Council of The Colonial Society of Massachusetts
1 May, 1918
President
- FRED NORRIS ROBINSON, Ph.D. Cambridge
Vice-President
- Hon. MARCUS PERRIN KNOWLTON, LL.D. Springfield
- ANDREW McFARLAND DAVIS, A.M. Cambridge
Recording Secretary
- HENRY WINCHESTER CUNNINGHAM, A.B. Milton
Corresponding Secretary
- Rev. CHARLES EDWARDS PARK, D.D. Boston
Treasure
- HENRY HERBERT EDES, A.M. Cambridge
Registrar
- ALFRED JOHNSON, Litt.D. Brookline
Executive Members
- SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON, Ph.D. Concord
- JOHN WOODBURY, A.B. Canton
- CHARLES LEMUEL NICHOLS, M.D. Worcester
Editor of Publications
- ALBERT MATTHEWS, A.B. Boston
1 Read but not printed
2 Read but not printed
3 Read but not printed
4 The terms “1672 edition” and “1675 volume” are used advisedly, and require a word of explanation. The word “edition” is thus defined in the Oxford Dictionary:
3.a. One of the differing forms in which a literary work (or a collection of works) is published, either by the author himself, or by subsequent editors. b. An impression, or issue in print, of a book, pamphlet, etc.; the whole number of copies printed from the same set of types and issued at the same time.
As used by me the word “edition” in “1672 edition” has the meaning given it under b in the above definition.
The word “impression” is thus defined in the same dictionary:
3.c. The printing of that number of copies (of a book, etc.) which forms one issue of it; ‘one course of printing’ (Johnson); hence, the aggregate of copies thus printed; see Edition 3b.
Sometimes distinguished from ‘edition,’ as an unaltered reprint from standing type or plates; but often used as a more general term including both ‘edition’ and ‘reprint:’ cf. quot. 1891.
The quotation referred to is from the Preface (p. 5) to the Bibliographical Catalogue of Macmillan’s Publications, and reads as follows:
After careful consideration the Publishers decided to describe as an Edition an impression from type set up afresh either with or without alteration and read for press by a proof-reader. An impression from standing type or from Stereotype or Electrotype plates is described as a Reprint.
The word “reprint” is thus defined in the Oxford Dictionary:
1. A reproduction in print of any matter already printed; a new impression of a work previously printed, without alteration of the matter.
The word “reissue” is thus defined in the Oxford Dictionary:
A second or renewed issue; spec. in the book-trade, a republication at a different price or in a different form of part of an impression already placed on the market.
If my conclusions in regard to the 1675 volume of Massachusetts Laws are correct, that volume cannot properly be described either as an “edition” or as an “impression” or as a “reprint” or as a “reissue,” or apparently by any other bibliographical term; and hence I have taken refuge in the word “volume.”
5 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 453.
6 Vol. iv. pt. ii. pp. 467–469.
7 Vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 488.
8 Vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 514.
9 Two other extracts from the Massachusetts Colony Records may be given, the first under date of May 15, 1672; the second under date of May 7, 1673:
In ansr to the petition of John Vsher, the Court judgeth it meete to order, & be it by this Court ordered & enacted, that no printer shall print any more coppies then are agreed & pajd for by the ouner of the sajd coppie or coppies, nor shall he nor any other reprint or make sale of any of the same, wthout the sajd owners consent, vpon the forfeiture and pœnalty of treble the whole charges of printing, & paper, &c, of the whole quantity payd for by the ouner of the coppie, to the sajd ouner or his assignes (vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 527).
Mr John Vsher hauing binn at the sole chardge of the impression of the booke of lawes, & presented the Goūnor, magistrate, secretary, as also euery deputy, the clark of ye deputjes on, & Capt̄ Dauis one, the Court judgeth it meete to order, that for at least this seven yeares, vnlesse he shall haue sold them all before that tyme, there shallbe no other or further impression made by any person thereof in this jurisdiction, vnder the pœnalty this Court shall see cause to lay on any that shall adventure in that kind, besides making ffull sattisfaction to the sajd Mr Jno Vsher or his assignes for his charge & damage therein. Voated by ye whole Court met together (vol. iv. pt. ii. p. 559).
10 Of this issue, a single copy has been preserved in the New Hampshire Archives, which was printed in facsimile by Albert S. Batchellor in Laws of New Hampshire, 1904, i. 811–825. It consists of four leaves, the pages being numbered 3–10, but lacks the title and has no colophon. The heading on p. 3 reads as follows:
An Order for the Holding of Courts &c. / [Seal] / By the / President and Council of His Majesties / Territory And Dominion of New-England / in America. / An Order for the Holding of Courts And Execution of Justice. / Published the 10th of June 1686.
Collation: No Title; An Order for the Holding of Courts, pp. 3–9; An Order for the Encouragement of Surveyers of Ships and Vessels, p. 9; Bounds and Power of Towns, p. 10.
On August 25, 1686, it was “Ordered That the Military Lawes be printed, also the Order for the strict Observation of the Lords-day” (i. 135). If these laws were actually printed, they may have formed part of the above issue, but no copy is known to be in existence.
The above item has been described in detail because it escaped Mr. Ford and myself when we were compiling our Bibliography of the Massachusetts Laws. The same fate befell the Explanatory Charter of Massachusetts, printed at Boston in 1726: see Publications of this Society, xiv. 399–400 and notes.
11 “The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts. Reprinted from the Edition of 1672, with the Supplements through 1686” (1887); “The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts. Reprinted from the Edition of 1660, with the Supplements to 1672” (1889); “A Bibliographical Sketch of the Laws of the Massachusetts Colony from 1630 to 1686” (1890).
12 Brinley Catalogue (1877), i. 109.
13 Publications of this Society, iv. 302. The British Museum and the Yale University Library also own copies.
14 The British Museum Catalogue calls this “Another edition” of the 1672 edition; and gives its place of publication as “Cambridge, New England, 1675.”
15 Cf. p. 14 note 4, below. What became of this copy I do not know.
16 History of Printing in America (1810), i. 259–260.
17 Catalogue of Books in the Library of the American Antiquarian Society (1837), M, p. 13. For the exact title of the American Antiquarian Society copy, incorrectly given in this catalogue and by Haven, see p. 17, below.
18 In Thomas’s History of Printing in America (1874), ii. 320.
19 Dictionary of Books relating to America, xi. 334.
20 State Publications (1908), p. 58.
21 Bibliographical Collections and Notes, Third Series, p. 157.
22 Charlemagne Tower Collection of American Colonial Laws, p. 63.
23 Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1906 (1908), ii. 297.
24 Publications of this Society (1908), iv. 304.
25 American Bibliography, i. 38.
26 “An Abridgement of the Laws In Force and Use in Her Majesty’s Plantations; (Viz.) Of Virginia, Jamaica, Barbadoes, Maryland, New-England, New-York, Carolina, &c.,” was published in London in 1704. It is difficult to describe this curious volume, since it has at least three sets of pagination and two sets of signatures. Near the end of the volume is “An Abridgement of the Laws and Ordinances of New-England,” filling pp. 1–104, but pp. 86, 87, 92, 96, 97, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, are misnumbered 87, 88, 96, 92, 10, 104, 97, 103, 102, 100. This is apparently an abridgment of the edition of the General Laws of Massachusetts published in 1672. It will be observed that by “New-England” is meant Massachusetts only: cf. Publications of this Society, xiv. 360 note 1, xvii. 70 note, 72 note 2, 92 note 7, 116, 117.
27 Publications of this Society, iv. 355–356.
28 Mr. Evans kindly informs me that his title was copied from an auction sale catalogue, though he cannot recall what catalogue. No copy is listed in Livingston’s Auction Prices of Books (1905), nor in Jaggard’s Index to Book-Prices Current_(1901, 1909).
29 The verse number ought to be “2,” and is “2” in most of the copies I have seen; but in the copy described in the text it is plainly “8.” In some copies the figure is so blurred that it cannot be made out with certainty.
30 In his description of the Church copy of the 1672 edition, Mr. G. W. Cole says: “The verso of p. 161 is blank, and is omitted in the pagination, bringing the even pages on the recto from this point top. 170, when, by omitting to number the blank page following, the normal paging is resumed” (Church Catalogue, iii. 1400). But p. 170 is the last numbered page, hence the “normal paging” is not resumed, as the Summary is not paged.
31 The Summary, as is clear from the collation, is not paged; but for the sake of convenience I have placed within parentheses the numbers that the pages would have if they were numbered. It will be observed that pp. (25) and (27) have no signatures: but seep. 20 note 1, below.
32 That is, there are nine lines not counting the word “Errata” itself as a line.
33 That is, there are ten lines not counting the word “Errata” itself as a line.
34 This fact is noted, but not much reliance is to be placed upon it since the paper used in the 1672 edition was of various kinds, there being two or three different water-marks.
35 Dr. John W. Jordan writes me: “In our copy the book list follows the title page, but this is evidently an error on the part of the binder. Our copy is not rebound.”
36 The copy of the 1672 edition owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania lacks the Summary. But in some of the copies of the 1672 edition — for instance, in those owned by the Boston Athenæum and the Massachusetts State Library — page (25) of the Summary has the signature G.
37 Pages 168–170 constitute signature Rr (see p. 17, above). If the sheets were stored by Usher with the Summary on top, then signature Rr would have been the outer sheet, and it is easy to see how that sheet might have got injured. Or perhaps the shipment to Usher was in two packages, one containing the Summary, the other the text. In this case also signature Rr would have been the outer sheet, and in some copies this might have been ruined by water or otherwise injured, necessitating a reprinting of that signature in London.
38 See A Ghost-Book, Publications of this Society, xiv. 278, 278 note 3, 279, 280.
39 See p. 11 note 5, above.
40 Usher’s Letter Book, Massachusetts Historical Society, C. 102. 4. f. 76. Though this letter is not dated, it follows one dated October 2, 1674, and precedes one dated November 19, 1674: hence it was doubtless written between those two dates. Usher means that he sent to Chiswell a remainder of 190 copies of the edition printed in 1672.
41 On Samuel Davies, see Meade, Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, i. 429 ff; Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, iii. 140–146.
42 Rev. Henry Patillo (1726–1801): see Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, iii. 196–199.
43 Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) had been installed as President of Princeton College, February 16, 1758, in succession to his son-in-law, Aaron Burr.
44 Francis Fauquier, lieutenant-governor from 1758 to his death in 1768.
45 Robert Dinwiddie.
46 Louisburg was taken July 26, 1758.
47 John Forbes (1710–1759).
48 John Campbell, Earl of Loudoun (1705–1782), whose delay and general ineptitude led to his recall. Amherst was sent in his place.
49 The Nature and Extent of Christ’s Redemption, printed at Williamsburg, 1753.
50 From the Chamberlain Manuscripts (A. 5. 56) in the Boston Public Library.
51 Probably Margaret Mitchell, the widow successively of the Rev. Thomas Shepard and the Rev. Jonathan Mitchell.
52 Christopher Read.
53 John Greenland.
54 Probably Margaret Jackson, widow of John Jackson, a brother of Edward Jackson.
55 Probably Samuel Miles.
56 From the Chamberlain Manuscripts (A. 2. 36) in the Boston Public Library.
57 The value of this document lies in the itinerary of the travellers. Many of the places are mentioned in Cuthbert Potter’s Journal of a journey from Virginia to Boston and back in 1690 (printed in N. D. Mereness’s Travels in the American Colonies, 1916, pp. 3–11), and in Madam Sarah Knight’s Journal of a trip from Boston to New York and back in 1704–1705 (Albany, 1865). See also Sewall’s Diary, under dates of April 21, 1690, and September 12, 1699; Jenkins, Old Boston Post Road (1913); 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiii. 249.
The earliest printed description of the route from Boston to New York is the following, taken from John Tulley’s Almanack for 1698 (Publications of this Society, xiii. 220):
A Description of the High Ways, & Roads.
From Boston to New-York 278 Miles, thus accounted.
FRom Boston to Dedham 10 miles, thence to Whites 6, to Billings 7, to Woodcocks 10. Or, from Dedham to Medfield 9, to Wrentham 10, to Woodcocks 4 (which is the smoother Road) to Providence 15, to the French Town 20, to Darby 24, to Pembertons 3, to Stonington 12, to New-London 15, to Say-Brook 18, to Killingsworth 12, to Guildford 10, to Branford 12, to New-Haven 10, to Mill-ford 10, to Stratford 4, to Fairfield 8, to Norwalk 12, to Standford 10, to Horseneck 7, to Rye 7, to Marineck 4, to New Rochel 4, to East-Chester 4, to Kings-bridge 6, to the Half-way-house 9, and from thence to New-York 9 mile.
From New-York to Philadelphia 96 mile, thus accounted.
FRom N-York to Elizabeth Town (by water) 20 m. to Woodbridge 8 m. to Piscattawa 8 m. to J[ ]inians 2 m. thence (the new Road) to Mill-stone-brook 14 m. to Assimpinks 4 m. to Croswicks-Bridge, over Doctors-brook 8 m. then to Burlington by the Mill 12 m. thence to Philadelphia 20 mile.
58 I believe this to have been Edward Randolph, whose official relations with Usher were close.
59 John Saffin appears to have removed from Boston to Bristol at some time between June 4, 1686, when he was described as “of Boston,” and August 14, 1689, when he was chosen deputy from Bristol (Plymouth Colony Records, vi. 189, 212; cf. Publications of this Society, i. 86 note). Edward Randolph’s first visit to New York was apparently in 1688. He left Boston late in July of that year, reached New York on August 11, was in Philadelphia on August 19, was again in New York on August 29, was at Fort Albany on September 12, and was once more in New York on October 2: see Edward Randolph (Prince Society), ii. 73–77, iv. 233, 235, 240, vi. 257, 258, 260; Publications of this Society, xvii. 9 note 4). Exactly when he returned from Fort Albany to New York cannot be ascertained, but it may well have been by September 20, on which date he is mentioned in the expense account.
60 Jeffries Family Papers, iv. 95.
61 Publications of this Society, xvii. 326, 331.
62 Mercury, June 16, 1795, p. 4/1. The ode was also printed in the Massachusetts Magazine for May, 1795, vii. 121. In Paine’s Works, published in 1812, it is stated that the ode was “Written for, and sung at the first Anniversary of the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society, 1794” (p. 243), where the year is of course an error for 1795.
63 The preparation of a memoir of Mr. Williamson was assigned to his classmate, our late associate Samuel Lothrop Thorndike, who died before he had performed the labor. As Mr. Williamson’s papers afforded material for such a work, his daughter, Mrs. Edes, was persuaded to prepare this tribute to her father’s memory.
64 Two of the five new sloops of war ordered by vote of the General Court in 1776 for defence of the seacoast came from the yards of Cross and Greenleaf; in 1778 a 20-gun ship was ordered from them; and they owned and equipped many privateers during the years 1775 to 1778.
Ralph Cross was captain of the Militia in 1772, holding a commission from the Royal Governor. He was appointed Major by ballot from the House of Representatives of the Second Essex Regiment and signalized himself by his zeal in training his men. In 1776 he became Lieut.-Colonel of Col. Samuel Johnson’s Regiment, serving in the Northern Department from August to November, 1777. He joined camp at Stillwater 14 October, 1778, and early engaged in the battle which preceded the surrender of Burgoyne at which he was present. The musket which he carried is now in the possession of his great-great-grandson, Alfred Johnson. Ralph Cross continued in active service through 1782. In 1802 he was appointed Collector of Customs of the port of Newburyport and continued to hold the office until his death. (See C. Cushing, History of Newburyport; J. J. Currier, History of Newburyport; and Capt. Edward Johnson, by Alfred Johnson.)
65 Henry Blatchford Wheelwright (H. C. 1844).
66 For a perfect picture of Harvard Class Day from 1850 to 1855, see The Thinking Bayonet, by James Kendall Hosmer.
67 No person of this name is known to have been in college or in Cambridge in October, 1849. The reference is probably to Thomas Chase (H. C. 1848), a tutor 1850–1853, afterwards President of Haverford College, although Theodore Chase (H. C. 1853), then a Freshman, may have been the man.
68 Charles Russell Lowell (H. C. 1826) married Anna Cabot Jackson, who died 1874. They lived for many years in the house No. 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, now occupied by Professor Farlow: see R. S. Rantoul, Personal Recollections (1916), pp. 62–66.
69 John Murray Forbes.
70 Charles Ellery Stedman (H. C. 1852).
71 President Jared Sparks.
72 Joseph Hodges Choate (H. C. 1852).
73 Rev. Convers Francis (H. C. 1815).
74 James Bradley Thayer. See Publications of this Society, vii. 296–318.
75 Francis James Child (H. C. 1846).
76 For a notice of Mr. Carter, see Publications of this Society, x. 60–67.
77 Melville Weston Fuller (1833–1910), afterward Chief Justice of the United States and an Honorary Member of this Society.
78 H. C. 1824.
79 Harvard Law School, 1861.
80 Mary Ann Smith Easton, daughter of Dr. Peter Easton of Nantucket.
81 He married, 29 April, 1863, Sarah Howland Ricketson, daughter of Benjamin Tucker Ricketson of New Bedford, and sister of John Howland Ricketson (H. C. 1859), a Corresponding Member of this Society.
82 Over the Teacups.
83 Publications, vii. 307.
84 New England Historical and Genealogical Register for October, 1903, lvii. 345–350.
85 A notice of Mr. Williamson appeared in the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine for September, 1903, xii. 97–99.
86 See Early Interest in Dighton Rock, Publications of this Society, xviii. 235–299, 417.
87 See G. L. Kittredge, Letters of Samuel Lee and Samuel Sewall (Publications of this Society, xiv. 147, 166–171, 178 f).
88 This controversy about the original peopling of America is too intricate to receive discussion here, and I deal with it only in so far as it affects opinion concerning Dighton Rock. For more detailed information, the following sources, among others, may be consulted: S. F. Haven, Archæology of the United States, in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge (1856), viii. chap. i, ii; Winsor, Pre-Columbian Explorations, in Narrative and Critical History of America, i; P. B. Watson, Bibliography of the Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America, in Library Journal (1881), vi. 227–244.
89 G. L. Kittredge, Cotton Mather’s Election into the Royal Society (Publications of this Society, xiv. 102–106).
90 xiv. 103.
91 Summary, etc., 1747, no. 11, pp. 170–171. This work was originally issued in numbers, each consisting of a half-title and sixteen pages of text. These original parts are rare, but the Harvard College Library owns the first seventeen, though the half-titles of only two (nos. 1 and 13) have been preserved. The passage quoted in the text must have appeared in no. 11. An advertisement in the Boston Evening Post of Monday, February 9, 1747, stated that “Saturday last was published, A Summary’ . . . By W. D. M. D. No. 1. To be continued” (p. 2/2). And the Boston News Letter of September 10, 1747, advertised “Just published, Number XI” (p. 4/2).
According to Drake’s Dictionary of American Biography (p. 278), William Douglass was a. physician and author, born in Scotland about 1691, settled. at Boston 1718, died there 1752. “He was a violent antagonist of Dr. Boylston, in his efforts to introduce inoculation. His learning was considerable; but his prejudices were strong, and he lacked judgment and taste. He wrote many political essays in the newspapers, which were generally filled with sarcastic remarks upon the magistrates, the clergy, the physicians, and the people of N. E. His ‘summary’ . . . is inaccurate, and records his private squabbles as well as public affairs.” See also A. McF. Davis, Colonial Currency Reprints (Prince Society), iii. 250–254.
92 In the supplementary note to my earlier paper, I showed that this was due partly to his lack of skill as a draughtsman, but much more to the fact that this part of his drawing was published upside-down.
93 Ezra Stiles was born December 10, 1727, at North Haven, Connecticut; graduated Yale, 1746; practised law 1753–1755; minister at Newport, 1755 to 1776. His congregation being dispersed by the war, but his pastoral relation not broken, he resided in Dighton from March 12, 1776, to May 22, 1777. He removed thence to preach at Portsmouth, N. H. In 1778, he was elected President of Yale College, and died May 12, 1795. See A. Holmes, Life of Ezra Stiles, 1798; also Stiles’s Literary Diary, 1901.
A clue to the existence of the drawings and unpublished materials is afforded by certain passages in the Diary and in the Election Sermon. It is through Professor Dexter that I located the material; and I am further under deep obligation to him for indispensable guidance in finding the pertinent passages. The two drawings in the Itinerary were photographed for me under the direction of the late Mr. J. C. Schwab, Librarian of Yale University; and a photostat of the other drawing was made for me by the Massachusetts Historical Society.
94 Last autumn Professor Dexter edited a volume entitled Itineraries and Correspondence of Ezra Stiles: see pp. 234–235 for Dighton Rock. The passages quoted in the text of this paper, most of which are not reproduced in this printed volume, are copied from the original manuscripts.
95 Publications of this Society, xviii. 264.
96 This paragraph and the one given below are not quoted in the exact order of words and sentences, but are compilations from scattered passages. This, and the fact that many statements are made by Stiles twice in slightly differing language, explains why the wording given here differs from that of corresponding passages in the published Itineraries.
97 Edward Everett Hale wrote in his Diary, under date of July 31, 1839: “There is an inscription on the North end of the rock made this or last year by some wanderer who hoped to deceive future antiquarians, I suppose. H and W figure in it.” I am indebted to Professor Edward E. Hale of Union College for this fact. Why Mr. Hale should have been so misinformed as to the recent origin of the marks is not clear. Possibly Dr. Stiles’s information may have been similarly untrustworthy. Cf. p. 95, below.
98 Publications of this Society, xviii. 239 note 1.
99 See p. 112, below.
100 On this map, the name Assonet as applied to the Neck (but not to the Bay or River) is spelled Wassonet. It is interesting to note that the same spelling occurs in the Old Proprietary Records of Taunton, Book 4, p. 230 (1683), and in the Land Records at Taunton, Book 3, p. 390 (1683 and 1691).
101 Portions of the letter and of the Itinerary were quoted in my earlier paper (p. 270), to show that Stiles learned of the visits of Greenwood and of Berkeley from Benjamin Jones, aged 70, owner of the Rock.
102 Now owned by the American Academy.
103 See pp. 112–113, cf. p. 80, below.
104 “Taken off June 6, 1767” (in the upper left-hand corner). “Here is taken above half but not Two Thirds of the Inscription.” “On a Rock eleven feet long & 4½ wide at Assonet on the East Bank or Shore of Taunton River 7 m. below Taunton, are these Inscriptions; which I took off June 6. 1767. I begun at A the SW End, & proceeded from right to left to B; continued on the other side from C to D the NE End. And as to Breadth I took about Two Thirds.” “Beginning.” “Continuation.” “End.” Twice the word “Deest.” In the upper right-hand corner, again the date, “June 6, 1767.” The “Deest” evidently means: “There is nothing here.” The dimensions indicated are these: of the left margin of the rock, “Two feet;” of the left-hand sheet, “Four feet this side;” of the right-hand sheet, “Six feet to here;” in the lower right-hand corner, “2½ feet high ie. here is taken off what fills 2½ feet breadth on the stone;” of the head of the human figure near the left end, “8 × 7 Ins;” of the tall figure in the middle of the right-hand sheet, “22 Inch by 7;” of the double triangular figure in the upper left-band corner of the right-hand sheet, with the letters c (above) and d (below) indicating its left vertical line, e and f its middle vertical, a and b its broken right vertical, and h and i its opening at the right end, “12 ab, 8 cd, 14 be, 12 ad, 9 ef, 2½ openg hi.” The pages 275 and 277 of the Itinerary are also indicated.
105 On August 13, 1788: see pp. 77 ff, below.
106 Unquoted portions of the letter show that Paddack did not take an impression of all the figures.
107 It depicts the two human figures and the “N” at the right end of the rock, and the collection of triangular figures to the right of the centre. It is in a badly worn and torn condition.
108 Publications of this Society, xviii. 267, 272.
109 Stiles mentions this visit in his Itinerary under date of June 6, 1768.
110 This was doubtless the Paddack copy.
111 From the transcript of Du Simitière’s manuscript made for Mr. F. L. Gay.
112 Life of Ezra Stiles, 1798, p. 119.
113 This is an error for 1767; but it is an error that Stiles himself made in his Diary on Oct. 3, 1788.
114 This opinion was expressed by Stiles in his Itinerary in 1767, and in his Sermon of 1783, as we shall see; but he expressed doubts about it in his Diary in 1782.
115 See Publications of this Society, xviii. 283. Mr. Eames died in 1744. The “some years since” mentioned below must therefore have been at about the time when John Winthrop made his “imperfect copy.”
116 Rev. Michael Lort, in Archaeologia, 1787, viii. 295.
117 Of these men who assisted Sewall I gather the following facts, among others, mainly from Appletons’ Cyclopredia of American Biography:
Thomas Danforth was a grandson of the Rev. John Danforth of Dorchester (who made the first drawing of Dighton Rock). Born about 1742, graduated Harvard 1762; studied law and became a councillor in Charlestown; left for Halifax in 1776, and lat er lived in England, where he died 1820.
William Baylies, physician, born in Uxbridge November 24, 1743, graduated Harvard 1760; studied medicine, and settled in Dighton; held various political offices; one of the founders of the Massachusetts Medical Society; fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the Massachusetts Historical Society; died in Dighton 1826. For several years he was Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for the County of Bristol.
David Cobb, born 1748, graduated Harvard 1766; studied medicine in Boston, and practised in Taunton for many years; an army officer, judge, general of militia, congressman, lieutenant-governor, etc.; died at Taunton 1830.
118 Gebelin spells this name “Jaunston.”
119 “Sur le rivage.” Sewall’s own words, as written on his drawing (see below) were: “inclines a little from a perpendicular.” He also wrote “of a scarlet hue” instead of “d’une couleur rouge;” and “for nearly a century past,” instead of “depuis un demi-siècle.”
120 Plate XXII. On account of the large size of the original, it was first reproduced in three parts by Albert H. Moore, photographer at the Harvard College Library, in the form of photostatic negatives. The three parts were then skillfully joined, mounted on cloth, and photographed by Mr. E. A. Dean, an expert photographer of Providence. The resulting photograph of the complete photostatic negative was then used by Mr. Joseph W. McCoid, photostatist of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, for securing the photostatic positive from which this plate was made. I desire to express my obligations to these persons for their careful work, as well as to Mr. George Parker Winship, Librarian of the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, who assisted in this undertaking, and who has been helpful in many other ways in this research.
121 There were then in college two students named Hale – Horatio, who entered August 30, 1833, and graduated in 1837; and Nathan, who entered September 1, 1834, and graduated. in 1838. The latter’s younger brother, Edward Everett Hale, did not enter until 1835. Edward was later much interested in Dighton Rock; but his son informs me that there is no record that Nathan (if it was be who made the copy) ever gave any further attention to it. Though Horatio Hale did not, so far as is known, write on Dighton Rock, yet he was early interested in the Indians, and while yet an undergraduate was appointed philologist to the South Sea Exploring Expedition: cf. 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 67–68.
122 The letters and drawing can be found in vol. ii of Correspondence & Reports (MS), Rhode Island Historical Society, pages 22, 25, 27, 32, 23.
123 Monde Primitif, 1781, viii. 13. See Plate XXIII.
124 See Plates II (Mallery), XXII (Sewall), XXIII (Gebelin), XXII (Lort), XXIII (Dammartin), and XXXI (Rafn).
125 The exact position of this apartment about 1764 will be seen by consulting the “Plan of Harvard Hall built in 1764,” made by Du Simitière and reproduced facing p. 16 of vol. xiv of the Publications of this Society.
126 College Book viii. 191. I am indebted to Mr. Matthews for this transcript of the vote of the Corporation, as well as for material used in many of my notes.
127 Discovery of America by the Norsemen, Massachusetts Quarterly Review, 1849, ii. 209.
128 Prehistoric Man, ii. 177.
129 Dr. A. C. Hamlin, Supposed Runic Inscriptions, Proceedings A.A.A.S., 10th Meeting, Albany, August 1856, pp. 214–215.
130 Narrative and Critical History of America, i. 101 note. The first meeting of the A.A.A.S. was held in 1848.
131 Another was attempted, however. A writer in the North American Review, 1874, cxix. 175, says: “Dr. Hamlin endeavored to take a plaster cast of the Dighton Rock, and unfortunately failed.” Other evidence makes it probable that this incident occurred not long before 1870. In the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, October 21, 1867, p. 7, is a statement that “Prof. Wyman is about to take a plaster cast of the rock;” but if he ever tried to carry out this intention, as an enterprise distinct from the attempt by Hamlin, it too was a failure.
132 Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1809, iii. 185.
133 I suspect that this statement belongs in the same class with those so commonly heard to the effect that the climate is growing milder. It is interesting to discover that similar opinions were current two hundred years ago, and probably have been expressed by aging people in all the intervening time; so that, if true, we ought by now to be living under decidedly tropical conditions. Samuel Sewall, writing on February 5, 1691, remarked: “’Twould be a vain thing to goe about to dissemble the severity of our Winters; only most ancient inhabitants judge there is an abatement of their former rigor” (Publications of this Society, xiv. 154). Remarks like Winthrop’s concerning the rock are still made to-day, and are probably not true except as psychological impressions (xviii. 238 f).
134 This last statement is, of course, a bare assertion of personal opinion, without evidential value.
135 Before I had straightened out in my own mind this confusion of the two persons, Mr. Albert Matthews, in a letter of February 6, 1915, set me right about it, and gave me some of the following details.
John Winthrop, b. 1714, was son of Chief Justice Adam Winthrop; graduated at Harvard 1732; Hollis Professor of Mathematics 1738–1779; Fellow of the Royal Society; died 1779. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography says that in the eighteenth century he was the foremost teacher of science in this country, and that his influence in determining the scientific spirit in America was great. See also Publications of this Society, vii. 321–328.
His son, James Winthrop, graduated Harvard 1769, was Librarian there 1772–1787; for several years was judge of the court of common pleas, and for a long time register of probate; died 1821. There is a sketch of him in A. C. Potter and C. K. Bolton’s Librarians of Harvard University (Library of Harvard University, Bibliographical Contributions, No. 52, 1897).
