ANNUAL MEETING, NOVEMBER, 1917

    THE Annual Meeting of the Society was held at the Algonquin Club, 217 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, on Wednesday, 21 November, 1917, at a quarter before seven o’clock in the evening, the President, Fred Norris Robinson, Ph.D., in the chair.

    The Records of the last Stated Meeting were approved without being read.

    The Corresponding Secretary reported that a letter had been received from Mr. George Burton Adams accepting Corresponding Membership.

    Mr. Frederic Adrian Delano of Washington, D. C., was elected a Corresponding Member.

    The Annual Report of the Council was presented and read on behalf of the Rev. Dr. Charles Edwards Park:

    REPORT OF THE COUNCIL

    There has been no departure during the past year from our usual custom of holding five stated meetings. Four of these have been at the house of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Society can make no other return for this hospitality than to put itself again on record as deeply grateful for the Academy’s steadfast kindness. The fifth meeting, in April, was held at the home of our Treasurer, Mr. Henry H. Edes, in Cambridge.

    Papers of substantial size and quality have been communicated during the year, and the Society’s Transactions will be found to have been maintained at the customary high level.

    Since the last annual meeting, Volume XVIII, consisting of Transactions, has been distributed. Volume XIX, also of Transactions, from November, 1916, to April, 1917, is at present in type to

    page 371, and will doubtless be ready for distribution in the spring. The text of Volumes XV and XVI, containing the Corporation Records of Harvard College down to 1750, is wholly in type and will, it is hoped, be distributed before long. Other volumes, as yet un-numbered, but containing the Royal Instructions, are engaging the Editor’s constant attention. The material for these volumes, most of which has had to be dug out of the documents in the Public Record Office in London, is now wholly in hand, but has not as yet gone to the printer.

    Our publications are selling a little better each year. Our customers are not only public institutions and government agencies, but ordinary book-stores in various parts of the country.

    Three more members have commuted their annual dues, thus increasing that portion of our invested funds to $6400. The Council confidently recommends that every member of the Society patronize our local Tetzel, and purchase for himself such an indulgence. It is good for life; it costs but $100; and best of all, it is guaranteed against the machinations of any stray Luther that may see fit to assail its validity.

    The Society receives by the will of our late associate, George Vasmer Leverett, the sum of $20,000, which brings our total endowment almost up to $100,000. Mr. Leverett’s generosity was of so unostentatious a sort that but a few of our members know that the entire cost of publishing the volume of Royal Commissions was borne by him, a matter of between two and three thousand dollars.

    Elections during the year have been as follows: to Resident Membership:

    • Nathaniel Thayer Kidder;

    and to Corresponding Membership:

    • Edmund Burke Delabarre,
    • William MacDonald,
    • George Burton Adams.

    Deaths during the year have been as follows:

    Richard Olney, a leader of the Massachusetts Bar, and a statesman of international fame; a Puritan in his moral rectitude and courage; simple, unassuming, unaloof, as only great men can afford to be.

    George Vasmer Leverett, nature’s nobleman, unaffected, openhanded, rich in friendships, loyal to everything that merits a good man’s loyalty; whose death deprives this Society of a familiar and well-beloved presence, and of a generous and reliable supporter.850

    Joseph Hodges Choate, Ambassador from the United States at the Court of St. James; a wise and tactful diplomat, a brilliant jurist, a man of rare cultivation, who, not satisfied merely to command men’s admiration by the power of his intellect, has, by the enchantment of his friendship, made all men love him.

    The complete roll of those elected to Honorary Membership in this Society since its founding is as follows:

    • Melvin Weston Fuller,
    • John Hay,
    • Edward John Phelps,
    • Andrew Dickson White,
    • Grover Cleveland,
    • James Btjrrill Angell,
    • Joseph Hodges Choate,
    • Elihu Root,
    • James Coolidge Carter,
    • John Pierpont Morgan,
    • Simon Newcomb,
    • William Howard Taft.
    • Samuel Pierpont Langlet,
     

    In view of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Society, which we mark at this meeting to-night, it is not inappropriate to make this Council Report something of a review of the Society’s achievements. These achievements consist principally in the Publications which the Society has issued. Up to the year 1904, the first twelve years of its existence, the editorial work of the Society was done by a volunteer committee, who necessarily had to make this work second in importance to their own personal vocations. In these twelve years therefore, there were issued four volumes of Publications, an average of one every three years. These were, —

    1896.

    Volume I,

    1902.

    Volume V,

    1900.

    Volume III,

    1904.

    Volume VI.

    It became evident that the Society must have an Editor. His salary was supplied by the generous subscriptions of a few members. He took over the entire charge of the Publications in January, 1905; and from that date to the present time, twelve volumes of Publications have been printed and distributed, an average of almost one a year. These are, —

    1905.

    Volume VII,

    1911.

    Volume XII,

    1906.

    Volume VIII,

    1912.

    Volume XIII,

    1907.

    Volume IX,

    1913.

    Volumes II and XIV,

    1908.

    Volume X,

    1916.

    Volume XVII,

    1910.

    Volumes IV and XI,

    1917.

    Volume XVIII.

    In addition, there are the various volumes mentioned above, as still in preparation. These contain matter of great value, demanding great editorial care and assiduity. They will be a conspicuous addition to the Society’s list of achievements; but it seems safe to say that their publication would have been a hopeless task had not the Society adopted the policy of engaging the services of a salaried Editor.

    Another achievement, in which the Society takes infinite satisfaction, and which is worthy of mention in this report, is the erection in the First Church in Boston of a beautiful memorial doorway to commemorate the life and distinguished services of Thomas Hutchinson, the last but one of the Royal Governors of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay.

    The Colonial Society has long felt that Governor Hutchinson’s name has been unduly beclouded by the fact that he was heartily and conscientiously royalist in his sympathies, and that his services to Massachusetts as Governor, Chief Justice, and historian, are of a quality and an extent to justify cordial and permanent recognition.

    The cost of this doorway was met by the unhesitating generosity of members of the Society. The inscription was prepared by our associate George Lyman Kittredge. The design is the work of our associate Richard Clipston Sturgis. The memorial was appropriately placed in the First Church, with which Hutchinson, both by ancestry and by personal interest, was closely identified.

    Dedication exercises were held in the church on the afternoon of November 5, the principal address being delivered by our associate James Kendall Hosmer, and briefer addresses by our associates Arthur Prentice Rugg, Chief Justice of the Commonwealth, and Samuel Eliot Morison.851

    Thomas Hutchinson Memorial Doorway

    First Church in Boston

    Engraved for The Colonial Society of Massachusetts

    The Treasurer submitted his Annual Report:

    REPORT OF THE TREASURER

    In compliance with the requirements of the By-Laws, the Treasurer submits his Annual Report for the year ending 19 November, 1917.

    CASH ACCOUNT

    RECEIPTS

    Balance, 16 November, 1916

     

    $119.77

    Admission Fees

    $10.00

     

    Annual Assessments

    620.00

     

    Commutation of the Annual Dues

    300.00

     

    Sales of the Society’s Publications

    139.14

     

    Sales of the Society’s paper

    13.06

     

    Contribution from a member

    5.00

     

    Editor’s Salary Fund, subscriptions

    900.00

     

    Interest

    3,816.08

     

    Henry H. Edes, demand loan without interest

    700.00

     

    George V. Leverett, demand loan without interest.

