-fourth of June, 1816, young Curzon, — as he was known in and after the summer of 1808, — was married in King’s Chapel to Margaret Searle. Later, they visited his Burling kinsfolk in their home in or near Natchez, Mississippi. In 1817, as stated in the text, Mr. Curzon went to Havana, and on his return made his home at Curzon’s Mill, now within the limits of the city of Newburyport, Massachusetts; but between 1830 and 1840 he resided partly in New York City. He died in Somerville, Massachusetts, 12 January, 1847. His father, Samuel Curzon, Senior, a New York merchant, born 21 September, 1753, was the eldest son of Richard Curzon, Senior, of London, England, and Baltimore, Maryland. The family name was formerly in America spelled Curson.
1 The Hospital occupied a large lot, originally comprising five acres, on the west side of Broadway between Duane Street and Worth Street (James William Beekman’s Centenary Address delivered before The Society of the New York Hospital, 1871, p. 34). “The region behind the Hospital was so secluded, that it was chosen as the place for a duel in 1786” (The Old New York Hospital, An Historical Sketch, by D. B. St. John Roosa, New York, 1900, p. 7).
2 James Perkins was born in Boston 30 March, 1761, and died at his country seat, Pine Bank, on the shore of Jamaica Pond, 1 August, 1822. He was brother of Col. Thomas Handasyd Perkins and Samuel Perkins who, to distinguish himself from another, changed his name to Samuel G Perkins, — the “G” being a letter only and not an initial. These brothers long held high rank among the merchants of Boston. They were sons of James and Elizabeth (Peck) Perkins, their father having died during their childhood. Mrs. Perkins’s house, whither young Curzon was brought, in 1786, stood in Merchants Row, on the easterly side, about midway between State Street and Chatham Street. The estate is nearly identical with that now numbered 9 and 11. In 1751, when Gillam Phillips conveyed this property to Thomas Handasyd Peck, the father of Elizabeth (Peck) Perkins, it had a frontage of forty feet on Merchants Row and of twenty-three and a half feet on Butler’s Row (which then extended through to Merchants Row), of which it made the southwesterly corner. In 1822 James Perkins gave his house in Pearl Street to the Proprietors of the Boston Athenæum for a library building, and it was occupied a such until the erection of the present building in Beacon Street. (Suffolk Deeds, lxxx. 132, cclxxiv. 265, cccv. 252; Suffolk Probate Files, No. 16,305; A Genealogical History of the Descendants of Joseph Peck, Boston, 1868, Appendix, pp. 267–277; and Memoir of James Perkins in 1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 353–368.)
201 See these Publications, vi. 152.
202 For an account of this enterprise, see Caleb Eddy’s Historical Sketch of the Middlesex Canal (1843); Amory’s Life of James Sullivan (1859), i. 293, 362–373, ii. 105, 106; and the Medford Historical Register, i. 33–51, 137, vii. 1–19. There is a valuable Plan of the Canal in the Engineer’s office of the Boston and Maine Railroad Company and another in the Massachusetts Archives, Maps and Plans, lii. 2. I am much indebted to Mr. Moses Whitcher Mann, of West Medford, whose profound knowledge of the history and topography of the Canal enabled him to identify all the localities mentioned in the text.
203 George Knight was a young merchant who was associated in business with Mr. Samuel Curzon while he was in Havana, and was constantly passing between that place and Boston and New York. He married Miss Mary Price of Natchez, Mississippi, where, for a time, Mr. Curzon resided.
204 Eliza-Susan, daughter of John Morton, married Josiah Quincy (H. C. 1790), afterward President of Harvard College.
205 Mehitable, daughter of Gov. James Sullivan, married (1) James Cutler and (2) Jonathan Amory (H. C. 1787).
206 These ladies were, Sarah-Webb, daughter of Col. James Swan, who married William Sullivan (H. C. 1792); Sarah, daughter of the Hon. Thomas Russell, who married Richard Sullivan (H. C. 1798); and Sarah-Bowdoin, daughter of the Hon. Thomas Lindall Winthrop, who married George Sullivan (H. C. 1801),—sons of Gov. James Sullivan.
207 George Searle (1788–1858), brother of the writer of the letter. He married (1) Susan Cleveland Perkins, daughter of Samuel G Perkins, and niece and namesake of Susan Cleveland Higginson, who married Francis Dana Channing. See below, p. 225 note 6. Mr. Searle married (2) Susan-Coffin, widow of Stephen Hooper and daughter of Joseph Marquand, all of Newburyport.