136 He is described in Hoefer’s Nouvelle Biographie Générale (xii. 216) as a “célèbre réudit francais,” b. 1725. He was the son of Antoine Court, but assumed the name Court de Gebelin in accordance with a common practice among Protestants of the time as a protection against persecution. His great work, defending the view that the practices of agriculture were the basis of mythology, was: Le Monde Primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne, 9 vols., Paris, 1775–1784. He died under the care of Mesmer in 1784, with his work still unfinished.
137 1781, viii. 58, 59, 560–568; and Planche I.
138 We have already seen that Sewall, who sent the copy, merely quoted but did not accept these opinions, and did believe that it was executed by Indians.
139 Gebelin does not mention the numbers on the drawing which identify these two animals. It is clear that the beaver is no. 10. The horse is much more; difficult to see. Some have denied its existence, and that of some other figures, except in the imagination of Gebelin (see, for example, Gabriel Gravier, Notice sur le roc de Dighton, Nancy, 1875, p. 8). But a sympathetic exercise of the faculty which discovers camels and whales in the clouds, can detect the rudely drawn animal of Gebelin’s fancy. I think its head is to be found directly above the number 11, with blunt curved muzzle, eye in the highest dot above and to the right of 11, and ears represented by the triangle next to the right of that; the fore legs go down to the head of the beaver; the curved line above the fattest dot near-by is the rump, from which one hind leg descends to the unnumbered figure just in front of the beaver, and the other stretches out behind just above the number 13, and terminates in a half-formed hoof. I confess, however, that I shall not resent correction in this identification.
140 One of these, apparently, is regarded by Gebelin as a priest, of whom he says merely that he is “ready” (deja pret). Probably therefore it is no. 4.
141 Vues des Cordillères, i. 180; Researches, etc., London edition, 1814, i. 151–153.
142 Archaeologia, 1787, viii. 300.
143 Ibid. viii. 302.
144 For example: Gabriel Gravier, Notice sur le roc de Dighton, 1875, p. 9.
145 Literary Diary.
146 The Itinerary mentions this visit, giving no fuller information.
147 This visit is somewhat more fully recorded in the Itinerary. The drawing is not preserved there, and was probably an unsatisfactory one to Stiles himself. He worked on it for about an hour and a quarter, and then “I desisted with an unfinished Drawg, discouraged” for some reason whose brief record is illegnble.
148 In 1787 (?) Benjamin Smith Barton, M.D., had published: “Observations on some parts of natural history: to which is prefixed an account of several remarkable vestiges of an ancient date which have been discovered in different parts of North America.” It bears no date, but is supposed to have been issued in 1787, an assumption confirmed by the fact that it was reviewed in the Gentleman’s Magazine for November, 1787 (lvii. 992–993). It was printed as Part I of a larger work, but no more was published. It contains no reference to Dighton Rock. It is now rare, but a copy of it can be found in the Library of Congress.
149 The United States elevated to Glory and Honor. A Sermon, Preached before His Excellency Jonathan Trumbull, Esq L.L.D. Governor and Commander in Chief, And the Honorable The General Assembly of The State of Connecticut, Convened at Hartford, At the Anniversary Election, May 8th, 1783, New-Haven, 1783, pp. 99. See pp. 9–14.
I do not know whether this sermon was given in full as printed. If it was, I calculate, after timing the reading of several pages at a fairly rapid rate, that it must have taken upwards of two hours and a half to deliver. It is amusing, therefore, to notice that on p. 94 he says “But I trespass upon your patience,” and then continues preaching for five pages more.
150 See Publications of this Society, xviii. 274.
151 This date is misprinted 1001.
152 1787, viii. 290, 291 note.
153 xv. 180.
154 Prehistoric Man, 1862, ii. 173.
155 Notice sur le roc de Dighton, 1875, p. 10 f.
156 Account of an antient Inscription in North America, Archaeologia, 1787, viii. 290–301. Read November 23, 1786.
157 xv. 180–182. See pp. 268, 269, of my former paper for fuller notice of this and the following reference.
158 J. B. Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, 1848, viii. 504–506.
159 Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, 1848, vii. 809. The letters quoted are in this same volume, pp. 824, 847.
160 For an account of James Winthrop, and the need of distinguishing between him and his father, John Winthrop, see page 66, above.
161 See memoir by Rev. Dr. N. L. Frothingham, in 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 142; and Kendall, Travels, ii. 221. Other accounts, however, say it was in the Museum. Probably, therefore, it was in the same room in Harvard Hall, in which Sewall’s drawing was kept (see p. 63, above).
162 The engraving measures, in its printed part, about 7¼ by 20½ inches. It is “a reduced representation of Mr. Winthrop’s original draft; accurately traced under his inspection.” It is reproduced from a photostatic copy in Plate XXIV. Compare with Mallery’s reproduction, Plate II, originating in Rafn’s non-photographic reproduction in Antiquitates Americanæ, 1837, and therefore presenting some difference from the original.
163 Account of an Inscribed Rock, at Dighton, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, accompanied with a copy of the Inscription, Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1804, vol. ii. pt. ii. pp. 126–129.
164 Dr. Stiles, in his Itinerary (p. 251, October 3, 1788) gives the date as August 21; but Winthrop’s own account makes it August 13.
165 Dr. William Baylies: see p. 58 note 3, above.
166 Rev. Dr. Frothingham, in the memoir just referred to, says that Mr. Thaddeus Mason Harris also “accompanied and assisted him. I have heard him describe the pantographic process by which it was done.” Winthrop’s own statement, corroborated by a similar statement in Stiles’s Itinerary, makes it clear that Harris was not one of the party. It is probable, however, that he later, in Cambridge, assisted Winthrop in making a reduced copy; for it was the copy, not the original, that was made in the manner alluded to. I cannot discover that T. M. Harris ever recorded his opinion of Dighton Rock, although he was greatly interested in Indian remains and described some of the mounds in Ohio. He believed that the Indians who made these mounds were of Siberian Tartar origin, and were driven southward into Mexico by the northern tribes of Indians, who came originally from northwestern Europe. This belief evidently would not commit him to acceptance of the Tartar theory concerning the rock. See his Journal of a Tour into Ohio in 1803 (1808), pp. 147 ff.
167 The “paint” used is said by Stiles (in his Itinerary) and by Kendall (in his Travels) to have been printers’ ink.
168 Previous paper, xviii. 236. This paper, p. 52, above.
169 This was done in the case of the only cast known to have been made, that in the Gilbert Museum at Amherst College.
170 Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1809, iii. 186.
171 Travels, ii. 226.
172 Unpublished Letter to John Ordronaux, May 9 and 27, 1854; in the collection of the Old Colony Historical Society, Taunton.
173 Unpublished manuscript, 1865, in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society.
174 Printed in full in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, x. 114–116. Washington’s visit was made October 29, 1789. The Massachusetts Centinel of Saturday, October 31, said:
On Thursday morning, at eight o’clock, The PRESIDENT of the United States sat out from his residence in Court-Street, on his journey eastward, . . . At Cambridge he was received in the Philosophy-Room of the University, by the President and Corporation, and after breakfasting he viewed the Library, Museum, &c. He then continued his journey (p. 2/3).
Washington’s own account, under date of October 29, is as follows:
Left Boston about 8 o’clock. Passed over the Bridge at Charles-Town, and went to see that at Malden, but proceeded to the College at Cambridge, attended by the Vice-President [John Adams], Mr. Bowdoin, and a great number of Gentlemen.
At this place I was shown by Mr. Willard, the President, the Philosophical aparatus, and amongst others Pope’s Orary (a curious piece of Mechanism for shewing the revolutions of the Sun, Earth, and many others of the Planets), the library, (containing 13.000 volumes,) and a Museum (Diary, ed. Lossing, 1860, p. 38).
175 Belknap Papers, i. 343, 353, 361, ii. 76, 77, 81, 160.
176 Belknap Papers, iii. 447. A footnote on p. 446 tells who this John Pintard was.
177 Joseph Gooding, Jr., was born March 6, 1773, in Dighton; developed remarkable mechanical genius, and before he was 21 commenced the manufacture of brass clocks at his home; later enlarged the business and made tall mahogany-cased clocks; was town clerk in the short-lived Wellington, and in Dighton 1806 to 1809; made watches in Troy (Fall River) 1826 to 1838, but returned to Dighton; was a skilful designer, engraver and die-cutter; died November 11, 1853, at the age of 80 years and 8 months. See Hurd’s History of Bristol County (1883), pp. 238n, 261, 264. Dates of birth and death were supplied by the Town Clerk of Dighton, who secured them from present members of the Gooding family.
178 Minister at Dighton; successor to the Rev. Nathaniel Fisher, whom he assisted for five years before the latter’s death in 1777. Graduated Princeton 1770. The following sketch of him appears in S. D. Alexander’s Princeton College during the Eighteenth Century (1872), pp. 137–138:
John Smith was a native of Plainfield, Connecticut. He became a Congregational minister, and on the 22d of April, 1772, was settled at Dighton, Massachusetts. In 1802, he became a Missionary in the neighborhood of Canandaigua, New York. He gave a deed of six thousand acres of land to form a seminary of learning in Canandaigua. Afterwards, Mr. Smith removed to Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, where he remained till 1812, when he removed to Nelson County, Kentucky, acting as a Missionary in both places. He died in Kentucky in 1820. Mr. Smith was the grandfather of Professor Henry B. Smith of the Union Theological Seminary, New York.
That the 6000 acres here mentioned were a grant from the State of New York for educational purposes is made probable by an unquoted portion of Smith’s letter to Stiles.
179 Minister at Acushnet in Dartmouth, now New Bedford; born Yarmouth, Mass., March 3, 1730; Harvard 1754; ordained June 3, 1761; a prominent Whig; member of conventions for framing the constitution of Massachusetts and of the United States; member of the American Philosophical Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; D.D. Harvard 1793; died Tiverton, R. I., September 24, 1807. “A man of superior abilities and education for that period. . . . A man of considerable erudition; and in his personal appearance, as well as his remarkable eccentricities of character, is thought to have resembled the great Dr. Johnson.” See Ricketson’s History of New Bedford (1858), pp. 276, 318 f. Another Samuel West graduated at Harvard in 1761, was a Boston minister, died 1808. The two are often confused.
180 This means that the two gentlemen were Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
181 Here “draughtmen” is written above the line.
182 Here “they” is written and crossed out, and no word substituted.
183 Travels, ii. 226. The “Judge” Baylies of whom he speaks was Dr. William Baylies.
184 Presented by Mr. Hale, together with a copy of the drawing made for him by Miss Brown in January, 1862, to the American Antiquarian Society, in whose collection it is now preserved. Miss Brown still had in her possession the original drawing by Gooding of which she speaks, up to the time of her recent death in Providence, and kindly loaned it to me for reproduction.
185 P. 1/3. I am indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews for this discovery.
186 Diary, 1911, iii. 322.
187 Francis, author of the Historical Memoir of the Colony of New Plymouth (1830), would have been too young, having been born in 1783. But his older brothers, Samuel, born June 22, 1774, and William, born September 15, 1776, were of about the same age as Gooding, the other draughtsman. See Hurd’s History of Bristol County (1883), pp. 234 f.
188 Unpublished manuscript on Dighton Rock, 1865, in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society.
189 John V. N. Yates and Joseph W. Moulton, History of the State of New York, 1824, i. 84–86.
190 Plates XXV and XXVI.
191 For the latter, see Plate II in Publications of this Society, xviii.
192 In Antiquitates Americanæ, 1837.
193 By Chingwauk, in 1839. See Schoolcraft’s History of the Indian Tribes, 1851, i. 108–120.
194 See my previous paper, p. 238.
195 See Plate I and p. 236 of my previous paper.
196 Travels, ii. 228.
197 The paper consists of 13 closely written pages, followed by several pages of drawings, not including any of Dighton Rock. It is entitled: “An Account of two Inscriptions upon Rocks in Kent and Washington in the Western part of the State of Connecticutt, taken off 1789 by Ezra Stiles, and by him communicated to the Acady of Arts & Sciences;” is addressed “To his Excellency James Bowdoin Esq. LL.D. President of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston 1790;” is dated “Yale College June 8, 1790;” and is endorsed: “Dr. Stiles Memoir, read Aug. 25, 1790.”
198 By Thomas H. Webb, in a letter of September 22, 1830, to Professor Rafn, published in Antiquitates Americanæ, 1837, pp. 359 f. The main memoir is accompanied by another much briefer one of the same date, describing a “stone bust supposed to have been an Indian god;” and this latter was published in 1809 in the Memoirs of the Academy, vol. iii. pt. i. pp. 192–194.
199 Preserved in the first Letter-book (1780–1791) of the Academy.
200 This portion of the paper, with its discussion of various theories and final acceptance of the view that the Hebrew characters were cut in the rock by recent Jewish searchers after mines, is quoted at length by Kendall in his Travels, i. 242–246. Incidentally, Kendall remarks that among his countrymen Dr. Stiles “has some reputation for credulity.”
201 Fully quoted by Webb, loc. cit.
202 The two O’s here are dotted by Stiles: cf. p. 51, above. The passages in brackets, which follow in the text, are condensations from Stiles’s statements.
203 The descriptions of this rock and of those mentioned later are quoted by Webb, loc. cit., p. 360.
204 P. 119. In connection with the last mentioned view, he refers to the Monthly Review, May, 1784, p. 424. There is nothing on this page pertinent to the subject. But on p. 350 (vol. lxx. 1784) is a description by William Bray of the “Indian Method of Picture Writing” on a tree. This is probably what is intended, although it makes no mention of Dighton Rock.
205 iii. 322–323. There is apparently allusion here both to Samuel Harris and to Thaddeus Mason Harris. It was the latter who saw the Ohio rocks in 1803, and described them in the Journal of his Tour. It was probably the former who compared the “Palmyrine Characters” with the marks on Dighton Rock; for he must have reached his conclusions at just about this time by some such comparison.
206 iii. 191, 194, 322, 530, 532.
207 July 11, 1810, p. 2/3–4.
208 For July 28, 1810, pp. 33–41. The quoted passages below are taken from this source.
209 The following entry, under date of October 3, 1808, is taken from the Faculty Records:
Samuel Harris of Boston, aged 25 years May 12, 1808, having been examined as a candidate for the Junior Class,
Voted, that the said Harris be accepted for the said Class; and that he be required to pay into the College Treasury $120 for advanced standing (viii. 155).
210 Travels, ii. 219 ff.
211 North American Review, 1838, xlvi. 188.
212 See Plate XXVII. Professor Kittredge searched among the papers and discovered this one for me. It is numbered “MS Am 747 F.”
213 Kopp’s Bilder und Schriften der Vorzeit, 1821, ii. 377–398.
214 These were found for me by Professor Kittredge. He describes and comments upon them as follows:
In Vol. II of the Harris MSS (H. C. Library, MS Am 746 F, II) there are eleven such alphabets. I append a list:
(1) Fol. 16. Column headed “Phenician Hebr &c which are not in my lists ut credo Astle” [i. e. Thos. Astle, The Origin and Progress of Writing, London, 1803, Tab. I, opp. p. 64. Astle heads the list of symbols (which H. hasn’t copied entire): “Phœnicium Hebr̃: antiq: sive Samaritanum.”]
(2) Fol. 16. Column headed “Punic.” [Source not given, — but the alphabet is practically identical with the column headed “Punicum” in the plate of Astle just referred to. Astle is certainly the source.]
(3) Fol. 18. Column headed “Palmyran Barthelemi.” [I.e. the celebrated Academician l’abbé Jean Jacques Barthélemy, author of Le Voyage du Jeune Anacharsis. This alphabet occurs (1) in Barthélemy’s paper “Réflexions sur l’alphabet et sur la langue dont on se servoit autrefois a Palmyre,” Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, XXVI, pl. 1, opp. p. 596; (2) from Barthélemy in the French Encyelopédie, Recueil de Planches, II, pt. i, 1763, plate V (6). Of the first of these, the essay is republished in his Œuvres, Paris, 1821, IV. 19 ff, and the alphabet is in the Atlas des Œuvres Complétes de J. J. Barthélemy, Paris, 1822, pi. 2.]
(4) Fol. 18. Column headed “Phœnician or Ionic Duret.” [This is from a plate on p. 336 of Claude Duret’s Thresor de l’Histoire des Langves de cest Vnivers, Iverdon, 1619.]
(5) Fol. 18. Column headed “Phœnician . . . Spanheim.” At the foot of the column H. has written “See Postellus.” [I haven’t found this alphabet in any work of either of the well-known Spanheims. The same thing, however, is found in Guillaume Postel’s De Poenicorum Literis, Paris, 1552, first plate. The book was in H. C. Library in Harris’s day, having been given to us by Thos. Hollis in the 18th century.]
(6) Fol. 18. Column headed “Phœnician frō inscrip in Malta & medals Barthelemy.” [This is either from Barthélemy’s pi. IV (1) in his paper “Réflexions sur quelques monumens phéniciens, et sur les alphabets qui en résultent,” Mém. Acad, des Inscriptions, xxx. 405–427 (also in Œuvres, IV, 40 ff., and in Atlas, pl. 8 (1)), or from the copy of his alphabet in Encyclopédie, as above, plate V (2) — I think from the latter.]
(7) Fol. 18. Column headed “Phœnician from Sicilian coins . . . Barthelemy.” [Either from same monograph, plate IV (2) — see also Atlas, plate 8 (2) — or from the reproduction in Encyclopédie, as above, pl. V (3).]
(8) Fol. 18. Column headed “From inscription in Cyprus Pocock Fr Encyclo.” [This might be from same monograph of Barthélemy, pi. IV (3) — see also Atlas, plate 8 (3) — or from Encyclopédie, as above, pl. V (4), but H. credits it to the latter.]
(9) Fol. 18. Column headed “from an inscrip lately at Malta Ency Franc.” [From Encyclopédic, as above, pl. V (5) — see also Atlas, plate 22.]
(10) Fol. 18. Column headed “By Revd S. Henley from coins &ca.” [From Samuel Henley’s Observations on the Subject of the Fourth Eclogue, the Allegory in the Third Georgie, and the Primary Design of the Aeneid of Virgil: with incidental Remarks on some Coins of the Jews, London, 1788.]
(11) Fol. 24. Column headed “Palmyrene” and credited to “Universal Magazine july 1755.”
Barthélemy’s two memoirs were accessible to Harris, for vols. 26 and 30 are in a set given us by Jasper Mauduit of London in 1768. The set of the Encyclopédic referred to was given to us by Thos. Lee of Cambridge, Mass., in 1784. I am not sure that Duret was in our library in Harris’s time. Harris must also have had access to the Rev. John Swinton’s papers on Phœnician in Philosophical Transactions, vols. 50 and 54, for these volumes were given to us by Thos. Hollis in the 18th century.
215 An English-Hebrew Lexicon, being a complete verbal Index to Gesenius’ Hebrew Lexicon as translated by Prof. Edward Robinson, D.D., Prepared by J. L. Potter, A.M., 1872.
216 Account of the Writing-Rock in Taunton River; in a letter to the Hon. John Davis, Esq., Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1809, iii. 165–191. The letter is dated Hallowell, October 29, 1807.
217 Travels through the Northern Parts of the United States, in the years 1807 and 1808 (1809), ii. 219–232, iii. 205–222.
218 These terms are both of them erroneous. Recent geologists have frequently called it graywacke, which, I am informed, is correct so far as it goes, but is too vague and elastic a term to be definite. The rock is really a gray sandstone, medium to coarse grained, of about medium toughness and hardness; and can be accurately characterized not by any one term but only by a rather lengthy description.
219 Elisha Slade of Somerset (quoted by R. D. Anderson in America not discovered by Columbus, p. 21) gives the following measurements in 1875: Angle of inscribed face to horizon, 47°; of surface sloping toward the shore, 25°; mean height on face above ground, 1.293 metres (4 ft. 2.9″); mean length on its surface (not face), 1.768 metres (5′ 9.6″); mean width of face, 3.384 metres (11′ 1.2″); contents above ground, 3.871 cu. metres (137 cu. feet); weight, 9071.023 kilograms (nearly ten tons). Viewing the rock, one looks about S.S.E. by the compass, whose variation here is 11° 03′ west of north. See also Stiles, p. 53, above.
220 In the summer of 1915, I dug to the extreme base. At the northerly end, the lower edge of the face is above the beach. It thence slopes gradually downward, dipping under the beach at a distance of about three feet, and at its southerly end reaches its greatest depth, which is slightly less than one foot vertically below the beach level.
221 An M indicates that the preceding statement or statements are taken from the paper in the Memoirs; a T, from the Travels.
222 E. G. Squier supports this view in the British Ethnological Journal for December, 1848, quoted in the National Intelligencer, March 27, 1849, p. 2. He compares the Dighton inscription with others on rocks upon the Guyandotte and Ohio rivers. In these latter occur iron seams, which were too hard for the instruments used for pecking, — hence not iron tools. The tools of the Indians, he says, “though rude, are, nevertheless, adequate to the chipping of nearly every variety of rock to the slight depth required in these rude memorials. The tough syenite hatchets which they used previous to European intercourse with them, and for some time thereafter, cut sandstone readily, and with little injury to the instruments themselves; and it is very likely that the graywacke of the Dighton Rock would yield more readily than is generally supposed to their continued application.”
If Squier’s opinion is not sufficient, the following cannot fail to convince (from a paper on Weather and Civilizations, by Ellsworth Huntington, in the Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, 1916, xiv. 17): “The greatest ruins of the Western Hemisphere are located in Guatemala and Yucatan. . . . Consider the degree of ability shown by these monuments. Of course the figures appear to us somewhat crude. Yet one who examines them closely will find that they display high artistic merit. They show a people who were original and inventive, a people who did not hesitate to attempt big things. Remember that the Mayas who built these monuments and the numerous great buildings associated with them had no iron tools, and must have used stone implements.”
223 I have not tested the accuracy of this statement, but I have serious doubts as to its being true. It may be that in some lights and from some near-by positions it might be possible.
224 Squier, in the paper just quoted, and others have called attention to the number of inscribed rocks that occur in positions which make them subject to being sometimes submerged.
225 In this I agree, though contrary opinions have very frequently been expressed. This fact, however, does not necessitate accepting Kendall’s conclusion as to the antiquity of the inscription, since very shallow markings made subsequent to the coming of the whites would have presented an identical appearance. I have discussed this question in an earlier connection (Publications of this Society, xviii. 238, 239).
226 If Kendall was justified in these conclusions, they would seem to be one of the best arguments against his belief in the antiquity of the work, and in favor of the view that it was executed some time between 1600 and 1680.
227 So far as I can learn, there is no name now attached to either the brook or the spring. I can discover no one who ever heard of the names here given, though they seem to have been familiar in Kendall’s day.
228 See Publications of this Society, xviii. 244 ff.
229 Although the fact doubtless has no bearing on the truth of these legends, yet it is not without interest to note that there was a genuine pirate indirectly associated with Assonet Neck, — Thomas Tew of Newport, who “in point of gallantry was inferior to none” (Capt. Charles Johnson, History of the Pirates, London, 1814). John O. Austin (Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, p. 394f; 160 Allied Families, pp. 236–240) thinks that “perhaps” he was a brother of Henry Tew of Newport, who in 1688 purchased two of the six lots on Assonet Neck from the original proprietors (Bristol County, Northern District, Land Records, Book 1, pp. 70, 71).
230 I have been unable to trace this story to its source. One other, and a very detailed, reading of the inscription by an Indian expert is on record, — that by Chingwauk in 1839, described by Schoolcraft in his Indian Tribes, i. 108. Kendall attempted to secure an interpretation by Indians, but without much success: “Indians themselves, even of the same language and country as those by whom it was probably executed, are unable to offer any explanation of its meaning. From such Indians, I have in some instances obtained conjectures as to particular parts, but never any satisfactory glimpse of the whole” (T iii. 214).
231 This prostrate slab, lying apparently flat on the beach and projecting only three or four inches above it, is in reality a flat-surfaced boulder. I dug down along its side in the summer of 1915 to a depth of about three feet without reaching its base, further work being rendered impossible by water seeping in. It is a curious fact that it is of the same material as Dighton Rock, and its surface, in shape and dimensions, is closely similar to the inscribed face of the latter. It is not impossible that the two formed originally one boulder that later split apart.
This same slab, we have seen, was described in 1767 by Dr. Stiles, who drew its characters in a manner somewhat resembling XR.
232 “that I falsified the figures at every touch” (T ii. 226).
233 These remarks are especially pertinent criticisms of all the modern representations of the rock by means of photography. The Burgess photograph is the only faithful one that I know, because for all the others the rock was first prepared by chalking.
234 I am informed that about 1848 the American Academy donated the contents of its “Cabinet” to the Peabody Museum; and probably the Kendall painting was included.
235 An Attempt to Explain the Inscription on the Dighton Rock, Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1809, iii. 197–205.
236 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 233.
237 History of Massachusetts (London, 1765), i. 471.
238 He cites several instances and authorities in evidence of this.
239 There is one suggested in the Winthrop copy near the top, as well as the one in the Baylies-Smith-Gooding drawing.
240 Several can be imagined in both of the drawings just mentioned.
241 Probably the shaded figure (not so reproduced by Rafn, Mallery, etc.) just above the M near the centre in Winthrop.
242 Many such are discoverable in Winthrop.
243 Just to the right of the head of the left-most human figure in Winthrop.
244 The shaded figure with two circles and free lines running upward?
245 I have collected a considerable number of Indian “marks” or signatures affixed to deeds; many of them from the published Plymouth Colony Records. There are six such “marks” affixed to a paper testifying that Assonet Neck was owned by Piowant in 1673 (xii. 242). Alexander, and Philip, and some or all of these six, would be among those whose initials we should expect to discover, if any. It is very easy to find, or to imagine, their presence there. But it is manifestly impossible in the case of any one of them to be sure that it has such a source.
246 Communicated to Davis by the Rev. Dr. Lathrop, who was with Washington in visiting the college. See pp. 81–82, above.
247 Vues dea Cordilléres et monuments des peuples indigenes de l’Amérique, i. 180.
248 Researches, concerning the Institutions and Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants of America, with Descriptions and Views of some of the most Striking Scenes in the Cordilleras. Written in French by Alexander de Humboldt, & Translated into English by Helen Maria Williams, London, 1814, pp. 149–154. The Introduction by von Humboldt is dated Paris, April the 12th, 1813.
249 Archaeologia. See p. 76, above.
250 See Plate XXX. I learn nothing concerning this Job Gardner, except that a present resident of Dighton, born in 1830, when he was a boy knew Gardner as a maker of globes in an old shop on the river-front.
251 Antiquitates Americanæ, 1837, p. 358.
252 According to Webb, in Antiquitates Americanaæ, p. 358.
253 Antiquities of America Explained, pp. 71 ff.
254 Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, pp. 633–635.
255 Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast, p. 416.
256 Le Printemps, premier chant du Poeme Chinois, Des Saisons, traduit en vers Français, et mêlé d’allusions au Regne de Louis XVIII. 28 pages.
257 American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review, 1817, i. 257.
258 x. 227.
259 “Mr. Moulton is in fact the sole author of this scarce book,” according to Sabin (xii. 440).
260 One of these, to “Col. Duane’s speculations on this subject,” I have been unable to discover.
261 I condense the account, without indicating omissions and other changes made for the purpose.
262 The invalidity of this opinion as to Kendall’s drawing, and of these arguments concerning the Indians, have already received attention.
263 Recherches sur les Antiquites des États-Unis de L’Amérique septentrional; in Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires, publié par la Société de Geographie, 1825, ii. 438, 439: Monument curieux qui a fait croire à quelques auteurs que les Phéniciens ont visité l’Amérique. Planche XII.
264 Nachrichten über die fruheren Einwohner von Nordamerika und ihre Denkmäler, gesammelt von Friedrich Wilhelm Assail, Berghauptmann des Staates Pennsylvanien. Herausgegeben mit einem Vorberichte von Franz Joseph Mone ord. Prof. der Geschichte und Statistik zu Heidelberg. Mit einem Atlas von 12 Steintafeln: Heidelberg, 1827, pp. 71 ff.
265 There are two universally accepted errors concerning these drawings. One is that they were made in 1830, as Rafn mistakenly asserted. The second and more serious error is that the “View of the Assonet Inscription Rock; J. R. Bartlett delineavit” and “The Rhode Island Historical Society’s 1830” drawing as published in Antiquitates Americanæ are rightly so named. What the Society actually sent to Professor Rafn was importantly different in both cases. To the original drawings he added in both cases conjectural lines of his own. In the case of the “View” he gave no indication of this. On the other drawing, however, he made it possible to distinguish his own additions; but even so it ceased to be “The Rhode Island Historical Society’s” drawing, and became Rafn’s own. Some writers have recognized the fact of the additions. But many omit the peculiarities of marking that serve to distinguish them, and mistakenly call the whole the “Society’s” drawing, giving a seriously misleading impression as to what was actually found on the Rock. This is the case in the reproduction shown on Plate II of my previous paper. In a later paper the originals, photographed for me in Denmark, and Rafn’s reproductions from them will be shown side by side.
266 Ira Hill, A.M., Antiquities of America Explained. Hagers-Town [Md.], 1831. Pp. ix. 131.
Ira Hill is mentioned as an A.M. of the class of 1808 of the University of Vermont, in its General Catalogue. He was tutor there 1809–1810; teacher in Maryland; died 1838. I find no further information concerning him. His book is mentioned as “a very curious and VERY SCARCE volume” in the Brinley Catalogue, 1881, iii. 95.
267 See Plate XXX.
268 I have found in the literature of the subject no other allusions to some of these theories. The Pelasgian reference may be to Mathieu’s speculations. The Egyptians are not named, to my knowledge, before 1838. The “Trogans” and Persians are entirely new to me.
269 I Kings, Chapter 9:
26. And king Solomon made a navy of ships in Eziongeber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red sea, in the land of Edom.
27. And Hiram sent in the navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon.
28. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to king Solomon.
10 : 22. For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.
270 Both Kendall (Travels, ii. 223) and Lathrop (see above, p. 81) speak of the Pillars of Hercules in connection with the sculptures on the rock.
271 Hill inconsistently counts fifteen moons from the time of departure from Asia to the time of union of the peoples, and assigns the date to this event. But his own enumeration of the dots (dark or new moons) proves that he is reckoning from the time of leaving the Straits of Gibraltar to the death of the king.