    750.00

     

    Mortgages, discharged or assigned

    15,000.00

    22,253.28

       

    522,373.05

     

    DISBURSEMENTS

    The University Press

    $2,281.78

     

    A. W. Elson & Co., photogravure

    280.37

     

    Folsom Engraving Company

    152.10

     

    S. D. Warren & Co., paper

    1,125.34

     

    Mary A. Tenney, indexing

    100.00

     

    Clerk hire

    70.10

     

    Albert Matthews, salary as Editor of Publications

    1,000.00

     

    American Academy of Arts and Sciences, fuel, light, and janitor service

    20.00

     

    Boston Storage Warehouse Company

    24.00

     

    J. Franklin Jameson, annual subscription toward the Bibliography of American Historical Writings

    50.00

     

    Miscellaneous incidentals

    440.05

     

    Mortgages on improved Real Estate in Boston

    16,500.00

     

    Interest in adjustment

    208.20

    22,251.94

    Balance on deposit in State Street Trust Company, 19 November, 1917

     

    121.11

       

    $22,373.05

    The Funds of the Society are invested as follows:

    $74,750.00

    in First Mortgages, payable in gold coin, on improved property in Greater Boston

    250.00

    on deposit in the Provident Institution for Savings in the Town of Boston

    $75,000.00

     

    TRIAL BALANCE

    DEBITS

    Cash

    $121.11

    $1,450.00

    Income

    1,328.89

    $1,450.00

    Mortgages

    74,750.00

     

    Provident Institution for Savings

    250.00

    75,000.00

       

    $76,450.00

    CREDITS

    Henry H. Edes

    $700

     

    George V. Leverett

    750

    $1,450.00

    Editor’s Salary Fund

    200

     

    Publication Fund

    10,000

     

    General Fund

    13,300

     

    Benjamin Apthorp Gould Memorial Fund

    10,000

     

    Edward Wheelwright Fund

    20,000

     

    Robert Charles Billings Fund

    10,000

     

    Robert Noxon Toppan Fund

    5,000

     

    Robert Charles Winthrop, Jr. Fund

    3,000

     

    Andrew McFarland Davis Fund

    2,000

     

    William Watson Fund

    1,000

     

    Horace Everett Ware Fund

    500

    75,000.00

       

    $76,450.00

    Henry H. Edes

    Treasurer

    Boston, 19 November, 1917

    REPORT OF THE AUDITING COMMITTEE

    The undersigned, a Committee appointed to examine the Accounts of the Treasurer for the year ending 19 November, 1917, have attended to their duty and report, that they find them correctly kept and properly vouched, and that proper evidence of the investments and of the balance of cash on hand has been shown to them. This Report is based on the examination of Andrew Stewart, certified public accountant.

    Nathaniel Thayer Kidder

    Charles Sedgwick Rackemann

    Committee

    Boston, 20 November, 1917

    The several Reports were accepted and referred to the Committee of Publication.

    The Committee appointed to nominate officers for the ensuing year presented the following candidates; and, a ballot having been taken, these gentlemen were unanimously elected.

    president

    • FRED NORRIS ROBINSON

    vice-presidents

    • MARCUS PERRIN KNOWLTON
    • ANDREW McFARLAND DAVIS

    recording secretary

    • HENRY WINCHESTER CUNNINGHAM

    corresponding secretary

    • CHARLES EDWARDS PARK

    treasurer

    • HENRY HERBERT EDES

    registrar

    • ALFRED JOHNSON

    member of the council for three years

    • CHARLES LEMUEL NICHOLS

    On behalf of Mr. Charles M. Andrews, a Corresponding Member, the following communication was made:

    “STATE OF THE TRADE,” 1763

    In my paper on The Boston Merchants and the Non-Importation Movement, presented at the meeting in February of this year,852 emphasis was laid on the fact that the Society for Encouraging Trade and Commerce was formed in Boston in April, 1763, for the immediate purpose of preventing the renewal of the Molasses Act of 1733, which was due to expire in 1764. To this end, the first business of the society was to draft a “State of the Trade,” in which the burdens of the act, as far as they concerned Massachusetts Bay, were to be presented as forcibly as possible. This “State” was duly drawn up by Thomas Gray and Edward Payne, to whom the task was assigned, and copies were sent to the Massachusetts General Court, to the Province’s agent in England, and to the merchants of the adjoining colonies, that all might cooperate in bringing about the defeat of the obnoxious measure. I was able at the time to give the main facts of the situation, but could not furnish a copy of the “State” itself, although I instituted a search in England, and in the archives of Massachusetts and Connecticut. In default of the original document, I was obliged to content myself with conjectures as to what the “State” probably contained.

    A few weeks ago, when discussing with Mr. Albert C. Bates, librarian of the Connecticut Historical Society and editor of its publications, the proposed contents of the volume of Fitch Papers, soon to be issued by the society, I was struck by his account of a document found in the Connecticut Archives which he proposed to include in the collection. My hope that this document was the desired “State” was realized when Mr. Bates very kindly sent me a photostat copy of the original and a transcript of the accompanying letter, which proves the identity without question. These papers had eluded my search, because filed in a volume labelled “Revolutionary War.” With Mr. Bates’s permission I present here the two documents: the accompanying letter, signed by four men, probably the Standing Committee, which confirms in all particulars the statements made on pages 166 and 167 of my paper; and the “State,” a document unique of its kind and very valuable for the light it throws on the fishery of the Province and the commercial relations with Great Britain.

    Boston Janry 9th 1764

    GentN

    The Act commonly known by the Name of the Sugar Act has long & justly been complain’d of by the Northern Colonies as a great Grievance; and should it be continued & put in Execution, with any Degree of Rigour (as is like to be the Case here after) it will give a Mortal Wound to the Peace of these Colonies.

    As this Act is now about to expire, it behoves us all to unite our endeavors to prevent, if possible, the revival of it.

    To this Purpose the Merchants in this Town, sometime since, met together and chose a Committee to prepare a State of the Trade of this Province, so far as it is affected by this act; to collect what Facts & Arguments might occur to them, proper to be urged against the Renewal of it, & to draw up & present to our General Court a Memorial praying they would make Application by their Agent at home, in order to obtain Relief. In Consequence of this memorial, the Court have raised a large Committee, who have given us a hearing upon the subject, and we are well assured they will send the necessary Instructions to their Agent, and will oppose the Renewal of the Act to the utmost of their Power.

    It will not be deny’d that the Trade of all the Governments of North America is affected by this Act. They are all therefore interested in the Affair, and as they have very powerful Antagonists to encounter, the united strength of them all will be necessary, if they mean to do anything to Effect. We therefore address ourselves to you on this Occasion, & inclose you a copy of what we have drawn up, relative to this Matter, desiring you to communicate it to the Merchants of Connecticut, that they may know what is doing here, and may have an Opportunity of assisting us in our Endeavours to defeat the iniquitous Schemes of these overgrown West Indians. We shall not presume to advise in what Manner this may be best done. We shall only say that, besides the public Application made by our General Court, the Merchants here will severally write to their respective Correspondents in England & endeavour to convince them that the Act in Question is, and will be prejudicial to the Trade of Great Britain.

    As the Trade of the several Provinces is attended with different circumstances, those Arguments that are pertinent with Regard to one, may not be so with Regard to the others. We, in what we have offered, had in View the Trade of this Province only; and each Government will doubtless make use of those Arguments that are most adapted to their own particular State and Circumstances.

    We shall detain you no longer than just to hint that no Time ought to be lost; and to ask Pardon for this Trouble we give you, which as it is designed to serve the Public, we flatter ourselves you will readily excuse.

    We are Sirs

    Your most obedt Servts

    Jos. Green

    Joshua Winslow

    Edward Payne

    Thomas [Gray]

    Gurdon Salstonstal & Nathl Shaw Esqrs

    [Indorsed]

    Letter from certain Merchants in Boston.853

    The “State of the Trade” is as follows:

    As the Act, commonly called the Sugar Act, has been passed upwards of thirty years without any Benefit to the Crown, the Duties arising from it, having never been appropriated by Parliament to any particular Use; and as this Act will expire this Winter, the following Considerations are offered as Reasons why it should not be renewed.

    FIRST, It is apprehended, that the Trade is so far from being able to bear the high Duties imposed by this Act, that it will not bear any Duty at all. The Price of Molosses at present, is but 12d Sterling per Gallon, at which Price it will barely answer to distil it into Rum for Exportation. Should this Duty be added, it would have the Effect of an absolute Prohibition on the Importation of Molasses and Sugar from the foreign Islands; and consequently the same effect on the Exportation of Fish, Lumber and other Commodities from hence to those Islands; as the French, Dutch and other Foreigners whom we supply with those Articles, will not permit us to bring away their Money; so that unless we can take their ordinary Sugars and Molasses in Return, this Trade will be lost. As we do not import any Rum from the foreign Islands, the Duty on that Commodity is of little Consequence, and Great-Britain would finally pay much more than the Duty on Sugars, if an End should be put to our Trade to the foreign Islands. For should the Colonies be obliged to take from our own Islands all the West-Indian Produce that they consume, the Price in Great-Britain must necessarily advance more than double this Duty. If we are permitted to import foreign Sugars and Molosses into the Northern Colonies, more of our West-India Produce will be carried to Great-Britain, where the Consumption is supposed to be equal to the whole Produce of our Islands.

