ABBOTT LOWELL CUMMINGS

A Recently Discovered Engraving of The Old State House in Boston

THE discovery of an hitherto unrecorded colonial print is always a matter of excitement. The engraving which forms the subject of this paper came to light recently in New Hampshire where it had hung for many years in its original frame on the walls of a house occupied by a person with remote Boston connections. As the inscription reveals, the print represents a south prospect of the “Courthouse” in Boston, dedicated to Thomas Hubbard, Speaker of the House of Representatives, by James Buck. Mr. Buck was a Boston printseller, and this information is confirmed with the statement at the bottom of the print: “Printed & Sold by James Buck at y^e Spectacles in Queen St.—1751.” More important yet, we are informed in the lower left-hand corner that the design could be credited to Thomas Dawes, Jr. (“T: Dawes Jun^r del.”). In the lower right-hand corner, the engraver is identified as Nathaniel Hurd (“N. Hurd sculp.”).

No knowledge of this print seems to have existed in 1882 when the Re-Dedication of the Old State House was published by the City Council—a thorough compendium of the history early and late of Boston’s chief surviving public building from the colonial period. It is interesting to realize, however, that while no recent scholars seem to have taken notice of the fact, the engraving was advertised at the time of its publication. We are told in the July 2, 1751, issue of the Boston Gazette that there was then “To be Sold by James Buck opposite the Crown and Comb in Queen-Street. A South Prospect of the Court-House in Boston.” And it was known to one early copyist at least, perhaps a school girl, in a pen-and-ink drawing which has hung for a number of years upon the walls of Walter Whitehill’s office at the Boston Athenæum. Some of the explanatory matter has been copied as well, though it is interesting to note that the copiest has transcribed T. Dawes as “T. Daives,” and the Junior as “jan.” For reasons which are inexplicable, he or she has identified Mr. Dawes as being of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

What do we learn from this important discovery? It enlarges our knowledge of: (1) the Old State House as an architectural entity; (2) the life and work and (ultimately) the significance of Thomas Dawes; and (3) Nathaniel Hurd’s creative output. Taking each of these three elements in turn, we discover first concerning the Old State House that its present basic form took shape through a rebuilding following a fire in 1711 which destroyed its wooden predecessor. On October 22, 1711, it was moved in the Provincial Assembly “that there be a House built in or Near the place where the Old Town House Stood . . . The breadth not to Exceede thirty six feet the length So as to be Convenient . . . That a Committee be Appointed by this Court to Take Care for the building as speedily & prudently as may be.” On November 10 of that same year “Elisha Hutchinson and Penn Townsend Esqr with such as shall be Named by the Representatives be a committee for the affair. The Committee to Advise with his Excsy & such skillful Gentlemen they may think fitte to be consulted with about the Model of the House.” The record, however, does not yield the name of the person (or persons) who furnished this “Model.” The Re-Dedication mentioned earlier, published in 1882, is the standard source for the documentary information concerning the aspect of the building in its early eighteenth-century form, amplified to some extent by visual evidence furnished through a detail from the William Burgis view of Boston in 1723.

On Wednesday, December 9, 1747, the Boston Weekly News Letter informs us that the woodwork under a hearth took fire and ignited the building in dead of winter “whereby that spacious and beautiful Building except the bare outward Walls, was entirely destroyed.” The structure was forthwith rebuilt, an event commemorated upon its completion by the Hurd-Dawes view.

79. The South Prospect of the Court House In Boston

80. The Bloody Massacre, 1770

Until the discovery of this engraving our knowledge of the appearance of the building after its rebuilding had been imperfect. Paul Revere’s celebrated representation of the Boston Massacre provides a glimpse of the east end at least through the smoke of battle shortly before the Revolution. Until now, however, the most circumstantial of the early views was that to be found in the Massachusetts Magazine for 1791, executed some forty years after the Old State House had been rebuilt. And although a continuing flow of nineteenth-century views documents the changing aspects of the building, radical changes after the Civil War have rendered less certain our precise knowledge of how it appeared before this successive overlay of alterations. The restoration in 1882, needless to say, occurred at a time when scholarly techniques in the field of restoration had scarcely begun to be refined.

Thus while the Hurd-Dawes and Massachusetts Magazine views may not be radically different in style and technique, the Hurd-Dawes view is the earliest and shows the building broadside. We gain explicit architectural knowledge about such minor features as downspouts, bulkheads, and dormer windows, to say nothing of quite circumstantial evidence concerning the south side entrance and the tower. Thus this view comes as a very special boon to the architectural historian.