208 There was a “passenger-packet” named the “Governor Sullivan” which, probably, was the boat used by this party. See Amory’s Life of James Sullivan, ii. 105, 106; and the Medford Historical Register, i. 44, 45.
209 Horn Pond. Cf. below, p. 227 and note 2.
210 John Langdon Sullivan, M.D., civil engineer, inventor, and physician, another son of the Governor, was agent of the Middlesex Canal Company.
211 This building was known as the Pavilion and stood between the Canal and the Pond.
212 Horn Pond.
213 Catharine Eliot, daughter of Samuel Eliot, married Professor Andrews Norton.
214 Olivia Buckminster was half-sister of the Rev. Joseph Stevens Buckminster. She subsequently married George Barrell Emerson (H. C. 1817), who was also present on this excursion. Her sister of the full blood, Mary Lyman Buckminster, married the Rev. Samuel Kirkland Lothrop.
215 Eliza Buckminster, afterward the wife of Thomas Lee (H. C. 1798) of Brookline, became a well known authoress. She and her eider sister Lucy Maria, the first wife of Prof. John Farrar (H. C. 1803), were sisters of the full blood of the Rev. Joseph Stevens Buckminster with whom they lived, in Boston, after his settlement, in 1805, over the Church in Brattle Square.
216 Daniel Webster.
217 James Savage (H. C. 1803), long the President of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
218 John Callender (H. C. 1790), Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court. See Loring’s Hundred Boston Orators, pp. 257, 258.
219 William Tudor (H. C. 1796), the founder and first editor of the North American Review, and a founder of the Boston Athenæum.
220 Horace Gray (H. C. 1819).
221 William Powell Mason (H. C. 1811), law-partner of the Hon. William Sullivan, and later Reporter of the United States Circuit Court.
222 Rev. Thomas Russell Sullivan (H. C. 1817), son of Dr. John Langdon Sullivan, was settled (1825–1835) over the Unitarian Church at Keene, N. H.
223 George Barrell Emerson (H. C. 1817).
224 Rev. Samuel Joseph May (H. C. 1817). He was a son of Col. Joseph May, for more than thirty years a Warden of King’s Chapel.
225 Josiah Quincy (H. C. 1790).
226 Jonathan Amory (H. C. 1787).
227 In later years known as Bacon’s Grave, near the present Wedgemere station on the old Boston and Lowell Railroad. Near this grave, in 1819, was a mill owned by John Langdon Sullivan.
228 Upper Mystic Pond.
229 West Cambridge, now Arlington.
230 Col. Joseph May, the young man’s father. See above, p. 219 note.
231 See above, p. 222 note 3.
232 This was the tavern of the Medford River lock, which stood on the northerly corner of Boston Avenue and Arlington Street, West Medford.
233 On the shore of the Mill Pond in Charlestown, near the present Sullivan Square, which was named in honor of Governor Sullivan.
234 Richard Sullivan (H. C. 1798), fourth son of Gov. Sullivan.
235 Elizabeth Lee Cabot, daughter of Samuel Cabot (1759–1819) of Boston, who subsequently married Dr. Charles Theodore Christian Follen.
236 Harriet Jackson, a daughter of the Hon. Jonathan Jackson (H. C. 1761) and sister of Mary Jackson, who married Henry Lee (1782–1867), brother of Thomas Lee (H. C. 1798).
237 Mrs. Curzon had been married only the year before.
238 Stephen Higginson (1743–1828), the author of the Letters of Laco.
239 Susan Cleveland (Higginson) Channing, a daughter of Stephen Higginson and widow of Francis Dana Channing (H. C. 1794). The Rev. William Henry Channing (H. C. 1829) was their son. The young widow and her three children made their home with Mr. Higginson and his then wife. See Materials for a Genealogy of the Higginson Family in Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, v. 33–42.
240 The Cremer Case was “an action of assumpsit, brought by the plaintiff as surviving partner of Thomas Theodore Cremer of Rotterdam, who had carried on business there under the firm of Thomas and Adrian Cremer, against Stephen Higginson and Samuel G Perkins, surviving partners of George Higginson of Boston under the firm of Stephen Higginson and Co., upon a letter of guaranty” for $50,000, dated 15 December, 1808. The suit was brought in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Massachusetts, and was tried before Mr. Justice Story and the Hon. John Davis, District Judge, by eminent counsel, — George Blake, United States District Attorney, and Daniel Webster, for the plaintiff, and Samuel Hubbard and William Prescott for the defendants. The case was decided in favor of the defendants at the October term, 1817 (Mason’s Reports, i. 323; and Federal Cases, vi. 797, Case No. 3383).