    SECONDLY, The Loss of the Trade to the foreign Islands on which great Part of our other Trade depends, must greatly affect all the Northern Colonies, and entirely destroy the Fishery in this Province, and at Newfoundland likewise, as our own Islands are not capable of taking off above one Third of our West-India Cod-Fish, nor one Quarter of the Mackrell, Shad, Alewives and other small Fish exported from hence. In this Province we have about 300 Sail of Vessels from 45 to 75 Tons, employed in the Cod-Fishery, and about 90 Sail from 25 to 40 Tons in the Mackrell Fishery; these Vessels carry from six to ten men each; the Bankers one with another make 800 Quintals a Vessel, in the Season; (from March to October;) and by an exact Account taken at several of our Fishing Towns, the Proportion of West-India Cod-Fish was about three fifths of the whole Quantity; the Mackrell Vessels get about 200 Barrels a Vessel in the Season. Now as our own Islands take off

    but about one Third of the West-India Cod-Fish, and not more than one Quarter of the Mackrell and other small Fish; the Remainder will be lost if we are prevented from supplying the foreign Islands, there being no other Market where it can be disposed of. The Fishery at present is carried on to very little Profit, and wants all the Encouragement that can possibly be given to support those concerned in it, suppose they had Vent for all their West-India Fish; but should they be deprived of a Market for two Thirds; (which they will be should this act be put in Execution;) the whole Fishery must infallibly be broke up, it being impossible to procure Fish for the European Market separate from the other; the merchantable being such as is culled out of the whole after it is cured, for the European Markets; what remains is fit only for the West-Indies; so that any Interruption in either Branch must be the Destruction of the whole. The manner of carrying on the Fishery is this; the Vessel draws two Eighths after the great General is taken out of the whole; the Shoreman who is generally the Owner has one Eighth for making, and the Fishermen the other five Eighths. Suppose the Vessel makes 800 Quintals, which appears by an exact Account taken last Year to be the Medium, and is estimated as follows, vizt.

         

    Sterling

    340 Quintals fit for the European Markets

    at 12/

    £204

     

    460 Quintals of West-India Fish

    at 9/

    207

     

    12 Barrels of Oyl

    at 30/

    18

    £429

    From this Sum of £429 — deduct the great General, which is Salt, Bait, Candles, Ballast, Boots etc, for the Salter etc.

       

    85–10–0

         

    £343–10-

    To the Vessel 2/8 which will barely pay for the Wear and Tear, as they expend double the Quantity of Cables, Anchors, Rigging and Sails, that Vessels in any other Employ do

     

    £85–17–6

     

    To the Shoreman’s one Eighth for making, on which the Support of his Family depends, as the Vessel don’t clear anything

     

    42–18–9

     

    To the Crew for the other five Eighths

     

    214–13–9

    £343–10–

    From the Crew’s ⅝ amounting to £214–13–9 is to be deducted the small General so called,854 being for Wood and Provisions of all Sorts, paid for by the Crew amounting to £44–10–0, likewise their Crafts as Boots, Barvils,855 Hooks, Lines, and small Stores amounting to, £5–15–0 a man for 7 men is £40–5–0; this leaves £129–18–4 to be divided among the Crew, and amounts to £18–11–3 Sterling a man; which is but a bare Subsistence, as most of the Fishermen have Families, and are at double the Expence for Cloathing, that other Seamen are; the Supply of which as well as the Rigging and Sails for the Vessels are from Great-Britain; should they be deprived of the Trade to the foreign Islands in the West Indies, by which two Thirds of the West-India Fish will be lost; this will reduce the Vessels Share to £51–17–6; which is not sufficient to pay the necessary Wear and Tear; the Fishermens Shares will likewise be reduced to £6–5–6½, a Sum by no Means sufficient for their Support. The Merchants who ship the Fish to Europe, and remit the Nett Proceeds to England, allow their Vessels from 2/6 to 3/ Sterling per Quintal Freight; if they go to Bilboa or the Streights, where they can’t procure Salt the Freight is 3/; if to Lisbon or Cadiz, it is only 2/6; at this low Freight the Fish seldom or never yeilds any Profit; If upon the whole the Merchants can make their Remittances at Par, they think themselves well off, and would always compound at this Rate for the Season: This evidently proves that the Fishery will not bear the least additional Incumbrance, and that a very small Discouragement will totally destroy it.

    THIRDLY, A Prohibition on the Trade to the foreign Islands will greatly promote the French Fishery: If the French Islands can be supplied with Fish for Molasses, it will be cheaper for them to purchase it of us than to catch it themselves; Should they be obliged to pay us Money, (as some have supposed they will be,) they must give a much greater Price for it than they do now, as our Vessels must come back empty, and consequently can’t afford it so low, as when they make a Freight Home; this will have a Tendency to promote and enlarge their Fishery; which the Planters in their Islands will not apply for, while they can be supplied with Fish for their Molasses and their establishing such a Fishery will be very prejudicial to Great-Britain; as great Numbers of our Fishermen having no Employ at home, will be induced to enter into the French Service, where they will have all possible Encouragement given them.

    FOURTHLY, The Fishery being a great Nursery of Seamen for his Majesty’s Navy, the Destruction thereof must very much weaken the Naval Power of Great-Britain. The Fishery in this Province alone employs near three Thousand Seamen, allowing only seven Men to a Vessel; the Vessels employed in carrying the merchantable Fish to Europe, are about fifty Sail, at eight Men to a Vessel is 400; the Vessels employed in the West-India Trade are about 300 Sail; by the Custom House Books it appears, that there was cleared out for the West-India Islands at the Ports of Boston and Salem, from January 1762, to January 1763, 266 Sail of Vessels; suppose only one half of these went to the foreign Islands, that is, 133 from these two Ports, and only 27 from Newbury and Casco Bay, which will make 160 at 8 Men to a Vessel is 1280; so that in the whole there will be near 5000 Seamen immediately turned out of Employ: From this Nursery of Seamen his Majesty’s Ships on this Station, and in the West-Indies, have often been supplied with Men in a Time of War; by which our Trade and Fishery have sometimes been greatly distressed; particularly the Squadron employed in the Reduction of Louisbourg and Quebec, upon application from Admiral Saunders were supplied with upwards of 500 Seamen, who were inlisted at Boston, to serve in that Expedition, and sent on board the Fleet then lying at Halifax; besides which two armed Vessels were fitted out at the Expence of this Government, for the Protection of our Coast, and manned out of the Fishermen; notwithstanding all which a Number were impressed out of the Vessels on the Banks, which obliged many to return without their Fairs, and by this means our Fishery was reduced one Third during the late War.

    FIFTHLY, The Destruction of the Fishery will be very prejudicial to the Trade of Great-Britain, by lessening the Demand for her Manufactures; (of which that Branch of Business occasions a very large Consumption). The Imports into Great-Britain from the Sugar Islands may appear more considerable than the Imports from the Northern Colonies; but the Exports of the Manufactures of Great-Britain to the Northern Colonies (on which the Wealth of the Nation so much depends) exceed those to the Sugar Islands vastly more than their Imports exceed ours; the Planters in the West-Indies soon get estates, leave their Plantations and retire; the Inhabitants of the Northern Colonies are not able by their Trade and Industry to procure Estates sufficient to retire; therefore are obliged to remain in this cold Climate, where they consume more of the Manufactures of Great-Britain, than the Sugar Planters have Occasion for, and their consuming these Manufactures in the Colonies is more beneficial to Great-Britain than their going Home would be in Order to consume the same Quantity there.

    The whole Produce of our Fishery, tho’ not immediately sent to Great-Britain, finally centers there, by means of our other Trade, which in a great Measure depends on this; so that the Importation of Goods from England into this Province, will thereby be lessened very near, if not the whole amount of our Fishery, being £164,466 Sterling per annum, as appears by the following Estimate of the Fish caught, and exported from hence, vizt. 300 Vessels in the Cod-Fishery, which caught last Year by the Accounts taken from the Fishing Towns 240,059 Quintals, Vizt.

    102,265 Quintals fit for the European Markets

    at 12/

    £61,359

    137,794 Quintals for the West-India Market

    9/

    62007–6–0

    90 Mackrell Vessels at 200 Barrels each is 18000 Barrels

    18/

    16200

    Shad, Alewives and other pickled Fish 1000 Barrels

    10/

    5000

    West-India Cod-Fish from Nova-Scotia & Newfoundland in Return for Provisions, Rum, Sugar & Molasses

       
       

    10000

    12 Barrels of Oyl to each Banker is 3600 Barrels

    30/

    5400

    15000 Hogsheads for Packing the West-India Fish

    6/

    4500

       

    £164,466–6–0

    The Exports of Fish to the West-Indies may be proved by the Custom House Books, where it will appear that from January 1762, to January 1763, there was entered for Exportation at the two Ports of Boston and Salem 14891 Hogsheads, and 2614 Quintals, equal to 330 Hogsheads, and make in all 15231 Hogsheads of Fish of about eight Quintals each.