Our second consideration is Thomas Dawes, the person responsible for the design which Hurd engraved. Some years ago, I spoke of the life and work of Thomas Dawes before the Colonial Society, placing him in context with other building artisans of eighteenth-century Boston. I shall reiterate here only the salient facts of his life in order to illuminate the significance of his association with the Hurd engraving. He was born in 1731 into a family dynasty of building artisans related by blood and marriage which looms far larger than any other such example known in colonial Boston. The Dawes family tree illustrates the strong continuity of a single occupation throughout five generations. Commencing with the immigrant ancestor, William Dawes, a seventeenth-century mason, mentioned in Sewell’s diary, we note that his brother-in-law and his three sons and three nephews (or nephews-in-law) were all masons. His grandson was a mason. In the fourth generation, his great-granddaughters married a painter and two housewrights, one of whom was William More, well known for his execution of much of the woodwork for the Hancock House. In the fifth generation, there were three housewrights, one painter, and four masons, including Thomas Dawes, the most celebrated member of the family. Over and beyond his trade, Thomas Dawes became a conspicuous public figure as well. He joined the Old South Congregation in 1749 and was a deacon of that church from 1785 until his death. He was spotted early for civic positions. In 1759 and 1761 he was chosen coroner in Boston, and in 1767 was put on a committee for the encouragement of the manufacture of duck. He was a member of the Long Room Club, composed mostly of patriotic young men, and was called by the Tories “Jonathan Smoothingplane.” His house in Purchase Street, next door to Sam Adams, was sacked by the British, and his brother, William Dawes, as history records, rode with Paul Revere at the time of the Lexington and Concord disturbances. Thomas Dawes himself was adjutant of the Boston Regiment and rose to the rank of colonel. After the adoption of the state constitution he was a representative, senator, and councilor, and was three times chosen an elector of the United States. His rise is also traced in the deeds. He calls himself a bricklayer until about 1770, and thereafter most land transactions identify him with the title “Esquire.” In the first Boston Directory of 1789 he is listed as the Honorable Thomas Dawes, and his name heads all the others under the D’s. Following his death in 1809, he was buried next to King’s Chapel with one of the most imposing monuments which survive in that yard.

81. S. W. View of the State-House, in Boston, 1791

His professional life was anything but routine. While characteristic masons’ bills can be found, for example his repairs to and whitewashing of the Old State House in 1773 with a list of his men who performed the work, he also laid the cornerstone of the Brattle Street Church on June 22, 1772. The church records reveal that a design had been solicited from the colonial portrait painter, John Singleton Copley, and that this design was rejected. Who was responsible for the ultimate appearance of the Brattle Street Church? Was it Dawes? The Massachusetts Magazine for January 1790 informs us that he designed the colonnade of the Triumphal Arch built for Washington’s visit to Boston in 1789, and when a state senator, full of years and honors, he was chosen to be one of the three men appointed to the committee to undertake the building of the new State House in Boston in 1795, a committee which included Charles Bulfinch. His role here may well have been advisory only. His tombstone inscription, however, is provocative: “Of his taste for the Grecian Simplicity in ARCHITECTURE, there are many Monuments which he raised when that Art was new to us.”

82. Brattle Street Church, 1857

83. View of the triumphal Arch, 1790

Some day we may know more of his role as an architectural designer. Of particular importance in this connection is his library of architectural works given following his death by a son to the Boston Athenæum. Of more than a dozen items, mid-eighteenth century in date or earlier, the majority are practical builder’s manuals. At least three items, however, are formal design books: James Gibbs’s Book of Architecture and his Rules for Drawing the Several Parts of Architecture, and Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus. In any event, whatever role Thomas Dawes may have played in the rebuilding of the Old State House after the fire of 1747, the Hurd engraving is of vast significance, for it is the first and only source to date which illustrates Thomas Dawes’s perfectly respectable drafting ability—derived presumably from a study of the books in his possession, hardly to be expected in a run-of-the-mill mason or bricklayer, and executed when he was but twenty years old!

Turning now to our third and final consideration, that of the engraver Nathaniel Hurd, we note that he too was quite young, only twenty-one years of age at the time the engraving was executed. He is remembered today both as silversmith and engraver, and his first dated bookplate was executed in 1749. It would be presumptuous of me to comment on the quality of the State House engraving in this distinguished company of authorities on the graphic arts beyond noting that Nathaniel Hurd’s biographer, Hollis French, writes in 1939 that “Of the fifteen known examples of Nathaniel Hurd’s engravings, other than his bookplates, there are none of any great artistic merit, though some are quite good.” He illustrates none of these though he describes all the then-known examples including trade cards, bills of exchange, loan certificates, tables of coins, portraits, caricatures, dance invitations, masonic summons, etc. Suffice it to say that the State House view would appear at present to be his only formal, full-scale “portrait” of a building. Beyond this and with respect to the artistic merit of this highly important historical document, I happily submit to the judgment of others.