272 N. S., i. 315 n.
273 i. 67.
274 American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, Boston, 1837, iii. 433.
275 Stark gives no authority for this statement, and I find no one else making such a claim. It may have been a variant of Kendall’s story about a ship’s anchor having been found there.
276 Moreau de Dammartin, La Pierre de Taunston, in Journal de l’Institut Historique, 1838, ix. 145–154.
Explication de la Pierre de Taunston, Par Moreau de Dammartin (Seine et Marne), membre de l’Institut historique. Passage Molière No. 5. Paris (n. d.). 28 pp. fold. pl. 8o.
277 Plates XXIII and XXXI. It should be noted that all of the figures on the second Plate are mirror-wise reversed.
278 I made use of the following:
Richard Hinckley Allen, Star-Names and their Meanings, 1899.
J. Fortin, Atlas Céleste de Flamsteed, 2nd edition, Paris, 1776. Probably a later edition would be preferable; and a discovery of the edition that Dammartin himself used would be indispensable, if there were any occasion to take his argument seriously. Brunet (Manuel du Libraire, 1861, ii. 1280) records a third edition, Paris, 1795. There is a copy of this edition in the Boston Public Library, the title reading in part, “Atlas Céleste de Flamsteed, publié en 1776, Par J. Fortin, . . . Troisième Édition, Revue, corrigée & augmentée par les Citoyens Lalande & Mechain. A Paris, . . . M.DCC.XCV.”
Richard Schurig, Tabulae Celestes, 2te Auflage, 1909.
279 The figure does not resemble the constellation.
280 The most arbitrary drawing of lines through this constellation fails to give the figure called for.
281 The stars arranged as here called for do not take at all the outline shown on the figure of the inscription referred to, as will be more definitely shown in criticizing Dammartin’s results as a whole.
282 The proportions and directions are very imperfect, and utterly wrong in their relations to Virgo and Horus. The Arabic figure 2 is very good as described. There is no constellation Horus mentioned in our books. But the stars between Virgo and Corvus could be arranged easily to form this figure; and Allen (p. 462) speaks of Isis, the equivalent of Virgo, as being sometimes represented as “clasping in her arms the young Horus.”
283 No star of this name is mentioned in the books consulted. From the description, it would appear that probably 16 Librae is meant.
284 See previous note on Boötes.
285 Allen, p. 123: “Great prominence is given to Sirius on the square Zodiac of Denderah, where it is figured as a cow recumbent in a boat with head surmounted by a star.”
286 It will be noticed that the number 28 occurs twice; but the one intended in each case is easily recognizable. There is no number 15.
287 The author’s own diagram in Planche 2 is the best comment on the absurdity of this identification.
288 I do not find this constellation mentioned, either in the books cited or in the dictionary of Larousse.
289 This result is fairly exact, except that Flamsteed shows no such arrangement for the stars of the head, some internal stars are neglected, and some lying outside of the picture of Orion in Flamsteed are used.
290 The seven-tubed syrinx cannot be formed out of the stars of Lepus as figured in Flamsteed, though by using stars outside its picture, a vague approximation to it can be made. It is no easier if one uses all the stars of Lepus in Schurig, whichever way they are turned.
291 This fact is demonstrated by the author (to his own satisfaction) at length; but his detailed exposition may be dispensed with here, as irrelevant to our purpose.
292 See Figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 is the portion of the inscription under discussion, as drawn in Dammartin’s Plate. Figure 2 shows the actual arrangement of the stars mentioned by him, as reduced by pantograph with fair accuracy from Schurig. Complete accuracy is not essential for the argument, in this or the following figures. Consequently, having first made them for my own satisfaction only, I have not revised them for publication.
293 See Figure 3.
294 W. K. Adams, The Book of the Master; or, the Egyptian Doctrine of the Light Born of the Virgin Mother, 1898.
S. G. P. Coryn, The Faith of Ancient Egypt, 1913.
295 Allen, loc. cit., p. 206.
296 See Fig. 4. This figure was reduced by pantograph from Schurig. Free-hand drawing from Flamsteed gave a figure somewhat nearer to that of the rock, but not so accurate. It is the latter drawing, however, that is assumed in the text.
297 I have verified this statement, of course, by actually making the drawings.
298 See pp. 109–110, above.
299 Stark is another believer in the Phœnicians.
300 Bellomont left Barbados March 9 and reached New York April 2, 1698, but did not come to Boston until May 26, 1699 (Publications of this Society, xvii. 49, 49 note).
301 From the Frederick Lewis Gay Transcripts (State Papers, ix. 28) in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
302 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 163. Cf. Sewall’s Diary, ii. 31*–131.*
303 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 214.
304 Cf. Publications of this Society, vi. 86–89, 91; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, ii. 437; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxiv. 110 note.
305 History of Massachusetts, ii. 153. For the earthquake, which occurred June 7, 1692, see Calendars of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1692–1693, pp. 651–652, 711–712.
306 P. 4/1. Cf. Shaw, Knights of England, ii. 274; 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, viii. 213.
307 Diary, ii. 42, 43.
308 Suffolk Probate Files, xix. 103.
309 Diary, i. 500.
310 Toleration Act (1689), which was introduced by Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham, to whom Mather’s letter was addressed.
311 Allusions to Hobby will be found in the Calendars of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1697–1698, p. 596; 1700, p. 52; 1701, p. 269; 1702, p. 434; 1702–1703, pp. 38, 168, 609, 641, 649, 678; 1704–1705, pp. 19, 514, 589, 602, 604; 1706–1708, nos. 511, 656, 1186 ii. On October 19, 1698, and on February 1, 1700, Hobby was described as “a merchant of Port Royal.” On the latter date Governor Sir William Beeston included Hobby in a list of persons recommended for the Council for Jamaica, but added: “though 20 years since, when there were many Gentlemen here, none of these would have been thought fitting.” On May 30, 1701, Beeston spoke of Hobby as “since gone off.”
312 Gay Transcripts (Miscellaneous Papers, i. 102–106: British Museum, Add. MSS. 29, 5 49. ff. 109–110 b).
313 Gay Transcripts (Miscellaneous Papers, i. 106–108: British Museum, Add. MSS. 29, 5 49. f. 111).
314 Publications, x. 247–252.
315 Cord Cordis married (for his second wife) Hannah Jones (widow of Elnathan Jones), October 2, 1740; and died at Concord, aged 63, July 29, 1772. His widow died in London in 1779. (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxviii. 214; Wyman, Genealogies and Estate of Charlestown, i. 240; Boston Nem Letter, August 6, 1772.)
316 It is more than likely that the Club was behind the movement of 1761 to oppose the writs of assistance and to break down the whole vice-admiralty system in Boston. Two of its members, Harrison Gray, treasurer of the province, and John Erving, one of the council, were plaintiffs in suits before the common law courts against vice-admiralty officials, which were designed, as Governor Bernard said, “to destroy the court of admiralty and with it the custom house which cannot subsist without it.” (Colonial Office, 5:891, Ll 67, 68; Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754–1765, pp. 119–123.)
317 In the original document the year is not given, and there is no mention of the founding of the Society in contemporary newspapers or diaries, but as John Hammock, Jr., one of the signers, died January 7, 1764 (Boston Gazette, January 16, 1764), and John Simpson, another of the signers, died June 30, 1764, while on his way from Fayal to Philadelphia (ibid. July 30, 1764), the year must be 1763. Furthermore the object of the Society was to prevent the renewal of the Molasses Act, and we have records of its activity in December, 1763.
318 In another hand.
319 In another hand.
320 Crossed out in the original.
321 Crossed out in the original, with a marginal note “not passed.”
322 In another hand.
323 In another hand.
324 Massachusetts Historical Society, 02517, a collection of papers originating with the Society for the Promotion of Trade and Commerce and gathered by Edward Payne, secretary of its Standing Committee.
325 Drake, Old Boston Taverns, pp. 33–38, 38–39, 55, and Appendix.
326 Rowe, Diary, March 25, 1767.
327 William Molineux was one of the chief offenders: see Rowe, February 11, 1768, and Drake, pp. 41–43, for a Molineux-Otis anecdote. Molineux was known and disliked as an agitator.
328 Thomas Gray and Edward Payne had been instructed to draft a state of the trade in 1763, and to make every effort possible to prevent a renewal of the Molasses Act. In doing so, they incurred considerable expense, for which under the rules of the Society they should have been reimbursed. That this was not done appears from their statement to the Committee in January, 1766, that even “if the Society that remains should pay them half a dollar each for the purpose aforesaid there would even then be a deficit” (Massachusetts Historical Society, O2517).
329 Boston Evening Post, May 14, 1764: “The annual meeting of the Society for encouraging Trade and Commerce will be held this evening at the British Coffee House. The members are desired to give their attendance.”
330 Massachusetts Historical Society, Broadsides.
331 Such as that of March 1, 1768, to correspond with merchants in other trading towns and provinces and consisting of John Hancock, John Rowe, Edward Payne, William Phillips, Thomas Boylston, Arnold Welles, Melatiah Bourne, Henderson Inches, and John Erving, Jr. A committee was also appointed to prepare a list of those articles which it might be thought necessary to import, and there were doubtless many others.
332 This diary was first published, with some omissions, in 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, x. 60–108; later in a separate volume (called Letters and Diary) edited by Mrs. Cunningham, in more complete form. I have been carefully over the original manuscript and obtained therefrom much additional information regarding the meetings and those who were present at them.
333 The New York merchants were equally active at this time. In February, 1764, they assembled in the Long Room of Burn’s tavern, which as a merchants’ meeting place corresponded to the British Coffee House in Boston, and appointed a committee to prepare a memorial to the assembly of the province, representing the decline of trade and the distresses of the merchants and traders of the city. This committee, which may be the same as that noted below, p. 174 note 2, wrote to Philadelphia advising the merchants there of their intention of “heartily joining the eastern governments in soliciting a discontinuance of the most unjust of all laws, the Sugar Act,” and of requesting the assembly to instruct the agent in England “to go hand in hand with the other governments.” Apparently the merchants of Rhode Island did the same, for the assembly there in February, 1764, ordered a memorial regarding the duties on sugar, molasses, etc., “to be sent to Mr. Agent Sherwood” (Boston Gazette, February 13, 1764; Boston Evening Post, March 26, 1764). It would be interesting to know more about this early instance of cooperation among the merchants. I owe these references to Miss Viola F. Barnes, who made the search for me.
334 Massachusetts Historical Society, 02517, no. 17. Memorial of Merchants and Traders of Boston, “That a certain Act of Parliament in the sixth year of his late Majesty’s reign, generally known by the name of the Sugar Act [Molasses Act], being near Expiring, they have the greatest reason to expect that the W. Indian planters will use their utmost endeavours to procure the renewal of it” (Massachusetts Archives, Court Records, xxv. 100. Memorial of Merchants and Traders of Plymouth, xxv. 100; of Marblehead, xxv. 109; of Salem, xxv. 114). Unfortunately the General Court proceedings, from December 21, 1763, to January 24, 1764, with all supplemental papers, were burnt in the fire which destroyed Harvard Hall on the night of January 24, 1764, where the assembly was sitting on account of the epidemic of small-pox in Boston. These letters and memorials were among the papers lost. But the committee was instructed to recover what it could, to prepare a letter to Mauduit during the recess of the assembly, and to place it in the hands of the Secretary for despatch (xxv. 143, 152–153, 194).
335 The text of the “State” probably contained the following sections:
One principal branch of the trade of this province is the fishing carried on to the Banks; in this branch there is upwards of 300 vessels employed, besides a great number of small boats in the Bay, and in the Mackrel Fishing about 90, the Fish these vessels cure, with the pickled Fish and Liver Oyl amounts to upwards of £160,000 stg. per annum; — about ⅖ of this Bank Fish turns out merchantable and is sent to Spain, Portugal, and Italy, the net proceeds of which with the freight is remitted to Great Britain; the other ⅗ being such as is oversalted, sunburnt, and broken, and thereby rendered unfit for any market in Europe is sent to the Islands in the West Indies, first to the English Islands, which cant consume more than ⅕ the remaining ⅖ is sent to the French foreign islands, in return for which we receive Molasses and a small proportion of ordinary sugars. This valuable branch of trade and nursery of seamen almost if not wholly depends on our trade to the foreign islands in the West Indies (as we cannot cure fish for the European market separate from the other sort sent to the West Indies) and as we have no other Market for what is made by the Bankers, it will be lost if not sent to the foreign islands in the West Indies and this loss must infallibly destroy the whole bank fishing.
Another considerable branch of our trade is lumber of all kinds which is sent to the West Indies, also provisions, horses, onions, and many other articles suitable for the West Indies, in which trade there is upwards of 300 vessels employed in this province. Most of these vessels call first at the English islands (who consume but a small proportion of what we export). When they are supplied, the remainder is carried to the foreign islands.
Some oak timber and staves are sent to Ireland, some to Madeira and the Western Islands to purchase wines, and some few cargoes are sent to Spain, Portugal, and England, but none to any foreign port to the No of Cape Finisterre; as the first cost of these cargoes of lumber is very small, the whole profits are no more than a freight for the vessel, but this freight is a great encouragement to shipbuilding, a very considerable branch of trade in this province, where there has been upwards of—built in a year, before the late embarrassments were laid on our trade since wch this number has been reduced ⅓.
Some of these ships with fish, oyl, potash and naval stores are sent direct to Europe, but chiefly to the West Indies with lumber, fish, and other articles of our produce, the proceeds of which with the freight to England, together with the vessel, are remitted to Great Britain to pay for the goods we receive from thence, and by having timber plenty and building so many vessels we become carriers for all other parts of America besides the trade to the West Indies. Many of our ships go to Virginia, No and So Carolina, where they carry large quantities of rum and other northern produce to purchase rice, tobacco, and naval stores, and take in freight for Great Britain where the Proceeds of the whole and indeed of all our trade centers (Massachusetts Historical Society, 02517).
I have not had access to a copy of the “State” of 1763, if such exists. Probably that sent to the General Assembly was lost in the fire. The figures given above correspond to those furnished by Marblehead and Salem, and the statement above, though containing a reference to the Sugar Act of 1764, and so actually written after that date, is likely to be nothing more than the earlier one adapted to a new need. Many such “States” were drafted between 1763 and 1769 and the same wording appears throughout. New “States” are simply old “States” added to. A copy of the “State” has recently been found: see pp. 379–390, below.
336 In studying the grievances of the New England merchants we must remember that New England had four particular forms of economic activity — agriculture, fishing, commerce, and manufactures, in the last three of which she was the rival of Great Britain. The southern colonies and the West Indies had neither manufactures, commerce, nor fisheries. See American Husbandry, i. 434–435, ii. 236–245.
James Bowdoin wrote to Alexander Mackay, November 29, 1770: “What is remitted to England is by a circuitous trade, and principally from Spain & Portugal, all which added to the numerous articles of their own and foreign produce sent by them to Britain is scarcely sufficient to pay for what they import from thence. Whatever, therefore, is taken from them as revenue not only so far prevents the paying the debt due to Britain, but operates to the discouragement and lessening of their general trade, upon which their ability to pay that debt and continue that importation depends” (6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 242).
Franklin wrote to Peter Collinson, April 30, 1764: “We are in your hands as Clay in the Hands of the Potter and so in more particulars than is generally considered, for as the Potter cannot waste or spoil his Clay without injuring himself so I think there is scarce anything you can do that may be hurtful to us, but what will be as much or more so to you. Does anybody see that if you confine us in America to your own Sugar Islands for that commodity, it must raise the price of it in England. Just so much as the price advances, so much is every Englishman tax’d to the West Indies” (British Museum, Add. MSS. 37021, f. 21).
337 William Barrell proposed to ship sugar from St. Croix to Boston, consigned to his brother Joseph Barrell. The latter warned him that the duties must be paid (“if you ship anything it must undoubtedly pay the duty”), and said that he would have to get the permission of the governor of the Danish island “which he had never refused to give” (April 12, 1709, Barrell Papers, Library of Congress). In a letter written to Jasper Mauduit, Nov. 24, 1764, and later sent to Richard Jackson, an unknown correspondent (the Society?) emphasizes the fact that the duties levied by the act of 1764 were a heavy drain on the colony, particularly in the matter of molasses, because the French would suffer none to trade without permits and these permits were very costly; the business had to be transacted by such a person as they appointed, “who was allowed ten per cent for doing it, and he charged the molasses as he pleased and no questions must be asked” (Massachusetts Historical Society, Massachusetts Papers, no. 1: not in the printed collection). Barrell had great trouble with the Danish governor and finally failed to get permission. The Society laid a great deal of stress on these points in its statements. Compare my Anglo-French Commercial Rivalry (American Historical Review, July, 1915, xx. 763 note 6).
338 The sending of flaxseed to Ireland was a very important aspect of New York and New England commerce at this time. The merchants said that the trade was worth £40,000 a year. See Commerce of Rhode Island, i. passim.
339 The object of this bond was to prevent smuggling. Until 1765, the Isle of Man had been controlled by private lords and in consequence smuggling had gone on to such an extent as to call for governmental interference. The custom-house books of western Scottish ports, notably those of Ayr, show the extent of this clandestine running of rum to Great Britain. In 1765 parliament bought out the governmental rights of the proprietaries, the Duke of Atholl and others, for £70,000, and immediately passed acts regulating the trade of the island. Under these acts the colonists were forbidden to carry rum to the Isle of Man and were required to give a bond not to do so. (5 George III, cc. 26, 39 sections 5, 6, c. 43.)
340 It is difficult to disentangle and classify these various drafts framed by the Standing Committee. No. 26 seems to be of date 1764, with additions of 1767; no. 27 must be of date later than 1766; no. 54 is the first draft of no. 39, which was probably that sent to De Berdt; while nos. 52, 53, 58–60, 65–67, 74, were probably notes used in making up no. 39, the last part of which is contained in nos. 55 and 56. No. 31 is apparently the latest of all, and was completed toward the end of the year 1768, as it embodies all the claims made since 1763. Nos. 68–70 may be the original draft of no. 31.
341 Thomas-Cushing to Dennys De Berdt, June 28, 1766 (Massachusetts Papers, Seventy-Six Society Publications, no. 3, p. 15).
342 Massachusetts Papers, Seventy-Six Society Publications, no. 3, p. 29.
343 American Husbandry, ii. 245.
344 11 William III, c. 25.
345 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, vi. § 704. Cf. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1704–1705, § 116; representation of the Board of Trade, April 29, 1765, Colonial Office, 195: 9, pp. 397–424; and the additional instructions to Palliser of May 6, 1765, ibid. pp. 434–436. Some of these orders are in the Book of Orders and Proclamations by Governors of Newfoundland, Public Record Office, Admiralty, Greenwich Hospital, Miscellanea, Various, 121.
346 Palliser arrived, for the second time, on April 3, 1766, and began to issue rules, orders, and regulations to be observed on the coast of Labrador. Under these rules no New Englander was to take cod in the straits of Belle Isle or off the coast of Labrador.
347 Massachusetts Historical Society, O2517, nos. 55, 56. See also Massachusetts Papers, p. 40, where additional grievances regarding the fishery may be found. In Massachusetts Historical Society, O2517, no. 65, is the following: “Mr. Palliser posted an order in the Town House and sent for the masters of all the vessels belonging to the plantations, forbidding [them] to tarry at St. John’s or any of the other harbours after the last day of October [1766], and if any presum’d to tarry after that time they were to have their rudders taken off and their sails carried into the Fort, and likewise sail masters to give bonds with sureties not to bring away any passengers. By which we are entirely excluded from the Cod fishery.” Cf. no. 74.
348 The letter was addressed to James Otis, Benjamin Faneuil, Henry Lloyd, John Rowe, Samuel Hughes, and Stephen Greenleaf, and was signed by John Cruger, John Alsop, James Jauncy, Walter Franklin, Henry White, Richard Yates, Isaac Sears, Robert Murray, Gerard Beekman, David Van Home, and Elias Desbrosses (Massachusetts Historical Society, O2517, no. 30). For the general situation in New York and for comments on the petition, see Becker, History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776, pp. 28–39.
349 Massachusetts Historical Society, O2517, no. 74.
350 Ibid. nos. 34, 35. Printed in Letters of Dennys De Berdt, 1757–1770 (Publications of this Society, xiii. 451–452).
351 The fees exacted at the custom houses everywhere at this period were a distinct grievance to the merchants. There were two forms of protest, one against excessive fees, and the other against fees that were illegal or were not authorized at all. On July 31, 1769, fifty-one of the leading merchants of Newport entered into an agreement not to pay higher custom-house fees than the law allowed and to guard strangers against the exactions of the custom-house officials (New Hampshire Gazette, October 13, 1769). The same question came up in Connecticut, when in October, 1769, memorials were presented to the assembly, which disclose the antagonism existing between the merchants and the customs officials (Connecticut Archives, Maritime and Trading Affairs, ii. nos. 90, 91). The protest had been made in the colonies as early as 1764 and was continued till 1770. It was emphatic in Philadelphia and Charles Town.
352 The colonial grievances against the courts of vice-admiralty at this period reached their climax in the case of Henry Laurens in Charles Town, who had three vessels seized and condemned. Laurens’s comments on this event can be found in his pamphlets, for the titles of which see Wallace, Life of Laurens. Some of his views, as given in his Letter Books, are even more expressive. He speaks of “the tyranny of custom house officers . . . the losses from their unjust exactions and from the rigorous, artful, and illegal decisions in the American courts of vice-admiralty . . . the vast extent of jurisdiction and powers given to a single man who may be a fool or a knave or both . . . those rapacious, haughty, insolent and overbearing men, such as our collector was during his short six months residence here, are great troublers of quiet minds . . . such men are the greatest enemies to Britain of any men in America and as one vile priest does more injury to the cause of religion than two rakes, so does one such officer or man in power more prejudice to the interest of Britain in America than twenty mouthing Liberty Boys” (Laurens, Letter Book, iv. 31, 168, 192, 329, 353, 355, 370, 374, South Carolina Historical Society).
353 Adams, Cushing, Otis, and Gray wrote to Dennys De Berdt, December 20, 1765: “We find that attempts have been made to raise a jealousy in the nation that the colonists are struggling for independence, than which nothing can be more injurious. It is neither their interest, nor have they ever shown the least disposition to be independent of Great Britain. They have always prided themselves on being British subjects” (Adams, Writings, i. 70–71).
Laurens wrote in 1767: “As to our European-American affairs I am under no dread about them, there may possibly be some disagreeable work, but even such work must be soon at an end and produce an establishment of union to endure for ages. There are mistaken men on both sides, the eyes of the nation will be opened and men on either part who do not want wisdom and who can see the compatibility of freedom and subordination will arise with healing under their wings and build an everlasting bridge from Britain to British America. God grant it may be so” (Letter Book, iv. 52).
354 William Allason wrote to his brother, September 6, 1765: “We may expect a good collection next spring unless the Stamp Duty should have the same bad consequences that is generally apprehended from it. By all accounts it will drain the country in a few years of all the money in circulation and entirely put it out of the power of people in trade to recover their small debts by the charge of the sheriffs that will be necessary in the prosecution of a suit for a trifling sum, of which most of our debts consist.” He further adds that in case of a suit “the plaintiff cannot recover the Stamp Duty as he can the other costs, since it is not so provided by Parliament” (Allason Papers, Virginia State Library).
355 Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1714–1719, p. 157. In 1765 Van Cortlandt wrote, “I would order tobacco could part of the duty be saved, but a penny sterlg Duty will not answer” (Letter Book, New York Public Library). It was reported from Charles Town in 1770 that the “Kings duties” were paid in silver, and this term probably included the plantation duty (South Carolina Gazette, May 31, 1770). For the quitrents, see Bond, The Quit Rent System in the American Colonies (American Historical Review, April, 1912, xvii. 508–510).
There was probably no hard money to speak of in the interior towns of any of the colonies, certainly not in New England, where scarcity in the cities, due to trade and the fisheries, would involve the country districts, which were entirely dependent on the mercantile centres for cash. For example, Enfield even at this period was making all authorized grants for schools, ministers, and town expenses “to be paid in the produce of the earth” (Allen, History of Enfield, i. 432–443, and passim). A similar condition prevailed in all the agricultural communities of New England.
356 “Distress and poverty stalks among us equal to anything among our neighbours” (Letter from New Bern, N. C., June 10, 1768, New Hampshire Gazette, July 22, 1768). The Boston Gazette of November 2, 1767, speaks of “the present alarming scarcity of money and consequent stagnation of trade, and the almost universally increasing complaints of debt and poverty.” A Providence town meeting, after listening to the report of its committee on December 4, 1767, stated as a reason for its vote that the colony was heavily in debt, its inhabitants subject to burdensome taxation, trade, which for some years had been on the decline, was suffering under great embarrassments, medium very scarce, and the balance of trade very unfavorable (Providence Gazette, December 12, 1767). Newport made the same statement, December 4 (Boston Gazette, December 14). In 1764, times in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were considered bad by all writers, and failures were not uncommon. On April 5, 1769, Washington wrote to George Mason, “That many families [in Virginia] are reduced almost, if not quite, to penury and want by the low ebb of their fortunes, and that estates are daily selling for the discharge of debts, the public papers furnish too many melancholy proofs” (Life and Correspondence of George Mason, i. 140); and in October, 1769, an address was sent to Gov. Franklin of New Jersey on the “Deplorable State of the Province, arising partly from the excessive scarcity of money and decay of trade, but chiefly from the multiplicity of lawsuits, mostly for debt” (New Jersey Archives, xxvi. 529). This petition led to the passage of the New Jersey Act “For the Relief of Insolvent Debtors.” John Watts of New York wrote to Gov. Monckton in 1765, “The illboding aspect of things, cramping of trade, suppression of paper money, duties, courts of admiralty, appeals, internal taxes, etc., have rendered people so poor, cross, and desperate that they don’t seem to care who are their masters or indeed for any master” (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, x. 587, December 30, 1765). See also a letter from J. W. Watts to the same, February 4, 1769, on the situation (Chalmers Papers, iii., New York Public Library).
357 William Dunterfield of Imlay’s Town, Pa., did this in 1767, and Nathaniel Barrell, whose financial troubles split the Sandemanian Church in New Hampshire, locked himself in his house for six weeks in 1766.
358 As the point here made is an important one, I should like to substantiate it by quoting a part of the evidence upon which it is based, drawn not from the newspapers but from the merchants’ letter-books of the period.
Thomas Browning of Georgetown, Maryland, wrote to Stephen Collins in 1762: “Collections in the Cuntry is I can say with truth the worst I ever knew them (March 15).” “The Farmers are not making more than half crops of wheat and not more in proportion of Indian corn. I can only say that two thirds of our farmers when I call on them for their account say that if we pay you off our children must suffer for bread” (June 15: Collins Papers).
The Allason letters of 1763 are full of references to suits to recover money from debtors in Annapolis, Philadelphia, North Carolina, and the up country. “I believe there never were so many suits depending in this country [Virginia] as there is at this time. Scarcely a prison is allowed to stand [empty] in some counties” (W. Allason to his brother, June 24, 1764, Allason Papers).
John Schaw, writing to Allason on February 9, 1763, said: “I have left above £1500 debts behind me [in Annapolis] and I shall go over about the last of March to make a collection,” with the result that “I made a very unsuccessful journey of it myself, I mean in collecting my debts, which gives me great uneasiness. The people there had nothing in short to pay me” (Letter of April 1, 1763). His journey included the Eastern Shore also.
Ezra Collins to Stephen Collins, March, 1763: “Thy old friends Danl King, W. Vane, Jno Nutting of Salem failed thousands worse than nothing.”
Scott & Gill wrote to Collins from Boston, April 18, 1763: “There is scarce any other money than gold passing here and a rare thing to see a dollar.”
Collins threatened one Thomas Barber of Piles Grove, New Jersey, with an execution until he paid or gave security, and couched his letter “in an angry style.” Barber replied that going to prison would not pay the debt.
John Kirkpatrick wrote from Alexandria, November 26, 1764: “I have been abroad these three weeks in quest of money but never met so great disappointment in collection. I had a great dependence on Col. Philip Lee, but in vain. There is £28 due from Col. Wm Fitzhugh in Stafford which I sued for.” Parrish wrote from Accomac in 1764: “Times is hard and money hard to collect, at least I find it so” (May 29, 1764), and he calls 1765 “that fatal year,” not because of the Stamp Act but because of his business troubles.
The letters from Joseph Barrell to his brother William emphasize constantly his difficulties in raising money, April 15, June 15, 1763. That of April 22 mentions the matter three times.
On May 4, 1765, Peter Schmuck of Hardwick, New Jersey, wrote Collins: “I received thy letter yesterday by which I understand thy uneasiness which I am sorry for and should have come to Town before now if I could got my money in which I have been trying ever since Last Fall but all in vain and now I began to sue and it seems to be all one. Of twenty fife person which I suit at one time I got my money only of four and the rest I must get it by execution, which it seems to go very hard. For such times never was known among people for there is never a week but there are some vendues of the sheriffs and constables.” In 1767 Collins sold up Schmuck, who wrote him a scornful letter, September 23. Collins in commenting on the situation said, May 21, 1768: “Sheriff, coroner, and I think Schmuck are all dependent on each others Lenity, either having executions against each other or debts due.”
Jacob Isaac to Collins: “I am schmd to come without the money becust it has been so long standen” (February 23, 1766). John Milhause to Collins, April 26, 1766, says much the same, and later, November 18, adds that he has enough owing him to pay many bonds but that it is impossible to get it quickly by suing, as the law allows three months in small debts and three courts in large ones. John Sheppard to Collins, June 19, 1765: “I have as much more money owing to me as I owe, but I cannot command it at this time by Rason of the great Scarcity of money.” Michael Hessler appealed to him in two letters from “Reading Gaol,” August 25, September 2, 1765. Jonathan Bowen of Cohansey, September 5: “I am getting in the money for you as fast as possible.” John Long to Collins, Burlington, New Jersey, November 25, 1766: “I recd your letter leding me no the Scarcity of money and indeed I put no Dout in it for I can get none at all.”
In 1767, William Barrell of Portsmouth was down to bed-rock in the matter of cash. “I havent 5 dollars in the world,” he wrote, April 15, 1767.