    SIXTHLY, The Destruction of the Fishery will not only lessen the Importation of Goods from Great-Britain, but must greatly prejudice the whole Trade of the Province. The Trade to the foreign Islands is become very considerable: Surinam, and the other Dutch Settlements, are wholly supplied with Provisions, Fish, Lumber, Horses, Onions and other articles exported from the Northern Colonies; for which we receive Molasses in Return; this is distilled into Rum for the Fishery, and to export to the Southern Colonies for Naval Stores, which we send to Great-Britain, and for Grain; and to Africa to purchase Slaves for our own Islands in the West-Indies: If this Trade is destroyed, the Distillery on the Continent must be broke up, as all our own Islands do not export Molosses sufficient to supply the Northern Colonies with Beer. The annual Supply of Rum and Molasses for this Province alone including the Whale, Cod, and Mackrel Fishery amounts to near 9000; besides which we export to the Southern Colonies upwards of 3000 Hogsheads to Nova-Scotia, and Newfoundland about 1300 Hogsheads, and to Africa about 1700 Hogsheads, which amounts to upwards of 6000 Hogsheads exported; so that the whole Demand for this Province amounts to about 15000 Hogsheads per Annum of 100 Gallons each. It is said by the Planters in the West-Indies that they can supply us with Rum and Molasses for the Fishery, and our own Consumption, and that there is no occasion for any Distillers in the Northern Colonies; To which it may be answered; First, That they are not capable of supplying us with all the Rum and Molasses we want; It appears by the Entries at the Custom House, that from January 1762, to January 1763, there was entered at Boston and Salem, from the Conquered Islands upwards of 7000 Hogsheads of Molosses; whereas from our own Islands were entered only 406 Hogsheads of Rum, and 424 Hogsheads of Molosses, 412 of which were from Jamaica, and only 12 from all the other Islands. Secondly, That the Price of Rum at our own Islands for many Years past, has been and now is so high, that the Fishermen can’t afford to purchase it, nor do they make Use of any but what is distilled here; should we be obliged to take all our Supply from them, the Price would immediately advance more than double. Thirdly, The demand of the Northern Colonies for Molosses is at present so great, that the Price of it in our Islands would soon be equal to the Price of Rum; and from the natural increase of Inhabitants on the Continent, our Demands would soon render that Article too dear for the poorer Sort to purchase only as a medicine. Fourthly, Molosses is distilled here into Rum 50 per Cent cheaper than in the West Indies, which is a very great Advantage to the Fishery, and we are hereby enabled to supply the Southern Colonies, and save our Money to send to Great-Britain, which otherwise must go to those Colonies for Grain. We are able also to export large Quantities to Africa, in Return for which we receive Slaves and Gold Dust, and likewise to supply the Fishery at Newfoundland, so that the Distillery here is become very necessary, not only for our Fishery but for our other Trade too, and has been a very considerable Branch of Business, which we cannot do without; Rum, Sugar and Molasses are become so necessary by being universally used among the Lumbermen, Tradesmen, and all Sorts of Labourers, that advancing the Price of those Articles, must greatly inhaunce the Price of Lumber, and Ship-Building, by which large Remittances are made to Great-Britain; and this will be a further Discouragement to the English Trade. In short, as Necessity is the Mother of Invention, the People will be driven into Manufactures for their Support, which they will never think of while they can maintain themselves by Trade.

    SEVENTHLY, The Destruction of the Fishery will be the Ruin of those concerned in that Business, and that are dependent on it. The Fishing Vessels which cost upwards of £100,000 Sterling; more than one half of which was supplied from Great-Britain, will thereby be rendered useless, and of little or no Value; consequently a Loss to near that Amount must ensue to the Owners. The Merchants concern’d in shipping the Fish to Europe, and the West-Indies will be great Sufferers by their Vessels being reduced in their Value for want of Employ. The Tradesmen of all Sorts in the Fishing Towns will be reduced to Beggary, as their whole Support depends on the Fishery; nor will the Distress end here; the Tradesmen in the Country Towns will be greatly affected, particularly the Coopers who will lose

    The making of 5000 Barrels for Oyl, Blubber, and Fishermens

       

    Water Cask at

    3/6

    £875

    18,000 Barrels used for Mackrel and other pickled Fish.

    3/

    2700

    10,000 Hogsheads and Barrels used for Rum, as the Distillery

       

    will be broke up with the Fishery

    10/

    5000

    10,000 Shook Hogsheads sent to the foreign Islands for Molasses

       

    4/

    2000

    200,000 Hoops to make up the Molasses Hogsheads

    70/

    700

    The Tanner and Shoemaker will lose the Sale of 2000 Pair of Boots and Barvils

       
     

    2000

    The Farmer will likewise be affected, as each Banker carries 6 Barrels of Pork, each Mackrel Vessel 4, which makes 2160 Barrels of Pork at 80/ besides what the Vessels use that are employed in carrying off the Fish, which is at least 500 Barrels of Pork at 80/ and 500 Barrels of Beef at 40/

       
       
       
       
     

    11640

    5000 Quintals of Bread for the Fishermen, besides what is used in their Families

       

    20/

    5000

    1000 Bushels of Beans and Pease, besides Butter, Cheese, Roots, etc.

       

    8/

    400

       

    £30315

    The whole amounting to £30,315 Lawfull Money of this Province per Annum, besides the Lumber, Horses, Provisions and other Commodities sent to the foreign Islands as Cargoes.

    EIGHTHLY, The Sugar Act, if put in Execution, will greatly affect the King’s Revenue, by lessening the Importation of Rum and Sugar into Great-Britain. The Duties paid upon Rum, it is said, amount to upwards of £50,000 Sterling per Annum; this will be wholly lost to the Crown, as the Northern Colonies will take all the Rum our Islands can make; consequently none can be shipped to Great-Britain; they will likewise want a great Proportion of their Sugars; and in a few years, should our numbers increase in Proportion to what they have done for a century past, the whole Produce of the Islands we at present possess, will not exceed the Demand for this Continent; the Consumption at present is computed to be about 15,000 Hogsheads of One Thousand Pounds each; the Duties on which, if imported into Great-Britain, would amount to upwards of £30,000 Sterling per annum.

    NINTHLY, This Act was procured by the Interest of the West-India Planters, with no other View than to enrich themselves by obliging the Northern Colonies to take their whole Supply from them; and they still endeavour the Continuance of it under a Pretence, that they can supply Great-Britain and all her Colonies with West-India Goods, which is perfectly chimerical: Take their own Accounts of the Exportation of their Produce from their several Islands, (which, by the way, from some would be one half more than is really their own Produce, it being foreign Produce run among them, and then cleared out as English,) then take the natural Demand of Great-Britain, for their Sugars, and the Demand of the Colonies for Rum, Sugar and Molosses; and it will appear that their Produce is by no means sufficient, to supply even the bare Necessities of the English. If the Demand for Rum and Molosses in the Southern Colonies, is in any Proportion to that of this Province, it will still further surmount the Exportation of Molosses from our Islands; & such a large Proportion of their Sugars might be brought this way for our Supply, as would raise the Price so much in Great-Britain, that they would soon feel the unhappy Effects of it. The Planters in our Islands have no reason to complain of our Trade to the foreign Islands, as it can be made to appear by examining of Original Accounts of Sales of our Goods, and Invoices, shipped from their Islands for twenty years before the French War in 1744, that our Goods sold from 20 to 30 per Cent higher, and their Goods were sold us from 30 to 50 per Cent cheaper than since the Peace in 1748. The Increase of our Lumber Business and Fishery has been such, that by exporting to them such large Quantities of these Commodities, they do not sell for more than their Prime Cost; and so many of our Vessels going to their Islands, has occasioned the Rise of their Goods near double.