1 George Francis Dow, The Arts & Crafts in New England, 1704–1775 (Topsfield, Mass., 1927; reprinted: New York, 1967), p. 27.

2 James Clements Wheat and Christian F. Brun, Maps and Charts Published in America Before 1800: A Bibliography (New Haven, 1969), pp. 50–53.

3 The map by Capt. Cyprian Southack shows the English colonies in North America. The John Carter Brown copy is untitled; that in the Public Record Office has this title in manuscript: “A New Chart of the English Empire in North America by Captain Cyprian Southack.” Both show the following engraved signature: “Engraven and Printed by Fra Dewing Boston New England. 1717.” Lawrence C. Wroth and Marion W. Adams, American Woodcuts and Engravings, 1670–1800 (Providence, 1946), pp. 16–17; Wheat and Brun, p. 8. An earlier copper plate map may have been printed in America although the circumstances of its publication do not seem to have been firmly established. See Charles Harper Walsh, “The Earliest Copper Engraving Executed in the American Colonies,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, xv (1912), 54–72. Dewing engraved another Southack map in 1720, “The Harbour and Island of Canso Part of the Boundaries of Nova Scotia” (Wheat and Brun, p. 13). That Dewing was thought to have been involved in a different aspect of his trade is mentioned by Winsor in his discussion of the Boston plan of 1722: “The engraver of this map is probably the same Francis Doing, who in 1718, as appears by the Council Records, was suspected of being concerned in counterfeiting the Province bills of credit. There is no evidence known to sustain the case.” Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston (Boston, 1882), ii, liii.

4 I. N. Phelps Stokes and Daniel C. Haskell, American Historical Prints: Early Views of American Cities (New York, 1932), p. 20.

5 One and perhaps two plans or views of Boston had been published prior to 1722. No copies have survived, and brief references in contemporary correspondence provide our only information. Wait Winthrop, writing to his brother on July 20, 1680, stated: “I haue sent you a map of the towne, with Charlestowne, taken by Mr. Foster the printer, from Nodles Island. Twas sent for Amsterdam, and y^r printed.” Six years later Judge Samuel Sewall wrote Edward Hull: “There is inclosed in the top, a Mapp of this Town which please to accept off” (Henry H. Edes, “The Burgis-Price View of Boston,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, 1906–1907, p. 245). The letters can be found in Winthrop Papers, iv, 421, and Sewall Letter Book, i, 32.

6 As quoted in Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge, 1963), p. 7.

7 Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1891), pp. 159, 162.

8 William Wood, New Englands Prospect, as quoted in Shurtleff, p. 41.

9 As quoted in Shurtleff, p. 160.

10 As quoted in Shurtleff, p. 62. Bonner had drawn a view of Long Wharf in 1714 and obviously used this in compiling his plan of the city. Bonner’s manuscript drawing of the wharf is reproduced in Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 1863–1864 (Boston, 1864), facing p. 477.

11 The Boston Gazette for April 19–26, 1725, carried an advertisement by William Price for a view of Boston and “Also an exact Plan of the Town, shewing the Streets, Lanes, and Publick Buildings” Dow, pp. 16–17. The view was the Burgis view described below. The plan was undoubtedly Bonner’s as reissued by Price.

12 My description of the additions and erasures from one state of the Bonner plan to another follows the useful analysis provided in Wheat and Brun. Even their minute examination of various states fails to distinguish all differences. For example, they fail to note that vertical rules in the legend and shoreline hatching were added on State ii.

13 A copy in the Massachusetts Historical Society is the only known impression, but George Smith in 1835 published a facsimile of this when it belonged to William Taylor. The facsimile omits some material and mistakenly gives Bonner’s age as 60 rather than 80.

14 Dow, pp. 15–17. For some details about Price see Emma Forbes Waite, “William Price of Boston: Map-Maker, Merchant and Churchman,” Old-Time New England, xlvi (1956), 52–56.

15 Wheat and Brun, who apparently examined the original impression in the John Carter Brown Library, state unequivocally that “traces of the erasure of ‘T. JOHNSON SCULP’ still remain.”

16 An earlier plan by Carleton in 1796 measured only 8¼ by 14¼ inches. His 1797 plan was on a scale of one inch to 21 rods (about 350 feet) and was an impressive 37⅜ by 41 inches in size. Wheat and Brun, p. 246.

17 Edes, p. 246; Dow, pp. 15–16.

18 The view was announced in the Boston Gazette for April 19–26, 1725, as “A New and Correct Prospect of the Town of Boston, curiously Engraved on Copper, according to the Proposal some time ago printed in this paper.” A second advertisement appeared in the New-England Courant for July 24–31, 1725 (Dow, pp. 16–17).