John Rodermel to Collins, “Richmont townsib, Barks County,” Pa., May 2, 1768: “I bake of you dow dwade me six monds lonker Deng will bay you ac whidoud fale den id unbasble for me to bay id sowner. Den I hobe you vont but me in ane chust [jail] dou it is ware hards time to gad money.”
In February, 1769, William Allason had twenty-six cases in Fredericksburg County court against Shenandoah debtors, among whom were Daniel Morgan, the Ashbys, and others. His suits, 1762–1764, against persons owing him either on bond or on account numbered 126, as follows: Frederick county 38, Stafford 30, Fauquier 24, Culpcper 16, etc. In 1768–1770, the total number was 94, covering fourteen counties and the general court. Allason kept a list of his lawyers (Allason Day Book and Suit Book).
The financial difficulties do not appear to have been as serious in New York as in Pennsylvania, though Philip Van Cortlandt said in 1764 that trade was “almost intirely stopt by the severity of the customs officers and men of war,” and his letter-books show that he had considerable sums owing him in Virginia, which he could not get except at serious loss. “I could wish the gentlemen of Virginia had been as punctual in payments as I have been in answering their requests,” he writes, and his correspondence is as spicy as is that of Collins. He had to go to law in some cases and to threaten to do so in others. As to his own business, he says, “I do but little more than pay the expence of my works at present,” and in December, 1765, speaks of “these dull times, the distressed situation, little business done, no law in force, a terable time.” “Most of the sugar houses are stopt since last Fall,” he writes in March, 1765, a situation due of course to the Sugar Act, the scarcity of raw sugar, and the watchfulness of the custom house officers and men of war. In 1768, he reported sugar again as low and other sugar houses as “stopt in the city.” From John Van Cortlandt’s ledgers may be obtained figures regarding the suits against Roscoe Sweny and Col. Tucker of Virginia, and Abraham Maers of North Carolina, as well as ample additional evidence of debts due all the way from New Haven to Hampton, Virginia.
359 Book debts play a very important part in colonial business and were the subject of legislation in a majority of the colonies. They occupy much space in ledgers after 1758, but comparative estimates are difficult to reach, on account of the scarcity of evidence. John Glassford, a well-known Scottish merchant, with a string of stores along the Potomac and near-by waters, enters in one of his ledgers a list of 250 customers with debit and credit items (October 1, 1760). The customers owed him £125 stg, 1613 lbs tobacco, and £975 Virginia currency; he owed them £15 stg, 3426 lbs tobacco, and £54 Virginia currency (Firm Accounts, Maryland and Virginia, v. Library of Congress). The entering of debts in a merchant’s ledger is no sign of specially bad times, but the following in ledgers of the period under consideration may be noted: “Debts deemed Desperate,” “Insolvent Debts,” “Dead and no Effects,” “Denies the Debt,” “Sued,” “Run to Virginia” (many), “Lunatick and no Effects,” “No such man can be found,” “Lost by Judgment.” It should be noticed that “Desperate Debts” was the customary term for bad debts (Mair, Bookkeeping Modernized, p. 516).
360 Freeman & Osland wrote April 28, 1763, saying that “the failure of remittances from America rendered it impossible for them to fill his orders.” Collins wrote to Neate, Pigon & Booth, “I shall be very cautious of ordering any more Goods than I can pay for to your satisfaction” (April 30, 1767).
361 He made a strenuous effort to collect money. Patrick Riley, Bound Brook, September 21, 1763, wrote, “I recd thine of the 8mo 4, 1763, which Required in the most strickest manner thy money.” John Goldy, New Mills, March 6, 1764, “As an Acknowledgement for thy Extrornery favor and patience in Waiting so long for thy Money,” etc.
362 The account between William Allason of Falmouth, Virginia, and his brother in Glasgow ran as follows:
December |
1760 |
Debit |
£2129 |
Balance |
1342 |
“ |
1762 |
“ |
1342 |
“ |
1392a |
“ |
1763 |
“ |
1657b |
“ |
1258 |
“ |
1764 |
“ |
1595b |
“ |
904 |
“ |
1765 |
“ |
1021b |
“ |
603 |
“ |
1766 |
“ |
1048b |
“ |
697 |
“ |
1767 |
“ |
717b |
“ |
362 |
“ |
1768 |
“ |
388c |
“ |
182 |
a Including £50 interest with no credit allowance.
b Principal and interest.
c Principal and interest and postage.
The letters from Henry Cruger to Aaron Lopez of Newport, Rhode Island, show a similar situation. In March, 1768, the indebtedness of Lopez to Cruger was £11,000 stg, with a prospect of a reduction to £9000. In 1767 it was £10,514 (Commerce of Rhode Island, i. 189, 229).
363 The Charles Town merchants generally had balances to their credit in England, so that the drain of specie in that direction was trifling as compared with the North. But there was a drain of specie northward, because of the large amounts of potatoes, onions, flour, and other staples imported from the northern colonies, for which there was only a little rice to give in return. Few provisions were raised on the plantations of South Carolina, and no Irish potatoes for export till 1768 (South Carolina Gazette, June 27, 1768). It was estimated in 1770, that specie was drawn from the colony in three ways: (1) by the payment of the king’s duties in silver; (2) by the trade with the northern colonies, “who take a very inconsiderable quantity of our produce in payment for their goods;” (3) by sea voyages to the same colonies for health, pleasure, change of air, or education. Thirty-two people are mentioned as going in that year to Rhode Island, Philadelphia, New York, or Boston, and taking with them 3500 guineas, chiefly in half joes and dollars. See an interesting letter in the Georgia Gazette on this subject, October 18, 1764.
364 “Oil without Vinegar and Dignity without Pride, or British, American, and West India Interests Considered, Together with a Chart showing the Rise and Fall of the Trade between the Two Countries, By Macall Medford,” 2d edition, London, 1807.
365 This subject will bear further investigation. The author of American Husbandry deems it a “hackneyed argument” to say that the money of the northern colonies was “laid out in merchandize with Britain” (ii. 242). But the colonists believed profoundly that it was so. Samuel Adams said, “The Dutys upon the goods imported from [England] and consumed here, together with those which are laid upon almost every Branch of our Trade all of which center in dry Cash in her Coffers amounts to a very great sum” (Writings, i. 42–43, 62, 114).
366 The following is taken from the Annual Abstracts of the Receiver General, 1746–1780 (Public Record Office, Treasury 38:357):
1762 |
Plantation duty |
£721 |
|
1763 |
“ “ |
1326 |
|
1764 |
“ “ |
1031 |
|
1765 |
Plantation duty |
£2959 |
|
1766 |
“ “ |
7378 |
|
1767 |
Plantation duty |
3910 |
|
By 4 George III |
29,685 |
||
“6 George II |
10 |
||
“ 6 George III |
272 |
||
Fines and Forfeitures |
684 |
||
1768 |
Plantation duty |
517 |
|
By 4 George III |
14,802 |
||
“ 6 George III |
8765 |
||
“ 7 George III |
86 |
||
Fines and Forfeitures |
119 |
||
1769 |
Plantation duty |
1075 |
|
By 6 George II |
75 |
||
“ 4 George III |
6047 |
||
“ 6 George III |
2655 |
||
“ 7 George III |
708 |
||
Fines and Forfeitures |
1217 |
||
Seizures by Ships of War (per 4 George III, c. 15) . |
597 |
367 See the grievances of the Boston merchants, p. 169 and note 1, above. Even in 1763, Van Cortlandt could say, “Here [New York] the men of warr and customs officials search every vessel and have seized several,” “Several vessels have been seized this week past, therefore be careful of contraband goods.”
368 Boston Gazette, May 22, 1769.
369 Pennsylvania Chronicle, July 18, 1769.
370 Boston Gazette, July 11, 1768.
371 This letter is not signed and there is no clue to its authorship. Its content is similar to the first part of that sent by Otis, Cushing, Gray, Adams, and Sheafe to Dennys De Berdt in December, 1765 (Massachusetts Papers, pp. 6–7), but it differs from the latter in containing the non-consumption clause and omitting the constitutional arguments that occupy so large a space in the latter document. As it was also sent to Richard Jackson in the spring of 1766, after the Otis letter had been sent to De Berdt and as the merchants at this time paid little attention to the constitutional claim, it is possible that the Society had something to do with it, particularly as Otis, Cushing, and Gray were all members of the Merchants’ Club (Rowe’s Diary, manuscript, December 14, 20, 24, 31, January 9, 10, 11, 1764–1765). This letter is not included in the printed Massachusetts Papers, but will be found in the manuscript collection.
Drake mentions a non-importation and non-consumption agreement of August, 1764 (History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 679), but I have been entirely unable to find contemporary evidence for it. It is certain that no non-importation agreement was made at that time, and had a non-consumption agreement been entered into in any formal way, it would surely be recorded in the newspapers.
372 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xvi. 221–224; Boston Gazette November 2, 1767. This meeting did not adopt a non-importation resolution as is frequently stated.
373 The town meeting met on November 25, and appointed a committee, which reported on December 2, at which time the resolution was adopted (Proiddence Town Records, November 25, December 2, 1767; Providence Gazette, December 12, 1767; Massachusetts Historical Society, Broadsides, December 9, 1767).
374 Memorial History of Boston, ii. 338.
375 The following towns may be listed, but the number could be greatly increased. Falmouth, Scarborough, Pepperellborough, Biddeford, Wells, Kittery, Old York, Arundel, Newburyport, Billerica, Medfield, Abington, Wellsboro, Ashburnham, Salem, Lexington, Grafton, Dartmouth, Plymouth, Sandwich, Truro. For Connecticut towns, see Lamed, History of Windham County, ii.118f1–161[1]. The proceedings in Boston and the northern colonies were printed with approval in both the South Carolina and Georgia Gazettes, but I cannot find that any formal action was taken. New Jersey sent Massachusetts her congratulations on the economy resolutions, and Virginia, April 5, 1768, said she was anxiously expecting that some resolves of frugality and industry would be entered into by the merchants of Philadelphia, as the influence of so large a place would be extensive and the lesser towns would be ambitious to follow her example (Boston Gazette, May 9, 1768). All of the non-importation agreements contain non-consumption clauses.
376 On September 21, 1769, there was held at Taunton “a Spinning Match: (or what is call’d in the Country a Bee)” (Boston Gazette, October 16, 1769).
377 Boston Gazette, November 2, 1767, October 16, 1769; New London Gazette, April 25, 1766.
378 One newspaper querist desired to know whether it would not be more probable that “we should soon have more profitable times among us, if the gentlemen’s oeconomy or prudence were half equal to that of the ladies” (Boston Gazette, June 6, 1768); and a lady wrote to the South Carolina Gazette upbraiding the men for lack of self-denial, going to club or tavern, gaming, horse-racing, and cock-fighting (October 5, 1769). The South Carolina maidens were not satisfied with a change of clothes, they wanted a change of habits also. New London recommended abstention from the use of spirituous liquors (Boston Gazette, February 1, 1768).
379 At Gloucester the spinning was followed by the singing of an anthem (Essex Gazette, December 27, 1768).
380 Hyperion or Labrador tea was a decoction of the leaves of the common “red root” and is described as “something like wild rosemary,” with a “very physical taste, of a deep brown color, and generally disliked by those who taste it.” It was afterwards advertised as “very wholesome and good for the rheumatism, spleen, and many other disorders and pains.” A writer of New Bern, North Carolina, June 10, 1768, noting that Hyperion tea was used in the North “as a succedaneum to that most pernicious and destructive plant Bohea, which annually drains America of thousands,” recommended to the people of North Carolina, “with due deference to the refined taste of the ladies, the use of Yeopann Tea.” “This plant,” the writer adds, “is much used among the lower sort, is of great efficacy, when taken physically, being a powerful sudorific; is no exotic but a domestic of almost every sandy plantation in this province. We hope, therefore, soon to have the pleasure of informing the public that at a meeting of the ladies on such and such a day at such a place, such a number of threads were spun, after which they regaled with Yeopann Tea” (New Hampshire Gazette, July 22, 1768). The yapon (yopon) shrub and “tea” are well known in the South.
381 Larned, Windham County, ii. 117; Caulkins, History of Norwich, p. 367.
382 Newport Mercury, February 13, 1769; South Carolina Gazette, November 23, 1769.
383 Newport Mercury, January 30, 1768.
384 The making of shoes at Lynn had been a New England industry for some years and was now considerably increased to relieve the people of buying the poorer varieties of shoes from England. The better varieties, such as callamanco shoes, the uppers of which were covered with a flowered or striped cloth imported from Flanders, were not made in America at this time. Cheap shoes in the South were made for sale by negro shoemakers on the plantations, and the business brought in considerable revenue to the slave owners. Lynn shoes were exported to Philadelphia and elsewhere.
385 Boston Gazette, January 4, 1768.
386 At Brown, the president also wore homespun (John Carter Brown Library, Broadside). The senior class at Yale announced their decision early “that their parents and friends [might] have sufficient time to be providing homespun cloaths for them that none of them [might] be obliged to the hard necessity of unfashionable singularity by wearing imported cloth” (New Hampshire Gazette, January 20, 1767). Madison wrote to his father from Nassau Hall (Princeton) that all the 115 students in the college and the 22 in the grammar school were wearing American cloth, July 23, 1770 (Writings, 1900, i. 7). For extracts from the Harvard “College Books,” referring to the wearing of homespun, see our Publications, xviii. 351–352.
387 Boston Gazette, March 27, 1767. How widespread the actual abstention from the use of British goods and tea-drinking was at this time it is difficult to say. The writer of the Journal of Occurrences, reprinted in the New London Gazette, January 6, 1769, said that the disuse of tea was universal and that retailers reported a falling off in its sale of four fifths; that many towns had entered into formal agreements to stop consumption; and that applications had been made from Georgia and another province for some articles of American manufacture. There was none, he added, available for export, but he knew that the manufacture of linen, cotton, and woollen had greatly increased since the Stamp Act, that almost every house was a manufactory, and that some towns had more looms than houses. So zealous was the spirit, he continued, and so helpful the new artisans brought over that already the country people everywhere were clothing themselves, and in time New England would have a surplus. Probably one must read such statements cautiously. The newspaper writers were very sanguine and often overstated their case, when it came to the expression of a hope or an expectation. As to this particular correspondent, we may well heed Thomas Hutchinson’s criticism in his letter to Israel Williams, “Nine tenths of what you read of the Journal of Occurrences in Boston is either absolutely false or grossly misrepresented” (Williams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, January 26, 1769). There was plenty of tea-drinking in Salem in 1769–1770: see the Holyoke Diaries, 1709–1856.
Patriotic zeal and a proneness to exaggeration must be reckoned with in all these accounts. Lancaster in 1770 was reported to have manufactured 30,000 yards of linen and woollen homespun, and to have in town 50 looms and 700 spinning wheels. Elizabeth went a step further and reported 100,000 yards spun and woven. Yet Gov. Franklin said in 1768 that there was no great increase in the raising of sheep in New Jersey and that there was not wool enough to provide each family with stockings (Pennsylvania Gazette, July 5, 1770; New Jersey Archives, x. 30–31).
There was a noteworthy effort at this time to bring skilled workmen from abroad, and efforts in that direction were successfully made. Wages were higher in the colonies than in England and complaints of artisans leaving England for America were not infrequent. Providence advertised in 1768 for “tradesmen in the mechanick arts,” and Boston in 1769 mentioned several persons “lately arrived from abroad” (Providence Gazette, February 13, 1768; Staples, Annals of Providence, pp. 217–218; Boston Record Commissioners Reports, xvi. 275. Cf. Boston Chronicle, February 13, 1769, for English complaints).
388 Boston continued to have elaborate funerals, as in the case of Jeremiah Gridley, 1767, when the parade and show were not at all to Rowe’s liking. The most costly funeral that Boston ever had was probably that of Andrew Faneuil in 1738, though that of Gov. Leverett in 1680 was certainly the most unique. (Memoir biographical and genealogical of Sir John Leverett, Knt., Governor of Massachusetts, Boston, 1856.)
389 South Carolina Gazette, March 2, 1769: “Our greatest friend to homespun cloth, Christ. Gadsden, Esq., buried his wife yesterday morning. The town was searched throughout for some of that manufactory to follow as a mourner, but none could be bought and he was obliged to follow in blue cloth. The whole expence of the funeral of the manufacture of England did not amount to more than £3.10 our currency” (equal to 10 sh. sterling). The funeral of Lord Botetourt at Williamsburg in Virginia, 1770, though not as grand as that of Lovelace in New York a century before, showed little restraint in matters of expense. The coffin had eight silver handles and sixteen escutcheons; thirty-two escutcheons ornamented the hearse and the church, where the reading desk, pulpit, and communion table were hung with superfine cloth. There were twenty-eight streamers for the horses. The total bill must have been considerably over £500 (Botetourt Accounts, Library of Congress).
390 Pennsylvania Chronicle, February 13, 1769; Boston Record Commissioners Reports, xvi. 240, 289.
391 New London Gazette, December 18, 1767.
392 New Hampshire Gazette, September 30, 1769.
393 Boston Gazette, November 23, 1767.
394 The Harvard College Theses of 1768 have at the bottom of the sheet the words, “In Papyrum Miltoni in Nov-Angliâ confectam” (Massachusetts Historical Society, Broadsides). As early as May 2, 1765, the Boston News-Letter was printed on paper manufactured at Milton. The New Hampshire Gazette, January 6, 1769, appeared in a sheet much reduced in size, and the printers in explaining the fact said that for some time they had been using paper not only made in New England but made of rags collected in Portsmouth. The Maryland Gazette apologized in like manner to its readers (Scharf, History of Maryland, i. 114). One man writing to another said, “My paper is poor but ’tis American made which I hope will give you patience in reading and pleasure in reflection.” The making of paper in Connecticut was begun in Norwich in 1766 (Caulkins, History of Norwich, p. 367).
395 To prevent manufacturing in the colonies was one of the main objects of British policy. “Nothing, certainly would create greater heart burning and discontent in Great Britain than her colonies going into manufactures” (An Essay on Trade and Commerce. . . . Together with Some interesting Reflections on the Importance of our Trade to America. [By J. Cunningham.] London, 1770, p. 197).
396 Boston Gazette, November 9, 16, 23, 30, 1767; Providence Gazette, December 12, 1767.
397 Massachusetts Historical Society, O2517, nos. 36, 50, 51 (canvas), 73, 74, 80–95 (linen); Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xvi. 222, 226–227, 230–232, 239, 240–250, 275 (condition of the poor), xviii. 71, 73. For New York, cf. Becker, op. cit., p. 71.
398 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 243.
399 Boston Gazette, November 11, 18, 1765; New York Colonial Documents, vii. 800; Becker, op. cit., p. 30.
400 New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, January 27, 1766.
401 Boston Gazette, November 25, 1765; Massachusetts Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society). This document is not in the printed collection. The committee appointed to see that this agreement was carried out consisted of Thomas Willing, Samuel Mifflin, Thomas Montgomery, Samuel Howell, Samuel Wharton, John Rhea, William Fisher, Joshua Fisher, Peter Chevalier, Benjamin Fuller, and Abel James.
402 Boston Gazette, December 2, 9, 16, 1765. The credit of originating the plan of non-importation has been given to Samuel Adams, but even if we could believe that one man, and he not a merchant, could have conceived the idea, the evidence is not sufficient to warrant the assertion. There is nothing whatever in Adams’s writings to show that non-importation was in his mind at this time. The sentence printed in Wells, Life of Adams, i. 80–82, at best refers to non-consumption and not to non-importation, and probably was not written by Adams at all. Cushing does not include the instruction in which the sentence occurs in his edition of Adams’s Writings. It is not until the merchants had had their meeting of March 1, 1768, that Adams comes out with a statement which might possibly be construed as referring to non-importation. The plan, by whomsoever broached, did not have its rise in Boston.
403 James Bowdoin as a subscriber to the agreement refused to import a set of Boydell’s engravings (6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 84–85).
404 As illustrating the interest taken in the non-importation situation, attention may be called to the appearance of the following subject among the Quaestiones, announced for debate at the coming Commencement of Harvard College, in July, 1768:
IX. An contractus mercatorii, ad perniciem publicam tendentes, obligant.
405 Massachusetts Papers (MS.), no. 87. This document is printed, not quite accurately, in Massachusetts Papers, p. 58. Also see Rowe’s Diary, under dates given.
406 Memorial History of New York, iv. 516.
407 New York Gazette and the Weekly Mercury, April 18, 1768.
408 “Gentlemen: You are called together to consider what answer shall be returned to the Brethren of Boston and New York, who desire to know whether we will unite with them in stopping the importation of goods from Great Britain until certain acts are repealed.”
The speaker then recounted the special grievances of Pennsylvania:
- 1. The law against steel and steel furnaces.
- 2. The law against plating and slitting mills.
- 3. The law against carrying wool freely from one colony to another.
- 4. The prohibition against sending logwood to foreign markets.
- 5. The obligation to carry Portuguese and Spanish wines to England.
- 6. The duty on Madeira wines.
- 7. The emptying of British jails upon the province.
- 8. The restrictions upon the fisheries and the duties on foreign molasses and sugars.
- 9. The necessity of supplying themselves with goods through England at 20 per cent and even 40 per cent increase.
- 10. The Stamp Act, Declaratory Act, and Townshend Act (Massachusetts Historical Society, Broadsides).
409 Becker, op. cit., p. 62. The Pennsylvania Chronicle, July 23, 1768, contains a list of fourteen queries proposed to the committee of the Philadelphia merchants, “now sitting,” for consideration, each raising the question as to the wisdom of the New York agreement. The writer asks “Whether precipitate combination, at the time of great distress in England, to import no British manufactures would not be a means of irritating and making enemies of the inhabitants of Great Britain at the same time distressing ourselves.” The writer urges patience and reasonableness, manufacturing and getting on without the taxed goods, and says that what may be prudent in the eastern governments (New York and New England) may be imprudent in the middle and southern, “seeing we widely differ in many circumstances.”
410 The following is the Gloucester agreement:
“We whose names are underwritten are of opinion that every legal measure for freeing the country from the present embarrassments should be adopted, and among others the stopping the importation of goods from Great Britain. We promise that we will not for one year from the above date [May 2, 1768] write for any goods, except such as are absolutely necessary for the carrying on the Fishery and that we will not take any English goods to sell on commission and we further promise that we will write to our correspondents and desire their interest and influence to put a stop to growing evils of offices that are multiplying among us.” Epes Sargent, Nathaniel Allen, Daniel Sargent, Winthrop Sargent, William Ellery, Jr. (Massachusetts Historical Society, 02517, no. 38).
411 Massachusetts Historical Society, 02517, no. 71.
412 Boston Gazette, August 15, 1768.
413 Rowe, Diary, August 1, 1768. The proceedings and agreement are given in full in the Boston Chronicle, May 1, 1769, and the agreement is printed in John Mein’s pamphlet to be mentioned later.
414 Rowe, Diary, August 2 and 8, 1768.
415 The situation in Salem was aggravated by the division in the town between Rescinders and Non Rescinders. Four of the Salem merchants were among the seventeen members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives who voted to rescind the resolutions upon which the letter of February 11th was based, and they had to defend themselves against the attack of their fellow townsmen (Boston Gazette, July 25, August 1, 1768).
416 As at Norwich: “We give this public testimony of our hearty and unanimous approbation of the resolutions the merchants have entered into to stop the importation of British goods; we will frown upon all who endeavour to frustrate these good designs, and avoid all correspondence with those merchants who shall dare to violate these obligations” (January 29, 1770, Caulkins, History of Norwich, p. 369).
417 New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, September 12, 1768. Printed also in a supplement to the Boston Gazette, September 19, 1768.
418 Professor Becker says in commenting on these resolutions: “If the provision making the agreement effective in part from August 16 was designed to meet the charge of monopoly, the provision regarding the Dutch trade was probably designed to prevent, in part at least, the smuggling from Holland. Thus early the two-fold weakness of the non-importation policy was manifest: if sufficiently comprehensive it gave a monopoly to those who inaugurated it; if limited to England, it enriched the smuggler” (op. cit., p. 63). The distinction here made seems to me too precise. There is ample evidence to show that the richer merchants, certainly in Boston and Philadelphia, suffered heavily for their self-denial. Take the case of John Barrett & Sons of Boston, who countermanded their English orders two months before the agreement was signed, and that of the merchants of Philadelphia mentioned in Drinker’s letter (Pennsylvania Magazine, xiv. 43) who felt the “present stagnation the most severely.” While it may be that the retailers depended on smuggling for their profits, I have seen no sufficient evidence to prove the point, nor does Professor Becker furnish such.
419 “The Honble Thomas Cushing, Esq. communicated to the Town a letter lately received from a Committee of Merchants in the City of New York, acquainting him with their Agreement relative to a Non-Importation of British Goods. Whereupon the Town by a Vote expressed their high satisfaction therein” (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xvi. 264).
420 One is reminded of Pitt’s famous characterization of traders and merchants, as “Little, paltry, peddling fellows, venders of two penny wares and falsehoods, who under the idea of trade, sell everything in their power — honour, truth, conscience,” etc. In Charles Town, South Carolina, a wholesale dealer was respectable but a retail dealer was not, and even a wholesale or commission merchant must deal in indigo and rice and not in other things.
421 Collins Papers.
422 Pennsylvania Journal, February 9, 1769. Printed in full in the Boston Chronicle, February 13, 1769, where it occupies three and a half columns.
423 There were four memorials from the merchants of Philadelphia: those of November, 1765; November, 1768; February 6, 1769; and March 10, 1769. The last was sent only to the merchants of London.
424 The petition of the New York assembly to the House of Lords is printed in the New York Gazette, April 17, 1768, and in the Pennsylvania Journal, April 20, 1768.
425 “Had a petition come over from your merchants on the principle of inexpediency instead of from your assembly denying the right, the law would ere now have been repealed” (Letter from London, Pennsylvania Chronicle, April 3, 1769). The advice to stick to the non-consumption and non-importation agreements and avoid riots, mobs, and such illegal measures, and lay less stress upon constitutional rights, came from men who were certain to lose by the process and so were based on honest conviction. That there was less sympathy for the American cause among the British merchants in 1769 than there had been in 1765 is unmistakable, and there is nothing to account for it except the advance in the American claims. Thomas Hutchinson, who represented conservative opinion, wrote to Israel Williams of Hatfield, May 9, 1769: “If we could be prudent, I think I may say only silent, we might save the country and retain the rights we contend for or which is the same thing might rest assured that parliament would not exercise the right of taxing which they claim, and we may be assured will not give up, but if we will go on denying the right and asserting our independence the nation will by force compell us to acknowledge it. I wish this force may be kept off as long as you and I live” (Williams Papers).
426 I have not been able to find a copy of the Philadelphia resolutions. That such were drawn up at the meetings mentioned above is clear from later allusions. For example, certain shipments were declared contrary “to the agreements entered into by the merchants and traders of this city on February 6 and March 10” (Pennsylvania Chronicle, July 24, 1769). On August 2, the merchants of Philadelphia met at the Coffee House and resolved “that the committee shall not be at liberty to receive and store any goods consigned after the agreement of the merchants here not to import was known in Great Britain nor such as were ordered after the 6th of February last” (ibid. August 7, 1769). On June 5, 1770, a meeting was held in Philadelphia at which it was voted to adhere to the agreement entered into March 10, 1769, “almost unanimously” (Pennsylvania Gazette, June 14, 1770). Drinker speaks definitely of the “agreement formed on the 10 of March” (Pennsylvania Magazine, xiv. 42). Stephen Collins gives the date of the first agreement as “2mo 1 1769.” This may be an error for February 6, or it may be that the first agreement was drafted on the 1st and ratified on the 6th.
427 South Carolina Gazette, October 12, 1769.
428 The following additional information is given by the newspaper:
We hear that a number of the principal freeholders of the said County, assembled at Christiana-Bridge, on Saturday last, in pursuance of notice given for that purpose, when the occasion of their meeting, the grievances complained of by North-Americans, and the most probable methods of obtaining redress, were opened, and fully explained, and the above compact was read, approved, and signed by all present. It is said that it will soon be signed by every freeholder and freeman in the country, and that the other counties in that government will immediately follow the example.
Some resolutions were made, nemine contradicente, in favour of persons, not inhabitants of the county, who should be so weak as to import any goods there contrary to the agreement; particularly, that they should be stored, effectually secured, and taken care of, until the obnoxious acts of parliament were repealed, except the same should be prevented by the imprudence of the owners.
429 Albany acted very much under the influence of New York, but the merchants there wished to include among the exempted commodities such Indian goods as blankets, strouds, penistones, gimps, linens, vermilions, and brass kettles. The New York merchants would not agree to this and compelled them to adopt the New York plan. There is some uncertainty as to the date, but it was before July, 1769. Some of the Albany merchants were restless under this agreement, as the increasing scarcity of Indian goods not only interfered with trade, but also rendered less cordial the relations with the Indians, who suspected a conspiracy against themselves and could not understand why the traffic in furs stopped and presents were no longer given. See p. 240, below. Albany undoubtedly broke the agreement early, by importing what she wanted through Quebec and Montreal.
430 Pennsylvania Chronicle, July 31, 1769; Boston Gazette, August 6, 1770. The New Haven agreement was signed by all at the meeting and was distributed to all in the town and the adjoining neighborhood.
431 Connecticut Colonial Records, xiii. 236 note.
432 New Jersey Archives, xxvi. 546.
433 Providence Gazette, October 14, 21, 1769. Staples gives the date October 24. The meeting of the 10th was probably that of the merchants.
434 Newport Mercury, November 6, 1769; Newport Historical Magazine, iii. 253–257.
435 Wethersfield Town Records, under date, printed in Stiles, Ancient Wethersfield, i. 419–420.
436 Middletown Town Records, under date.
437 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xviii. 8.
438 Boston Gazette, June 9, 1770. Text in full.
439 Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News Letter, July 5, 1770.