    The general Course of our Trade to the West-Indies having been this, our Vessels (except those bound to Surinam, and some that go directly to Jamaica) call at Barbadoes to try their Markets, from thence they proceed to Antigua, Nevis and St. Kitts, and in case they meet with a tolerable Market at either of those Islands, they always embrace it, if not they then proceed, some to Jamaica, others to St. Eustatius, and the other foreign Islands, where they dispose of the Cargoes which our own Islands do not want, being already overstock’d with those Commodities. But a further Proof that the Trade is in their Favour is this; formerly when our Goods fetch’d a Price with them, and their Produce did not vend quick; they owned and sent Vessels with their Produce to sell among us, and took our Produce in Pay; but this is not the Case now; for where one Vessel owned in the West-Indies comes to us, we send an hundred Sail to them, which plainly shows, that they do not want our Goods, so much as we do to sell them, nor to vend their own so much as we do to buy; their Navigation is otherwise employed; they take our Fish and other Commodities; dispose of them among the French, and pay us in the Return of those Goods only, shifted into English Cask at 100 per Cent Advance.

    Upon the whole, It is plain that our Islands are able neither to supply us with what we want from them, nor to take from us what Lumber and Fish we are obliged to export: and they will be still less able to do either; for our Demands will be growing faster than their Produce, and our Fishery which has been increasing, will continue still to increase, if not obstructed, while their Demands have not increased in any Proportion, and never can.

    BOSTON December 1763856

    The Advocates for our Sugar Islands alledge that the Supplys the foreign Islands receive from us by our Trade with them are of great Advantage to them in carrying on their Works and supporting their Slaves, and that they are hereby enabled more easily to send their Sugars to Market, and to become our Rivals in that Trade. If this was really the Case, the French Government would certainly permitt and even encourage our Trade with their Islands. But they are so far from doing this, that they have laid a Prohibition on it & thrown so many Discouragements in the Way, that it is with Difficulty and oftentimes with considerable Hazard, that it is carry’d on at all.857

    Mr. George Parker Winship communicated a Memoir of Frederick Lewis Gay, which Mr. Winship had been requested to prepare for publication in the Transactions of the Society.

    After the meeting was dissolved, dinner was served. The guests of the Society were the Rev. Dr. Samuel McChord Crothers, the Rev. Dr. Kirsopp Lake, Dr. Frederick Cheever Shattuck, and Messrs. George Russell Agassiz, Robert Pierce Casey, Charles Cestre, Charles Robert Cross, Otis Grant Hammond, Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, Joseph Grafton Minot, Grenville Howland Norcross, James Parker Parmenter, Henry Goddard Pickering, Arthur Gordon Webster, and Samuel Bayard Woodward. The President presided.

    MEMOIR OF FREDERICK LEWIS GAY, A.B.

    by GEORGE PARKER WINSHIP

    Frederick Lewis Gay was born in Boston on October 28, 1856. He graduated from the Boston Latin School in June, 1874, spent the next four years as a member of the class of 1878 at Harvard College, and the four succeeding years in attendance at the Harvard Medical School. He went to Chicago in 1887 and became cashier in the offices of the Santa Fe system. On June 5, 1889, he married Josephine Spencer of Dorchester. Mr. and Mrs. Gay soon returned to Boston, residing at No. 84 Beacon Street, and a year later settled on Fisher Avenue in Brookline, where they afterward built the house in which he died on March 3, 1916.

    The rest of the story of Mr. Gay’s life outside of his home is the record of a few intimate, warmly cherished friendships and a single dominating interest. A mind of unusual power had refused to concentrate on the routine of academic studies, medical schooling, or business prospects, but when it found itself freed from the pressure of neighborhood and family expectations, it developed rapidly and productively. It made him the recognized master of a much frequented field.

    While he was a college undergraduate, on September 6, 1877, Gay became a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. In the issue of its Register for the following January he contributed a note calling attention to the omission in the “Saltonstall Pedigree,” of the name of the sister of Sir Richard Saltonstall, from whom he was descended. A year later he printed in the Register “William Clark’s Genealogical Statement,” dated at Boston in October, 1731; and in the same issue appeared his account, filling fifteen pages, of “John Gay of Boston and Some of his Descendants.”

    He was the eighth in descent from John Gay, who had lived at Watertown and helped to settle Dedham. Both his father and mother came of stocks that had taken a due share in the activities of the several communities with which they had been connected. On one side or the other and frequently on both sides, he traced to many of the influential names in the early annals of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Elder Brewster and Edward Winslow, Anne Hutchinson, Dr. John Clark, Rev. Ebenezer Gay, Sir Charles Hobby, Thomas Lake, and many of the families of Allin, Coit, Cookson, Ellis, Fisher, Gardner, Gooch, Hubbart or Hobart, Kilcup, Lovering, Maverick, Phillips, and Thacher, were his forebears or their next of kin. It was his especial fortune to learn from his mother’s father, Dr. Winslow Lewis, and his aunt Anne Gay, much about all of these people, so that he came to think of them less as ancestors than as acquaintances and friends, whose daily habits and personal idiosyncracies should be kept in mind whenever they are being talked or written about.

    This intimate familiarity with a large number of colonial individuals, the knowledge of their peculiarities and the inheritances which explain much of what they are reported to have said and done, was the foundation upon which Mr. Gay built. He was a conscientious delver after genealogical data, sparing neither time, strength nor money in the search for a name or a date to hang on an empty twig of a family tree. He searched, not by looking through old record books, but by reading each of them and all the other available papers. He preferred to do the work in this way because he enjoyed it, and the enjoyment came because he knew a great deal about most of the persons whose names appeared in any New England document. When he wrote, as he occasionally did to the Boston Transcript’s genealogical column, his communication nearly always had an especial value on account of the setting which he was able to give to the isolated fact that he felt called upon to correct or to put on record.

    The publication of an unusual bit of evidence, with a shrewd, intuitive suggestion of its obvious meaning, had been his first essay in print, and the second was a document written a century and a half before. He made it his business to illuminate the local history of this community by these two means. In April, 1894, he corrected the date of La Tour’s appointment as Lieutenant-General of Acadia, which had appeared erroneously in print several times, by producing the original text of the appointment and offering it for publication in the first volume; of this Society’s Publications. Each succeeding volume contains some message from the study on Fisher Hill, which came to be the place where the history of New England was investigated more thoroughly and thought about more seriously than it had been anywhere since the death of Charles Deane.

    His method is nowhere better illustrated than in the modest statement — the modesty being a part of the plan to ensure acceptance as well as a temperamental characteristic of the man — in the Transactions for April, 1895, which set forth the reasons why he was certain that all the previous writers had been ignorant of the actual location of the house in which Governor John Winthrop lived in Boston prior to his financial troubles in 1639. The site does not seem important, unless one wishes to know exactly how the lines of social and commercial cleavage in New England first began to be laid down. It was a point which interested Mr. Gay because of his vivid realization of the extent to which the natural course of each individual’s daily routine influenced the trend of affairs in a small community. To him the inferences that followed inevitably from one location or another much more than justified the spending of all the time which it took to find and to read carefully the seven Suffolk deeds which settled this matter, and change the natural but inaccurate presumptions of preceding writers into a demonstrable certainty. Mr. Gay had the good fortune to acquire, among the latest additions to his collection, the original of one of these deeds, on which was the autograph endorsement of its acknowledgment before Governor Bellingham. This document was exhibited by him in March, 1915, at the last meeting of this Society which he attended.

    An unforeseen result of the paper on the site of Governor Winthrop’s house came to light at the December meeting in 1900, at which Mr. Gay communicated, on behalf of Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, Jr., a group of hitherto unpublished letters written by Governor Winthrop. These letters had been found among the Harleian manuscripts at the British Museum, and Mr. Winthrop, to whom the news of the discovery had been sent, secured copies of them. He sent these at once to Mr. Gay, placing them at the disposal of this Society. Mr. Winthrop also wrote the explanatory note which accompanies the printed letters. His sympathetic appreciation of the way in which the Society was carrying on the work of elucidating the annals of colonial Massachusetts bore further fruit in his testamentary gift of $3000 to the Society’s funds.

    The location of the Governor’s Boston mansion on the site where the Exchange Building stands, made it necessary, to Mr. Gay’s mind, for him to settle the original householders on the remainder of what is now State Street. In the same way he followed Winthrop across the Charles and up the Mystic rivers to his Ten Hills farm and the neighboring Royal House. Concerning the latter he gradually accumulated a note-book full of odd information that satisfied him that this was in earlier days either an Usher or a Lidgett house. Likewise, realizing from his reading that Governor Bellingham’s city mansion had similarly been wrongly located, he searched the archives until this was placed definitely on the right spot. A less pretentious edifice in which he took much deeper interest, and which he looked for persistently until he found the lot on which it stood in 1639, was that which housed the first printing press set up in English America. The Cambridge antiquaries had placed this elsewhere, as a bronze tablet testifies, but he showed conclusively that it actually faced on what is now Holyoke Street.