19 The complete text of the engraved description can be found in Edes, pp. 248–249. Since Price’s advertisement for subscriptions in December 1723 stated that the drawing from which the engraving would be made was then on view at his shop, the year of depiction would seem to be clearly established. The date of c. 1722 assigned in the Stokes Collection catalogue is probably erroneous (Stokes and Haskell, p. 20).

20 Ibid., pp. 20–21. This imprint appears to have been engraved by another hand and may well have been added by Price in Boston after he received the plate from John Harris in London.

21 For the deduction by Justin Winsor, after his study of the 1743 state, that there must have been an earlier version, see Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, xviii (1880–81), 68–69. Winsor evidently learned subsequently of the existence of the British Museum copy, wrote in 1884 to his fellow Bostonian C. C. Smith, asking him to examine it, and Smith reported his finding to the Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 2d ser., i (1884–85), 249–250.

22 Dow, p. 20.

23 The Burgis view of Harvard College was first advertised in the Boston News-Letter for July 7–14, 1726, as follows: “This Day is Published a Prospect of the Colleges in Cambridge in New England, curiously Engraven in Copper; and are to be sold at Mr. Price’s Print-seller, over against the Town-House, Mr. Randal Jappaner in Ann Street, by Mr. Stedman in Cambridge, and the Booksellers of Boston” (Dow, p. 18).

24 Clarence S. Brigham, Paul Revere’s Engravings (Worcester, 1954), pp. 60, 134.

25 Brigham, p. 59, gives the text of Revere’s advertisement along with a detailed discussion of the view and a full-size color facsimile of it.

26 Ibid., pp. 79–80.

27 A copy is in the Sinclair Hamilton Collection, Princeton University. The plan is briefly described in Peter J. Guthorn, American Maps and Map Makers of the Revolution (Monmouth Beach, N.J., 1966), pp. 36–37. The artist is unknown, but Guthorn gives the publisher as Robertsons and Trumbull.

28 Arthur Gilman, The Story of Boston (New York, 1889), pp. 281–289.

29 Winsor, ii, xxxii. Winsor in identifying property owners by reference to the Bonner plan states that in the 1720’s the lot on which the tree stood was owned by Garret Bourne.

30 Pelham was born in Boston on Mar. 14, 1748/9, the only son of Mary Singleton Copley Pelham by her second husband, Peter Pelham. Henry’s father died in 1751, and it was doubtless from his half brother, John Singleton Copley, eleven years his senior, that Henry learned to draw and paint. Copley’s portrait of Henry, probably not then more than ten, is known by the title, The Boy and the Squirrel. See Denison Rogers Slade, “Henry Pelham, the Half-Brother of John Singleton Copley,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, 1897, 1898 (Boston, 1902), pp. 194, 196.

31 James [?] Johnson to Henry Pelham, Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, lxxi (1914), 350.

32 Pelham to Copley, Aug. 19, 1775. Pelham then added that he had been advised by General Gage “that it would not be altogether proper to publish a plan of Charlestown in its present state, as it would furnish those without with a knowledge of the fortification [s] erected there and in a polite manner desired I would postpone the sending it at present” (ibid., p. 351).

33 Philip Lee Phillips, for many years chief of the Library of Congress Division of Maps, regarded this map as the most valuable single sheet acquisition during his long tenure in that position (conversation with his former assistant, Mrs. Clara E. Le Gear, Washington, 1968).

34 Pelham to Copley, Jan. 27, 1776, Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, pp. 367–368.

1 A Volume of Records Relating to the History of Boston, Twenty-Ninth Report (Boston, 1900), p. 273.

2 Dunlap, History of the Arts of Design in America, Bayley and Goodspeed, eds. (Boston, 1918), ii, 286.

3 John H. Edmonds, “The Burgis Views of New York and Boston,” Proceedings of the Bostonian Society (Boston, 1915), pp. 29–33.

4 J. Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotinto Portraits (London, 1884), p. liii.

5 Edmonds, pp. 33–37.

6 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, xix, 104–106.