440 New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, July 20, 1769; Boston Gazette, July 31, 1769. One of the most remarkable series of resolutions is that of Abington, Mass. Section 9 reads: “Voted as the opinion of this town that the agreement of the merchants and traders of the Town of Boston relative to non-importation has a natural and righteous tendency to frustrate the scheme of the enemies of the constitution, and to render ineffectual the said unconstitutional and unrighteous acts, and is a superlative instance of self-denial and public virtue, which we hope will be handed down to posterity, even to the latest generation, to their immortal honour” (Essex Gazette, April 3, 1770). These resolves gave the New York brethren “infinite pleasure.” “How many ages hence,” they said, “in unborn states and with accents yet unknown, shall these manly and noble resolves be recited” (ibid. May 5, 1770).
441 The Portsmouth merchants were summoned to meet at the house of John Stavers, September 12, 1768, but want of accord led to the postponement of the meeting to the 16th, then to the 23d, and then indefinitely (New Hampshire Gazette, September 9, 1768). See pp. 233 note 1, 239, below.
442 Printed in the Boston Chronicle, June 8, 1769, and in Burk, History of Virginia, iii. 345–349.
443 “The Proceedings of the Committee appointed to examine into the Importation of Goods by the Brigandine Good Intent Capt. Errington, from London in February, 1770,” Annapolis, 1770. Reprinted in the Maryland Magazine, iii. nos. 2, 3, 4. See also the Eden-Hillsborough correspondence (ibid. ii. 228–229, 234, 239, 244). The resolutions are printed in this pamphlet (Maryland Magazine, iii. 144–147); Maryland Gazette, June 29, 1769; Boston Chronicle, July 10, 1769; and Scharf, History of Maryland, i. 111–114.
444 South Carolina Gazette, June 29, July 6, 27, 1769. The early history of the South Carolina draft is confusing. John Gordon wrote that the resolutions of July 22 were the seventh form of agreement and the fifth to be subscribed, and though he was one of the first to coöperate, he was tired of being bandied about from resolution to resolution (South Carolina Gazette, September 14, 1769).
445 Georgia Gazette, October 26, 1769.
446 Georgia Gazette, September 13, 20, 1769.
447 “It was agreed, That the late acts so fully and unanimously remonstrated against by the Northern Colonies were in themselves unconstitutional and the mode of taxation was entirely inconsistent with the abilities of the people.
“At a time when we believe that healing measures and a redress of grievances will be effectually pursued at the next meeting of Parliament, we think it unnecessary to enumerate the whole, further than that, in general, and as far as we know, we approve of and agree in sentiment with the other provinces.
“It was agreed respecting this province in particular that the mode of payment of such duties is a great additional grievance. The sterling current money of this province, which was by Act of Assembly assented to by his Majesty and declared equal in value to the sterling money of Great Britain and a lawful tender in all payments, being refused in payment of such duties, tends greatly to depreciate its value; a circumstance greatly affecting every person anywise interested in this province; after having wisely excluded us [from] the Spanish trade, the only channel through which specie could possibly be procured, and then, by subsequent acts imposing duties on us payable in gold and silver, shews that they are entirely ignorant of our internal police, and know little of what is beneficial to the colonies, and thereby prevents our having it even in our power to give a regular and constitutional aid to the mother country, if such was demanded.
“We therefore resolve, That any person or persons whatever, importing any of the articles subject to such duties, after having it in their power to prevent it, ought not only to be treated with the utmost contempt, but deemed enemies to their country, it being a circumstance that would need only to be mentioned to any person, inspired with the least sense of liberty that it may be detested and abhorred” (Georgia Gazette, September 20, 1769; Tobler, South Carolina and Georgia Almanack, for 1770).
448 Revolutionary Records of Georgia, i. 8–11. The list of exemptions was somewhat different, including in addition osnaburgs, certain varieties of flannels, linen, hose, cottons, checks, felt hats, shoes, hardware of all sorts (probably the same as “plantation and workman’s tools, nails, and fishhooks” which are in the South Carolina list and omitted from that of Georgia), paper, and Indian goods. The list omits also salt and bar-steel.
449 South Carolina Gazette, December 8, 1769; Connor, North Carolina Booklet, viii. 21–26; Connor, Cornelius Harnett, pp. 53–57.
450 For the case of Adonijah Thomas of West Haven, see the New London Gazette, September 20, 1769; for cases in Boston, Rowe, Diary, October 28, 1769, May 18, 1770, March 9, 1775. Tar and feathers were kept on hand in New Jersey (New Jersey Archives, xxvii. 217; see also the Holyoke Diaries, p. 69). Two New York “revolters,” who went to New Brunswick, N. J., were stopped and “genteely ducked” at Woodbridge (New York Journal, August 9, 1770; New Jersey Archives, xxvii. 218, 220).
451 “Resolved, That every subscriber who shall presume directly or indirectly to purchase from or sell for any violator of the general resolutions, shall be looked upon in the same odious light as a violator himself, shunned as a pestilence and held in the utmost abhorrence and contempt” (South Carolina Gazette, June 28, 1770). For illustration, see Letters of James Murray, Loyalist, p. 179.
The following is a good specimen of the language used in denouncing violators: “Gibetted (in Fame) to rot and stink under the noses of their countrymen, as a mark of public infamy and warning to those who shall endeavour to counteract the designs of society in favour of Liberty. If oppression, according to Solomon, maketh a wise man mad, what a pity ’tis that it cannot teach fools wisdom.”
452 The case of David Hill of Massachusetts, whose barrels of goods were seized by a mob in New York and burnt. This action called out a protest and denunciation from the committee of inspection (New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, July 9, 1770). Hill brought suit against the committee of merchants, Isaac Low and others, and was awarded £280 damages in March, 1772.
453 This is the impression one gets from a study of the Laurens Papers and from the report of the Wilmington meeting of the Sons of Liberty, July 5, 1770, when many of the merchants refused to sign the agreement (Cape Fear Mercury, July 11, 1770). A Charles Town merchant writing to his correspondent in England said that those who got up the agreement there were men without credit in England.
454 Stiles, Wethersfield, i. 418–419.
455 The cases of Gov. Hutchinson’s sons in Boston (Massachusetts Papers, pp. 131–132) and Peter Frye and others in Salem (Essex Gazette, October 2, 1770).
456 Above, p. 222 note 3.
457 A writer to the New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, August 27, 1770, said that in Newport and Boston every store had two doors, which made it easy to keep the agreement. He said also that the stores were often open and that many thousands of dollars were taken from Connecticut and adjacent counties in the night time. Newport denied vehemently that there were “back doors to the public stores.”
Illustrations could be given of goods stored or returned in every colony. The most active towns were Charles Town, Annapolis, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. In Charles Town there was a committee of inspection that covered the coast from Georgetown (Winyah) to Beaufort, and in Maryland and Virginia there were committees of inspection for each county. Some of the best known cases are: Boston, Capt. Scott, Capt. Bryant (the Wolf); Providence, Capt. Shand (the Tristram); New York, Capt. Speir (the Sharpe), Capt. Munds (the Brittania); Middletown, Conn., Capt. Butler; Philadelphia, Capt. Strickland (the Speedwell); Baltimore, Capt. Johnson (the Lord Cambden); Annapolis, Capt. Bryson (the Betsey), Capt. Carter (the Flora), Capt. Errington (the Good Intent). From Georgetown various colonial vessels were sent back, and from Charles Town, vessels from Boston, New York, and Jamaica, and those importing goods for Saxby, Gillon, Benjamin and Ann Matthews, Stukes, and Tidyman. There is much in the Collins Papers about the ship Commerce from Hull to New York and Philadelphia. Many cases are recorded in which the names are not given, as when Maryland compelled an owner to reship twenty pipes of wine, and Philadelphia prevented a cargo from being landed, which was to have been got ashore in small parcels and in different parts. Ample evidence exists for a study of these and other cases, but they cannot be considered further here.
458 To Peter Frye and other Gentlemen of the Committee of Merchants, Salem, Jan. 19, 1769: “Being informed by letters from Salem that some persons there who signed the agreement for the non-importation of goods have, contrary to said agreement, sent their Spring orders and others are preparing to do the same, alledging that Marblehead and Cape Ann havent come into the agreement, and that in case other towns did not and any in Salem should not conform to it others were not held,” the committee said that this conduct had caused great uneasiness, and they wished to inform Salem that Marblehead and Cape Ann had come in, New York was holding fast, Boston was more determined than ever, and their best friends in England approved (Massachusetts Historical Society, O2517, no. 63).
459 The sea captains and masters made considerable trouble. In South Carolina it was found that “the Resolutions had been in some measure defeated by masters of vessels and other transient persons being at liberty to dispose of goods they imported if they could find purchasers, several persons having availed themselves of this opening and clandestinely disposed of and purchased, and others refused to store or reship goods thus imported.” On this account the Body of Merchants entered into a new agreement designed to put a stop to this evil. This agreement was repeated in March, 1770 (South Carolina Gazette, February 1, March 8, 1770).
460 Massachusetts Historical Society, 02517, nos. 40, 43, 63.
461 Rowe, Diary, July 24, 1769; Boston Chronicle, July 27, 1769; Boston Gazette, July 31, 1769.
462 Boston Gazette, August 14, 1769. The Boston town meeting aided the merchants by entering these names on the records of its session of October 4 (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xvi. 298).
463 For the sufferings of Henry Barnes, see the letter from Mrs. Barnes, June, 1770, printed in Letters of James Murray, Loyalist, pp. 175–177.
464 Boston Gazette, November 20, December 25, 1769. Colburn Barrell, who had subscribed, said afterwards that he was bullied into the agreement “by the threatening and cajoling conduct of some of their committee men.” He did not wish to have trouble with the merchants, desiring to live quietly and at peace with his fellow townsmen. He was willing to reship, if the merchants would meet all charges for insurance and freight and would recompense him for damage incurred in returning the goods (compare the same proposition made by James Dick in the Good Intent case, Maryland Magazine, iii. 356). The committee replied, but Barrell said that the reply was insufficient and he proceeded to make remarks at some length, calling his submission unlawful and the meeting that asked for it unlawful. In consequence, he considered himself freed from his engagement. At a meeting of the merchants, held on December 7, this letter was commented upon severely. Barrell replied that there were many non-subscribing merchants in Boston and those who yielded to threats were cowards. Barrell showed a good deal of courage. He had been a merchant of Newmarket, N. H., and a member of the Sandemanian church of Portsmouth (Sandeman-Barrell Papers), and was a brother of William, Joseph, and Walter Barrell. He had a shop just north of the Mill-bridge (Boston Chronicle, October 9, December 7, 1769).
The New Yorkers about this time advertised one Simeon Cooley, a jeweller, who having joined the merchants later defied them, and broke the agreement. The subscribers called on the people to boycott him as “the most insolent, impertinent, and daring of any former aggressor.” Cooley eventually submitted (New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, July 24, 1769). Similarly Thomas Richardson, jeweller, was compelled to retract (New York Journal, September 21, 1769). Jewellers seem to have been particularly obstinate. Philip Tidyman of Charles Town was a jeweller (South Carolina Gazette, November 1, 1770).
465 See Mr. Bolton’s article in Publications of this Society, xi. 196–200, and notes on p. 200, also p. 6 note 4. The facts of Mein’s career are well known and need not be rehearsed here, but extracts will be given from his memorial to the Treasury, which has never been used.
466 Mein said that before 1769 he “carried on in his various occupations of bookseller, stationer, and printer, the most extensive trade of any person on the American Continent” and “possessed the confidence of the Principal People.” His paper had a subscription list of fourteen hundred and his bookstore netted him £40, £60, and £80 a week, while his stock in trade amounted to six or seven thousand pounds sterling (Public Record Office, Treasury 1: 478, f. 478).
467 “The speaker of the House of Representatives, and many others, the Heads of the Faction, harrassed him daily for months, first with entreaties, urging as strong motive the great encouragement he had received among them, and afterwards employed threats, in order to induce him to accede to their combination. He was even told that the Crisis was now arrived, in which Neutrality was criminal, but he remained uniform in his refusal, a Sense of Duty being more prevalent with him than either the continuance or the increased favour of the public, which he was led to expect, or their highest displeasure, with which he was threatened” (ibid.).
468 Mein was aroused by the report of the committee stating that but few importations had taken place, and by the decision of the Body to print the names of delinquents. In his own paper (August 17, 1769) he left blank the space where the names should have been. He began to print the manifests of importations, since January 1, 1769, on August 21 and continued them on the 24, 28, 31, September 4, 7, 11, 14, 18, etc., to October 19, with a running commentary. On December 11, 14, 1 8, he added the manifest of the ship John, owned by John Hancock, and manifests of other vessels owned by Boston merchants, and he continued publishing the manifests in January and February, 1770, issuing fifty-five in all. Furthermore he gave a list of forty non-signers, who made heavy importations during the year. As stated above, he issued these manifests in a pamphlet entitled “A State of the Importations from Great Britain into the Port of Boston from the Beginning of January, 1769, to August 17, 1769,” with an Appendix of importations to January 1, 1770. The other side of the controversy can be followed in the Boston Gazette and in Massachusetts Historical Society, 02517, no. 65. On September 10, the merchants took his case into consideration and voted that he had endeavored to frustrate the good intentions of the signers of the agreement, by maliciously insinuating to the public that the agreement had not been generally complied with and that the committee’s report was false and intended to deceive the public, and further that he had treated “the inspectors, the committee, and the whole body of merchants and traders in the most haughty, imperious, and insulting manner.”
The influence of the facts Mein presented can hardly be overestimated, while in temper and good manners he distinctly had the best of his opponents. There is certainly nothing “scurrilous,” “scandalous,” “impudent,” or “contemptible” in what Mein wrote in his paper, and the language used by the patriotic party and their laudation of themselves and their motives and characters arouse the suspicion that Mein’s disclosures struck a tender spot. The weakness of the defence lies in its scurrility, its anonymity, its refusal to give names, and its concealment of the places where the goods were stored. It is curious how unwilling the upholders of non-importation were to sign their names to their articles. Conceding that anonymity was a fashion of the time, we must feel that the refusal to acknowledge authorship was a confession of weakness or worse. Hutchinson once said that such articles were the production of people “who if they would sign their names need do nothing more to blast the credit of everything they say” (Hutchinson to Williams, September 18, 1769, Williams Papers).
If Mein’s facts are correct, then the merchants of Boston and Salem, and notably John Hancock, were doing a fairly prosperous freighting business in goods made contraband by the merchants. The explanations given by the latter are not convincing, and that they were not convincing to the merchants of New York and Philadelphia, the sequel was to prove. The latter frequently quoted Mein’s sheets and pamphlet. In the face of the facts given, it is hardly a sufficient defence of Hancock to say that his “name will shine in the records of fame when infamous Jacobites and Tories will sink in oblivion,” however true that statement may be as a prophecy (Boston Gazette, October 9, 1769). Mein was the first active opponent of the non-importation movement in America, and the information that he furnished did much to bring about its failure, for, as he says himself, “The Rupture between the Boston Faction and the combining colonies of N. York and Philadelphia will be evinced from their own advertisements; for the accusations brought by the latter against the former could be drawn from no other source than the publications of your Memorialist” (Public Record Office, Treasury 1: 478, f. 480).
469 The acrostic containing the line
M ean is the man, M–n is his name
is printed in our Publications, xi. 198; and the “Description of the Pope, 1769,” of which the acrostic forms a part, was printed in full in the Boston Chronicle, November 9, 1769, and also in a broadside. The following additional lines may be quoted:
Here stands the Devil for a Show,
With the I–p–rs in a row,
All bound to Hell, and that we know.
Go M–n lade deep with curses on thy head,
To some dark Corner of the World repair,
Where the bright Sun no pleasant Beams can shed,
And spend thy Life in Horror and Despair.
At the head of the broadside is a rough woodcut, in which Mein’s effigy, substituted for that of the Pope, appears standing under a gallows on a four-wheeled wagon, with the Devil behind, and before and after various smaller devils and tomcods. These are defined as “M–n, his Servant, &c. A Bunch of Tom-Cods.” The following also is printed on the sheet:
“See the Informer, how he stands. If any one now takes his Part, An Enemy to all the Land, He’ll go to Hell without a cart.”
470 Rowe, Diary, October 28, 1769; our Publications, xi. 198–200, where Mr. Bolton gives information regarding Mein’s financial troubles, drawn from letters in private hands. His account should be studied in connection with Mein’s remarks in his Memorial about justice in Massachusetts. There is a paper in the Dartmouth collection at Patshull House, containing information which Mein furnished John Pownall, under secretary of state for the colonies, but I have been unable to get a copy of it, because Patshull House is at present a military hospital. For the attack on Mein, see Hutchinson to Secretary Hillsborough, November 11, 1769, Colonial Office, 5:758, p. 445; Andrew Oliver to Sir Francis Bernard, same date, British Museum, Egertori, 2670, f. 28; and the London Chronicle, December 19, 1769. In the Letters of James Murray, Loyalist, pp. 168–174, are many references to Mein, whom Murray assisted. John Rowe notes the presence of “Mr. Murray of Cape Fear” at the Merchants’ Club, May 27, 1765, and we may not doubt that he was in attendance at other times also.
471 Massachusetts Papers, pp. 128–130; Boston Gazette, November 20, 1769; Letters of Dennys De Berdt, our Publications, xiii. 398–399. De Berdt wrote to Thomas McKean, February 15, 1770: “The condisinal orders (if these acts are repel’d) arose from the Quakers in Phila, who grew impatient of the restraints on tread, and came into this new agreement which they communicated to Boston & Boston has done the same.”
472 Boston Gazette, November 20, 1769; Massachusetts Historical Society, Broadsides, December 6, 1769. A considerable enlargement was made in the list of exempted articles. The additional articles in the new list are here italicized:
Coals, salt, fishhooks and lines, hemp and duck, bar-lead, shot, wool-cards and card wire, clothier’s shears, tin plates, drugs and medicines, dyestuffs, alum and copperas, gunpowder, grindstones, chalk, sheet-copper, German steel, schoolbooks, as also “the article of Bayze for the supply of the fishing.” The influence of the lists adopted by other colonies is clearly seen.
473 Joseph Rotch & Son to Aaron Lopez, November 29, 1769: “We are now well assured that all the Agreements in the world will not prevent the Boston purchasers from exceeding the limits agreed on,” and they want to know whether the “manufacturers of Newport intend altering their agreement or not” (Commerce of Rhode Island, i. 288. See also Boston Gazette, December 11, 1769).
474 The Hutchinson and Sheafe affairs especially, for which see Massachusetts Papers, pp. 131–132, and Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 775.
475 Massachusetts Historical Society, 02517; Broadsides, January 16, 1770.
476 Rowe, Diary under dates; Broadside, January 23, 1770. The broadside further says: “The friends of liberty and their country’s cause are desired to paste this up over the Chimney Piece of every Public House and on every other proper place, in every Town in this and every other Colony, there to. remain as a Monument of the Remembrance of the Detestable Names above mentioned.” Another vote at the meeting was to this effect, “That the committee of inspection be directed to use their endeavours to discover the owner or owners of such goods upon their arrival, and being thus discovered, we will not sell or buy of, or have any dealings or social intercourse whatever with such persons for the space of two years, from the time of the arrival of such goods, and that the committee of inspection are desired to publish this vote, together with the names of the owners of such goods for the space of two years from the time of their arrival.”
An example of such publication, relating to William Jackson, was given in our Publications, viii. 99 note.
Nathaniel Rogers in May, 1770, left Boston and went to New York, where the Sons of Liberty carried his effigy through the streets. Leaving New York, he went to Shelter Island, and there, word from New York having been received in advance, his effigy was placed on a pole, with the label “Nat. Rogers one of the infamous importers,” and after being paraded through the town was hung by the neck before the door of the house where he was staying. The next day he embarked for Rhode Island, eventually returning to Boston, where he was again posted, and finally in June applied for readmission. He died suddenly in August of the same year.
James and Patrick McMasters were particularly offensive to the merchants. In 1770 Patrick was carted through the streets of Boston for persisting in his refusal to join the merchants, and this punishment was so roughly administered that, we are told, a woman viewing it died of fright (Essex Gazette, February 5, 1771). “I received a letter from Miss Cummings,” wrote Mrs. Barnes, “which was far from being a cordial to my drooping spirits. She writes me word that one of the McMasters had been carted out of town at noonday in a most ignominious manner, and that the other two brothers had fled for their lives” (Letters of James Murray, Loyalist, pp. 177–178). The McMasters and others, finding public opinion against them in Boston, fled to Portsmouth, an event which roused a good deal of excitement there, and may have had something to do with Portsmouth’s continued unwillingness to adopt non-importation.
477 Committee to De Berdt, January 30, 1770, giving their version of the matter (Massachusetts Papers, pp. 132–135).
478 “The True Sons of Liberty and supporters of non-importation are determined to resent any the least insult or menace offer’d to any one or more of the several committees appointed by the Body at Faneuil Hall, and chastise any one or more of them as they truly deserve; and will also support the printers in anything the committees shall desire them to print. ☞ As a warning to any one that shall affront as aforesaid, upon some information given, one of these Advertisements will be posted up at the Door or Dwelling House of the offender” (January, 1770, Massachusetts Historical Society, Broadsides).
479 Remarks by Mr. Pierce in his introduction to John Rowe’s Diary (2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, x. 57–58). The act mentioned empowered the selectmen of Boston to appoint thirty watchmen from among the inhabitants of the town, one of whom in each division was to be head or constable, and to keep an account of what was going on and to report to the selectmen once a week. The watchmen were to walk the rounds to prevent danger from fires and see that good order was kept. Any one resisting a watchman was to be fined not more than £5 or less than 40 shillings. The watchmen were authorized to call on any citizen for assistance, who in case of refusal was liable to a 40 shilling fine. The act was to be in force until 1770.
480 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xviii. 12–13, 16, 20. The meeting expressed the hope “that the Patriotick Spirit so widely diffused, and so nobly ardent, uniting all parts of the Province and disposing them with Alacrity to aid one another upon all Occasions in the common cause, a Spirit not confined to [this colony] but extending to all the Colonies, will ensure by the blessing of Heaven the Prosperity of the whole, and soon produce a thorough, effectual, and permanent relief from our great and common Grievances” (March 16, 1770).
481 He says this of the proceedings at the meetings of April 20 and 26. I have not been able to find the votes in question, but the call for the meeting on April 20 is as follows:
“To receive the report of the committee of inspection relative to the most unaccountable and extraordinary conduct of several persons who have imported goods contrary to agreement, particularly a Quantity of Tea; and to consider and determine upon some legal and spirited measures to prevent the nonimportation agreement being rendered abortive,” etc. (Massachusetts Historical Society, Broadsides, April 20, 1770).
It will be noticed that the wording is the same as that of January 16th, except that the offence stated is different. Probably the meeting voted to deal more severely than ever with the offenders, who may be the same as those entered on the records of the town meeting of March 16th, and afterwards published by the merchants in the newspapers. See p. 244 note 1, below.
482 Massachusetts Historical Society, 02517, no. 73. The following articles were exempted: paper, glass, painters’ colors, tacks, brads, nails of all sorts under 10 pennies, all kinds of utensils for carrying on any manufactures, lead, copper, “allum,” grindstones, salt, coals, tinplates, hooks, lines, and other necessaries for the fishery, baize, duffils, hemp, duck, “ozenbrigs,” fruit, oil, and all other kind of goods of the product and manufacture of any foreign ports in Europe usually imported from Great Britain, except any articles of luxury. This is a very different list from that of August 1, 1768.
483 Essex Gazette, May 8, 1770. The agreement is given in full in the Boston Gazette, October 8, 1770.
484 New London Gazette, June 1, 1770.
485 Boston Gazette, October 9, 1769.
486 On the Jews in Newport, see Kohler, “The Jews in Newport” (Publicatioins American Jewish Historical Society, 1897, no. 6, p. 69; no. 10, p. 11), where the number is given. See also Stiles, Literary Diary, i. 11; Itineraries and Correspondence, pp. 52–53. There was a Jewish Social Club in Newport in 1761 (Publications American Jewish Historical Society, iv. 58–60).
487 Boston Gazette, May 28, 1770.
488 New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, May 28, 1770; Pennsylvania Chronicle, May 28, 1770; Pennsylvania Gazette, May 24, 1770; Boston Gazette, June 4, 1770. A Newport ship, Capt. Whitman, master, arrived in Philadelphia with a cargo, but was sent back.
489 New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, May 28, June 4, 1770.
490 New London Gazette, June 15, 1770. The same paper contains an elaborate account of four Connecticut traders, two from Hartford and two from Windham, who started immediately for Newport to take advantage of the leak.
491 New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, June 11, August 13, 1770; Boston Gazette, June 25, 1770; Cape Fear Mercury, July 11, 1770; South Carolina Gazette, June 28, July 5, 1770. Ships were sent back from all these places.
The resolutions adopted at a meeting of the inhabitants of Charles Town “at Liberty Tree,” June 22, 1770, though too long to be printed here, are worthy of reproduction in part. They describe the Rhode Islanders as “dead to every feeling but a criminal attachment to their private interest,” “betrayers of American Liberty,” and guilty of “heinous duplicity of conduct.” They class together the people of Georgia and Rhode Island as “deluded people” deserving “to be amputated from the rest of their Bretheren, as a rotten Part that might spread a dangerous Infection” (South Carolina Gazette, June 28, 1770).
Stephen Collins wrote to N. & R. Denison, June 8, 1770: “The people of Rhode Island have broaken through their agreement which I think they must resume again very soon, as the whole Continent are rais’d in just indignation against them, their produce being but little, their merchants depend on foreign trade chiefly and their vessels are almost every day drove out of one port or another on the Continent and not suffer’d to trade but carry their cargo back, so that I think where they gain a penny in the trade of dry goods, they will stand a chance of loosing a pound for want of their trade with the other colonies” (Collins Papers).
492 News from Philadelphia, June 14 (South Carolina Gazette, July 12, 1770).
493 Providence Gazette, May 26, June 30, 1770; Newport Mercury, June 4, 1770; New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, June 18, 1770; Staples, Annals of Providence, pp. 225–227. On September 5, 1770, Boston voted “That it appears to this Body that the town of Providence hath faithfully adhered to the non-importation agreement, and that all reports to the contrary are without foundation.”
494 South Carolina Gazette, June 28, 1770.
495 South Carolina Gazette, July 12, 1770. Letter from Portsmouth to Boston, May 28, 1770, quoted in the South Carolina Gazette: “The merchants here have received a letter from merchants in Boston on the affair of non-importation, but have not yet come to a final resolution. Happy should we be had we a generous Hancock to lead the way. . . . The inhabitants are friends to liberty but need powerful leaders.”
496 Rowe, Diary, June 19, 1770; Massachusetts Gazette, July 5, 1770; Adams, Annals of Portsmouth, pp. 226–227.
497 New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, August 20, November 8, 1770; New York Journal, August 23, 1770.
498 Letters to Stephen Collins from Benj. & John Bowers, Manchester, February 1, 1770; William Neate, London, February 7, March 6, 26, 1770; Harford & Powell, February 28, 1770; Williams, Bellamy & Williams, London, March 1, 1770; Nath. & Robert Denison, Nottingham, March 8, 1770; and the many letters from Samuel Elam of Hull. Benj. & John Bowers wrote that they would be “very great sufferers,” as “the greatest part of their fortune was expended in manufactures designed for the American market” (Collins Papers).
499 Henry Drinker to Abel James, 1769–1770 (Pennsylvania Magazine, xiv. 43). See the letter of “Plebarius,” in the Pennsylvania Gazette, May 24, 1770, suggesting a general subscription for the sufferers.
500 Drinker wrote, May 26, 1770, that “notwithstanding the little dirty colony of Rhode Island had shamefully broken faith,” yet this “flagrant violation and breach of their plighted honour” had not “staggered the merchants of New York or this place.” In May “A Tradesman” wrote to the Pennsylvania Chronicle urging his brethren to enter into Resolutions denying their custom to any “who should dare an infraction of the mercantile resolutions.”
501 New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, July 2, 1770; New London Gazette, June 15, 1770.
502 The Hartford meeting was held on June 1, so that there must have been an earlier letter, but I have not been able to trace it. It appears to have been written as early as May 16. There was a New York merchants’ meeting on the 18th, but that was called to discuss non-importation, and deferred action, hoping the duty would be repealed (New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, May 21, 1 770). An earlier letter from Connecticut was sent on May 19, replying to that from New York, and signed by Matthew Talcott, Richard Alsop, and Silas Deane (ibid. July 23, 1770).
503 Boston Gazette, June 11, 1770; New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, June 25, 1770. The names are printed in a supplement to the Boston Gazette, June 18, 1770. They are John Gillespie, John Bernard, James McMasters, Patrick McMasters, Nathaniel Rogers, William Jackson, Theophilus Lillie, John Taylor, Ame and Elizabeth Cuming, Israel Williams & Son of Hatfield, and Henry Barnes of Marlborough. These firms had already been publicly entered in the town records on March 19, and may have been acted upon at the merchants’ meeting of April 20, but I find no earlier publication in the newspapers.
504 New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, June 18, 1770. The members of the merchants’ committee were Isaac Low, chairman, Henry Remsen, Jr., Jacob Walton, and J. H. Cruger. Isaac Low advertised in the Post Boy, November 26, 1770, that he had imported and that he had a right to do so and that he had certain goods for sale and hoped people would buy of him. A curious advertisement.
505 A letter to the Boston Gazette, June 25, 1770, gives the anti-merchants’ point of view.
506 New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, July 9, 16, 1770. See a very informing letter sent by Alexander Colden, postmaster, to Anthony Todd, secretary to the postmasters general in London, July 11, 1770 (New York Colonial Documents, viii. 218–221).
507 New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, July 23, 1770. In a supplement to the paper appears a complete list of “alterers,” returned by the ward committees to the committee of inspection. It distinguishes between “Importers,” “Those zealous for Importing,” and “Shop-keepers,” and was printed to show that only about 800 were for importing, whereas there were probably 3000 whose votes ought to have been taken. In the list is the name of John Glover, Samuel Elam’s agent in New York, whose letters throw light on the situation in the city at this time.
