April Meeting, 1960

A STATED Meeting of the Society was held at its House, No. 87 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, on Thursday, 28 April 1960, at half after eight o’clock in the evening, the President, Mr. Richard Mott Gummere, in the chair.

The records of the Stated Meeting in February were read and approved.

Messrs. Robert Churchill Vose, Jr., and Richard Harding Randall, Jr., were elected Resident Members of the Society.

The chair appointed the following committees in anticipation of the Annual Meeting:

To nominate candidates for the several offices,—Messrs. Elliott Perkins and Fred Norris Robinson.

To examine the Treasurer’s accounts,—Messrs. William Bradford Osgood and Arthur Stanwood Pier.

To arrange for the Annual Dinner,—Messrs. Walter Muir Whitehill and David Britton Little.

Mr. Dean A. Fales, Jr., read a paper entitled:

Joseph Barrell’s Pleasant Hill

I.

“IN the improvement of the land, I hope to find employment as long as I live,” wrote Joseph Barrell in 1794.306 The improvements of his land, its buildings and its people are the subject of this paper, the main purpose of which is to show the relationship between a successful Massachusetts merchant of the late eighteenth century and the craftsmen and artisans about him that made his house in Charlestown, “Pleasant Hill,” the most outstanding private residence built in America during the last decade of the century. Though the house no longer stands and the ground itself has been changed, it is still possible to trace the growth of this amazing building through old records, drawings, and photographs. All these serve as indications of the greatness not only of Pleasant Hill, but of Joseph Barrell himself.

Barrell was born in Boston in 1739, the sixth of eleven sons of John Barrell, Jr., a merchant and shipbuilder. As did most of his brothers, Joseph became a merchant as well as participating on occasion in public life. In 1764 he married Ann Pierce. In the next year their pastel portraits were done by John Singleton Copley, that of Barrell being now at the Worcester Art Museum.

In 1769, among those who appeared in the list of three hundred and fifty-five Sons of Liberty who dined at the Liberty Tree on 14 August, were Samuel and John Adams, Joseph Barrell, James Otis, Jr., and Paul Revere. The same year, on 8 May, in a long advertisement of household wares and food in the Boston Gazette, Barrell advertised brown sugars, “Double and Treble refined,” as well as loaf sugar and coffee. On 11 July 1763, he had advertised “Bristol glass, Boxes of Glass Ware, and Hogsheads of Earthenware, neatly sorted, Wine and Beer Glasses and Decanters curiously engraved with the Mason’s Arms.”

In 1771, his first wife having died, he married Hannah Fitch, whose pastel by Copley attests to her grace. This portrait is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and was done probably the year they were married. She, like his first wife, unfortunately died still young, during the Revolution.

In the unsettled 1770’s Barrell moved to Waltham, using the harbor of Newburyport for his mercantile operations. On 12 April 1776, he wrote about Boston to his brother William, a Philadelphia merchant,

The shops are not yet open in that town, & though the Redcoat Rascals have deserted, yet a melancholy appearance is alone to be seen in that once happy place. Mr. Green in whose hands I left my affairs, is amongst the fugitives, that carried with him, all my carpets, looking glasses, curtains, beds & bedding & almost every necessary in a household way, that I am not in a capacity to go into Housekeeping, & know not when I shall return to Boston.307

He did return, however, and continued to perform service for his native Boston. In 1776 he was chairman of a committee to examine the town treasury, a member of a committee to prepare instructions for the Massachusetts representatives in the General Assembly, and a juror on the Maritime Court. In 1778 he was chosen as a Representative to the Massachusetts Assembly, was on the school committee, and ran for State senator. In 1784, he was treasurer of a committee which was to incorporate Boston into a city, and a few years later ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Massachusetts.

These few examples will serve to show his interest in public affairs. Many of his letters are fascinating commentaries of events of the time. He returned to Boston after the Revolution, living in a large house on Summer Street. His business boomed, and with relatives in Portsmouth, New York, Philadelphia, London, and France, the Barrell brothers became practically a cartel!