    Mr. Gay’s interest in anything that had to do with Harvard and his desire to serve the University were shown in many quiet ways, and brought him a deeply appreciated recognition when the Corporation gave him his degree as of his own class at Commencement in 1903. On March 6, 1902, he wrote to the Council of this Society that he would pay the cost of transcribing the contents of three volumes in which the early manuscript records of the college are preserved, as well as $2000 towards the cost of issuing these in print. The seemingly slow progress on this work was due in no small part to his insistence that nothing should be overlooked or slighted, and that when issued it should be definitive. His satisfaction with the work as it went along was great, and although he did not live to see the volumes published,858 he had personally examined and approved all the printed sheets containing the text of the records.

    Three lines and three photo-engraved plates, in the Transactions for April, 1911, are all there is in print as a result of a trip made by Mr. Gay, who never went far from his own reading chair for any trivial reason, to Philadelphia to examine with his own eyes Du Simitiere’s drawings of the Harvard buildings. During the same journey he went deep into the New Jersey archives in a fruitless search for two record books of the seventeenth century New England Company, one of which was discovered in a Boston library five years later through his efforts. At the following February meeting he read a letter from the second Rev. Thomas Shepard “to his son at his admission into the college” which had been often printed, but never before in its entirety. In April, 1913, he set forth who Hugh Peter was, and forcefully pointed out the fact that the University in its official Quinquennial Catalogue ignored him, as well as the other members of Harvard’s first Board of Overseers. Among the books which he exhibited on this occasion, all from his own collection, was the first edition of the Milk for Babes, printed at Rotterdam probably, in 1630. No other copy of this has been located, possibly because he was the first to recognize that this was one of the publications of the militant Puritan parson. To the next March meeting he brought a little volume written by a German divine and printed at Riga in 1691, in which he had found, inserted by the author as a chance “Gleaning to fill out a blank page” at the end of the book, a “Relation of the Academy at Cambridge,” in which he recognized convincing evidence that the college had printed an otherwise unknown triennial catalogue in 1685.

    At this Society’s March meeting in 1899 Mr. Gay showed, with an explanatory statement brief and pertinent as always, a manuscript petition that had come into his possession, embodying the complaints of the troops who were investing the town of Boston in May, 1775, about the insufficient and bad food with which they were supplied. A letter from the Rev. Thomas Welde “to his people at Tarling in Essex” was offered for publication in March, 1910. Three years later he provided a photographic facsimile of the broadside making public “The Capital Laws of New England.” This was taken from the only copy he could find, in the Thomason Collection at the British Museum, of a London reprint of the original edition printed at Cambridge in 1643, which has apparently disappeared. In April, 1905, he communicated a number of documents which illustrated the activities of Major Robert Sedgwick of Charlestown as a trusted agent of Cromwell.

    The Massachusetts Historical Society printed in its Proceedings for April, 1910, a letter which he had written to its editor, calling attention to the fact that a Boston shopkeeper in 1741 had owned, and lost, copies of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, and also stating his reasons for speaking of John Humphrey as the “press agent” of the Great Emigration of 1630. A number of documents relating to Edward Ashley, a trader at Penobscot accused of selling guns to the Indians in 1631, were contributed to its Proceedings for February, 1912. For Professor Kittredge’s paper in the same issue he supplied the dates when Dr. Douglass paid his dues to the Scots’ Charitable Society of Boston, as well as much more significant material taken from his transcripts made from the letter-books of the Royal Society in London. In February, 1915, he presented to that Society for publication the documents which he had gathered in regard to the Rev. Francis Marbury, and the evidence which established the date and place of the marriage of Marbury’s famous daughter Anne to William Hutchinson.

    Only twice did he appeal to the wider general public, when he thought that he had something to say which would or ought to interest it. The omission of any mention of Nathaniel Eaton, the first active head of the unnamed infant Harvard, from the Quinquennial Catalogue, seemed to him sufficiently curious to justify a repetition of what others had urged, and so he brought it again to the attention of the graduates, in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin for May 26, 1915. This was the particular sort of thing which he considered that it was his business in life to put right once for all, and he set about doing it in the most effective way he knew.

    With a similar end in view he sent to the New York Nation, for publication in its issue for February 11, 1909, his account of “The First American Play,” performed by the Sieur De Monts and his fellow French colonists at Port Royal, Acadia, in 1606. Inasmuch as he had found the entire text of the production in one of the books with which students of the history of Canada are most familiar, Marc Lescarbot’s Les Muses de la Nouvelle France, published at Paris in 1609, Mr. Gay endeavored to put the facts on record where writers on American literature, as well as those who study its history, could not longer be ignorant of it.

    A contribution prepared for the meeting of this Society in April, 1915, begins, “I have brought for examination the muster roll of Captain Thomas Larimore’s Company, which was mustered for her Majesty’s service December 1, 1702, and embarked at Boston for Jamaica. . . . The particular significance attaching to this is that it is the first company ever sent outside the limits of the Province in obedience to instructions from the Crown.” An indisposition that did not seem unusually serious prevented Mr. Gay’s attending that meeting, and he kept actively at his books through the summer and autumn, but at the meeting in the following March his death was announced.

    The preceding summary of what, for one reason or another, happened to get into print, serves admirably as a suggestion, but it is little more than that, of what Mr. Gay was doing in his study during the years from 1890 to 1916. There he read the three thousand odd volumes written by his colonial ancestors and their contemporaries, which had come into his possession in 1875 by the bequest of Dr. Lewis. As he read, he noted the titles of other books which would help him to understand these. Whenever opportunity offered he bought these other books that he wanted. Never a collector in the usual sense, he gathered steadily everything that would help him to comprehend the people in whom he was interested. The library that he brought together ranked high among those devoted to the early New Englanders. Choice copies of many costly books, and many more of greater rarity than the ones that are familiar to the bibliographers, found their way to his shelves. He was particularly fond of hunting down a suspected volume within whose covers lurked some passage full of meaning to whoever could supply the explanation of its significance. Moreover, he read each of these volumes as it came to him.

    Puritan theology was to Mr. Gay a thoroughly entertaining subject with which to while away a quiet evening. He began by understanding who the men were for whom the theologians wrote their books, and why these books were printed and read in the seventeenth century. He came to be equally familiar with the personal relationships existing among the different groups of controversialists. He comprehended the human reasons which led them to take one side or the other, to shift at times from one to the other, and to hold opinions and to use language with a vigor and pertinency that is a truly God-given endowment. The ideas about life in this world as well as in the next, upon which these opinions were based, were a part of his own inheritance, which his early training enabled him to interpret. Like a good many of his ancestors, he could understand and sympathize with both sides of most of these controversies.

    The dogmatical treatises and non-polemical sermons interested him almost as much as those in which the human factors lay nearer the surface. In these also he could perceive the reasons which led to the covering of reams of paper with carefully thought-out sentences, and to the paying the cost of printing heavy tomes spotted with references to Biblical commentaries and the Church Fathers. He watched the working of the minds of the men whose daily habits he knew, and while watching this with thorough enjoyment, he picked up many stray bits of New England news.

    The transition of interest from Puritan theology to manuscript documents came as naturally as had the earlier shifting from genealogy to sermons. Mr. Gay never lost his instinct for or his delight in the solving of genealogical problems, nor did he ever lose track of the remote ramifications of his family lines. He also continued to read theological disquisitions whenever the booksellers could supply one in his line with which he was not familiar. He perused Thomas Edwards’s Gangræna, as well as the Lives of the Irish Saints in the Latin text, during one of his last summers at Marblehead.

    The verifying of references in footnotes led him to the Calendars of British State Papers and to the Reports of the English Historical Manuscripts Commission, and therein a fresh realm of delight opened to him. Through these substantial volumes, wherein many others had browsed, he read systematically, noting in his memorandum books every document that aroused a suspicion that it might refer to any on the constantly increasing list of subjects about which he was collecting data. The Calendars gave only abstracts, and so he sent to his London agent for transcripts of the whole of each one that held the slightest promise of additional information. The omitted portions of abstracted documents rarely justify the hopes of investigators, unless the reader is prepared to interpret the significance hidden behind polite phrases and messages to relatives. To Mr. Gay, examining these papers with somewhat of the appreciation of the original recipient, the transcripts proved to be stored with a wealth of untouched material.