508 Becker, op. cit., p. 93.
509 The protest is printed in the New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, August 6, 1770.
510 New Jersey Archives, xxvii. 202, 204, 206–207, 215, 218–219.
511 Madison to his father, July 23, 1770 (Writings, 1900, i. 7; New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, July 16, 1770). At the Princeton Commencement Exercises, September 26, 1770, “Mr. Ogden defended this Proposition. The Non-Importation Agreement reflects a Glory on the American Merchants, and was a noble Exertion of Self denial and public Spirit. He was opposed by Mr. Horton, to whom Mr. John Smith replied.” At the same exercises, “Mr. Frelinghuysen pronounced an Oration on the Utility of American Manufactures,” and “In the Afternoon Mr. Wilson began an Oration on Commerce” (New Jersey Archives, xxvii. 268, 269).
512 Rowe, Diary, July 24, 1770; Massachusetts Gazette, July 26, 1770; Boston Gazette, July 30, August 20, 27, September 4, 1770; New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, August 17, 1770; New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, August 27, September 10, 24, 1770; Essex Gazette, August 28, 1770; Pennsylvania Gazette, September 20, 1770; Newport Historical Magazine, iii. 256.
513 Boston Gazette, August 13, 20, 1770. “The gentleman-merchants of the committee in Connecticut, met at Hartford, Aug. 4, declared their abhorrence of New York, issued a card calling for a closing of all accounts with the merchants there, and on the 7th authorized the publishing of five names, William Bowes, Rufus Greene, Edward Church, Nathaniel Cary, and William Coffin, Jr.” Their resolution declared that New York’s act was “in downright violation of the solemn agreement of this colony and of the neighbouring provinces . . . an infamous breach of their public faith plighted to her sister colonies not to import, and is a practice so destructive to the natural and civil rights and liberties of the people of America, that we must hold New York . . . in the utmost detestation and abhorrence.” This quotation illustrates the almost universal tendency to identify non-importation, at this time, with the constitutional claims.
514 “The Plea of New Haven for Non-Importation,” July 26, 1770, is printed from the Emmet Papers in the Bulletin of the New York Public Library, i. 184. It speaks of “our backsliding Brethren of New York, who have meanly prostituted the Common Cause to the present sordid prospect of a little Pelf.” The meeting was presided over by Roger Sherman.
515 Representatives from these five towns met at Mansfield and took action.
516 Scharf, History of Maryland, i. 118–119, where the resolutions are given.
517 The Association of June 22, 1770, is differently worded in its preamble from that of May 18, 1769. It is less rhetorical and more businesslike in tone. The articles run about the same, except that the list of goods not to be imported is considerably altered. The Association is signed by Peyton Randolph for the burgesses and Andrew Sprowle of Gosport for the merchants (Virginia Gazette, June 28, 1770; New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, July 23, 1770; Boston Gazette, July 23, 1770).
518 Cape Fear Mercury, July 11, 1770; South Carolina Gazette, July 5, 26, August 9, 1770; New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, August 13, 1770. In reply to a letter from Charles Town, addressed to the Sons of Liberty of North Carolina, a committee, composed of members from Wilmington, New Hanover county, Bladen county, Duplin county, Onslow county, and Cumberland county, met at Wilmington. It took the members a long time to get together, as “the gentlemen lived long distances apart.” Many of the merchants reused to sign the renewal.
519 To the Sons of Liberty of Charles Town the New Yorkers were “traitors to their country, themselves, and ages yet unborn, who, no doubt, when groaning under a British yoke will forever curse the traitors” (South Carolina Gazette, August 16, 23, 1770; New Jersey Archives, xxvii. 293).
520 Connecticut Courant, September 17, 1770. Just where Connecticut intended to purchase English goods is not clear. The merchants had broken with Boston, and now they broke with New York. New Haven, in its earlier non-importation agreement, voted to trade with Philadelphia and Boston, and probably in this case a return to the Boston connection was designed. “A Connecticut Farmer,” writing to the New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, August 27, 1770, urges the cutting loose from all connections and the opening up of direct trade with England. He wanted Connecticut to have her own trade just as the New Jersey towns were hoping to do. This cutting of new channels of trade was in the minds of the freeholders and inhabitants of Sussex county, New Jersey, a region of wheat, and iron and steel furnaces, who, in voting non-intercourse with New york, declared that they would send their wheat and iron by the “more natural and easy water carriage down the River Delaware to our friends at Trenton and Philadelphia.” As early as 1738, Gov. Morris of New Jersey wrote to the Board of Trade: “They [the people] have warm desires and are big with hopes of carrying on a trade directly with Great Britain, instead of receiving European commodities from their neighbors of Boston, New York, and Pennsylvania” (Colonial Office, 5: 973, F 31).
521 New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, October 15, 1770. New York said: “Can Carolina, Philadelphia, Albany, New Brunswick, Woodbridge, or New Haven, etc, still retain a desire to hold a union with these gentlemen [of Boston], though they promise ever so great a Union in Deceit? Can you still resolve and protest against the merchants in New York, who maintained their agreement inviolate, untill they were convinced of the propriety of an Alteration, and then acted bold and upright, publickly declaring their Intentions to the world— like Honest Men” (Massachusetts Gazette, October 4, 1770, supplement). For a Boston statement, see ibid. September 6, 1770, and note the following as a specimen of language used in Boston: “At this juncture, when the merchants of New York have shamefully violated the agreement and forsaken the cause of this country, — when those who wish to have the chains fastened upon us are assiduous in their endeavours to scatter the seeds of discord among the other colonies, when they are casting the most malicious aspersions on the merchants of this town and province, and are artfully endeavouring to render them particularly odious in the eyes of the world, —when we feel the hand of oppression and tyranny daily growing more and more heavy upon us, — when the enemies of America, destitute of shame or remorse, insolently begin to laugh at her struggles for Freedom, and already flatter themselves that in a little time despotic power shall gain a complete triumph in a land of Liberty, — at such a time and under such circumstances everyone will judge it is the duty of each Individual in the community who loves his country to attend the public meetings — There to deliberate and consult with candor, to determine with wisdom, and to execute with that undaunted fortitude which becomes those only who are resolved to be free.” This statement was made at a meeting held in Faneuil Hall, and we are not surprised that it had to be adjourned because so few were present When the next meeting was held on September 5, a letter was voted to be sent to say that all the New York charges against Boston were “without foundation” (Massachusetts Gazette, September 20, 1770).
522 Pennsylvania Gazette, June 14, 1770.
523 New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, August 27, 1770.
524 Letters to Samuel Elam and William Neate, November 24, 1770, and to John Glover, November 20, 1770 (Collins Papers).
525 Pennsylvania Gazette, October 4, 1770.
526 Pennsylvania Gazette, October 4, 1770; New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy, October 1, 1770. Capt. Bosley wrote to Collins: “Last Thursday was a meeting of the subscribers to the non-importation agreement at Davenport’s. J. Gibson spoke much and I am told very well against the trade being opened; W. West spoke strainously on the other side and gained the point. They are now making out their orders to go by the London packet, Capt. Cook” (Collins Papers).
527 Many London merchants had sent goods to Philadelphia in August and September, hoping the trade would be opened. Samuel Elam of Hull loaded the ship Commerce in August with bales for both New York and Philadelphia, and consigned them to John Glover, New York. Glover had a great deal of trouble with this consignment, for it was not until November that Philadelphia merchants dared receive their bales. Some of the Philadelphia consignees were Geo. Emlin, Abraham Usher, Joseph Swift, Benj. Wynkoop, Isaac & Joseph Paschall, Jacob Winey, James & Drinker, William Wisher, Richard Parker, Thomas Clifford & Son, John & Clem Biddle, Matthias Aspden, John Steinmetz, Caleb & Amos Foulke, and Stephen Collins. All wrote Glover in November to forward by the Bordentown stage, to be deposited at the Crooked Billet tavern. “I believe none will hinder their coming,” wrote Parker. “Do not apprehend there will be any difficulty in receiving of them,” wrote the Cliffords. As it happened, the Commerce was wrecked off the Maryland coast, November 11, and though 400 bales were saved they were so much damaged that they had to be sold at public vendue in New York (Collins Papers; New York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, December 3, 1770).
528 “Goods are dayley arriving here from New York,” wrote C. & A. Foulke, November 15; “I find great quantities of goods are coming here from Maryland,” B. Wynkoop, November 10; “I have an assortment of broadcloths coming by way of Maryland, which will be sufficient for my spring sale,” Abraham Usher, November 29 (Letters to John Glover).
529 This is inferred from the names of the members present (Rowe, Letters and Diary, pp. 206–207.)
530 A meeting was held in Salem in September to denounce the “infamous conduct” of the four importers (p. 235, above) who had signed the agreement of May 2, 1770, and on September 22 had broken it by taking their goods out of storage, “breaking open the stores with force and violence, armed with a process of law, and assisted by the under-sheriff.” The meeting voted to boycott the stores and shops of the four, and even the truckman who handled the goods. A narrative of the circumstances, a terrible piece of thunder, is given in the Essex Gazette, October 2, 1770. Peter Frye, one of the offenders, wrote a letter defending himself, and saying that there were so many leaks everywhere, at Marblehead, Portsmouth, and Boston, that he was justified in seizing his property and offering it for sale. In the Essex Gazette of the 9th are published the names of three persons who had purchased goods of the four (Boston Gazette, October 8, 1770; Essex Gazette, October 2, 9, 1770).
531 Essex Gazette, November 20, 1770.
532 Denison Bros. to Collins, January 10, 1771.
533 Boston Gazette, December 24, 1770; 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 284.
534 Virginia was one of the last, if not the very last, to give in. Perkins, Buchanan & Brown wrote to Thomas Adams, April 9, 1770: “The duty on Tea is yet retained, the repealing the other three articles certainly does not redress the grievance North America complained of. This being the case surely your resolution of May 18 should be strictly observed” (Virginia Historical Society, File 5). Just when action was taken I have not discovered, but it was not until after June 1, 1771, for on that date Jefferson wrote from Monticello to Adams, “The day appointed for the meeting of the associates is not yet arrived, but it seems certain that the restrictions will be taken off everything but the dutied articles” (Jefferson, Writings, i. 387).
535 Regarding the situation in North Carolina, James Iredell wrote in October, 1771, “All mobbing is at an end here and we are once more at peace” (McRee, Life of Iredell, i. 93).
536 South Carolina Gazette, December 13, 27, 1770.
537 Ames’s Diary, Dedham Historical Register, i. 12; Faculty Records, ii. 85.
538 Rev. William Symmes (H. C. 1750), Tutor 1755–1758. He was succeeded by the Rev. Joseph Jackson (H. C. 1753), Tutor 1758–1760.
539 Robert Dodsley’s Preceptor, first published in 1748, went through several editions.
540 William Kneeland (H. C. 1751), Tutor 1754–1763.
541 A William Hook was born October 19, 1718 (Vital Records of Cambridge, i. 370). On November 5, 1731, a guardian was appointed for a William Hook, a minor, aged about fourteen (Suffolk Probate Files, No. 6158). The dates indicate that perhaps these two William Hooks were one and the same.
542 Faculty Records, ii. 117, 118–119, 137.
543 October 2–3, 1711.
544 Rev. George Curwin (H. C. 1701).
545 Rev. John Emerson (H. C. 1675), who died March 10, 1712.
546 Hobart’s wife was Sarah, daughter of Edward Jackson: she died February 23, 1712. The letter is owned by the American Antiquarian Society.
547 Cf. Publications of this Society, xvii, 120–122.
548 Quincy, History of the Boston Athenaeum, p. 190.
549 P. 261, above.
550 Dedham Historical Register, i. 113, 114.
551 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 29, 30, 49, 396: cf. i. 197. Among those “entertained” by the company in 1629 was Lambert Wilson, who was to “serve this Companie and the other planters that liue in the plantac͞on for 3 yeares, and in that time apply himselfe to cure not only of such as came from hence for the gen̄all and p̄ticuler accompts, but also for the Indian as from tyme to tyme hee shalbe directed,” and who was also “to educate & instruct in his art one or more youths, such as yow and the said councell shall appoint, that may bee helpful to him, and, if occasion serve, succeed him in the plantac͞on.” Savage says of Wilson: “my doubt is strong, whether he continued half the time.”
552 In Shepard’s Clear Sun-shine of the Gospel breaking forth upon the Indians of New-England, London, 1648, pp. 25–26.
553 See the previous note.
554 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv. 57.
555 Memorial History of Boston (1881), iv. 530. In 1884 Dr. Green repeated his statement, with slight variations in language; and further said: “It is very likely that Cambridge was the place where Giles Firmin had ‘read upon’ or lectured on his skeleton” (2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 46, 47). In 1901 Dr. Francis R. Packard said: “A skeleton was formerly called an anatomy, hence it would appear that demonstrations of the bones were made by Firmin” (History of Medicine in the United States, p. 34).
556 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 201.
557 Wonder-working Providence, p. 165.
558 Connecticut Colonial Records, i. 396. Dr. Green printed two editions of his Centennial Address, one at Groton, the other at Boston, which differ in pagination and slightly in text, and to the Boston edition was added an Appendix (pp. 129–131) in which the 1663 case is mentioned.
559 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, vi. 205.
560 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, vi. 181. In his Account of Two Voyages to New-England, 1674, John Josselyn said: “There was in the Countrey not long since . . . a young maid that was troubled with a sore pricking at her heart, . . . it so fell out that the maid dyed; her friends desirous to discover the cause of the distemper of her heart, had her open’d, and found two crooked bones growing upon the top of the heart” (p. 186), but did not state when or where this autopsy was held. Josselyn added: “At Cape-Porpus lived an honest poor planter of middle-age, . . . at last he dyed in Anno 1668 as I think, or thereabouts. Some Chirurgeons there were that proffered to open him, but his wife would not assent to it, and so his disease was hidden in the Grave.”
561 S. A. Green, Centennial Address (Groton, 1881), pp. 49–50. This autopsy was made by Zerobabel Endecott. Cf. G. F. Dow, preface to Endecott’s Synopsis Medicinae, or A Compendium of Galenical and Chymical Physick (Essex Tracts, 1914), p. 5.
562 Diary, i. 21.
563 S. A. Green, Centennial Address (Groton), p. 50. The extracts thus far quoted are well known, all having been noted by Dr. Green; those which follow are mostly new.
564 Diary, i. 65. In April, 1693, the body of Cotton Mather’s son Joseph, who lived only four days, was “opened” (i. 163–164). For these references I am indebted to Mr. John H. Edmonds.
565 New York Colonial Documents, iii. 794. “A post mortem examination of the body was ordered” on the day of his death (Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1689–1692, p. 510: cf. pp. 511, 513, 520).
566 P. 2/2. For this reference I am indebted to Mr. John H. Edmonds.
567 Colonial Currency Reprints (Prince Society), i. 329, 330.
568 G. L. Kittredge, Cotton Mather’s Scientific Communications to the Royal Society (Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, 1916, xxvi. 40–41). For this reference I am indebted to Mr. Kittredge.
569 Quoted in Dr. Packard’s History of Medicine in the United States, 1901, pp. 164–165.
570 Boston News Letter, February 22, 1733, p. 2/1. Cf. March 1, p. 2/1; March 8, p. 2/1; March 22, p. 2/1.
571 Dr. Packard says that in 1750 “a criminal named Hermanus Carroll was cexecuted for murder in New York City, and his body was dissected by Dr. John Bard and Dr. Peter Middleton for the instruction of the young men then engaged in the study of medicine. This is the first essay made in the colonies for the purpose of acquiring medical knowledge by dissection, of which we have any record’” (History of Medicine in the United States, p. 165). From whom this passage is quoted is not stated, but the extracts given in our text show that earlier dissections were made.
572 These two references came to-me from our late associate Mr. Gay.
573 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii, 189. This Medical Society in Boston was referred to in the Boston News Letter of January 5, 1738 (not 1737, as misprinted), and of November 13, 1741, after which allusions to it have not been found.
574 John Chandler (d 1762).
575 P. 101.
576 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 45–46. Attention was first called to the passage by George H. Moore, who spoke of the unnamed and unknown Bostonian as “the first promoter of medical education in America” (1 ibid. xix. 249–250).
577 Suffolk Probate Records, xl. 331–332. The inventory, as here recorded (the original being missing), clearly reads as printed in the text; but it seems likely that “Anat:” is an error for “Art:” — that is, “arteries.” See text, under 1750.
578 H. C. 1733.
579 H. C. 1745. William Davis, the physician, and Hannah Winslow were married January 26, 1715 (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxviii. 57); a son William was born March 17, 1726 (xxiv. 175); and letters of administration were granted to Hannah Davis, widow, on March 28, 1746 (Suffolk Probate Files, no. 8489). The Faculty Records (i. 165) state that the William Davis who graduated in 1745 was born December 25, 1727, and that his residence at entrance was Boston. Presumably the son of the physician and the Harvard graduate were one and the same, the dates given in the Faculty Records being sometimes those of baptism.
580 Francis Archibald, a Boston physician, and Huldah Rainsford were married November 18, 1714; a son Edward (H. C. 1736) was born March 24, 1716; a son Francis was born February 5, 1724; and on October 25, 1746, letters of administration were granted to Huldah Archibald, widow, and Francis Archibald, merchant. (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxiv. 111, 163, xxviii, 49; Suffolk Probate Files, no. 8589). Hence the donor of the skeleton doubtless in herite dit from his father. The name is variously spelled Archbald, Archbold, and Archibald: I follow the form given in the Harvard Quinquennial Catalogue.
581 College Book, iv. 315–316.
582 Suffolk Probate Records, xlviii. 326.
583 Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, ii. 1581, 1582; J. J. Levick, early Physicians of Philadelphia (1886), p. 11 note; F. R. Packard, History of Medicine in the United States, p. 165. Apparently Philadelphians have come to believe this statement by dint of repeating it, for I have been unable to find any evidence in its support. That at least one medical lecture was delivered in 1750 is proved by the following advertisement which appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette of November 29, p. 2/2:
Next Week will be published,
A DISCOURSE on the Preparation of the Body for the Small-Pox: And the Manner of receiving the Infection. As it was delivered in the publick Hall of the Academy, before the Trustees, and others, on Wednesday, the 21st of November, 1750.
By ADAM THOMSON, Physician in Philadelphia . . .
The Philadelphia Academy, of whose trustees Franklin was then president, is the present University of Pennsylvania. Cf. the same paper, December 18 (presumably a misprint for 20), p. 2/1–2.
Dr. R. F. Stone says that Cadwalader’s Iliac Passion, or Colica Pictonum, “was written in 1743, and was one of the first publications on a medical subject in America. He is said, however, to have written a paper on ‘Inoculation Variola’ (1730) which antedates this and all other contributions to American medical literature” (Biography of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons, pp. 71–72). It is hardly necessary to say that this statement is quite erroneous, as there had been many medical publications before 1730, the earliest known being the Rev. Thomas Thacher’s A Brief Rule To guide the Common-People of New-England How to order themselves and theirs in the Small Pocks, or Measels, a broadside printed at Boston in 1678. It is dated January 21, 1678.
584 American Medical Biography (1828), i. 304–305.
585 Boston evening Post, January 20, 1755, p. 2/2; January 27, p. 3/2; February 3, p. 2/2.
586 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 305 note.
587 Boston evening Post, January 30, 1764, p. 2/2.
588 Boston News Letter, December 20, 1770, p. 3/2. Hersey graduated in 1728. The bequest was received on November 9, 1772, and the vote of the Corporation of that date was printed in the Boston News Letter of November 12, 1772, p. 2/3; where it is also stated: “We are informed likewise, that His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor [Andrew Oliver] hath presented to HARVARD—COLLEGE a Number of curious Anatomical Preparations, from London, in Aid to the before mentioned laudable Design.”
589 2 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 109–110. There were at that time several physicians named Josiah Bartlett. A sketch of this one (born 1759, died 1820) will be found in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 323–330.
590 Oration occasioned by the Death of John Warren, M.D. (1815), p. 5.
591 Eulogy of the Character of John Warren, M.D. (1815), p. 9.
592 E. Warren, Life of John Warren, M.D. (1874), p. 12.
593 Ibid. pp. 226–227.
594 E. Warren, Life of John Warren, M.D. (1874), pp. 25, 26.
595 Ibid. p. 23.
596 Ibid. p. 227.
597 E. Warren, Life of John Warren, M.D. (1874), pp. 228–229. The persons mentioned in this letter were: Dr. Benjamin Church (H. C. 1754); Dr. John Clarke (H. C. 1772); Dr. John Jeffries (H. C. 1763); Dr. James Lloyd (1728–1810); Dr. Jonathan Norwood (H. C. 1771); Rev. Samuel Stillman (1738–1807); Dr. David Townsend (H. C. 170).
598 P. 2/3. On the same day John Rowe wrote: “Levi Ames was hanged this afternoon — many Thousand Spectators attended the execution” (Letters and Diary, p. 252). cr. 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xv. 343; Memorial History of Boston, ii. 486–487.
599 “Christ sent to heal the Broken Hearted. A Sermon, Preached at the Thursday Lecture in Boston, On October 21st. 1773. When Levi Ames . . . Was present to hear the Discourse” (1773).
600 “Christ’s Promise to the penitent Thief. A Sermon Preached the Lord’s Day before the Execution of Levi Ames, . . . N.B. This discourse was delivered at the desire of the Prisoner, who was present when it was delivered” (1773).
601 “Two Sermons: The First . . . . Delivered the Lord’s Day before the Execution of Levi Ames . . . This Discourse was preached at the Desire of the Criminal, who also attended on the Occasion. The Second . . . Preached the Lords-Day after his Execution” (1773).
602 A society called the S— G— was founded September 6, 1770, and on September 11 John Warren was admitted a member. This was the Speaking Club, now the Institute of 1770, the records of which are preserved in the College Library. Sone of theearly pages are either gone or mutilated, making it impossible to say with certainty whether Eustis and Norwood were members, but their names do not occur in the pages remaining. Warren spoke on October 9, November 21, December 18, 1770, and March 4, April 2, May 14, 1771. Some of the pieces may have been original, but probably most if not all were selections. Cr. Publications of this Society, viii. 291 note 4, 292 note 2.
603 Independent Chronicle, January 4, 1781, p. 3/3; January 11, p. 4/2; January 18, p. 4/1.
604 Independent Chronicle, December 6, 1781, p. 2/1; December 14, p. 4/3; December 20, p. 4/3. On December 20 the advertisement contained this addition: “N.B. Gentlemen of whatever profession may be admitted.” This course was in response to a vote of the Boston Medical Society on November 3, 1781, “That Dr. John Warren be desired to demonstrate a course of Anatomical Lectures the ensuing winter” (T. F. Harrington, Harvard Medical School, i. 80, 259).
605 Harrington, Harvard Medical School, i. 84.
606 See p. 262, above. On January 5, 1762, Ames wrote in his Diary that a student “that was expell from College for Breaking Doct. Kneelands Windows some time since Comment is now recd again upon application to the Overseers of Colls” (Dedham Historical Register, i. 146).
607 Harrington says that Kneeland, after his graduation from Harvard in 1751, “took up the study of medicine with an eminent physician, and while pursuing his studies cultivated various branches of science, and was noted as a scholar in logic and metaphysics. He was Tutor . . . from the year 1754 to 1763, after which he began the practice of medicine in Cambridge” (Harvard Medical School, i. 170).
608 In 1733 a curious case arose. Ebenezer Hartshorn entered in the class of 1732 and was duly placed at some time between September 30 and November 26, 1728, but against his name is written “left College” (Faculty Records, i. 20). In June, 1733, his petition for a Bachelor’s degree was dismissed because he “declin’d offering himself to such an Examination” as the Corporation insisted upon. Hartshorn’s own declaration was “yt he knew nothing of Hebrew, not so much as ye Letters; yt he had never read any system of natural or moral Phylosophy, yt he was unacquainted with Mathematicks, & could not pretend to answer in Logick; . . . and all yt he consented to be examined in, was Latin Classick Authors, ye Greek Testament & his profession of Physick” (College Book, iv. 167). That a student should have offered himself for examination in medicine as early as 1733 is worth notice.
609 Mr. Matthews, who has furnished the notes for this document, finds that Ephraim Eliot omitted two of his classmates — John Barrett and James Delaney. Barrett’s name does not occur in the list of those admitted August 8, 9, September 13, 25, 1776, in the Faculty Records (iv. 37), but was interlined later as follows:
Barrett John Springfield. State of Vermont. 23 Augt 16 1779
from Dart: Augt 1779
That is, he was born August 16, 1756, he was admitted from Dartmouth College in August, 1779, and his place of residence at entrance was Springfield, Vermont. He was admitted to the honorary degree of A.M. at Dartmouth in 1780, but his name does not appear in the list of non-graduates in the General Catalogue of Dartmouth College (1911).
Delaney’s name is thus entered in the Faculty Records (iv. 37):
Delaney James St Christophers 17 Novr 5
On July 15, 1777, the Faculty voted “That James Delaney have Leave of Absence to go to St Christophors agreable to his Father’s Desire, & to return to this Society as soon as his Affairs may permit” (iv. 67). Apparently he never returned.
610 Bradshaw was over twenty-five at entrance, having been born March 8, 1751 (Faculty Records, iv. 37).
611 Brown, “Sophomore at Providence College,” was admitted August 29, 1779, “His Age 15. Sept 22. 1776” (Faculty Records, iv. 64–65). See General Catalogue of Brown University (1914).
612 Crane, the only clergyman in the class, a “Freshman at Providence College,” was admitted May 15, 1777. “N. B. He is from Norton — Age 21. March 26, 1777” (Faculty Records, iv. 58). See General Catalogue of Brown University (1914). He was minister at Northbridge — not Northfield, as Eliot has it.
613 Croswell, “Son of the Revd Mr [Andrew] Croswell of Boston, aged 16 Years July 1776,” was admitted March 13, 1777 (Faculty Records, iv. 53).
614 Draper had a varied career. In the list of those admitted in 1775 to the class of 1779, he is thus entered (Faculty Records, iv. 15):
Draper Philip (N. B. Rusticated) Dedham 18 March 2
The words “(N. B. Rusticated)” are interlined and were of course added later. On October 3, 1777, he was admonished in that he “did grosly & cruelly beat” another student; on October 6 he was degraded six places for theft; on November 3 he had leave to go to New York; on December 12–14, 1777, he was restored to his former place; on June 5, 1779, he was rusticated; on July 21 his petition to the Corporation for reversal of his rustication was denied; on June 23, 1780, his petition to the Faculty for readmission was deferred, and on July 10 was denied; but on July 19, 1780, his petition to the Corporation for a degree was granted. (Faculty Records, iv. 15, 69, 71, 72–73, 96, 125–127, 151; College Book, viii. 29, 56–57.)
T. W. M. Draper says that “Mr. Draper received his M.D. from Harvard University in 1780, and was a practising physician in the South Parish of Dedham until his death” (Draper Family in America, 1892, pp. 176–177). The former statement is of course incorrect, and if the latter is not also the fact escaped Dr. T. F. Harrington, who does not mention him in his Harvard Medical School. Draper’s brother Ichabod graduated in the class of 1783, while his two sons Jeremiah and Moses graduated in the class of 1808.
615 Flynt’s name is not found in Dr. Harrington’s Harvard Medical School.
616 James Hughes was admitted to college July 18, 1780, and was granted his degree the next day. The case is so extraordinary that it is worth giving the Faculty vote in full:
At the Meeting of the President Professors & Tutors.
James Hughes of Boston, who was designed to be a member of this College at the time when the war broke out, but was prevented by being shut up in Boston in that Town by the British Troops, and was afterwards discouraged by many difficulties, now offering himself to examination, for admission into the present Senior Class, to be with them a Candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts; And he being recommended by several respectable Gentlemen of education, as a person of unexceptionable moral character, and that he has pursued the course of Studies, usual in this University, and made such advances in the several branches of Literature as render him worthy of a first degree — Agreed that he be admitted to examination — He was accordingly examined, in the Learned Languages, in Geography, Logic, Mathematics, Natural Philosophy & Astronomy, and found to have made good proficiency in those branches of Literature
Whereupon it was voted — That the aforesaid James Hughes, upon his paying the Sum of Ninety pounds in Spanish Milled Dollars, or Continental Bills equivalent, to the Satisfaction of the Treasurer, be admitted a Member of the present Senior Class, and stand candidate with them for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Faculty Records, iv. 153–154).
617 On June 27, 1777, “Daniel Jenckes of Providence College,” a Junior Sophister, applied for admission to the Sophomore Class, was examined, found deficient, yet was admitted “on Conditions” (Faculty Records, iv. 61). See General Catalogue of Brown University (1914).
618 Samuel Moody, H. C. 1746; preceptor of Dummer Academy, 1763–1790; died 1795.
619 On July 24, 1779, “Nehemiah Mason of Stonington aged 22 Years 10th April last, producing a Certificate from President Stiles of his regular standing in Yale College; & Jacob White of Mansfield, aged 21 Years 30th of July last, who had, as appears by the Testimony of Mason, a Certificate of like Tenor, which thro inadvertence he left at Home, desiring Admission into the Senior Sophister Class” (Faculty Records, iv. 112–113), were duly admitted.
620 Plympton’s name does not occur in the list of those admitted in 1776, but was interlined later as follows (Faculty Records, iv. 37):
Plympton Sylvanus Medfield 21 Novr 7 1778 from Dart: Augt 1779
His name is not found in the General Catalogue of Dartmouth College (1911).
621 Election day in 1785 was May 25, while Commencement Day was July 20. The following notice appeared in the Independent Chronicle of July 21, 1785:
Yesterday died, greatly lamented, Mr. Thomas Walley Russell, son of Mr. Joseph Russell, of this town, in the 24th year of his age. His remains are to be entombed to-morrow afternoon, at six o’clock, from his father’s house in Long-Lane, where his friends and relations are desired to attend. An attempt to do justice to his memory, might, by the eye of the uncandid and stranger, be viewed as adulation, and add fresh poignancy to the grief his disease has already occasioned his numerous friends and acquaintance (p. 3/3).
622 The commonplace book contains at another place further particulars regarding the mysterious disappearance of Jesse Thomas.