7 Hamilton Vaughan Bail, Views of Harvard, a Pictorial Record to 1860 (Cambridge, 1949), p. 41.

8 Edmonds, p. 49.

9 Barbara Owen, The Organs and Music of King’s Chapel (Boston, King’s Chapel, 1966), pp. 5 and 7.

10 Cecil Clutton and Austin Niland, The British Organ (London, B. T. Batsford, Ltd., 1963), pp. 217 and 219.

11 Edmonds, p. 49.

12 Edmonds, p. 50.

13 William Loring Andrews, The Bradford Map (New York, 1893), p. 21.

1 Johnston’s trade card is reproduced in Joseph Downs’s article on “American Japanned Furniture” in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, xxviii, No. 3 (March 1933), 44; in The Walpole Society Note Book (1935), opposite p. 33, with notes by Philip Leffingwell Spalding; and in George Francis Dow’s article on “Trade Cards,” Old-Time New England, xxvi (April, 1936), 115–137. A second installment of Dow’s article appeared in Old-Time New England, xxvii (July, 1936), 3–22. The card, as Spalding explains, was found on the back of the inside of a clock made by Benjamin Bagnall (1689–1773) of Boston. Spalding writes: “The case, which is of pine, undoubtedly was japanned at one time, but was refinished in the natural wood before it came into my possession.” Paradoxically, the only japanned piece of furniture for which there is clear evidence showing that Johnston provided the decorations is this clock, which no longer has its japanning! Downs attributed several pieces of japanned furniture to Johnston, but was never able to put together a clear and well-documented description of Johnston’s style. He was forced to reason entirely from the evidence of Johnston’s trade card. See his American Furniture, Queen Anne and Chippendale Periods, in the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum (New York, 1952), item 187; also p. xiv and item 188.

2 The American Antiquarian Society owns a water color coat of arms made for the Mather family and in 1814 given to the society by Hannah Mather Crocker. Harold Bowditch attributed the picture to Thomas Johnston, and his opinion is preserved in a note on the back of the frame. Bowditch also attributed to Johnston a painting on canvas in oils of the Barton arms, thought to have been made as a funeral hatchment; it is owned by the Essex Institute. See “Early Water-Color Paintings of New England Coats of Arms” by Dr. Harold Bowditch, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxxv (Boston, 1951), Fig. 18 and pp. 200–201.

3 I am grateful to Mrs. Fales for her analysis of Johnston’s engraved heraldic and emblematic designs, presented in this volume and extremely helpful to me in compiling a new and more comprehensive listing of Johnston’s prints.

4 Alan Burroughs, John Greenwood in America 1745–1752 (Andover, Mass.: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, 1943), p. 74; also pp. 12 and 80.

5 Copperplate printing continued to be a part of Rea’s business. In March 1770 he sent Henry Pelham a bill for “Printing 575 of your Prints @ 12 /Pr. Hund. 319:” This presumably was the first of the Boston Massacre prints, copied by Paul Revere and made familiar by him in the course of his energetic campaign to spread it abroad. See Brigham’s Paul Revere’s Engravings (Worcester, 1954), pp. 41–42.

6 Later, Nathaniel Hurd (1729–77) and Joseph Callender (1751–1821) were among the engravers who found additional business engraving compass cards.

7 Burroughs, John Greenwood in America, p. 12.

8 Burroughs, pp. 64 and 80; Harriette M. Forbes, Gravestones of Early New England (Boston, 1927), pp. 59–60. The stone, which survives in Copps Hill Buyring Ground, is reproduced by Forbes opposite p. 43. There is also discussion of the funeral decorations in Flexner’s American Painting: First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), p. 242.

9 Mary Kent Davey Babcock printed the list of subscribers to the organ in her Christ Church, Salem Street, Boston (Boston, 1947), pp. 241–242. Esther Stevens Brazier analyzed the inventory of Davis’ estate in “The Early Boston Japanners,” Antiques, xliii, No. 5 (May 1943).

10 In the Boston Gazette of June 27, 1763, Lewis Deblois advertised for sale “an Organ, made by Mr. Thomas Johnston of this Town, formerly made Use of in Concert-Hall, and can be recommended.—An abatement of Ten Guineas will be made, (from the real Value of said Instrument) if bought and made Use of for any Congregation in this Town.”

The inventory of Johnston’s estate is indispensable to an understanding of his many-faceted business. It is printed in full at the end of this article.

11 The property listed in his inventory was valued at a total of £912:1:10, including “The Mansion House and Land & house up the Yard” which were valued at £666:13:4.

12 Lawrence Wroth in The Walpole Society Note Book (1950), p. 30. See also Wroth’s article, “The Thomas Johnston Maps of the Kennebeck Purchase,” In Tribute to Fred Anthoensen Master Printer, ed. Ruth A. Chaplin (Portland, Me., 1952). This detailed study was a breakthrough to much fuller understanding of Johnston’s skills and conduct of business.