In 1781 Barrell took into his counting house for five years a young family friend, Charles Bulfinch, a graduate of Boston Latin School. This was the start of a long friendship culminating finally in Bulfinch designing “Pleasant Hill” after his European tour in the eighties.

While Bulfinch was working for Barrell, journals of Captain Cook’s voyages to the northwest reached Boston. Tempted by the fur of the sea otter, Barrell was instrumental in fitting out a voyage to this area. The ship Columbia and the sloop Washington, owned by Barrell, Samuel Brown, Charles Bulfinch, John Derby, Crowell Hatch, and John Pintard, left Boston on 30 September 1787, bound to the northwest coast, China, and then Boston. The venture was successful.308 Furs were taken on board in the northwest, where a large river was named for the first vessel, the furs were then taken to China (a stop at the Hawaiian Islands for “refreshment and provisions” made en route), and in China they were traded for a cargo of tea to come back to Boston. Barrell ordered Captain Kendrick to get “Bohea and Hyson tea; blue and white china plates and dishes and tea and coffee cups and saucers, or any other article which you think will answer better in this country.”309 Boston papers hailed the voyage of the first two American ships that went completely around the world as a great triumph. Medals of the expedition were made of silver and copper.310 A silver medal was sent by Barrell to Jefferson. On 2 May 1789, the goldsmith Paul Revere recorded in his ledger the making of six silver medals and repairing the edges of ten copper medals, for Joseph Barrell.311 A silver medal at the Massachusetts Historical Society is one that Barrell gave to the Society in 1791.

In 1792 the owners of the ships received thanks from the Corporation of Harvard College for a present to the museum of “a number of rare curiosities, procured by those vessells from Nootka Sound, and the Sandwich Islands in their late voyage, being the first ever made by Americans to the North West Coast.”

Until 1793, Barrell lived on Summer Street, which at that time was the most beautiful street in Boston. When Reverend William Bentley visited there in 1791, he had this to say:

Was politely received at dinner by Mr. Barrell, & Family, who shewed me his large and elegant arrangements for amusement, & philosophic experiments. His birds played in a globe surrounded with a globe of water in which the fish play. . . . He has a variety of paintings, engravings, & representations in clay from China. He was an adventurer in the first voyage to the back parts of America, & has several great curiosities. His apparatus for experimental Philosophy is good, especially for electricity. He has a good library. The house is elegant in all its furniture. His Garden is beyond any example I have seen. A young grove is growing in the back ground, in the middle of which is a pond, decorated with four ships at anchor, & a marble figure in the centre. The Chinese manner is mixed with the European in the Summer house which fronts the House, below the Flower Garden. Below is the Hot House. In the apartment above are his flowers admitted more freely to the air, & above a Summer House with every convenience. The squares are decorated with Marble figures as large as life. No expense is spared to render the whole amusing, instructive & friendly.312

In the early 1790’s Barrell acquired over two hundred acres overlooking the Charles River at Cobble Hill in Charlestown. It was on this hill that General Knox had built extensive fortifications during the Revolution. This hill, now part of Somerville, was between Charlestown and Boston on the mainland.313 The house was to be Bulfinch’s first private dwelling. Construction started early in 1792; and on 19 September 1792 a traveler, in his Extracts of a Gentleman Visiting Boston, reported this:

On our return struck off from the road (to Cobble Hill), and took a view of the beautiful and commodious edifice which Mr. Joseph Barrell of this town is erecting for his country residence upon an eminence near the Charles River. As it will be the largest, too I think it will be infinitely the most elegant dwelling house ever yet built in New England. It commands the most beautiful views imaginable.

V. East elevation of Pleasant Hill as originally designed. Copy of a sketch now lost.

Courtesy of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

VI. East elevation of Pleasant Hill as originally designed.

Drawing by Charles Bulfinch in the Boston Athenæum.

VII. East elevation of Pleasant Hill as altered.

Photograph in the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

VIII. Staircase in Pleasant Hill, 1792–1896.

Photograph in the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

IX. Details of Pleasant Hill sketched by Samuel McIntire.

Drawing in the Essex Institute.