623 “Fortescue Vernon of Boston, aged 15 yrs Novr 9 1776,” was admitted February 18, 1777 (Faculty Records, iv. 51). He was the son of William Vernon who, though born in Boston June 27, 1740, described himself in his will (dated October 15, 1787, proved December 28, 1789) as “of the Colony of Esscquibo, Planter,” and stated that he had sold his “plantation called Boston in Essequibo.” William Vernon was the son of Capt. Fortescue and Jane (Cowell) Vernon. In Capt. Vernon’s will (dated June 23, 1778, and proved January 8, 1779) are these clauses: “Item I give to my Son William Vernon, the Farm at Newton . . For and During his natural Life only, & upon the Decease of my said Son Willm Vernon, I give & Devise the same unto his son by his first Wife namely my Grandson Fortesque Vernon. . . . Item I give & bequeath to my Grandson Fortesque Vernon . . . seven thousand Dollars in Continental Securities with the Interest thereon that may be Due at the Time of my Decease, and that the Interest that may become Due on them after, I will may be paid to him yearly as it becomes due for his Maintenance at Colledge and Pocket Expences at his own Discretion.” Capt. Vernon died December 21, 1778, as appears from the following notice: “Last Monday evening departed this Life, Captain Fortesque Vernon, aged 63. His funeral will be this afternoon, from his mansion-house (in Charter-Street) at half past 3 o’clock — where his Friends and Acquaintance are desired to attend” (Independent Chronicle, Thursday, December 24, 1778, p. 3/2).
On January 29, 1779, Professor Stephen Sewall was appointed “guardian unto Fortesque Vernon a Minor above fourteen years of Age Grandson of Capt. Fortesque Vernon late of Boston deceased;” and in the account he rendered September 29, 1783, is this item: “pd the President & Fellows of Harvard College 3.2.1.” While in college, Vernon was admonished on May 10–16, 1780, and again on December 15, 1780 (Faculty Records, iv. 145–146, 183–185), showing that he was in residence for at least a while after graduation, though apparently he did not remain for his A.M. He died intestate in March, 1790, and on April 13 administration on his estate was granted to Stephen Bruce. The Massachusetts Centinel of April 14 said: “DIED] — At Demarara, Mr. Fortescue Vernon” (xiii. 35/2). See Suffolk Probate Files, nos. 16804, 16831, 18955, 19344, 19476; Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxiv. 242, 251, 268, 272, xxviii, 230; Massachusetts Magazine, i. 64, ii. 256; T. Bridgman, Epitaphs from Copp’s Hill Burial Ground, 1851, p. 48; Boston Gazette, January 31, 1780, p. 3/1; Independent Chronicle, February 5, 1789, p. 3/3.
624 Jacob (not James) White was admitted from Yale July 24, 1779: see p. 293, note 2, above.
625 Winthrop was admitted from Yale April 30, 1779. “N. B. Winthrop belongs to New-London — Aged 19. March 6. 1779” (Faculty Records, iv. 104).
626 New Hampshire State Papers, viii. 2–4; Adams, Annals of Portsmouth, p. 262.
627 New Hampshire State Papers, viii. 12, 15, 33, 6 7.
628 New Hampshire Town Papers, xii. 68.
629 New Hampshire State Papers, viii. 16.
630 Account Book (1722–1759) of Christ Church.
631 Christ Church files; from copy of original letter.
632 Account Book.
633 Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, i. 323.
634 All extracts from the Vestry Records are from the first Record Book, 1724–1802.
635 Annals of King’s Chapel, i. 400.
636 Edmund Gibson.
637 W. S. Perry, Historical Collections relating to the American Colonial Church, iii. 270.
638 Henry Newman, H. C. 1687, Librarian 1690–1693: see our Publications, xiv. 135–136.
639 Belcher Papers, i. 59.
640 Belcher Papers, i. 65–66.
641 i. 66–67.
642 Belcher Papers, i. 73–74.
643 Belcher Papers, i. 75.
644 Thomas Sandford, merchant in London and agent of the congregation of King’s Chapel (Annals of King’s Chapel, i. 352, 381–382).
645 Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers, 1731–1734, p. 379.
646 Andrew Belcher (H. C. 1724), oldest son of Governor Belcher, and a Boston merchant.
647 Filleted, “marked or decorated with a fillet.” Fillet, “a plain line impressed on the cover of a book” (Oxford English Dictionary).
648 Employed in the now obsolete sense of a covering for the Altar. The Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical agreed upon by Bishops and Clergy in their Synod (1603) provide that the Communion Table shall be “covered in time of Divine Service with a Carpet of Silk or other decent Stuff, thought meet by the Ordinary of the place, if any question be made of it, and with a fair linen cloth at the time of the Ministration, as becometh that Table, and so stand, saving when the holy Communion is to be administered.”
649 Belcher Papers, i. 389–390.
650 Lady Day, the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary; also, under Old Style, the first day of the new year.
651 Perry, Historical Collections of the American Colonial Church, iii. 270.
652 iii. 271.
653 Belcher Papers, i. 72.
654 i. 460.
655 ii. 175.
656 Belcher Papers, ii. 175.
657 ii. 176.
658 Annals of King’s Chapel, i. 377 note.
659 Vestry Records, June 9, 1727.
660 Trinity Church, Boston, also set apart a pew for the use of the Governor, after the receipt, in 1742, of a gift of Communion plate, Bible and Prayer Books from the King through Governor Shirley. At a vestry meeting held August 27, 1742, it was voted: “that a pew be fitted up for his Exceleys accomodation when he pleases to come to this Church, that the two pews No 69 & No 70 be made into square pews one for to accomodate his Excelcy the other for the Wardens” (Addison, Life and Times of Edward Bass, p. 111).
661 Cocket, a “document sealed by the officers of the custom-house, and delivered to merchants as a certificate that their merchandise has been duly entered and has paid duty” (Oxford English Dictionary).
662 Primage, “a customary allowance formerly made by the shipper to the master and crew of a vessel for the loading and care of the cargo; also called hat money” (Oxford English Dictionary).
663 See p. 312, above, where a charge of two shillings for hooks for the Altar piece is recorded under date of September 10, 1733.
664 This inscription is copied from the chalice. The style of the inscription on the flagons is varied slightly in two words: “Excellncy Governr.”
665 The imprint on the title-page to the New Testament portion is dated 1716.
666 The title at the top of the first column on the page where the major part of the twentieth chapter of St. Luke is printed reads: “The parable of the vinegar,” instead of “The parable of the vineyard.”
667 Account Book.
668 A copy of the Vinegar Bible recently offered in the catalogue of an English antiquarian bookseller is described as follows: “The Holy Bible, with frontispiece and vignettes by Vander Gucht, ruled in red, 2 vols. roy. folio, Large Paper Copy, specially bound for King George I, in full dark green morocco, broad tooled ornamental borders, back panels containing his monogram, G.R., surmounted by Crown, royal arms stamped in gold on covers, silk ties, with tassels of gold wire (some defective), very fine copy. Oxford, J. Basket t, 1717.”
669 Francis Beteilhe was chosen clerk of the vestry January 15, 1733, and filled the position for some six years, the latest entry in the Records in his handwriting and over his signature being under date of July 30, 1739. On March 19, 1733, the vestry, “perceiving the irregular Order in keeping Records of our Meetings (as it too plainly appears by the foregoing pages) It is now Voted That all the Subscriptions Books & Papers be deliverd to Said Fr Beteilhe To make a faithfull & Exact Copy of all our Votes and Also make a Sett of Books of Accompts that we and our Successors might for the future transact & manage the Church Affairs with more Ease, Satisfaction and evident benefit to Christ Church.” As a result of this vote all the earliest records of Christ Church, as they appear in the first books of Vestry Records, Proprietors Records, and Account Books, are in Beteilhe’s characteristic and legible handwriting. Many, if not all, of the originals from which the transcripts were made are preserved, neatly docketed, among the church’s files. Beteilhe was also active in the early days of Free Masonry in Boston. I am indebted to Mr. Melvin M. Johnson, Past Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, for the following account. The Provincial Grand Lodge was founded on July 30, 1733, “receiving on the same evening a petition for the organization of a particular Lodge which original petition is still in our archives. Francis Beteilhe joined the Lodge on July 24, 1734. Just when he became Grand Secretary of the Provincial Grand Lodge we do not know, but it was prior to June 24, 1737. We know also that in 1736 he was Secretary of the First Lodge in Boston, and we have his original records during his incumbency of that office.” He continued as secretary of the Grand Lodge until August 7, 1739, and of the First Lodge until December 26, 1739. Cf. Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts for the years: 1871, p. 288; 1883, pp. 158, 159; 1899, p. 72; also Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlix, 289.
670 As a matter of accuracy it should be stated that a slip of paper has been pasted over the major part of the imprint in the volume which is shown in the. vestry room, with the obvious intention of covering the Royal arms, which were employed after the manner of a printer’s device above the imprint.
671 The Rev. Henry Burroughs in his address on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, December 29, 1873, and the Rev. Charles W. Duane in a similar address on the one hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary, December 29, 1898, refer briefly to the adaptation of the Prayer Books to the American Liturgy.
672 W. S. Perry, Journals of General Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church, iii. 101–103.
673 “Since the War two Clergymen have settled in this State, Revd. Mr. Lewis, who was Chaplain in Burgoyne’s Regiment of light Dragoons, left that Service and came to this Town in 1778 and settled at Christ’s Church; The other, the Revd. Mr. Fisher, who came from Annapolis in Nova Scotia in 1780 and settled in Salem” (Rev. Samuel Parker, Rector of Trinity Church, Boston, to the Rev. William White of Philadelphia, June 21, 1784, ibid. iii. 57).
674 “These alterations were introduced into the services of Trinity Church by the Rev. Mr. Parker on the first Sunday in August, 1786” (W. McGarvey, Liturgiae Americanae, or the Book of Common Prayer as used in the United States of America, 1895, p. xxii). This statement was apparently made on the authority of a letter written January 28, 1788, to Bishop Seabury of Connecticut by the Rev. Samuel Parker of Trinity Church (Journals of General Conventions, iii. 365). I am, however, indebted to Mr. Robert Treat Paine, Clerk of Trinity Church, for the information that on July 27, 1786, the vestry voted to adopt the alterations in the Liturgy as proposed by the Boston Convention. On July 30 the Proprietors of Trinity also voted to adopt the alterations and provided that the service should “be performed conformable thereto on the second Sunday in August.” Cf. Annals of King’s Chapel, ii. 309. More than four years later at a meeting of the vestry of Trinity Church, November 30, 1790, it was voted that in order that the congregation should have an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the new form of Prayer agreed upon by the General Convention at Philadelphia in October, 1789, it should be used in the church on Sundays and Holy-days from December 12, 1790, to January 3, 1791, when the Proprietors were to hold a meeting. At the Proprietors’ meeting held on January 16, 1791 (adjourned from January 3), “The Proprietors also expressed their Approbation of the Constitution & form of Prayer framed & revised by the general Convention holden at Philadelphia Octor. 1789.”
675 The Pennsylvania Gazette for Wednesday, September 8, 1790, contains an advertisement of the Book of Common Prayer as “Just published, and now Selling, at W. and D. Hall’s Book-store, in Market-Street.” A certificate of the Clerk of the District of Pennsylvania which appears in the advertisement recites, “that on the Seventh Day of August in the Fifteenth Year of the Independence . . . William Hall, of the said District hath deposited in this Office the Title of a Book, the Rights Whereof he claims as Proprietor, in the Words following, to wit: . . .” Then follows the detailed title of the Prayer Book. This advertisement appears again three times each, in September and October, and also on November 3.
676 Proprietors’ Records (1724–1806).
677 For convenience in description the several Prayer Books (with the exception of the large paper copy) are indicated as Folios 1, 2, 3, and 4, the numbering being based on the probable order of alteration. The large paper copy is called Folio 5.
678 The Bonum est confiteri and Benedic, anima mea, which were neither in the English Prayer Book nor in the Proposed Book, but are in the American Book of 1790 and subsequent editions.
679 This inscription is found in Folios 1 and 4. The inscription “For the Use of His Excellency the Governor A.D. 1733” is in Folio 2.
680 Neither the English Book nor the Proposed Book has the second form of the Absolution which appears in all editions of the American Book both in Morning and Evening Prayer.
681 It is not unlikely that these changes were made by the Rev. William Montague, Rector of Christ Church 1786–1792. A comparison of the handwriting in the volume with several manuscript sermons written at about this time by Mr. Montague, kindly provided for inspection by his grandson, Mr. Henry W. Montague of Boston, shows a marked similarity, although the evidence is not sufficiently clear to warrant a positive conclusion.
682 The Gun-powder Treason, King Charles the Martyr, King’s Restoration, and the accession of George II.
683 The Pennsylvania Gazette of Wednesday, December 28, 1791, has the following advertisement of the second edition: “Philadelphia, December 20, 1791. This Day is Published, and now Selling, At W. and D. Hall’s Book-store, In Market-Street, No. 51, (Price 4/9 the single Book, 4/2 by the Dozen, 3/9 by the Hundred, bound, or 2/6 in Sheets,) A Neat Edition of the Book of Common Prayer, . . .” The advertisement then continues with the wording of the advertisement of September 8, 1790, including the certificate as to the copyright. It is repeated twice in January, 1792, and in February; once each in March and April, and three times in May. It is possible that it first appeared in the issue of December 21, 1791, but there is no copy of this issue, nor of January 4, 1792, in the files of the American Antiquarian Society.
684 The General Convention of 1789 had instructed the Committee appointed to superintend the printing of the Prayer Book; “besides a full and complete edition of the said book, printed in folio or octavo, or in both, to have an edition published, to contain only the parts in general use and the Collects of the day, with references to the Epistles and Gospels” (Journals of General Conventions, i. 112).
685 The Rev. Dr. Frederick Gibson in his Bibliographical Sketch of the Standard Editions of the American Prayer Book (in Liturgiae Americanae, p. lxi) mentions folio copies of English Prayer Books, altered, by insertion of printed matter, to conform to the American Liturgy, in St. John’s Parish, Baltimore and Harford Counties, Md. (now in the Mary land Diocesan Library, Baltimore), St. John’s Church, Portsmouth, N. H., Christ Church, Cambridge, Mass., and Christ Church, Boston. Both the Maryland Diocesan Library copy (London, 1718) and the Christ Church Cambridge copy (London, 1766) were altered by the insertion of the partial folio of 1792. The Cambridge church also has a folio Prayer Book (Cambridge, England, 1757) in which alterations were made by hand in the Morning and Evening Prayer and Litany, although, curiously enough, the State Prayers were left untouched in the first two services.
686 For use “Yearly on the First Thursday in November, or on such other Day as shall be appointed by the Civil Authority.”
687 The hymns were six in number; two each for Christmas and Easter Day; one each for Good Friday and Whitsunday.
688 Liturgiae Americanae, p. lxi.
689 Through the courtesy of the Rev. Appleton Grannis, Rector of St. Anne’s Church, Lowell, I have been able to examine this copy which is still preserved in the Rectory library. It is a tall copy, 9⅜ by 15¾ inches, in perfect condition. On the fly-leaf is written “Maria Parkers 1840” and in a different handwriting “Partial Edition of 1790.” “Maria Parkers 1840” is also written on the inside of the back cover. The Rectory library was mainly formed by the late Rev. Dr. Theodore Edson when Rector of St. Anne’s Church. Mrs. Edson (Rebecca Parker) and Maria Parker were daughters of the Rev. Dr. Samuel Parker, Rector of Trinity Church, Boston (later the second Bishop of Massachusetts), and it can be safely assumed that this copy came from Dr. Parker.
690 These two copies appear to be identical, textually and typographically, except that in the quarto the Table of Lessons is printed horizontally on the pages instead of vertically, and the verso of Q2 has four hymns only instead of six as in the folio. The uncompleted date in the folio copy may be accounted for on the supposition that the notes in the volume were inserted at the time when Thomas presented his library to the Antiquarian Society in 1812, or later, and that his recollection as to the time of publication was not sufficiently exact to warrant his completing the date.
691 The reason for Dr. Parker’s activities and interest in the printing of the Prayer Book is clearly shown by the following extracts. At a convention in Boston, January 26, 1791, it was “Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Convention, that it is expedient that there be printed an edition of the alterations in the Service of the Church, contained in the Form of Prayer set forth by the General Convention;” and “Resolved, That the Committee chosen yesterday, be requested to procure the same to be printed, and to forward one copy to.” A few months later at a Convention held in Boston, May 24, 1 791, it was “Resolved, That the Form of Prayer set forth by the General Convention, be adopted and used in this Church.” “Resolved, That the Rev. Dr. Bass, Rev. Dr. Parker, and Rev. Mr. Fisher, be a Committee to confer with any Printers on the printing of an edition of the Common Prayer, this day adopted by the Convention; and, in case any Printer shall undertake it, the said Committee is requested to inspect the Press” (Journals of the Conventions of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the Diocese of Massachusetts, from the Year 1784 to the Year 1828 inclusive, Printed by order of the Convention of 1848, pp. 29, 3 2, 3 3). Dr. Bass was settled at Newburyport, Mr. Fisher at Salem, And it seems probable that the active supervision of the work would have fallen to the lot of Dr. Parker of Boston.
692 I am indebted to the American Antiquarian Society for permission to print these letters from the Isaiah Thomas Papers in the Society’s library; to our associate Dr. Charles L. Nichols of Worcester for his assistance; and to Mrs. Mary R. Reynolds of the Antiquarian Society, whose interest and assiduous research in the files of the Thomas correspondence have resulted in the fact of the publishers and place of imprint being established.
693 The advertisement, which also appeared in the Columbian Centinel of July 4, 18, and 25, is as follows:
Episcopal Prayer Book.
Just published, in Quarto, on a large type, and to be sold by THOMAS and ANDREWS, Faust’s statue, No. 45, Newbury-Street,
THE Morning and Evening Service, Litany, Occasional Prayers, Communion Service, and selections of Psalms, with the Table of Lessons, and Calendar of the Protestant Episcopal Church, as revised and set forth by the General Convention of said Church, held at Philadelphia, in October, 1789, and now used by the Churches of that denomination in this Commonwealth. Also,
A few sets of the same, in Folio, price Three Shilling s and Nine Pence, by which the old Prayer Book, of that size, may be made to answer to the revised form.
June 27, 1792.
694 The text-page of the partial folio, 1792, measures roughly 6½ by 11¼ inches: the text-page of the full folio, 1795, 7⅞ by 13¾ inches.
695 That is, the first edition of the Prayer Book, both the issues of 1790 and 1791, as differentiated from the first Standard Prayer-Book of 1793. The peculiarities referred to are in the Apostles Creed where the words “[He descended into Hell]” are italicized and placed between brackets. This was corrected by the General Convention of 1792. Also in the Communion Service in the Prayer of Oblation which has the words “which we now offer unto thee” in small capitals; and in the Invocation in the phrase “thy Word and Holy Spirit” where “word” is spelled without the initial capital. In the 1793 Standard the situation is exactly reversed; the phrase in the Oblation being entirely in lower case, and “word” being spelled generally, though not invariably, with an initial capital. Also in the first petition in the Litany, “O God the Father, in Heaven,” the 1790 book has a comma after “Father,” while in the 1793 Standard the comma is placed after the word “God.” There are also several minor points of difference which are not sufficiently important to be noted in detail.
696 The differences, if any, in eleven of the prayers are slight, the spirit and purport being unchanged. The prayer in the standard American Book “In Time of Great Sickness and Mortality” and the prayer of thanksgiving “For Deliverance from great Sickness and Mortality” are materially different in wording from the corresponding prayers in the English Book. The latter are headed respectively, “In the time of any common Plague or Sickness” and “For Deliverance from the Plague, or other common Sickness.” As the English Book of Common Prayer was established, substantially in its present form, by the Act of Uniformity in 1662 the reason for the specific reference to the Plague is obvious. Why the thirteen prayers should have been omitted in the partial edition cannot be explained.
697 The terminology employed by the Rev. Dr. Gibson in his Bibliographical Sketch of the Prayer Book is followed here. The Book authorized by the General Convention of 1789, and ordered to be in force after October 1, 1790, is referred to as the first edition, including both the 1790 and 1791 issues. The Prayer Book authorized by the General Convention of 1792, and published in 1793, was the first Standard Book, and was so established by the Third Canon passed in the General Convention of 1801. The Book in use at the present time is the seventh Standard and eighth edition of the authorized American Prayer Book.
698 Thomas & Andrews published a complete edition of the Prayer Book in 1794. It was advertised in the Columbian Centinel of Wednesday, April 23, 1794, as “Just Published, In large 12mo. on a new fair type, price 5s 3 single, and 4s 6 by the dozen.” There is a copy of this edition in the library of the American Antiquarian Society, and also of the Thomas & Andrews edition of 1800.
The following chronological list will prove useful:
- 1785 Sept.–Oct. Proposed Book prepared by General Convention at Philadelphia.
- 1786 Proposed Book published by Hall & Sellers, Philadelphia, 12 mo.
- 1789 Proposed Book reprinted for J. Debrett, London, 12mo. (The Proposed Book was not generally accepted and apparently was very little used.)
- 1789 Sept.–Oct. The English Liturgy revised for the use of the American Church by General Convention at Philadelphia.
- 1790 Sept. First edition of the American Prayer Book published by Hall & Sellers, Philadelphia, 12mo.
- 1791 Dec. Second issue of First Prayer Book published by Hall & Sellers, I Philadelphia, 12mo.
- 1792 June. Reprint of “parts in general use” in folio and quarto by Thomas & Andrews, Boston.
- 1792 Sept. Prayer Book revised by General Convention at New York.
- 1793 First Standard Prayer Book published by Hugh Gaine, New York, 8vo. Also an edition published by Gaine in 12mo.
- 1794 April Prayer Book published by Thomas & Andrews, Boston, 12mo. Also a few copies advertised in 8vo.
- 1794 Another edition of Prayer Book published by Hugh Gaine, New York, 12mo.
- 1795 First full folio American Prayer Book published by Hugh Gaine, New York.
699 Through the courtesy of Mr. Horace G. Wadlin I have been able to examine the copy of the 1795 folio in the collection of the late Josiah H. Benton, which enabled me to verify absolutely these portions inserted in Folio 3 as being part of the 1795 issue.
700 Including the same subject matter (the Table of Lessons, Baptismal Services, and Thanksgiving Day Service being excluded) the signatures in Folio 2 are B–1, K–L1, M–Q; in Folio 3, A-D, verso T2–U, X, Gg2–Ii, Kk1.
701 One variation from the Occasional Prayers in the 1790, 1791, and 1792 editions, as well as in the present Standard Book may be noted here. The prayer “For Malefactors after Condemnation” is headed “For a Malefactor after Condemnation” in the 1795 folio, and it is worded throughout in the singular instead of plural form. This seems to be peculiar to the 1795 folio. It is not found in Gaine’s 8vo edition of 1793 and 12mo edition of 1794, nor in the Thomas & Andrews 1794 edition.
702 The “Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving for the Fruits of the Earth” was not inserted in Folio 3, doubtless due to an oversight, as it is found in Folio 4 and Folio 5.
703 The Family Prayers in the Benton copy begin on the verso of Ff2 and end on the verso of Gg.
704 There are no textual variations between the ten Selections of Psalms and the Portions of Psalms to be used in place of the Venite as found in the 1792 and 1795 folio editions. They can however easily be distinguished both by the typographical differences and by the signatures; also the six hymns which follow the Portions of Psalms in the 1792 edition do not appear in the 1795 edition.
705 The Rev. Peter and Mary (Prince) Thacher had nine children, of whom the following are mentioned in the Diary; (1) Mary; (2) Mercy, who married Nathaniel Foster of Plymouth; (3) Rev. Peter (H. C. 1737); (4) Samuel; (5) Susanna.
706 Capt. Joseph Prince went from Sandwich, Mass., to Stratford, Ct., in 1736, and in 1743 joined the Episcopal Church: see S. Orcutt, History of Stratford and Bridgeport, i. 350, 352, ii. 1274.
707 “We hear from Rattan, that the Rev. Mr. Nathan Prince died at that Island the 25th of July last” (Boston News Letter, October 6, 1748, p. 2/1).
708 “On Friday Night last died here in the 27th Year of his Age, of a consumptive Illness, Thomas Prince, jun. M. A. only Son of the Rev. Mr. Thomas Prince of this Town. His Death is very much lamented by his Relations and Friends. His Corpse was inter’d Yesterday with great Respect” (Boston News Letter, October 6, 1748, p. 2/1).
709 See the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, v. 375–384.
710 C. C. Denny, Denny Genealogy, pp. 20–21, 79.
711 Peter Thacher (H. C. 1696) and Peter Thacher (H. C. 1706) were cousins; while Peter Thacher (H. C. 1737) was the son of Peter Thacher (H. C. 1706) of Middle borough.
712 Nehemiah Walter was the father of Nathaniel Walter.
713 Prince employs many abbreviations, some of which are obvious, while others are not. A list is given:
a |
= |
A. M. |
à |
= |
from |
b |
= |
be |
BS |
= |
Brattle Street Church |
CH |
= |
First Church (Old Brick Church) |
d |
= |
day |
d |
= de = |
concerning |
e |
= |
evening |
è |
= |
out |
G L |
= |
General Lecture |
LS |
= |
Lecture Sacramental |
m |
= |
noon |
NCh |
= |
North Church (Second Church) |
NS |
= |
New South Church |
P |
= |
P. M. |
r |
= |
are |
R |
= |
Rev. |
SCh |
= |
Old South Church |
T P |
= |
Thomas Prince |
WCh |
= |
West Church |
The abbreviations used for the Boston churches are all obvious except “C.H.” Allusions on March 31st to the Rev. Mr. Foxcroft, and on August 4th to a Quaker wedding, make it certain that the letters indicate the First Church: see pp. 342, 353 note 1, below. Mr. Prince may have chosen the letters because they were also the initial letters of the Rev. Mr. Chauncy, one of the pastors of that church; but more probably, as Mr. Tuttle suggests, they stand merely for “Church” — the First Church, as the oldest in Boston, being the Church.
714 Hugh Hall (H. C. 1713): see New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlii. 300–307.
715 For a notice of James Gooch (born 1693), see our Publications, vi. 91. The name was spelled Gooch or Gouge indifferently.
716 John Darrel (d 1746).
717 Thomas Hubbard (H. C. 1721). He was the son of Joseph Hubbard (1676–1761), and married Mary Jackson, daughter of Jonathan Jackson and Mary (Salter) Jackson. Edward Jackson (H. C. 1726), a brother of Mrs. Thomas Hubbard, is mentioned later. Cf. Publications of this Society, viii. 251 note, 253–254 notes.
718 Rev. Thomas Foxcroft: see p. 333, above.
719 This account in the Boston News Letter of January 6, p. 2/1, is as follows:
Monday last in the Afternoon, a New Congregational Church was gather’d in the Westerly Part of this Town. And because the Method of gathering such Churches here, may not be known abroad; we shall give the Publick a brief Account of this particular Transaction:
A Number of Christians belonging to several Congregations in this Town judging it convenient to build a House for publick Worship in the Westerly Part thereof, and having carried on the Building to a considerable Forwardness; 13 of their Number, being Brethren in full Communion with 5 several Churches here, and 1 in full Communion with the First Church at Cambridge, having applied to their respective Churches, obtain’d Letters of Dismission to incorporate into a new Church by themselves: Three others who have not been in full Communion with any of our Churches, offering to join them, and there being no Objection either on the Account of Doctrine or Conversation, but being known and agreable to them, the others accepted their offer; and consulting with several Ministers to whom they belong’d, prepared a Covenant of Incorporation in which they could all agree: and then applied to some of those who had been their Pastors to assist them in the Solemnity of their Confederation. Accordingly on said Monday at 3 in the Afternoon, being the Time appointed, 2 of those Pastors, viz. the Rev. Mr. Prince and Foxcroft, met with the said 17 Persons; and having receiv’d the Evidence of the said Dismissions, made some Enquiries of the 3 proposed Members, and the others testifying their Acceptance of them; Mr. Prince the Moderator, beginning with a Premonition concerning the Solemnity of this Transaction, then proceeded to Pray. Mr. Foxcroft then Discoursed from Matth. XVIII. 20. Then all the Company standing up, the Moderator deliberately read their Covenant which they had written fairly in their Church Record; to which at his Proposal, all the Seventeen lift up their Hands in Token of their Consent, and then subscribed their Names. The Moderator then addressing them in such Terms as These, We must now own you to be a true Church of CHRIST, and invested with all the Privileges belonging to such a One: And we pray You may have Grace to keep this Holy Covenant, and that You and Your Offspring may enjoy the Blessings of it. Mr. Foxcroft then made the closing Prayer, and the Moderator pronounc’d the Blessing.
720 For Rev. William Hooper, see p. 334, above. An interesting letter on the high cost of living, written by a Boston clergyman, was printed in the New England Weekly Journal of May 17, 1737. A postscript reads in part as follows:
I may here observe that . . . the New Church lately Gather’d in the West Part of the Town have at their first setting out highly Honoured themselves in giving Mr. Hooper a greater Allowance even at Present, than any other Congregational Minister in Town, tho’ he has only Himself to maintain (p. 1/3).
721 1, above.
722 See pp. 332–333, above.
723 Jonathan Belcher (H. C. 1699).
724 Jonathan Remington (H. C. 1696).
725 “Last Wednesday Night about Ten o’Clock the Dwelling House of Leonard Vassal, Esq; in Summer street catch’d on Fire in the Garret (occasion’d as ’tis thought) by a Negro Boy’s carrying up a Candle, the Blaze of which catch’d some Cloaths which hung at the Top of the Stairs; but through the Goodness of God, and the Care and Endeavours of those that assisted, the House was saved, when in the utmost Hazard, tho’ very much damaged” (New England Weekly Journal, January 11, p. 2/2–3). On Vassall’s death, the house was bought by Thomas Hubbard (H. C. 1721).
726 Throughout the Diary Prince indicates the days of the week not by their names but by their signs, as has been done in the text for the first week. These signs are now dropped, and abbreviations substituted, as follows:
☉ = Su |
♂ = Tu |
♃ = Th |
♄ = Sa |
☽ = M |
☿ = W |
♀ = F |
727 William Brattle (H. C. 1722).
728 Rev. Charles Chauncy: see p. 333, above.
729 Prince’s Chronological History of New-England bears the date M DCCXXXVI on the title-page. The dedication to Gov. Belcher, Lt.-Gov. Phips, the Council, and the Representatives, is dated November 24, 1736. It was advertised as “Published, and ready to be deliver’d to Subscribers” in the Boston Evening Post of January 31, 1737, p. 2/2. The presentation noted by Mr. Prince is thus recorded in the Massachusetts House Journal on January 12, 1737:
The House being informed the Rev. Mr. Thomas Prince was at the Door and desired Admittance, Ordered, That Mr. Prince be admitted into the House, and coming up to the Table, he addressed himself to Mr. Speaker and the House in the following manner, viz.