241 Barbara-Cooper Higginson, daughter of Stephen Higginson (1743–1828), married Samuel G Perkins of Boston.
242 Elizabeth Peck Perkins, daughter of Samuel G Perkins.
243 Miss Quincy was the eldest daughter of President Quincy.
244 Catharine Eliot, daughter of Samuel Eliot, afterward Mrs. Andrews Norton.
245 Abigail Phillips Quincy.
246 Margaret Morton Quincy married Benjamin D. Greene.
247 Maria Sophia Quincy.
248 Daughters of the Hon. Thomas Lindall Winthrop. Jane Winthrop died unmarried in Boston 21 February, 1819, and her sister Ann married Dr. John Collins Warren.
249 Otherwise known as Horn Pond, in Woburn.
250 Bacon’s Grove. See above, p. 223 note 1.
251 Upper Mystic Pond.
252 The house of Samuel Eliot, the great merchant and philanthropist, stood on a large estate which made the northerly corner of Beacon and Tremont Streets (Gleaner Articles, No. 33, in Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, v., Second edition, 96). The site is now occupied by the department store of Houghton and Dutton.
253 See Publications, vi. 455, 456.
254 This society is in the town of Harvard, Worcester County.
255 The following quasi-historical societies have also been incorporated:
wales family association.
Purposes. To collect, preserve and publish the Genealogical records and history of the Wales family and to cultivate and strengthen its family ties.
Date of Charter. 12 April, 1900.
the contractors and builders association of the city of boston.
Purposes. To establish an association of Master Mechanics, Contractors, Builders & those persons who are engaged in trades and industries connected with the construction of buildings, public works, and trades & industries subsidiary thereto, to promote a knowledge of literature, history & science as relates to building operations & to provide suitable rooms for meetings & discussions of questions relating to the building industries & to establish and maintain a library for the use of the members to accomplish the purposes aforesaid.
Date of Charter. 15 June, 1900.
veteran association, company l, sixth regiment, massachusetts volunteer militia.
Purposes. The prosecution of historical studies, and the establishment and maintenance of a place for social meetings.
Date of Charter. 2 August, 1900.
independent boston fusilier veterans.
Purposes. To bring together in fraternal union the past active members of the Independent Boston Fusiliers, now known as Battery G, First Heavy Artillery, M.V.M., its predecessors and successors; to keep alive interest in the affairs of said organization and to cherish and record the past and current history of the same. To establish a place for social meetings.
Date of Charter. 2 August, 1900.
central republican club.
Purposes. To promote the political education of voters, to teach American political history, to secure a place for lectures, speeches, or debates on political subjects, to procure & distribute literature on the same & to maintain a place for social meetings to attract members to the rooms of the club. [Fall River.]
Date of Charter. 24 October, 1900.
west newbury natural history club.
Purposes. The purpose for which the Corporation is constituted is to promote the knowledge of natural science and local history and to maintain a general library.
Date of Charter. 8 February, 1901.
256 A sketch of Mr. Greenough, written by President Kittredge, will be found in the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine for December, 1901, x. 196–201.
257 Mr. Matthews’s paper was printed in full by the United States Weather Bureau in the Monthly Weather Review for January and February, 1902, xxx. 19–28, 69–79, and also in a separate pamphlet.
258 Military Journal, 1859, p. 198. The Journal was also printed, together with another work, in 1860, and the passage will be found at page 402 of that edition.
259 It was printed, from another copy, in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxii. 141. For notices of the Leonard family, see Ibid. xxii. 140–143; 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 173–175.
260 For a notice of Danforth, see Sibley, Harvard Graduates, iii. 243–249.
261 The date 2 June is given by J. Winsor, Reader’s Handbook of the American Revolution (1899), p. 91, and J. P. Baxter, Journal of Lieut. W. Digby, p. 9 note; but W. T. R. Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War (1858), p. 436, gives 30 May, while F. S. Drake, New England Historical and Genealogic al Register, xxxiii. 383, gives 5 June.
262 The Milton Town Records give the date of Colonel Vose’s birth as 26 November, 1738, and Memorials of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati (1890), p. 493, give it as 7 December, 1739. In the Milton Church Records his baptism is found under date of 3 December, 1738. The Milton Town Records state that he died 22 May, 1816, aged 76.
263 Memorials of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, p. 493.
264 See Ibid.; also Heitman’s Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution.
265 Under dates of 15, 21, and 26 April, 1776, Heath wrote:
Four American regiments, viz. Poor’s, Patterson’s, Greaton’s, and Bond’s, were ordered for Canada; Gen. Thompson was to command them. Gen. Thomas had been, some time before, sent from Boston to command in Canada . . . The regiments destined for Canada, sailed for Albany . . . Six more regiments were ordered for Canada, viz. two from the Pennsylvania line, two from the New-Jersey, and two from the New-Hampshire (Memoirs, 1798, p. 45).