13 James Thomas Flexner in American Painting: First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), p. 311 (see entry for John Greenwood), says that Johnston was an “engraver, printer, designer of gravestones, painter of houses, fire buckets, ships, and almost certainly portraits.” The houses, fire buckets, and ships are mentioned in the Rea and Johnston account books dating from after Thomas Johnston’s death; Flexner was reasoning back from that evidence. (Today we know about Johnston’s house-painting from the bill of 1764 to Samuel P. Savage printed in this article.) On the subject of possible portraits by Johnston, Flexner cites (p. 284) an entry in the inventory of Johnston’s estate listing portraits of Dr. Mayhew and Mr. Gee and says that these were “probably painted by himself.” There is at least an equal chance, however, that they were painted by someone else; a portrait of Joshua Gee, for instance, was painted by John Smibert (The Notebook of John Smibert [Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1969], p. 91). Lila Parrish Lyman in her excellent article on William Johnston (1732–72) in the New-York Historical Society Quarterly, xxxix (January 1955), 63, calls Thomas Johnston “a portrait and heraldic painter, japanner and engraver.” Sidney Gunn, who is one of the authorities she cites, had written in his sketch of Johnston, published in the Dictionary of American Biography in 1933, “There is a portrait attributed to him in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and another is owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society.” Today the portrait in the Boston Museum cannot be identified, while the well-modelled and convincing pastel portrait of Dudley Atkins at the Massachusetts Historical Society represents a mastery of portraiture in a difficult medium which would be surprising for someone who, if he did paint portraits, tried his hand at it only occasionally. A more tempting reference to Johnston as a portrait painter is provided by Jules Prown in his comments on John Singleton Copley’s portrait of John Codman, the eldest of three John Codmans whom Copley painted. According to Prown, this portrait “is said to be a copy after a painting by Thomas Johnston, taken to England from Boston by the sitter’s son, . . .” (John Singleton Copley in England 1774–1815 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966], p. 377).

14 All three of the Copley portraits can be seen in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

1 Anne Allison, “Peter Pelham, Engraver in Mezzotinto,” Antiques, lii (Dec. 1947), 441–443. See also Frederick W. Coburn, “More Notes on Peter Pelham,” Art in America, xx (June–Aug. 1932), 143–154.

2 John Chaloner Smith, British Mezzotint Portraits, 4 vols. (London, 1884), iii, 964–978.

3 Boston Gazette, Feb. 19–26, Feb. 26–Mar. 4, 1728.

4 “Boston, March the 19th. 1727/8.

“Received of the Rev’d. Mr. Benjn Coleman the Sum of 3 shillings being the first Payment of the Subscription for a Print in Metzo:^o of the Late Rev. Dr. COTTON MATHER, by which the Bearer is Entitled to the said Print Paying 2 shillings at the Delivery of the same. By me Peter Pelham.” Reproduced in facsimile in Guernsey Jones (ed.), Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, Vol. lxxi (Boston, 1914), p. 5; hereafter cited as Copley-Pelham Letters.

5 Boston Gazette, May 20–27, June 10–17, 1728.

6 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 32.

7 Boston Gazette, Aug. 18–25, 1729.

8 Quoted in Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King’s Chapel, 3 vols. (Boston, 1882), 1, 397.

9 Boston News-Letter, Dec. 23, 1731.

10 John Tasker Howard, The Music of George Washington’s Time (Washington, 1931), p. 9.

11 Boston Gazette, Nov. 13–20, 1732. The game was continued in the following issue of the Gazette, Nov. 27–Dec 4, when an unnamed writer replied indignantly to the former notice, stating that he “could not help being very much pleas’d at the Sight of such a Number of agreeable Ladies as appear’d at Mr. Pelham’s; where every Body seem’d to be well Satisfy’d, and a Chearful & Innocent Conversation was carried on, with open & honest Faces, and all Mankind must allow, that such a Society well Regulated, is the best School for a true and polite behaviour.”

12 William K. Bottorff, “Peter Pelham, Late of Boston,” The New-England Galaxy, Winter 1970, p. 37.

13 Boston Gazette, Jan. 1–8, 1733.

14 Boston Gazette, Apr. 5, 1734, quoted in George Francis Dow, The Arts& Crafts in New England 1704–1773 (Topsfield, Mass., 1927), p. 11.

15 Sir David Evans, John Kerslake, and Andrew Oliver (eds.), The Notebook of John Smibert (Boston, 1969), pp. 87–91.

16 Ebenezer Turell, The Life and Character of the Reverend Benjamin Colman (Boston, 1749), p. 23.

17 James T. Flexner, First Flowers of Our Wilderness (Boston, 1947), p. 195.

18 Original parish records of Trinity Church, Newport, vol. entitled “List of Baptized Persons”; in the possession of Trinity Church, Newport.

19 Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, 2d ed. (New York, 1955), p. 441.