X. Interior of Pleasant Hill.

Photograph in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

XI. Mahogany desk-and-bookcase once owned by Joseph Barrell.

Courtesy of the Henry Francis du pont

Bentley recorded on the same date, “Barrell’s house advanced to the second story, upon Letchmore’s Point and Coble Hill.”314

It was in this setting that Barrell was to create his ideal country seat. The grounds would be adorned with the finest trees, lawns, terraces, gardens, fish ponds, dovecotes, poultry yard, stables, a large barn and a boat-house.315 The house itself has long been ascribed to Bulfinch by reason of several mentions of his name in Barrell’s letters. However, the rather recent discovery of three of Bulfinch’s own drawings of the house confirms the matter. One of these at the Boston Athenaeum shows the east elevation of the house. This side overlooked his gardens and the Charles River, affording a fine prospect of Boston. The main feature of the house was a large oval drawing room on the main floor, one story high, on the roof of which were two sixteen-foot Corinthian columns, with pilasters against the house, supporting the upper roof which covered the balcony. Bulfinch had seen prototypes for this swell-front type of structure on his trip abroad.

The building was 74 feet by 42 feet. The western front, a carriage entrance, had a porch supported by four Ionic columns, on squares of Scotch granite. The steps, the caps and sills, and the belt course, were of the same stone.

The walls were of brick and the timber of hewn pine, brought from the Kennebec where Barrell had extensive holdings, measuring 12 by 12, and sometimes 16 by 16 inches. The floors were deadened by brick laid between the floor joists, with an under floor laid over them. Brick fire stops or rodent stops were laid behind all the baseboards. The inner partitions not of brick were of two-inch pine plank set very closely together with split hemlock laths, forming a thin, yet very sturdy, partition. From this brief description, it is evident the best and strongest materials were used.

Moving inside the house, the plan of the first floor shows four generous rooms at the corners, the center section given over to the oval room and large vestibule and hallway leading to it. The stairway was an unusual one. It was a flying staircase, ascending at each end, thirty-two feet in length. It came together at a landing in the center, supported by four fluted posts. It then went up three steps to another landing, and diverged to the right and left to landings connecting with the second floor.316

II.

Through his three hundred and fifty-page letter book, a recent gift of Benjamin Joy to the Massachusetts Historical Society, Joseph Barrell is able to tell us much about his house. The letter book covers the years 1792 to 1797 and is restricted mostly to personal—not business—letters that are as complete and valuable a commentary of the trials of the new house owner as any that are written today.

While still living at Summer Street in the winter of 1792 and 1793, he ordered many articles for Pleasant Hill. In December 1792 Barrell had ordered material for finishing some curtains. He wrote to his brother in London, ordering “6 lbs. of silk exactly the colour of the Pattern, as I want it to make fringe for some Damask curtains.”317 It had not arrived five months later, and once again Barrell asked for it, “properly twisted for the fringe.”318 With the first order, he added that his daughter “wishes a compleat set of silk shades for working embroidery.”

On 12 January 1793 he wrote to his brother Nathaniel in New York:

I rec’d your favour by Mr. Bulfinch to observe you had procured the iron hearths. . . . I observe the price of the cover for the table. I should be glad of one but think they are too high. I understand there are candlesticks with them, which I do not want.319

On 13 February he ordered “4 masts of 20 inches and 20 feet long for pillars at my house,” adding, “The longer they have been seasoned, the better.”320 The next month he wrote Nathaniel in New York again, wondering where the iron hearths and live oysters he had ordered were, and also wanted “2 white marble chimney pieces of the whitest marble you can get.”321

In March he wrote to Major Webb of Weathersfield “my house is in forwardness and before the first of May barring accidents, I shall be there.”322 Perhaps the planning had taken its toll, because in the same month he asked his brother Colburn in London to send a watch with a plain dial and large hands “for I find old eyes cannot see as well as young.”323