266 Under date of 13 December, 1901, the Rev. James Gardiner Vose, D.D., of Providence, Rhode Island, the grandson of Col. Joseph Vose and a member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, writes: —
I regret very much to say that there is no portrait of my Grandfather, nor any diary or Journal of his in existence. He died in 1816, and no effort seems to have been made by any of his children to preserve papers which he must have left.
The diary now printed is in the possession of a collateral branch of the family, which may easily account for the fact that the Rev. Dr. Vose had never heard of its existence. It belongs to Mrs. William Brewster of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a great grand-daughter of Elijah Vose of Milton, brother of Joseph Vose, and himself an officer in the Revolutionary Army and Lieutenant-Colonel of the Regiments of which his brother Joseph was in command.
267 The officers mentioned in this Journal may all be identified and the terms of their service found by referring to F. B. Heitman’s Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution (Washington, 1893).
John Greaton, afterwards Brigadier-General, was a resident of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where he was born 10 March, 1741, and died 16 December, 1783. He is buried in the cemetery on the corner of Washington and Eustis Streets, Boston.
John Paterson was a resident of Lenox and was Colonel of the Berkshire regiment which started for Boston upon hearing the news of the battle of Lexington. He graduated from Yale in 1762 and was by profession a lawyer. After the war he removed to Binghamton, New York, and was Chief-Justice of the County Court. He died 19 July, 1808 (Memorials of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati, Boston, 1890, p. 381).
William Bond, born 17 February, 1733–34, was of the Watertown family of that name. He died in camp near Ticonderoga 31 August, 1776 (Bond’s Genealogies and History of Watertown, i. 66).
Enoch Poor was a prominent merchant of Exeter, New Hampshire, and served with distinction as Colonel and Brigadier-General. He died in camp at Hackensack, New Jersey, 8 or 9 September, 1780.
268 Half Moon is now Waterford on the Hudson, and was undoubtedly named for Henry Hudson’s ship. There were no bridges over the Hudson or Mohawk rivers at that time, but there was a ferry at Half Moon, and another on the Mohawk five miles above Cohoes Falls (Lossing’s Field Book of the Revolution, i. 41).
269 Now Whitehall, at the head of the South Bay of Lake Champlain.
270 In the skirmish of Abercrombie’s troops in August, 1758, with the French and Indians, Major Israel Putnam was taken prisoner and tied to a tree, and was about to be burned alive when released by a French officer. The spot was about a mile west of Fort Anne and just south of Whitehall (Ibid. i. 140; and Fiske’s New France and New England, 1902, chapter x.).
271 William Bent, Captain in the 24th Continental Infantry.
272 Edward Payson Williams, son of Jeremiah Williams of Roxbury, was a Captain in the same regiment and died in service, 25 May, 1777 (Drake’s The Town of Roxbury, 1878, pp. 31, 398).
273 James Howe kept a bakeshop near the corner of the present Washington and Warren Streets and was a prominent man in Roxbury at the time of the Revolution (Ibid. pp. 92, 206, 280, 381). He was probably the son of James Howe (born in 1713) of Roxbury, weaver, and Jane Meroth of Dorchester, who were married 31 July, 1740, and had two sons: (i) James, born 2 November, 1746, died 1798, and (ii) David, born 1 March, 1757. The latter was probably the David How, or David Howe, Jr., who was a member of E. P. Williams’s Company (Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the War of the Revolution, viii. 331, 384).
274 George Augustus, Viscount Howe, eider brother of Admiral Richard, Viscount Howe and of General Sir William Howe. He was a soldier of great ability and had been sent over by Pitt as second in command to General Abercrombie. He was killed in a battle with the French 6 July, 1758.
275 Split Rock is about thirty miles north of Crown Point on Lake Champlain.
276 The Rev. Caleb Barnum was the seventh minister of the First Congregational Church at Taunton, Massachusetts, where he was installed 2 February, 1769. (See Emery’s Ministry of Taunton, ii. 1, for a sketch and portrait of him.) He graduated from the College of New Jersey in 1157, and received the honorary degree of A.M. from Harvard in 1768. He was Chaplain of Col. Greaton’s Regiment, and through the fatigue and exposure of this expedition he contracted a disease from which he died at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 23 August, 1776, in the fortieth year of his age.