20 Bridenbaugh, p. 355.

21 Records of Boston Selectmen.

22 Boston Gazette, Jan. 16–23, Feb. 6, 1738.

23 Boston Gazette, May 1–8, 1738.

24 For Pelham’s Masonic connections see Melvin M. Johnson, The Beginnings of Freemasonry in America (New York, 1924), and Harvey N. Shepard, History of St. Johns Lodge (Boston, 1917).

25 Boston Gazette, Sept. 25, Oct. 23, 1741.

26 The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., reprint (Gloucester, 1962), 1, 270, July 2, 1791.

27 Sibleys Harvard Graduates, viii, 48.

28 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 3.

29 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 14.

30 Original minutes of the vestry of Trinity Church, unpublished, in the possession of Trinity Church, Boston.

31 The News-Letter, May 10, 1744.

32 Boston Gazette, Aug. 27, 1751.

33 Boston Gazette, Sept. 16, 1746.

34 Boston Evening Post, July 7, 1747, quoted in Dow, p. 35.

35 Boston Evening Post, Dec. 11, 1749.

36 Boston Gazette, July 12, 1748.

37 Boston Gazette, Sept. 20, 1748.

38 Boston Gazette, Mar. 21, 1749.

39 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 18.

40 Alan Burroughs, John Greenwood in America (Andover, Mass., 1943), p. 79.

41 The News-Letter, May 24, 1750.

42 Copley-Pelham Letters, p. 19.

43 Boston Gazette, Mar. 12, 1751.

44 Boston Gazette, Sept. 17, 1751.

45 Burroughs, Greenwood, pp. 18 and 69; The News-Letter, July 18, 1751.

46 Boston Gazette, Aug. 4, 1752.

47 Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 1, 162.

48 Smith, iii, 966.

1 Sydney P. Noe, The Pine Tree Coinage of Massachusetts (New York, 1952), pp. 21–22.

2 Hermann Frederick Clarke, John Coney, Silversmith, 1655–1722 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1932), pp. 9–10, pi. xxxi. Andrew McFarland Davis, “The Massachusetts Bay Currency, 1690–1750, The Plates,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, xii (October 1898), 410–424.

3 Hermann Frederick Clarke and Henry Wilder Foote, Jeremiah Dummer, Colonial Craftsman & Merchant, 1645–1718 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1935), p. 27, pl. xxii.

4 Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 101, No. 525.

5 During the summer following the print conference, Sinclair Hitchings discovered at the New Hampshire Historical Society proof that John Coney was paid for engraving the plates for New Hampshire bills in 1722. The manuscript treasurer’s accounts for New Hampshire record:

“By Sundry paym^ṭs since May y^e 18^th 1722

M^ṛ Allen print^g. y^e Bills p^d £18..10

M^ṛ Cunny doing the plates p^d £15..10”

6 Matt B. Jones, in “The Early Massachusetts-Bay Seals,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, ns 44 (April to October 1934), 13–44, believed that the Cambridge seal had been cut in England. Recent scholars suggest that it may also have been cut by John Foster but proof is lacking and the question raised by Jones as to why the 1675 cut should be inferior to the 1672 cut if both were the work of Foster remains unanswered. Richard B. Holman, “Seventeenth-Century American Prints,” Prints in and of America to 1830 (The University Press of Virginia, 1970), pp. 33–35.

7 Richard Le Baron Bowen, Massachusetts Records (privately printed, Rehobeth, Mass., 1957), pp. 48–52.

8 Louis F. Middlebrook, Seals of Maritime New England (Salem, Mass: The Essex Institute, 1926), pp. 8–10.

9 Hollis French, Jacob Hurd and His Sons (The Walpole Society: Cambridge, Mass., 1939), p. 70.

10 The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), iii, 144–146.

11 The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), iv, 205–206.

12 Samuel Eliot Morison, “Harvard Seals and Arms,” The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, Sept. 1933, pp. 1–15, and letter to the author from Harley P. Holden, Assistant Curator, Harvard University Archives, April 16, 1971.

13 Addenda to French’s Jacob Hurd and His Sons (1941 ed.), pp. 7–8.

14 Ibid.

15 French, pp. 67–69.

16 Middlebrook, p. 40. Dewing was suspected in 1718 of being concerned with counterfeiting the province bills of credit according to Justin Winsor’s Memorial History of Boston, ii, liii.

17 The first American bookplate apparently was the bordered name plate used by Thomas Smith of Boston and dated 1707 (Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670–1870 [Princeton, N.J., 1958], p. xxv). Other early armorial bookplates used by Americans were engraved in England.

18 Suffolk County Court House, #14045. Harold Bowditch suggested that this book may have been the 1724 edition of Guillim subsequently owned by the heraldic painter John Coles of Boston (“Early Water-Color Paintings of New England Coats of Arms,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxxv (December 1944), 178).