    The transcripts from the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and private collections in England, accumulated steadily, until they made an imposing array of fifty-six bound volumes. Never churlish, although always particular about the way in which the information that he controlled was used, Mr. Gay made the contents of these volumes known to those whom he thought that he could trust to use them to advantage. Seventy-five copies of A Rough List of a Collection of Transcripts relating to the History of New England, 1630–1776, were printed in 1913, making a volume of 273 pages. These were distributed after careful consideration to students in whose personal judgment and historical competence he had entire confidence, for in the introductory note was the statement, deliberately made, that the transcripts were “at the service of those who receive this book from me.” The series of volumes containing these papers, with others supplementing them, has been given to the Massachusetts Historical Society by his heirs, with a provision that “the freest possible use of it, consistent with its safety, be given to all historical students of serious intent.”

    The number of persons who were invited to his study was never large, for he did not care to share his ideas or information with those who he thought were likely to make unintelligent or injudicious use of either. Least of all would he pass the time with acquaintances who had been misled into regarding him as one who was buying old books in lieu of other occupation. To those whom he admitted to his workroom, there were no secrets or prohibitions, although there was apt to be much talk of century-old gossip that has not gone out in modern print.

    Mr. Gay was always most generous to anyone who secured his confidence. He shared freely his antiquarian lore and his most precious trove from ancient manuscripts. The mention of his name in a preface or a footnote often covers the use of data which he had accumulated during years of reading, or of suggestions which he had long before elaborated into plans for some independent publication, all of which had been turned over to another. He was equally generous with his original material. He presented to this Society at its meeting in April, 1894, the original manuscript commission on parchment, signed by Louis XIII of France, and dated February 8, 1631, appointing Charles de la Tour Lieutenant-General of Acadia. To the American Antiquarian Society on its one hundredth anniversary meeting, October 12, 1912, he gave the contemporary manuscript Records of the Council for New England, covering the meetings in the two important years 1622 and 1623. Money he gave liberally, but always as quietly as might be. The treasurer’s books of this, as of the other societies in which he was interested, preserve his name, for a generous amount whenever help was needed to carry out a well-considered plan to serve any historical or antiquarian object.

    The “Rough List” of the transcripts was made by Mr. Gay with his own hand, except for one series of documents, and he wrote out an annotated shelf list of what was to him the more valuable portion of his library. He filled a long series of note-books with memoranda and suggestions. A reliable memory enabled him to find almost anything that he wanted to refer to, in his books or among his papers. He realized that it was by doing these things himself that he secured his intimate, accurate acquaintance with them, but he also appreciated the fact that his interests had come to be so varied and his material so bulky that assistance was imperative if the things that he had undertaken were to be accomplished. He had the good fortune to find a collaborator who was able to hold his own as a persistent investigator and a retentive accumulator of facts, Mr. John H. Edmonds. Mr. Edmonds had succeeded, while compiling a list of maps of Boston for the city’s Engineering Department, in finding out what he wanted to know about the many rare ones belonging to Mr. Gay. At the same time Mr. Gay found that this was the man for whom he had been looking. The result was that the two worked together during the ensuing nine years, and that a very considerable amount of the stored-up knowledge which would otherwise have gone when the older man died, became a matter of record.

    During these years Mr. Gay took up the systematic investigation of a number of subjects about which he had been gathering data and ideas during the previous decades. One of these that had been in his mind much of the time for thirty years and that was all but completed for publication, dealt with the career of Cyprian Southack, privateer, pioneer New England cartographer, and for nineteen years Captain of the Massachusetts Province Galley. Southack was in all probability the earliest inhabitant of this part of the world to practise map making extensively, preparing charts of the New England and Canada coasts, with detailed surveys of nearly all the important harbors. A character even more picturesque was Sir William Phips, whose search for buried treasure in the Bahamas was recorded in a group of papers which were put in order for publication by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Other students, rather than look the matter up, had found it easier to suggest that Cotton Mather must have drawn his long bow when he stated that Phips was one of a family of twenty-one children. Mr. Gay sought to find out about these brothers and sisters, and succeeded in locating definitely at least three fourths of them, turning up a considerable amount of fresh material concerning the more distinguished member of the family as a by-product of the search.

    For six months most of his attention was given to coördinating and supplementing the notes about the most famous of American pirates. The publication of Sir Cornelius Neal Dalton’s The True Captain Kidd stopped further work on this subject, although it was evident that there was still much to be told about the treasure that Kidd acquired and what became of it. As a part of the effort to place Kidd in his proper historical setting, other pirates were followed on their voyages; Captain Low of Boston, who took 140 vessels in twenty months, Captain Bartholomew Roberts, who took 400 vessels in three years, many of them off the New England coast, Captain Avery, who starved in New England with his pockets full of gems, and Captain Bellamy who was lost on the back of Cape Cod with 127 of his crew. Captains Pound, Bradish, Phillips, and Fly were others who had a place in this noteworthy assemblage.

    Another sort of Captain, Jonathan Carver, author of the Travels, being a Massachusetts man, came in for a share of note taking, as well as of book buying, as soon as Mr. Gay read that his good name had been assailed. What is perhaps the finest collection of the numerous editions of his writings in any library east of Cleveland was soon matched by the carefully analyzed records of the three Jonathan Carvers, whose divergent careers had given the traveller the unmerited reputation of never having been or done what he claimed in his narratives. Mr. Gay bought Carver’s Travels in order to find out about the author; he started to look up Thomas Maule because he had the good fortune to secure copies of three of the exceedingly rare works which bear that author’s name. The reading of these books convinced him that they were not by the same writer. The consequent investigation, which led to a perusal of the writings of Robert Calef and the contemporary Quakers, was one of the later subjects taken in hand.

    There were many of these subjects about which investigations had been carried far enough to show that the results would justify whatever trouble and time might be necessary to complete them. One of these was the Hollis Street Church in Boston and its stubborn pastor, the Reverend Mather Byles of more reverend ancestry and picturesque local reputation. The Rev. Mr. Byles’s private records of the church’s affairs, which had come into Mr. Gay’s possession, have been presented by Mrs. Gay in his name to this Society. Boston riots was another, especially those outbreaks in which Daniel Malcolm had a hand. Taverns likewise, but more particularly the Bunch of Grapes, the two Punch Bowls, and the Vernon Head which had belonged to an ancestor, together with the manifold events that emanated from these hostelries, occupied much of his attention.

    The opportunity to purchase a large collection of the original papers relating to the Penobscot expedition of 1779, which have also been given to this Society by Mrs. Gay, set him to work on the details of that adventure. He knew the Kennebec and Sagadahock regions from frequent cruisings in his yacht, and quite as well from his trips in search of the early proprietors and settlers, and the location of their Church of England edifice over which the Rev. Robert Gutch of Salem presided.

    The ownership of a lot near Fort Sewall at Marblehead led him to run the sequence of his own and the adjoining titles, with the result that a wholly new line of entertaining information came to light, taking him for a while into the affairs of the Conants and of the Westons of London, Weymouth, Salem, and Virginia. The extraordinary complications that have accumulated around many of the Marblehead land titles suggested the advisability of printing the available manuscript material relating to that locality. A special calendar was prepared of the Marblehead documents dated before 1776 in the archives of the state. Exact copies were secured of all of these down to 1760, as well as of every paper in the Court Files of Suffolk County, to 1700, that contains the name of Marblehead.

    Dedham and Brookline shared with Boston and Marblehead his special interest in the communities with which he had inherited connection or personal association. His collection of Dedham books, including those by Dedham folk and those mentioning the town, as well as those printed in it, was given after his death to the Dedham Historical Society, of which he had long been a member, taking a generous and friendly interest in all of its activities.

    The notes relating to these communities were numerous, but there were breaks in the several series which interrupted the work on almost every subject that was taken up. As a long step toward filling these gaps, a detailed summary was prepared from the documents in the Massachusetts archives dated between 1625 and 1776, noting every reference which seemed likely to prove useful. The localities which were watched for included Acadia and Nova Scotia, Maine and New Hampshire. Among the broader subjects were the work of engravers, leading to counterfeiters and so to whatever concerned the issue of bills of public credit; pirates and thence to malefactors of whatever description; marriages and divorces; the Canadian expeditions, and so everything on the French and Indian wars, including impressment on land or sea, and thus to almost anything that seemed to be sufficiently unusual to call for particular consideration. Finding as this work progressed that many of the statements needed further elucidation, a supplementary calendar was prepared of the Council Records from 1690 to 1760. To facilitate the use of this material, an index was compiled to both series.