277 Isle La Motte, in Lake Champlain.
278 St. John’s is on the west bank of the Richelieu or Sorel River, Canada.
279 Chambly, Canada.
280 Ebenezer Stevens, of the New York Artillery, was commissioned Captain of Artillery 6 December, 1775, and later became Major and Lieutenant-Colonel (Saffell’s Records of the Revolutionary War, 1894, third edition, p. 155).
281 Deschambault, about forty miles from Quebec.
282 Henry Sherburn, of Rhode Island, was commissioned a Major in General Paterson’s Regiment (15th Continental Infantry) January, 1776, taken prisoner at The Cedars, 20 May, made Major of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment January, 1777, and Colonel of one of the additional Continental Regiments 12 January, 1777 (Heitman; Lossing’s Field Book of the Revolution, i. 208; T. Egleston, Life of John Paterson, 1898, p. 87.)
283 John Philip De Haas of Pennsylvania had been appointed Colonel of the First Battalion of Pennsylvania Regulars 22 January, 1776, and the following year was made a Brigadier-General of the Continental Army. He retired to Philadelphia in 1779 and rendered no subsequent service. He died 3 June, 1786 (Heitman; Force’s American Archives, Fourth Series, iv. 785, Fifth Series, ii. 615).
284 Lachine.
285 Gen. John Sullivan of New Hampshire, then a Brigadier-General in the Continental Army.
286 Gen. John Stark of New Hampshire was at this time Colonel of the 5th Continental Infantry.
287 William Thompson had been Colonel of the Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment, and was made Brigadier-General of the Continental Infantry 1 March, 1776. He was taken prisoner 8 June, 1776, and exchanged 25 October, 1780. He died 3 September, 1781 (Heitman).
288 The reference is probably to St. François.
289 Isle Aux Noix, in the Sorel.
290 Gen. Anthony Wayne, at this time Colonel of the 4th Pennsylvania. Battalion.
291 See an article by Mr. Lane in the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine for March, 1904, xii. 349–358. Photographie plates of Bell’s views will be found facing pp. 341, 355.
292 See Mr. Lane’s remarks at the March meeting, pp. 331–336, below.
293 It is to be printed by Harvard University.
294 For a note on bounties for scalps, containing an interesting and judicial investigation into the charges against Hamilton, see the Narrative and Critical History of America, vi. 681–684. This note was written by our associate Mr. Andrew McF. Davis.
295 Quoted by Mr. Davis (Ibid. vi. 682) from the American Archives, Fifth Series, iii. 32. Mr. Davis does not quote the extracts given in the text.
296 Pennsylvania Archives, vii. 362. Compare with Lochry’s statement the following extract from the Boston News-Letter of 22–29 April, 1729, No. 1109:
James Cochran the Youth that came into Brunswick Fort with the Two Scalps, came to Town on Monday last, and on Tuesday produced the said Scalps before the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and Council, for which he Received a Reward of Two Hundred Pounds: And for a further Encouragement to Young Men & others to perform Bold & Hardy Actions in this Indian War, His Honour the Lieut. Governor has been pleased to make him a Serjeant in the Forces (p. 2/1).
In some of the Colonies there was a regular scale of prices, — so much for a man’s scalp, so much for a woman’s scalp, so much for a child’s scalp.
297 Pennsylvania Archives, vii. 569, 570.
298 Pennsylvania Colonial Record, xii. 311.
299 Ibid. xii. 312.
300 Ibid. xii. 328.
301 Pennsylvania Archives, viii. 393.
302 Ibid. viii. 568. Other rewards were claimed and paid in 1781 and 1782: see Pennsylvania Colonial Records, xii. 632, xiii. 201.
303 Many revolting details will be found scattered through the Journals of the Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Nations of Indians in 1779, published by the State of New York.
304 Annals of King’s Chapel, i. 522, 523.
305 Read before the Historical Society of Old New bury, Newburyport, 27 October, 1892.
306 A. Young, Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 326 note.
307 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 230.
308 Ibid. i. 236, 239, 271.
309 J. Coffin, History of Newbury, p. 28.
310 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 263.
311 Coffin, History of Newbury, pp. 36, 44.
312 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 17.
313 Coffin, History of Newbury, p. 40.
314 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 87.
315 Ibid. iii. 28.
316 Ibid. iii. 61.
317 Ibid. ii. 147, 148.
318 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 166.
319 In 1646 it was ordered, “That no person whatsoever in this Jurisdiction, shall joyne any persons together in Marriage, but the Magistrate, or such other as the General Court, or Court of Assistants shall Authorize in such place, where no Magistrate is neer” (Colonial Laws of Massachusetts, Whitmore’s edition, 1889, p. 172). Referring to Charlestown, Mr. Edes writes that the Rev. Charles Morton “was the first clergyman in this place to solemnize marriages, which previously to 1686 were performed only by civil magistrates” (Memorial History of Boston, ii. 315). This last fact was noted by Randolph in 1676 (Ibid. i. 196).