19 Mary Means, “Early American Trade Cards,” (Master’s thesis, University of Delaware, 1958).

20 The History of Printing in America by Isaiah Thomas, edited by Marcus A. McCorison from the second edition (Barre, Mass.: Imprint Society, 1970), p. 256. I am indebted to Sinclair Hitchings for calling this and other related materials to my attention.

21 Papers of Benjamin Franklin, iii, 145.

22 Bowditch, “Early Water-Color Paintings,” pp. 179–181. Although Bowditch believed there were two different James Turners, one from Boston and one from Marblehead, it now appears that James Turner whose bill to the estate of William Lynde was inscribed Marblehead, 1752, is the same James Turner who also worked in Boston, and later moved to Philadelphia.

23 In Massachusetts the encircling snake was used as a design on the gravestone of Mrs. Susannah Jayne of Marblehead in 1776 and on Massachusetts bills and lotteries in 1777–79. In Philadelphia in 1775 the snake was used to enclose a patriotic emblem advertising an American edition of Swan’s Designs in Architecture to be published by Robert Bell and John Norman.

24 The bill of Paul Revere for engraving the seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, dated Aug. 5, 1775, is preserved at the Massachusetts State House.

1 The only study of this specific subject known to me is my “Prints and Scientific Illustration in America,” in Prints in and of America to 1850 (Winterthur, Del., & Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), pp. 161–191. This study is concerned mainly with early nineteenth-century illustration.

2 Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670–1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958).

3 Barbara Gelman, The Wood Engravings of Winslow Homer (New York: Crown, 1969). On the general subject of early American book illustration see Georgia C. Haugh, “The Beginnings of American Book Illustration,” in Francis J. Brewer (ed.), Book Illustration (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1963), pp. 34–44.

4 The best single study is Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970).

5 William Smellie, An Abridgement of the Practice of Midwifery (Boston: J. Norman, 1786).

6 Richard B. Holman, “Seventeenth Century American Prints,” in Prints in and of America to 1850, pp. 23–52.

7 I have not been able to determine exactly when the first copperplate intaglio print for scientific purposes was employed, but it was certainly within the time span of this paper.

8 Unpublished research notes of Sinclair Hitchings, in a letter to the author dated March 19, 1971.

9 A long note on this book is given in The Colonial Scene (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1950), pp. 32–33.

10 As indicated especially by the elegant upswept tail of the bull, a stylized convention which probably has its origin in “high art.”

11 W. M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968), Chap. 2.

12 As illustrated in Pl. 15 of G. E. Fussell, The Old English Farming Books From Fitzherbert to Tull 1523 to 1730 (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1947).

13 See note 9.

14 Joseph Ewan (ed.), William Bartram Botanical and Zoological Drawings 1756–1788 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968), p. 4.

15 Stearns, p. 144.

16 Manasseh Cutler, “An Account of Some of the Vegetable Productions Naturally Growing in this part of America Botanically Arranged,” Memoirs of the American Academy, 1 (1785).

17 Ewan, p. 4.

18 Bruce R. Voeller and Paul F. Cranefield, Three Centuries of Botany in North America, an Exhibit (New York: The Rockefeller University, 1967), p. 8.

19 Joseph and Nesta Ewan, John Banister and his Natural History of Virginia 1678–1692 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970).

20 Joseph Ewan, “First Fern Records from Virginia: John Banister’s Account of 1679–1692,” American Fern Journal, 53 (Oct.–Dec. 1963), 138.

21 Ewan, John Banister, pp. 74–75.

22 Ibid., p. 51.

23 Ibid., p. 83.

24 George F. Frick and R. P. Stearns, Mark Catesby: The Colonial Audubon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961).

25 Elsa G. Allen, The History of American Ornithology before Audubon (New York: Russell & Russell, 1969), pp. 463–477.

26 Voeller and Cranefield, p. 10.

27 See note 14.

1 I have seen photographs of the Schenck prints, through the courtesy of Mrs. Carl Dolmetsch, assistant curator of prints at Colonial Williamsburg, where examples are to be found.

2 Since this paper was read in Boston, I have learned of William G. Sturtevant’s paper, “Lafitau’s Hoes,” in American Antiquity, vol. 33, no. 1 (Jan. 1968). Sturtevant demonstrates that Lafitau’s plate of Huron agricultural practices, in the 1724 edition, borrows shamelessly from a De Bry plate of 1591, showing Timucua agricultural practices in the vicinity of St. Augustine, Florida. Here, then, is further evidence of both the longevity of the De Bry tradition and the tendency of one printmaker to borrow from another.