In the spring, he moved to Pleasant Hill, selling the Summer Street house to Charles Vaughn, the brother-in-law of Bulfinch.324 In a long letter to Nathaniel, it was obvious that not everything was going according to schedule:

I shall depend on the iron hearths, for which, with the marble chimney pieces, I am now waiting. The hearth of marble I think to do without, as Connecticut stone is best for use. Mr. Pomeroy tells me he has given directions for the frames of his looking glasses to be made after the English fashion, & as we have seen some from France lately that are very neat, I wish you would give orders to have my glasses framed in the manner of Mr. Pomeroys & the guilding done in such a way that it will not come off in wetting. The small glasses being for chimney pieces must have only square frames, the others for the piers may be ornamented as fashionable.325

Once more, he wondered where the oysters were. These, by the way, were not for immediate consumption. Barrell had prepared a bed for them in the river, and when they finally arrived, he naturalized them in the Charles River—a feat which certainly would be impossible today! He also introduced several new species of fish to the vicinity as well as domesticating trout in a fountain near his summer house; so it should be stated that his interests extended beyond his land. The oysters had not yet arrived in May, and he expressed his disappointment to Nathaniel once again, also ordering another hearth and an “iron back suitable for the chimney.”326

On 28 May 1793 he wrote to a London agent, Thomas Dickson, ordering carpeting and wallpaper:

I want for a carpet for my hall a painted canvas without seams, 20 by 22, but with the neatest small figure & border, and 25 feet by 8-½ feet each to answer the same figure without any border, as 1 wish to cut it up to have it go under my stairs. I wish the ground a strong bright grass green; also 14 rolls of very handsome paper for a hall—the figures neat & not too large, the ground a handsome stone color. The height of the wall above the dado is 8ʹ 4″, without allowing anything for the border, which may be some guide in chusing a paper that will not cut to waste, And 6 rolls of bright Mazerine blue plain—with borders for both.—The chimney pieces are very handsome, but as I think them too high prized, I shall for the present omit them. The medallions are pretty & I shall keep them. I request you will omit the painted carpets, as I find I can supply myself sooner here.327

In the following year, Barrell wrote to Benjamin Joy:

I’ve just determined to have a carpet for my Summer Room instead of the canvas now on it. I shall therefore be glad if you send for a Brussels carpet of the following dimensions 22 ft. 6 in. x 19ʹ 1″—the colour of the damask enclosed—covered with handsome bunches of flowers.328

In a long series of letters to Shaler and Hall, the firm that provided the Scotch granite for steps and terraces, Barrell constantly had to get after them to make their shipments in time. In June of 1793, he wrote them:

I am exceedingly disappointed in not receiving the stone steps I so long ago desired, more especially those with the string pieces as my laying out my garden is stopped thereby. I hope my disappointment is not owing to your finding the stones for the theatre in Boston, as it was entirely to my recommendation that they were sent for.329

Barrell was on a committee for building this theater, which Bulfinch also designed; and after pointing this out to Shaler and Hall, he was pleased to see that all future orders were handled with great promptness by these Scots. In one letter to them, he told them not to be afraid to tell him if they could not supply him. He merely wanted a definite answer, he said, “‘For the life of suspense is the life of a spider!’”330

Although the transportation situation improved, the problems were not all solved. In the next year he wrote them, “Have waited to consult with Mr. Bulfinch as to some steps I yet want. Those I received last from you either from his mistake or yours are not long enough.”331

On 31 May 1793, Bentley gave this report on the house:

In the morning I stopped at Mr Barrell on Cable hill, so called when a fort was erected there. The plan of the Building is to me new, & not entirely executed. The Saloon is oval fronting the Town. The Cellars are in the best order. The flights of stairs in a vast entry opening towards the country & meet upon the first floor. There is an oval opening above which preserves the communication above, with a neat balustrade & the stairs are back. Every thing discovered expence, but taste, & elegance. The prospect is the best I ever beheld.332