320 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 261, 283, 284.
321 Ibid. ii. 283; Coffin, History of New bury, pp. 50, 51.
322 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv. (i.) 46.
323 See the Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 195, 198.
324 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv. (i.) 85.
325 Ibid. iv. (i.) 116.
326 Ibid. iv. (i.) 146.
327 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv. (i.) 157, 211.
328 Ibid. iv. (i.) 173.
329 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, iii. 201–208, 297–330.
330 2 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 186.
331 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv. (i.) 282.
332 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv. (i.) 391.
333 The estate extended from Washington Street to Tremont Street, and through its entire length Rawson opened the way now known as Bromfield Street. Rawson’s mansion house, which he sold in 1670 to John Pynchon of Springfield, stood on the lots, comprising “neere one Acree,” now making the northerly corner of Bromfield and Washington Streets (Suffolk Deeds, vi. 238).
334 Massachusetts Colony Records, iv. (ii) 195, 199.
335 Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 451, 458.
336 Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 515, 516.
337 On 21 May, 1686 (Publications of this Society, vi. 81, 82).
338 Diary, i. 150.
339 Diary, i. 334, 335.
340 It will be found in the Andros Tracts (Prince Society), i. 63–132.
341 For notices of Rawson, see Sullivan S. Rawson, Memoir of Edward Rawson (1849); E. B. Crane, Revised Memoir of Edward Rawson (1875); E. B. Crane, Ancestry of Edward Rawson (1887); J. J. Currier, Ould Newbury (1896), pp. 43–54.
342 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xi. 8.
343 At the meeting of the Council held 3 April, 1902, the Corresponding Secretary reported that he had conferred with the Corporation of Harvard College, and that it had granted to the Colonial Society permission to print its early Records. At a subsequent meeting of the Council, Messrs. William C. Laue and Albert Matthews were appointed the other two members of the Special Committee.
344 It is remarkable that, in a foot-note to this very passage, Quincy refers to the text of the diploma, which he prints in an Appendix (ii. 506, 507), without noticing that the document bears the signature of the man who was entitled to the honor he was claiming for Washington, and that the letters LL.D. are appended to the signature.
345 Our associate Mr. William Coolidge Laue writes: —
Curiously enough, the degrees conferred this year were not confirmed by the Overseers. At least, there is no record of them in the Overseers’ Records, while Dr. Appleton’s degree, in 1771, was confirmed with many complimentary remarks.
346 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxiv. 101. Professor Winthrop was baptized at the Second Church in Boston, 12 December, 1714. Cf. Muskett’s Suffolk Manorial Families (1894), i. Part I. 26; and Paige’s History of Cambridge, p. 700, in both of which the date of Professor Winthrop’s birth is given as 19 December, 1714. This last mentioned date is given in a footnote to p. 21 of a memorial Discourse delivered by Professor Wigglesworth, and appears to have been accepted ever since by biographers and genealogists. The change, in 1752, from Old Style to New Style will readily account for the discrepancy.
Since this paper was communicated to the Society, Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, Jr., has found among the unpublished Winthrop manuscripts a fragmentary memorandum in the handwriting of Judge Adam Winthrop concerning his children in which occurs the following passage:
1714. Decembr. 8th Wednesday about half an hour before one o’clock in the morning my Wife was dd of a son who was the next Sabbath baptized John at the North Church by Dr Cotton Mather.
347 A letter from Professor Winthrop to Franklin, dated 26 October, 1770, will be found in 1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for October, 1876, xv. 12, 13. Letters which passed between Professor Winthrop and John Adams are printed in 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv. 291–313. One of these letters, written 29 May, 1775, is addressed “To the Honorable John Winthrop, Esq., LL.D.”
348 The University of Edinburgh conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws upon Professor Winthrop in 1771, two years before he received it from his Alma Mater. The Boston Gazette of Monday, 18 November, 1771, No. 867, p. 3/1, contains the following paragraph:
We hear that Capt. Coffin from London has brought a Diploma from the University of Edinburgh, conferring on John Winthrop, Esq; Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy at Cambridge, and F.R.S. the Degree of Doctor of Laws.
The Latin text of this diploma was copied into one of the volumes containing the Records of the Corporation of Harvard College, — iii. 28, back.