Mr. Speaker, I most humbly present to your Honour and this Honourable House, the first Volume of my Chronological History of New England, which, at no small Expence and Pains, I have composed and published for the Instruction and Good of my Country.
And then he made a Compliment of one of the Books to Mr. Speaker by presenting it to him, and another he presented to and for the Use of the Members of the House of Representatives, and laid it on the Table, and then withdrew (p. 107).
The Speaker was John Quincy (H. C. 1708).
730 Rev. John Webb: see p. 334, above.
731 Rev. Joseph Sewall: see p. 334, above. His wife, mentioned later, was Elizabeth Walley.
732 John Cushing’s death was noted in the New England Weekly Journal of January 25, p. 2/1, and a long obituary notice appeared in the Boston News Letter of February 3, p. 2/1. He was a brother of Thomas Cushing (1663–1740), the father of Thomas Cushing (H. C. 1711).
733 Rev. Israel Loring: see p. 334, above.
734 Rev. William Cooper: see p. 333, above.
735 Thomas Prince (H. C. 1740).
736 Lt.-Gov. Spencer Phips (H. C. 1703).
737 Rev. Daniel Rogers (H. C. 1725; d 1785), Tutor; Stephen Sewall (H. C. 1721), Tutor; Henry Flynt (H. C. 1693), Tutor and Fellow; Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth, see p. 334, above.
738 Moses Prince: see p. 332, above.
739 His death was noted in the New Weekly Journal of February 1, p. 2/2.
740 Rev. Samuel Checkley: see p. 333, above, and our Publications, xii. 270–306, where his Diary for 1735 is printed.
741 “Last Saturday Evening, about Seven a Clock, was discovered in the W.S.W. a strange Meteor in the Heavens, appearing as a faint Stream or Blaze of Light: It was also seen on Monday & Tuesday Evenings, it being then fair Weather, and causes various Conjectures. It is tho’t by most to be a Comet or Blazing Star, and that the vast Distance of it, at its first Appearance, occasions the dimness of its Light as to us” (Boston News Letter, February 10, p. 2/2).
742 “Last Lord’s day between Four and Five o’Clock in the Afternoon, a considerable Shock of an Earthquake was perciev’d in this Town; . . .” (New England Weekly Journal, February 8, p. 2/2).
743 Rev. William Welsteed: see p. 334, above.
744 Rev. Benjamin Stevens, John Barnard, Samuel Gay. John Barnard was the son of the Rev. John Barnard (H. C. 1709) of Andover, and died before graduation on October 5, 1739: cf. Publications of this Society, xvii. 276, 279.
745 Ebenezer Sever, who died February 14, was a brother of Abigail Sever, wife of George Hews, and a son of Shubael Sever: see New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxvi, 306–307.
746 See p. 334, above.
747 See p. 333, above.
748 Rev. Samuel Mather: see p. 334, above.
749 Rev. John Brown: see p. 333, above.
750 “On Friday Morning last about Four o’Clock in the Morning, a Fire broke out in the Shop of Mr. John Brocas, Cabinet-maker in Union-Street, which consumed the same, with what was therein, to a considerable Value: Mr. Brocas’s Dwelling House took Fire, but by a wonderful Interposition of Providence, and the Skill and Industry of those who came to the Help of the exposed, the same was soon Extinguished, and thereby the whole Neighbourhood were wonderfully preserved” (New England Weekly Journal, March 8, p. 2/2). The same paper of March 22 advertised a “Sermon preach’d by the Rev. Dr. Colman at the Friday-Lecture in Brattle-Street, March 4th. 1736, 7. . . . After a most merciful and wonderful Preservation of the Town from being consumed by Fire, which broke out in Union-Street about Four that Morning” (p. 2/3).
751 Nathan Prince: see p. 332, above.
752 Peter Thacher (H. C. 1737); see p. 332 note 1, above.
753 See p. 335 note 1, above.
754 Rev. Mather Byles: see p. 333, above.
755 Rev. Nicholas Sever (H. C. 1701).
756 Rev. Benjamin Colman: see p. 333, above.
757 An account was printed in the New England Weekly Journal of March 22, p. 2/1–2; and another, written by the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, in the same paper of April 5, p. 2/1–2.
758 Rev. Edward Wigglesworth (H. C. 1710).
759 “Oratio Funebris in Obitum Reverendi Domini Benjamanis Wadsworth, . . . Habita in Aula Academiae. Ab Henrico Flynt. . . . Bostoni . . . Mdccxxxvii.”
760 Rev. Peter Thacher (H. C. 1696): see p. 334, above.
761 “When the Godly cease, and Faithful fail; we must seek to God for Help. A Sermon Preach’d at Cambridge, Upon the Death of the Reverend Mr. Benjamin Wadsworth, . . . By Joseph Sewall, D.D. . . . Boston: . . . Mdccxxxvii.”
762 Rev. Joshua Gee: see p. 333, above.
763 Josiah Willard, whose wife is mentioned later. This was his second wife, Hannah (Appleton) Clarke, widow of William Clarke: cf. our Publications, xii. 163–166.
764 Elisha Cooke (H. C. 1697), whose death is recorded on August 24.
765 Samuel Denny: see p. 333, above.
766 These letters are perfectly clear but their meaning eludes me.
767 Rev. Nathaniel Appleton: see p. 333, above.
768 Mrs. Hannah (Waldo) Fayerweather was the widow of Thomas Fayerweather. On her death in 1755, Mr. Prince preached a funeral sermon.
769 This society is again mentioned on September 29, but no clue is given as to exactly what it was.
770 Oxenbridge Thacher (H. C. 1698) and his son Oxenbridge Thacher (H. C. 1738).
771 His death was noted in the New England Weekly Journal of April 12, p. 2/2.
772 His arrival was noted in the New England Weekly Journal of April 12, p. 2/2, together with the news he brought. I have been unable to identify this Capt. Joseph Prince.
773 See p. 332, above.
774 Joseph Prince: see p. 332, above.
775 Capt. Isaac Dupee, mentioned later, married Sarah Bromfield, daughter of Edward Bromfield (d 1734), while Mary Bromfield, a sister, married Thomas Cushing (H. C. 1711). On the death of their brother Edward Bromfield in 1756, Mr. Prince preached a funeral sermon.
776 Ellis Huske: cf. our Publications, ix. 465–466.
777 Doubtless this should read: “Proceed to the election of a President.” “The Question was put whether the Corporation be counselled & advised to come to the Choice of a president next Wednesday come Sevenight in the afternoon and it passed in the affirmative” (Overseers’ Records, April 26, i. 153).
778 The New England Weekly Journal of May 17, 1737, contained this advertisement:
THERE is to be prepared for the Press, and e’er long will be published, a Book in Octavo, entitled An Apology for the Liberties of the Churches in New-England: . . . By Samuel Mather, M.A. (p. 2/3).
It was not published until 1738: cf. our Publications, xviii. 224.
779 Daniel Henchman (d 1761).
780 Daughters of Mr. Prince: see p. 333, above.
781 Perhaps “I. Hunt’s.”
782 “Last Friday dyed much Lamented, Mrs. Elizabeth Chauncy, the vertuous Consort of the Rev. Mr. Charles Chauncy, one of the Pastors of the first Church in this Town, and was decently Interred the last Night” (New England Weekly Journal, May 17, p. 2/1). She was the daughter of Grove Hirst, and was Chauncy’s first wife. The death of her sister, Mrs. Jane Davenport, is noted on September 6.
783 A complicated relationship existed between the Glovers and the Princes. Nathaniel Glover (1631–1657) married Mary Smith, by whom he had Nathaniel (d 1724) and Anne. Anne married William Rawson, a son of Secretary Edward Rawson; and their son David (1683–1752) married Mary Gulliver, a daughter of Capt. John Gulliver of Milton. (The death at Milton of Capt. John Gulliver on July 3 was noted in the New England Weekly Journal of July 5, 1737, p. 2/1.) On the death of her first husband, Nathaniel Glover, Mary Smith married Gov. Thomas Hinckley; and among their children were Mercy, who, as already stated (p. 332, above), married Samuel Prince (father of the Rev. Thomas Prince), and Thankful, who married the Rev. Experience Mayhew. But Mary Smith was Gov. Hinckley’s second wife, and by his first wife, Mary Richards, he had a daughter Hannah, who married the Nathaniel Glover who died in 1724. The “cousin Thomas Glover” and the “cousin Widow Glover,” mentioned in the text, were presumably related to this Nathaniel Glover, but exactly how I have not determined. “Culliver” and “Gulliver” are variants of the same name.
784 Rev. Jonathan Bowman: see p. 333, above.
785 Rev. Joseph Baxter: see p. 333, above. A notice of the convention was printed in the Boston News Letter of May 26, p. 2/2.
786 Rev. Peter Reynolds: see p. 334, above.
787 Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton: see p. 334, above.
788 Thomas Cushing (H. C. 1711). On his death in 1746, Mr. Prince preached a funeral sermon. He married Mary Bromfield, a daughter of Edward Bromfield (d 1734): see p. 343 note 8, above.
789 Daughter of the Rev. Peter Thatcher (H. C. 1706): see p 332 note 1, above.
790 A long account of the storm appeared in the New England Weekly Journal of June 7, p. 2/1–2, where it is stated that “Capt. Caleb Pitman at Salem, standing with 5 other Persons in a large Entry, was struck Dead.” In the Lynde Diaries (p. 148) the name is given as Caleb Pickman.
791 See p. 333, above.
792 “Yesterday Morning Died after a few Days Illness, Timothy Clarke, Esq; one of His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the County of Suffolk” (New England Weekly Journal, June 14, p. 2/2). A long notice of him appeared in the same paper of June 21, p. 2/2.
793 Nathan Prince.
794 “Yesterday died at Wilmington after a few Days Illness, Samuel Dummer, Esq; . . . Brother to the Honourable William Dummer, Esq;” (New England Weekly Journal, February 7, 1738, p. 2/2).
795 “Yesterday Morning died at his Seat in this Town, Leonard Vassal, Esq; aged about Sixty Years” (New England Weekly Journal, June 21, 1737, p. 2/2).
796 See our Publications, xviii. 372–373.
797 The Rev. Joshua Gee married Sarah Rogers, daughter of the Rev. Nathaniel Rogers (H. C. 1687) of Portsmouth. Her brother George Rogers was without doubt, I think, the “G. Rogers” who was a temporary student at Harvard College in the class of 1723 or thereabouts: cf. our Publications, xvii. 275, 283. He died late in 1747 or early in 1748, as his estate was advertised in the Boston Evening Post of January 18, 1748, p. 4/2.
798 Mr. Prince’s daughters.
799 Children of the Rev. Peter Thacher (H. C. 1706): see p. 332 note 1, above.
800 Nathaniel and Mercy (Thacher) Foster: see p. 332 note 1, above.
801 Benjamin Lynde (H. C. 1718).
802 Rev. William Williams: see p. 334, above.
803 Anthony Stoddard (H. C. 1697; d 1748): cf. our Publications, xii. 282 note 2. On the death in 1748 of his wife Martha, a sister of Gov. Belcher, Mr. Prince preached a funeral sermon.
804 See p. 333, above.
805 See p. 333, above.
806 Andrew Belcher (H. C. 1724) and Jonathan Belcher (H. C. 1728).
807 According to the New England Weekly Journal of August 9, p. 2/1, this marriage, which is not recorded in the Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, took place in “the old brick Church:” cf. p. 334 note 3, above.
“Thursday last Mr. Benjamin Bagnal Jun. eldest Son of Mr. Benjamin Bagnal, Merchant, was married to Mrs. Anne Hawdan, eldest Daughter of Mr. James Hawdan, Shopkeeper, both the Parents wealthy and eminent Quakers of this Town. There was the greatest Concourse of People assembled that was ever known in New England before on the like Occasion.” The marriage was to have taken place in the Quaker meeting-house, but that was so crowded when the bride and groom arrived that they could not get in, the galleries began “to crack and give way,” and so “the Friends . . . applied to some of the Proprietors of the Brick Meeting House in Cornhill, for leave to meet there, who readily and generously granted their Request, . . . Mr. Hawdan had not only his own House (which is very large) but also another House adjoining filled with Guests, to the Number of several Hundreds, and such a prodigious Quantity of the best Sorts of Provision were prepared, as surprized the Beholders, the like having never been seen among us before: . . .” (Boston Evening Post, August 8, p. 2/1).
808 Rev. Ames Cheever: see p. 333, above.
809 Rev. William Hobby: see p. 333, above. He married Lucy Remington.
810 Rev. Daniel Perkins: see p. 334, above.
811 Paul Dudley (H. C. 1690).
812 This “Greek nobleman” was Greek by religion only, not by nationality. The following notice appeared in the Boston Evening Post of July 25, p. 2/1:
On Wednesday last arrived here in Capt. Jones from Bristol, a Gentleman of Distinction, named Schick Sidi: The Place of his Residence when at Home, was Barut, near Mount Libanus in Syria, from whence he was driven by the Persecution of the Turks some Years since on Account of his Religion, he being a Greek by Profession. He was kindly entertain’d by the Empress of Russia, and recommended by her to the Nobility in England, where he has been generously supported for 3 or 4 Years, and has receiv’d particular Marks of Favour and Generosity from his Grace the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Robert Walpole, and other Gentlemen of Distinction, as appears by Credentials they have sign’d, recommending him as a fit Object of Charity and Compassion to well disposed Christians, he being an unfortunate Gentleman. His Retenue consists of an Interpreter, and two other Domesticks. He is about 45 Years old, and wears the Turkish Habit, which makes him much gazed at by the Americans when he goes abroad, which is but seldom. He is extream stately in Walking, never moving his Head or Eyes to the right Hand or the left. He is of a swarthy Complexion, and as all other Eastern People of Fashion are, very grand and majestick in his Mein and Behaviour. ’Tis said he does not like this Place very well, and intends to return to Europe in a short Time, without visiting any other Places in America (p. 2/1).
This intention was later altered and he made a tour of the country: sets p. 355 note 2, below.
813 “Rhode Island, August 12. Last Night there was here a very Bright Aurora Borealis, which lasted the greatest part of the Night with the usual Variations and Appearances. What was extraordinary was that about Eleven o’Clock, there was a most Beautiful Bow extending from East to West, somewhat Broader and about the colour of a Rain-bow of the Moon, the Arch was perfect only the Western Leg most Luminous, there was a considerable distance between the Bow and the Northern Light, the most amusing [amazing?] Appearance continued near an Hour, and died away by Degrees” (New England Weekly Journal, August 16, p. 2/1). In the same paper of September 27 was printed a long letter on the aurora dated “Cambridge Sept. 26. 1737” and signed “N. P.” — perhaps Nathan Prince.
814 “Schick Sidi the Christian from Barut near Mount Libanus in Syria, whose Arrival here from Bristol, we gave an account of a few Weeks past, set out from this Town for Newport last Tuesday, with his Attendants, from whence we are told that he purposes to go to New-York and Philadelphia, and from thence take his Passage to Jamaica, and after that to return back to London” (New England Weekly Journal, August 23, p. 2/2).
“Rhode Island, Sept. 9. Schick Sidi the Christian from Barut, near Mount Libanus in Syria, with his Attendants, took his Passage from hence in one of Capt. Robert Griffin’s Sloops, on Monday Morning last, with a fair Wind bound for New-York, the Gentlemen of this Town were very kind and generous to the aforesaid Gentleman” (ibid. September 13, p. 1/2).
“Philadelphia, Dec. 15. On Friday last Scheck Sibet, the eastern Nobleman (who came to America last July) with his Attendants, embark’d here on board the Brigantine Joseph, Capt. Loftus, for Barbados” (Boston News Letter, January 12, 1738, p. 2/1).
“We are inform’d by a Letter from Philadelphia, That the Eastern Nobleman Shich Sibi, before he sail’d from thence for Barbadoes, was very handsomely entertain’d there, and had 300 Pistoles bestowed upon him” (ibid. January 12, 1738, p. 2/2).
815 Rev. Hull Abbot: see p. 333, above.
816 Edward Bromfield (d 1756): see p. 343 note 8, above.
817 Edward Winslow.
818 “On Tuesday last died, and on Friday was Interred, Mrs. Jane Davenport, the vertuous Consort of the Rev. Mr. Addington Davenport, and was the youngest Daughter of Grove Hirst, Esq; Aged about twenty eight Years” (New England Weekly Journal, September 13, p. 2/2). The same paper of April 26, stated that Mr. Davenport (H. C. 1719) succeeded “the late Dr. Harward in King’s Chapel in Boston, and Mr. Cutler, Son of the Rev. Dr. Cutler, is to succeed Mr. Davenport at Scituate” (p. 2/2). Cf. p. 345 note 4, above.
819 See p. 333, above.
820 This word is difficult to read and may not be correctly interpreted; besides which a word — probably “copied” — has apparently been inadvertently omitted. The meaning is that the “Laws by being continually copied by divers persons, are generally and more and more corrupted every year.”
821 Rev. Jonathan Mills: see p. 334, above.
822 See p. 335 note 1, above.
823 Probably Eunice Willard, a daughter of the Rev. Samuel Willard (H. C. 1659).
824 An account of the inauguration in the Boston Evening Post of October 3, p. 2/2, stated that “In the Evening the Windows of the Three Colleges were finely illuminated, while the Chambers rang with melodious Joy and Singing.”
825 This was in School Street, the Rev. Andrew Le Mercier being pastor.
826 The Boston News Letter of December 1, p. 2/1, stated that on the previous Wednesday the Rev. Joseph Seccombe “was Install’d into the Pastoral Office at Kingston in the Province of New Hampshire” (p. 2/1).
827 Rev. Timothy Ruggles: see p. 334,. above.
828 Rev. Nathaniel Clap: see p. 333, above.
829 Though not mentioned by Mr. Prince, the following extracts relating to a bell for the West Church are worth quoting:
A fine Bell is bro’t hither from London in Capt. Cary, for the Meeting House in the West Part of the Town, whereof the Rev. Mr. Hooper is Minister: ’Tis said to be the largest Bell in New England, weighing Eleven Hundred Weight (New England Weekly Journal, November 8, p. 2/1).
On Saturday last the large Bell mentioned in some of our News Papers, was Raised, and placed in the Steple of the West Church in this Town, whereof the Rev. Mr. Hooper is Pastor; and by good Judges is allowed to have the loudest and most melodious Sound of any Bell in the Country; and we are inform’d was the generous Present of Francis Wilks, Esq; and some of his Friends, who are well Wishers to the Dissenting Protestant Interest. The Bell weighs, without the Clapper, twelve hundred and forty six Pounds (ibid. November 15, p. 2/2).
830 Rev. Nathaniel Williams (H. C. 1693). The following obituary notice appeared in the Boston News Letter of January 12, 1738:
Last Tuesday in the Afternoon died here the Reverend and Learned Mr. Nathanael Williams, a Gentleman who has been a faithful and upright Servant to his Generation; being for many Years Master of the South Grammar School in this Town, which difficult and important Business he discharg’d with great Industry and Fidelity: And as he was, by the Blessing of GOD, a very skilful and successful Physician, so he was very much imployed and approved among us. As his Life has been very extensively serviceable, so his Death is esteemed as a publick Loss (p. 2/1).
On his death, Mr. Prince preached a funeral sermon.
831 Edmund Quincy (H. C. 1699).
832 An advertisement, signed “Jonas Clarke, Proprietor’s Clerk,” “to Notify the Proprietors of RUTLAND (the Settlers part excepted) that their Meeting is adjourned to Wednesday the 23d Currant, to be held at the Exchange Tavern in this Town at Three o’Clock Afternoon.” etc., was printed in the Boston Evening Post of November 21, p. 2/2.
833 The following advertisements appeared in the New England Weekly Journal:
TO be sold at publick Vendue by Ephraim Baker at the Crown Tavern at the Head of Scarlett’a Wharff the North End of Boston, on Wednesday next the 30th Instant.
A Choice and Valuable Collection of Books in Folios, Quartoes, and Octavoes, the Folioes will be Sold separate, the others in Lots or Parcels; the Sale will begin at Three o’Clock Afternoon: Catalogues will be given gratis, at the Place of Sale any Time before the Sale begins. . . . (November 29, p. 2/3).
THE remaining and most valuable Parcel of BOOKS as Advertis’d in our last, to be Sold at the Crown Tavern, the North End Boston, at publick Vendue by Ephraim Baker, are to be sold at publick Vandue, by said Baker at the Place afore mentioned, with a large variety of English Goods, . . .
N.B. The Sale will begin Wednesday the 7th Current at Three o’Clock Afternoon, and will be continued Three Days successively (December 6, p. 2/3).
834 Isaac Greenwood (H. C. 1721), the first Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, was dismissed for intemperance in 1738.
835 Sir Thomas Pelham-Holles, first Duke of Newcastle; William Stanhope, first Earl of Harrington; Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington; Samuel Holden (d 1740), whose widow and children built Holden Chapel; Rev. William Harris (1675–1740); Rev. Isaac Watts (1674–1748); Rev. John Guyse (1680–1761); Rev. Daniel Neal (1678–1743).
836 There is much about the earthquake in the Boston News Letter of December 8, 1737, p. 2/1; December 22, pp. 1/2, 2/1; December 29, p. 2/1; January 12, 1738, p. 2/1.
837 Rev. James Allen: see p. 333, above.
838 Rev. Experience Mayhew (d 1758): see p. 346 note, above.
839 Early in 1740 Mr. Hooper again gave offence: see The West Church and its Ministers (1856), pp. 63–77; Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, v. 122126.
840 Our Publications, vi. 87, 89.
841 Parsons, Life of Sir William Pepperrell (3rd ed., 1856), pp. 158 ff, 189–190.
842 Magnalia (1820), i. 253.
843 There is a statement of his loyalty in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, v. 69. Some account of him is in Wise, The Kingdome of Accawmacke (1911).
844 Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, iv. 65.
845 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xliii. 4–16.
846 Samuel Pease.
847 This last letter is only signed by Custis.
848 Suffolk Probate Records, lxviii. 181, 183.
849 Thomas, History of Printing (Albany, 1874), ii. 225.
850 At a meeting of the Council held 1 November, 1917, the following minute was unanimously adopted:
It is with deep sorrow that the Council has learned of the death, on the eighteenth of October, of its associate, George Vasmer Leverett. Long a member of the Society, and thrice a member of this Board, Mr. Leverett was constant in attendance, wise and judicious in counsel, and generous in aiding our every undertaking. His character, eminent ability, unaffected modesty and rarely sympathetic personality endeared him to all who were privileged to enjoy his friendship, and cause his death to be deeply lamented. His munificence enabled the Society to publish the volume containing the Royal Commissions, and his noble bequest of Twenty Thousand Dollars, to be added to our Publication Funds, will make it possible to print companion volumes containing the Instructions to the Royal Governors of the Province, — an undertaking he had authorized and had much at heart.
Much that President Quincy wrote, long ago, of his noble predecessor, John Leverett, might be said to-day with equal truth of our late associate:
“The abilities of Leverett seem to have been of a superior order, which the events of his life had enabled him to improve and refine by an extensive intercourse with books and mankind. His talents were eminently practical. He knew better than most men what course to shape in difficult times. . . . In all his official relations, his industry, vigor and fidelity were conspicuous and exemplary. He was a man more actuated by a sense of duty than by desire of fame. . . . In the character of Leverett there was no obtrusive display. . . . He studied not to gratify vanity, but to enable himself better to perform his duty. His labors were practical, and . . . he prepared himself for the various and important stations to which he was called. . . . A perfect fulfillment of whatever he undertook was the object to which he limited his endeavors. At this he aimed; in this he succeeded.”
We shall miss his presence, instinct with good-will and kindliness; we shall cherish his memory and the example he has left us of faithfulness in friendship, breadth of interest, and loyalty to every trust and every duty.
851 The exercises are printed below, pp. 413–435.
852 Pp. 159–259, above.
853 Connecticut Archives, Revolutionary War, vol. i, no. 1.
854 “U.S. Great, small generals: The general charges furnished respectively (a) by the owner of a fishing vessel, e. g. wood, water, knives, lights, salt, bait, etc.; (b) by the crew, e. g. provisions, lines, hooks, etc.” (Oxford English Dictionary.)
855 Barvels are fishermen’s large leather aprons. The use of the word here is interesting. The earliest extract in the Oxford English Dictionary is of the year 1878, but the term must have been in common use among fishermen in England early in the seventeenth century, since it is there found in 1629 (Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 404) and was employed along the Maine coast in 1639 (Documentary History of the State of Maine, 1884, iii. 171, 192, 297).
856 The “State” ends at this point. The paragraph that follows has been added as a kind of postscript in another hand.
857 Connecticut Archives, Revolutionary War, vol. i, no. 2. These documents will appear in the Governor Thomas Fitch Papers, now in press, in Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society.
858 They will appear as vols. xv and xvi of our Publications.
859 The First Church in Boston was founded by Governor John Winthrop in 1630. The eminent men and women connected with it who have already received mural commemoration include eight governors of Massachusetts, three presidents of Harvard College, several envoys to England and other foreign courts, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, justices of the Supreme Court, cabinet officers, and a president of the United States, besides Fellows of the Royal Society, London, scientists, historians, diplomatists, philosophers, and poets. A life-size recumbent portrait statue of John Cotton by the late Bela Lyon Pratt is in a recess in the south wall of the nave, and rests upon a marble base inclosing tracery from the walls of St. Botolph’s Church, of which Cotton was vicar for twenty-one years. The tablet to Sir Henry Vane in the south transept was given by his descendant the Rt. Hon. Henry de Vere Vane, Lord Barnard of Raby Castle. Near it is another tablet to Isaac Johnson (grandson of William Chadderton, Bishop of Chester and Lincoln), who married and brought hither the Lady Arbella, sister of the fourth Earl of Lincoln. Charles Francis Adams, John Quincy Adams, George Bancroft, Anne Bradstreet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Endicott, Edward Everett, Benjamin Apthorp Gould, Thomas Hutchinson, John Leverett, Robert Treat Paine, and John Winthrop are a few of the illustrious parishioners whose names and careers are recorded on the walls of the church.
860 Thomas Hutchinson was born in Boston September 9, 1711; graduated at Harvard College in 1727; received the degree of Doctor of the Civil Law from Oxford University in 1776; and died in London June 3, 1780. He held the following offices: Selectman of Boston, 1737; Representative, 1735–1740, 1742–1748; Boundary Commissioner at various times between 1740 and 1773; Envoy to England, 1740; Speaker of the House, 1746–1748; Councillor, 1749–1766; Indian Treaty Commissioner, 1750; Judge of the Common Pleas, 1752–1758; Judge of Probate, 1752–1769; Delegate to the Albany Congress, 1754; Lieutenant-Governor, 1758–1771; Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature, 1760–1769; Governor, 1771–1774.
861 The committee consisted of Messrs. Henry Herbert Edes, Charles Edwards Park, and Fred Norris Robinson.
862 In a second letter, dated November 23rd, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice wrote:
I have now received from the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford the original text of the message from the Hebdomadal Council of the University to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts on the occasion of the Dedication of the Memorial to Thomas Hutchinson at the First Church, Boston, on the 5th instant — the text of which, as received by telegraph, was communicated to you on October 26th. I daresay the Colonial Society will be glad to preserve this document in their archives, and so I send it to you herewith.
863 “It is by no means an easy task to do justice to the character of one towards whom a feeling of such bitter hostility prevailed, as towards Governor Hutchinson. Whoever should be able to separate his character as a judge from that as a politician, would do much to rescue his name from the odium in which it has come down to us, and help to do justice to the memory of a man who unhappily for his own fame, was permitted to reach the summit of his loftiest ambition. Few who sat upon the bench in the last century, were more deserving commendation than Judge Hutchinson. His character, in this capacity, was irreproachable. His learning, even in the science of the law, was highly respectable, and, when we consider his early education, was indeed remarkable. He possessed great clearness of thought, and excelled in that most difficult property of a good judge, a clear and intelligible statement of the case upon which he was to pass. It is a traditionary anecdote, that after listening to the charges given by his associates, juries were in the habit of remarking, when Hutchinson rose to address them, that ‘now we shall have something which we can understand’”. (Judicial History of Massachusetts, p. 306.)
864 Quincy’s Reports, Appendix I, pp. 395 ff.
865 Otis.
866 Mr. Richard Clipston Sturgis.
The stately doorway leads from the south transept of the church to the vestry. It is of walnut, elaborately carved by hand. The general character of the work is late Gothic, in keeping with the architecture of the church. The symbolism is distinctly American, conspicuously seen in the use of Indian corn and the large leaves of the tobacco plant, which admirably lend themselves to such decoration. The grape-vine and its fruit, with the corn, symbolize the ecclesiastical feature of the memorial. At the keystone of the arch are the Hutchinson arms. In the spandrel at the left is the Royal British shield of George III; opposite, on the right, in another spandrel, is the shield of the United States. On the flanking buttresses are the insignia of the colonies of Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay, the shield of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Pine Tree flag of the Revolution, and the seals of the Superior Court of Judicature of which Hutchinson was Chief Justice, and of the Probate Court for the County of Suffolk, of which he was the Judge. The arms and shields are painted in their appropriate heraldic tinctures, the flag in its appropriate colors, and the seals in black and silver. The inscriptions are in gold upon scrolls on panels on the splays of the arch. Gold and colors have been used with fine effect in picking out and tinting the delicately wrought ornament. At the base, on the right, carved in relief in the natural wood, is the seal of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
867 Mr. George Lyman Kittredge.
868 Miss Mary Rivers, who occupies the Hutchinson estate at Milton, sent a wreath of leaves and greenery which grew in the Governor’s garden. It was placed on the Anne Hutchinson tablet, which is next to the doorway commemorating the Governor.