In 1793 and 1794 he also ordered a register stove for his library room—“the border round and japanned,”333 more Corinthian capitals, six gross of cider bottles—which were not to be had in Boston,334 and several Brussels carpets, one an oval one “covered with sprigs.”335 As do many people today, he must have felt that his presence in the partially finished house would help in its more rapid completion. On 1 January 1795 he wrote “My house is entirely finished except my best room. The carpenters’ work will be completed in a few days when I shall wait for plaster of Paris to finish the stucco.”336

The oval room was approximately 32 by 24 feet. In 1795, after the stucco work had been completed, Elias Hasket Derby of Salem received permission to send his own designer, Samuel McIntire, to Pleasant Hill to take notes and make sketches, for Derby wanted the very latest and best ideas to go into the planning of a new house he wanted to build. It is a happy and fitting coincidence that Barrell, Bulfinch, Derby and McIntire should come together in this way, since both Pleasant Hill and the Derby Mansion were perhaps the two most important houses built in Massachusetts in the last decade of the eighteenth century. McIntire’s drawings at Essex Institute give us great insight into the original appearance of the room.337 He drew a door and window capping, while beside it is a sketch of one of the wall panels, with the wooden ceiling molding and base molding. Two of these panels were set between the windows. They were painted a light blue. McIntire also noted that the arched or coved ceiling, which started at the “Ionic dentilled cornice” at the top of this sketch, extended up for two feet, terminating in a Corinthian cornice with plain modillions.

For fitting out the oval room Barrell wrote to his brother Colburn in London in February 1795:

I want 2 Register Stoves to be made exactly as they are for fireplaces in my oval room and are covered by looking glass windows, which by opening, show the fireplace. I mention this that you may know there must be no polished steel about them as they will be much opposed to rust. I would therefore have the border about them of Tutenag or East India white copper, which if you think too dear may be of brass or Princess mettle, but I should prefer the copper.338

The early use of mirrored doors in this letter is noteworthy. Even earlier, in 1793, he had written to his brother Nathaniel in New York, “I beg you will send me by the first opportunity 30 squares of looking glasses 18 x 12″ without frames. I want them to form two windows.”339

In March, he sent to John Atkinson of New York a board as a mold for “two marble hearths of white marble of the best kind. I want them for the 2 fire places in my Oval Room.”340 In November he wrote to John Hoskins:

Therefore desire you will procure for my Oval Room a pair of elegant oval glasses framed in the neatest manner and gilt in such a way that the gilding will not wash off. The space they are to occupy is 4ʹ 3″ by 3ʹ 10″. . . . Pray attend to the packing, for in France they are clumsy enough at that work, and be sure the mirrors are without any flaw or defect of any kind.341

He also asked Hoskins to try to find two pictures for panels in the room, about twenty-one inches square, to match the two paintings “that are in my room, which you remember are views with elegant waterfalls.” The next month he wrote Hoskins again about a chandelier:

I want an elegant lustre for my oval room. If the one you mention is so very elegant, why will it not do? At any rate I wish you to get me one that is light, airy, & elegant, to hold not exceeding 12 lights, and if they should be fixed with argent lamps, I should prefer them to candles, but in that case, they must be absolutely secured from dropping oil.342

He also mentioned he would like four more pictures to flank the mirrors, if Hoskins could find suitable ones.

One interesting feature of the oval room was Barrell’s feeling that the windows must have imported plate glass. He wrote his brother Nathaniel in New York, “Do you hear nothing more respecting the plate glass for my oval room? If it does not come soon, I must have recourse to the glass of this country.”343

There are other mentions of equipment for this room in the letter book, all of which, together with the few poor later photographs which have survived, afford the interested person an exact description of what was the most important room in a Federal dwelling of the time, combining lightness and elegance in the most tasteful manner.

In 1795 Barrell married Electra Brigham of Stockbridge, who was to die a few years later.344 He then married Sarah Webb, the sister of Major Webb of Weathersfield, Connecticut. She survived him. The house was a busy one in the nineties, not only with the activities of Barrell and the children, but with constant visits of many friends, not to mention his own brothers and their families, many of which are still genealogists’ nightmares.