349 Mr. Matthews sends me the following interesting item:
We hear, That on Wednesday last the Rev. President, Fellows and Overseers of Harvard College, waited on his Excellency General Washington, with an Address, conferring on him the Degree of Doctor of Laws (Boston Gazette of Monday, 8 April, 1776, No. 1090, p. 2/2).
350 The Independent Chronicle of Friday, 7 May, 1779 (No. 559, p. 3/3), contains the following announcement:
Monday last died at Cambridge, that great scholar and excellent man, the honorable John Winthrop, Esq; Hollisian Professor of the Mathematics in Harvard College.
Funeral discourses on Professor Winthrop were delivered by the Rev. Stephen Sewall, the Rev. Samuel Langdon, and the Rev. Edward Wigglesworth. In the Independent Chronicle of Thursday, 17 June, 1779, No. 565, p. 4/2, appeared An Elegy on the late Professor Winthrop; and in the same paper of Thursday, 21 October, 1779, No. 583, p. 1/1, was printed a long poem “written a Lady, and sent to Mrs. Winthrop.” Mr. R. C. Winthrop, Jr., thinks that the Elegy, which was reprinted at the end of Wigglesworth’s Discourse, and again in the 1811 edition of Professor Winthrop’s Two Lectures on Cornets, was doubtless written by Andrew Oliver (H. C. 1749); and suggests that the long poem was from the pen of Mercy Warren. This proves to be correct, and the poem will be found in her Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous, 1790, pp. 235–239.
351 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, x. 159.
352 History of Harvard University, ii. 223.
353 Professor Winthrop published the following pamphlets: A Lecture on Earthquakes, Boston, 1755; Two Lectures on Comets, Boston, 1759; Relation of a Voyage from Boston to Newfoundland, for The Observation of the Transit of Venus, Boston, 1761; Cogitata de Cometis, Londini, 1767; Two Lectures on the Parallax and Distance of the Sun, as deducible from The Transit of Venus, Boston, 1769.
354 History of Harvard University, ii. 506, 507.
355 Writings of Washington, iv. 6, 7 note.
356 Mr. Kittredge points out (The Old Farmer and his Almanack, p. 237 note) that it was printed in J. T. Buckingham’s Specimens of Newspaper Literature (1850), pp. 223, 224.
357 New England Chronicle of Thursday, 25 April, 1776, No. 401, p. 1. The diploma was also printed in the Boston Gazette of Monday, 15 April, 1776, No. 1091, p. 1.
358 In the course of his remarks, Mr. Slade alluded to a rare volume printed at Paris in 1868 — Montcalm et le Canada, by Félix Joubleau. It was picked up in Paris by Mr. Victor H. Paltsits of the Lenox Library, by whom it was sold to the Pequot Library, Southport, Connecticut. Mr. Paltsits doubts whether Parkman ever saw the book.
359 See v. 548 and note for references to other portraits. In 1761 J. P. de Bougainville wrote Pitt for permission to send an epitaph engraved on marble for the Ursuline Church in Quebec. There is reason to believe that the marble was shipped, but there is no record that it reached its destination. See Annual Register for 1762, pp. 266–268; Warburton, Conquest of Canada, ii. 491—494; Pouchot, Memoir, ii. 263–266.
360 See p. 274, above.
361 Letters to Sir Guy Carleton and to Gen. Haldimand, successively Governors of Quebec, concerning the affairs of his post and the expected attack of the Americans, will be found in volume ix. of the Michigan Pioneer Collections.
362 In volume ix. of the Michigan Pioneer Collections.
363 First edition, 1869; second edition, 1890.
364 For the history and derivation of the word poquosin, applied to “low tracts of land in close proximity to creeks or other bodies of water, and occasionally to land subject to overflow from one cause or another,” see the American Anthropologist, New Series, i. 162–170.
365 Probably Baptiste Hamilton.
366 Perhaps John Gibson of Colchester.
367 In a Ledger I find mention of Herbert & Potts.
368 The allusion is to the Rev. William Gordon’s History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States, published in 1788.
369 Mourt’s Relation (1865), pp. 92, 93.
370 Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, p. 192 note; cf. pp. 113 note, 174 note 3.
371 Genealogical Dictionary, iv. 572, 573.
372 History of New England, i. 178 note.
373 F. Baylies’s Historical Memoir of the Colony of New Plymouth, v. 24.
374 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlii. 62, 63.
375 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlii. 63, 64.
376 2 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, v. 33–37.
377 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, i. 90.
378 Pioneers of Massachusetts, pp. 501, 502.
379 John Holmes, a brother of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, was of the Harvard Class of 1832.
380 This was printed in the Doll’s Record, a newspaper published 18 April, 1893, in aid of a fair given by the ladies of Christ Church, Cambridge.