    Another index that proved to be of the utmost value in bringing together bits of apparently meaningless information, gave a summary of the items in the local columns and the advertisements in the Boston News Letter from 1704 to 1708, the New England Courant from 1721 to 1726, and the New England Weekly Journal from 1727 to 1741. Besides the indexes made from these consecutive files, there were others to single years of a number of papers, compiled when the work on some special topic made it desirable to consult them. By means of these it was repeatedly found possible to settle exact dates which gave fresh meaning to otherwise insignificant facts, to determine just when a controversial pamphlet appeared and thus throw new light upon its causes or consequences, and in other ways to add definiteness and precision to statements of what and how and why.

    “The Pelham Club. Boston 1901” was the name which Mr. Gay put on a series of photogravure reproductions made for him from twelve mezzotint portraits engraved by Peter Pelham in Boston between 1727 and 1751. Nearly all of these were taken from his own unsurpassed impressions of the originals. The subjects are Charles Brockwell, his Majesty’s Chaplain in Boston, Mather Byles, “Ecclesiae apud Bostonum Nov-Anglorum Pastor,” Henry Caner, Minister of King’s Chapel, Benjamin Colman, D.D., Timothy Cutler, of Christ Church, William Hooper, Minister of Trinity Church, “Cottonus Matherus S. Theologiae Doctor Regiae Societatis Londinensis Socius,” John Moorhead, “Minister of a Church of Presbyterian Strangers at Boston,” Thomas Prince, “Quintus Ecclesiae Australis Bostonii Novanglorum Pastor,” Sir William Pepperrell, Governor William Shirley, and Thomas Hollis, “a most generous Benefactor to Harvard College.” In addition to these portraits by Pelham, he distributed in the name of the Club a portrait of John Adams, in the hope that some one might be able to confirm, or disprove, his opinion that the original was engraved as well as painted by Savage.

    The early Boston artists and their work, especially their portraits, engaged much of Mr. Gay’s attention. Pelham’s mezzotint of Sir William Pepperrell was exhibited by him at the January meeting of this Society in 1898, when he pointed out that the inscription gave the name of the painter, Smibert. The portrait was clearly copied from an original canvas, now belonging to the Essex Institute at Salem, which had frequently been described as by an unknown artist. At the meeting in February, 1902, he called attention to the entry in the Boston Selectmen’s records for August 25, 1701, mentioning “Lawrence Brown, a Limner,” concerning whose ability to support himself the town fathers were properly cautious. He contributed a paper on Gawen and Mather Brown, with a portrait of the latter by himself, reproduced from the original in Mr. Gay’s own possession, to the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society for March, 1914. The shadowy Tom Child, “who often painted death,” and the surgeon who married his widow and succeeded to his painting business, Greenwood, Copley, Blackburn, Emmons and Smibert were other artists whose names were in the note-books always near at hand.

    A monograph was well under way on Thomas Johnston, 1708–1767, japanner, heraldic painter, organ builder and engraver. The researches into his career resulted, among other things, in attributing to Johnston twenty-three works in place of the six engravings on copper which are listed in Stauffer’s Early American Engravers. It was discovered that three of Johnston’s children followed their father’s profession as an artist, and that one of these was probably the painter of a considerable number of the portraits which have been confidently attributed to Copley by their later owners. By locating the residences of Pelham and Copley, the Johnstons and Greenwood, it was found that they all lived near together, so that the likelihood that each influenced the others to some extent, and that the younger generation studied under and strove to emulate the work of the most successful master, was easily established.

    Engravers and cartographers were both equally concerned in the production of the early maps. In furtherance of his studies in this direction, Mr. Gay distributed to those with whom he was corresponding on this subject in 1905, a few copies of a facsimile of John Seller’s Map of New England published at London in 1675. In 1912 he issued a photolithographic facsimile of Captain Thomas Pound’s A New Map of New England from Cape Cod to Cape Sables, exactly surveyed by the Author, the larger part of which is an inset of Boston Harbor.

    A Descriptive Catalogue of an Exhibition of Early Engraving in America, held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston during the winter of 1904–1905, lists forty-four items selected from Mr. Gay’s collection. He printed for his own use a special edition of one hundred copies, on larger and better paper, of this catalogue. In 1907 he served on the committee which arranged the exhibition of books illustrating the pre-Revolutionary history of Massachusetts, at the Jamestown Exposition. In order that there might be a permanent record of this very comprehensive representation of the early stages of the State’s intellectual evolution, he printed at his own expense, but under the seal of the commonwealth, three hundred copies of A Descriptive Catalogue of the Massachusetts Exhibit of Colonial Books at the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition. The bibliographical and descriptive notes under each title were prepared by his friend and trusted agent, George Emery Littlefield. “Synopsis Medicinae or a Compendium of Galenical and Chymical Physick By Zerobabel Endecott Physician of Salem” is the title given to a manuscript in his collection which was printed in 1914 “for Frederick Lewis Gay and George Francis Dow and their Friends.”

    Hugh Peter, Puritan divine, Harvard Overseer, Roundhead Colonel, and English regicide, led Mr. Gay further afield than any other of the many characters whom he tried to track to their lairs. He started on this trail in 1912 because a writer in Notes and Queries drew inferences disparaging to the old Puritan. Mr. Gay’s instinct made him suspect that these might not stand the test of verification. He found and bought the books from which quotations had been made, and in order that he might be certain that he understood the author, he ordered as many more of Peter’s writings as he could find in the bookshops. He kept on buying until he had secured twenty-three separate publications, and in addition filled several shelves with the productions of Peter’s more or less venomous opponents.

    He soon found that he had launched himself on the tortuous channel that winds through the mazes of the English Civil War and Commonwealth periods. It would have given pause to most men who thought that they had their course already well laid out, but Mr. Gay sallied into the grim recesses of these tracts with all the zest of an explorer amid an uncharted archipelago. He read these pamphlets with the same keen insight into the human interests hidden behind their interminable sentences that had carried him through the dogmatical treatises of the same period. He ordered from the English booksellers’ catalogues most of the titles printed during the years from 1640 to 1661. As soon as the dealers realized that he had a new interest, they began to offer him the first chance at whatever they acquired in this field, with the result that he secured several important collections of tracts before they were broken up for the general trade. During the four years remaining of his life, these Civil War tracts came to Fisher Avenue at the rate of nearly a thousand a year. An extraordinarily large proportion of them contain notes or memoranda showing that Mr. Gay had read them. This is true of all of those that concern Hugh Peter, Sir Harry Vane, and the unrestrainable William Prynne. His English correspondents had an open order to send anything in which these names appeared.

    Soon after the collecting of the Civil War tracts became a definite pursuit, it was learned that his principal competitor was the Harvard Library. An arrangement mutually satisfactory was easily made between the rivals. Mr. Gay was appointed by the Harvard Corporation “Curator of British and American Historical Tracts.” As such, he assumed the congenial task, for which no one could have been more competent, of spending the money that the college library allotted for this subject. He was assigned a room in the new Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library building. There he planned to combine his own collection of tracts with those belonging to the college, and to develop the two systematically with a view to their eventual union. This plan has been carried out through the generous cooperation of Mrs. Gay and his two brothers, both of whom died shortly after this arrangement was completed. The Gay Collection in the Harvard Library comprises all the historical tracts of the Stuart and Commonwealth periods belonging to the University. A number of important additions have already been made since it was organized as a distinct section of the library, and both its size and convenient arrangement for investigators assure it a position as one of the important features of the Harvard Library. There will be no more suitable memorial to Frederick Lewis Gay, nor could there be one which would more fully meet his wishes that the work which he was doing should go on in the college library at Cambridge.

    After his return to Boston, Mr. Gay was elected to the Tavern Club, in 1889; he became a member of the Club of Odd Volumes in 1890; and two years later he rejoined the New England Historic Genealogical Society, from which he had withdrawn while he was living in Chicago. He became a member of this Society at its third stated meeting, in March, 1893. In April, 1906, he was elected to the American Antiquarian Society, and to the Massachusetts Historical Society on January 8, 1914.