In 1797, however, one visitor was interested in more than the house. Joseph Dennie, Jr., who has optimistically been called the American Addison, was more than delighted with young Hannah. He wrote in August:

For at five o’clock I found myself, by Barrell’s civility, at his chateau and by his daughter’s side . . . I am not much in the habit of tacking on the epithets, angelic and divine, by way of fringe to a petticoat, but am willing to allow that Miss B. is a very perfect mortal, and as pretty a piece of flesh as any in all Messina.4

Had Dennie’s eye been taken by the inanimate furnishings of Pleasant Hill, we might have a clearer picture of the objects used there. Some are known, however, and they, with the letter book and Barrell’s inventory, give us some knowledge of the interior accessories.

Although he had lost most of his household furnishings during the Revolution, a few pieces had been saved. Among them was a large French tapestry showing a bucolic scene, now owned by a descendant. In 1789, when Washington visited Boston, Barrell lent this for a formal assembly accorded the important guest. He was also one of a committee of three to escort Washington from Worcester to Boston for the occasion using his own equipment. This tapestry was used also at Pleasant Hill in the summer dining room, and in 1796 he wrote John Hoskins asking him if he could find another “elegant piece of tapestry 13 feet long and 8ʹ 3″ high.”345

In his dining room, he had some Höchst German procelain figures—or “images.” His London agent procured them from a sale at an English country house and Barrell was very pleased to have been able to acquire these objects which had been originally owned by a member of the British nobility.346

In April of 1795 he wrote Hoskins:

If you meet with a handsome cover for a (dining) table of looking glass, and a pyramid of handsome cut glass for the middle of the table . . . I wish you would buy them. Also 4 handsome damask table cloths 22ʹ by 8ʹ.347

He also asked Hoskins to find for him “a set of elegant coolers for the table, 2 for glasses and 4 for decanters—or half the number of each—and second hand.”348 The desire for elegance was constantly tempered by the hand that held the purse strings.

In 1795 from his agent John Atkinson in New York he ordered:

Also 18 of the handsomest Windsor chairs fit for Dining and my Hall. I would have them with arms, rather less in the seat than larger than common, as they will thereby accomodate more at table. I would have them painted of light blue grey colour, the same as my summer dining room. Let them be strong and neat.349

This, with the exception of looking glasses, is one of the few references to furniture in the letter book. Since the letters are to people living away from Boston, and since they mention little furniture, we can assume that much of it was produced locally. One important piece owned by him is a large mahogany desk-and-bookcase now at Winterthur. Upon a typically fine Massachusetts kettle or bombé base is a mirrored upper section with very rich carving. Carved swags, leafage, rams’ heads and paterae abound, and the top of the case is surmounted by three carved female figures representing Justice and Prosperity flanking Hope at the top. While the carver and cabinetmaker are not known, the work is of the highest quality. This desk was given to his daughter Hannah after she married Benjamin Joy and descended in the Joy family. While the base seems of an earlier period than the top, the construction of the piece indicates they were made for each other, and family history reveals the piece was like this in the 1840’s. It is a superb American desk-and-bookcase, yet one that is tantalizing in its original owner’s silence about it.

The use of allegorical figures like those on the upper section of the bookcase, can be seen in the bookplate of Joseph Barrell. At the top, as on the bookcase, is the figure of Hope. Industry and Indolence are also featured in the design, with their results graphically shown. The mottoes at the bottom are “Not always so” and “Indure but Hope.” Impressions of this bookplate, which may well have been the source for the bookplate of Thomas Russell engraved by Joseph Callender of Boston, are known in both black and green ink, the latter probably for either Barrell’s rarer volumes, or for a specialized collection.

Another Barrell-Joy family piece is a convex girandole mirror. The gilt frame is surmounted with a large shell, with leafage flanking it, and at the bottom two sconces, each holding two candles, are attached. Its dimensions are very close to the two Barrell ordered from France for the Oval Room. Several of these were ordered for the house, and since some were returned due to breakage, it is difficult to say where this one originally hung.