381 Dr. Andrew Craigie was Apothecary-General of the Northern Department of the Revolutionary Army, and cared for the wounded at Bunker Hill. He was born in Boston 22 February, 1754, the son of Capt. Andrew Craigie who joined the West Church 1 February, 1756, during the pastorate of the Rev. Jonathan Maybew (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxiv. 283; Records of the West Church in Boston; Paige’s History of Cambridge, 183 and note; Memorial History of Boston, iii. 113. See 1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for February, 1874, xiii. 250).
382 Mr. Holmes is in error here. Dr. Craigie’s bride was Elizabeth Shaw, only child of the Rev. Bezaliel Shaw (H. C. 1762) of Nantucket, and cousin-german to Chief-Justice Lemuel Shaw. In Nathaniel Cutting’s Journal of a visit to Boston in the autumn of 1792, we catch a glimpse of her in the following entry:
Nov. 6. We went to Aspinwall’s Hospital to visit the intended bride of Mr. Craigie, Miss Shaw, who is now under the operation of the small-pox by inoculation. (1 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for March, 1871, xii. 66.)
She was married by the Rev. Abiel Holmes to Dr. Craigie, 10 January, 1793, and died in Cambridge on Wednesday, 5 May, 1841, at the age of 69. As Dr. Craigie was in his thirty-ninth year at the time of his marriage to Miss Shaw, who was noted for her beauty, Mr. Holmes’s statement that he was “quite old, or elderly” is amusing. Her miniature by Robertson is in the possession of Samuel Savage Shaw, Esquire. In a letter written by the Rev. Bezaliel Shaw to his brother, the Rev. Oakes Shaw (H. C. 1758), he speaks of Mr. Craigie as a person —
on whom the hand of Providence has liberally bestowed the good things of this life. . . . He has purchased the estates that formerly belonged to Harry and John Vassall. He lives in “the house that Jack built.”
Mrs. Craigie’s mother was Elizabeth Hammond, daughter of John and Mary (Ruggles) Hammond of Rochester, Massachusetts, where she was born 9 January, 1742, and married to the Rev. Bezaliel Shaw 17 September, 1769. She spent her last years with Mrs. Craigie and died in Cambridge 7 April, 1814, at the age of 72 (Nantucket Town Records; Records of the First Church in Cambridge; Records of the First Church in Rochester; Boston Evening Transcript of Saturday, 8 May, 1841; A History and Genealogy of the Descendants of William Hammond, Boston, 1894, pp. 234, 235; Letter of Samuel Savage Shaw).
383 For the use of the word “college,” as applied to the College buildings, see Dialect Notes, ii. 91–114.
384 For particulars of Dr. Craigie’s schemes and land speculations, see Paige’s History of Cambridge, pp. 184–186, 203–208.
385 See an article on the Craigie House by our associate Mr. Samuel Swett Green in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for April, 1900, New Series, xiii. 312–352; and another by Miss Alice M. Longfellow in the Cambridge Tribune of 21 April, 1900, in which Miss Longfellow erroneously refers to Dr. Craigie’s bride as “Miss Nancy Shaw.” See also Josiah Quincy’s Figures of the Past (1883), pp. 25–27; and Col. Higginson’s poem on Madam Craigie, in his Afternoon Landscape (1889), pp. 44, 45.
386 Dr. Craigie died in Cambridge on Sunday, 19 September, 1819, aged 65. He was a Warden of Christ Church of which, in the days of its adversity and of his prosperity, he was a generous benefactor (Columbian Centinel of Wednesday, 22 September, 1819, p. 2/4; Paige’s History of Cambridge, p. 310).
387 From the Harvard Magazine for November and December, 1863, we learn its:
The old County Court-House stood where the Post-Office now is, and the remains of this ancient building can still be seen in the rear of the Post-Office. . . . At the Great Rebellion in 1808 the students refused to eat in commons, and held out a week or more in their intention. During that time all the exercises of the College were suspended. The parents and friends of the students met in the old Court-House, where now the Post-Office stands, and, after considerable negotiation with the College government and the students, College exercises were resumed, and commons for a while were improved (x. 98, 127).
388 The following extract is taken from the Harvard Magazine for November, 1863:
This article should not be closed without mention being made of the College Wharf. From time immemorial, almost, College has owned a wharf on the river. Until within a few years it was built of wood. In olden time the sloop Harvard, a College institution, made continuous voyages to the coast of Maine, for the sole purpose of keeping the College wood-yard well supplied. The wood-yard of late years was in the rear of the present College House (x. 98).
The notes to this paper were not written by Mr. Holmes.