Besides the Copley portraits already mentioned, there are other family likenesses. Barrell had painted a miniature of himself by Copley and had it put in a gold bracelet which he gave his daughter Hannah. Also, Barrell had the young Boston artist Henry Sargent paint for him a portrait of the Reverend John Clarke, the minister of the First Church in Boston. This portrait is now at the Massachusetts Historical Society.350 There are also other miniatures and silhouettes of the Barrell family in private collections.

A great deal of silver is listed in the inventory, including a tea set, several salvers, and many spoons, as well as plated sconces, candlesticks, decanter stands and many other items. All of this is rather amazing, since it is known he gave his best silver to his daughter and sons before he died. A pair of cans, made long before the time of Pleasant Hill, were made by Knight Leverett of Boston for Dr. Thomas Bulfinch. They passed from him to his son Charles, who gave them to Hannah before she married Benjamin Joy. They are now owned by Mark Bortman of Boston and on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts.

Probably a great part of the silver came from abroad. However, we have seen Barrell had the Columbia expedition medals made by Paul Revere in 1789. Later entries in the Revere ledgers charged Barrell in 1793 for “mending sundries” and on 28 July 1796, for “mending cream pitchers” and for “a silver letter B for the back of chairs.” This most likely refers to a chaise.351

There are also in existence some English glasses—barrel-shaped, of course—and decanters still owned by a descendant. In 1797 he ordered glasses from England. He did not want a case, however, since he said he already had “a very handsome Shagreen one.”352 Also there are a few other small pieces owned by descendants.

In the letter book, Barrell frequently ordered watches and jewelry from London. In one letter to his brother, Barrell ordered a watch for Hannah:

My daughter who is a very good girl, wishes a gold key in the form of a very handsome Urn, both sides of christel & the lock of her Father’s hair herewith plaited neatly & fixed between.353

This custom, then, was not always a posthumous panegyric!

Barrell was most interested in various phases of science, and in the letter book he was constantly ordering various pieces of equipment, usually from London, from maps, barometers, telescopes, microscopes and thermometers to a shower bath, magnets, a pedometer, rain gauges and elaborate electrical instruments.354 On one occasion he ordered a large supply of fireworks.

III.

This interest in science was most evident in his landscape work. When Timothy Dwight visited Pleasant Hill in 1799, he wrote:

It is now a beautiful plantation, and considering the short period since it was begun, highly improved. The house furnishes one of the best prospects of this charming country.355

It should have been beautiful, for Barrell planted thousands of trees and shrubs, as well as creating many gardens, terraces, and fountains. In the 1790’s, as until recently, the New Englander’s main plantings consisted of fruit trees. Barrell ordered countless pears, cherries, apples, and peaches from England. One order alone consisted of twenty each of twenty-one varieties of pear trees.356 Another ordered from a nursery in Bordeaux 40 pear trees, 20 nectarines, 20 apricots, 20 peaches, 20 cherries, 20 plums and 20 grapes.357 He also ordered dwarf and espaliered fruit trees, especially peaches.358 He was constantly experimenting with new types, improving fruiting habits of his trees through better pollination, and striving to develop hardier varieties of selected more tender species.

In 1793 he asked his brother Nathaniel in New York to send him one of Prince’s lists.359 William Prince and Son, in Flushing, had established the first successful commercial American nursery, issuing tree and seed catalogues before the Revolution. With this firm Barrell placed several large orders.

As Pleasant Hill was being built, Barrell and Bulfinch were two of twenty-eight men who petitioned to have the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture incorporated in March of 1792. Two years later he wrote to one of his chief suppliers, William Pringle of Lyndenham in Kent, ordering certain trees which “are spoken highly of by The Compleat Farmer, by a Society of Gentlemen.”360 This book, The Compleat Farmer; or a general Dictionary of Husbandry in all its Branches, especially the fourth London edition, was the foremost guide of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century gardeners and farmers and was owned throughout Federal America.361

Since the shipments from abroad were often damaged in transit or arrived at an improper planting time, the rate of mortality of the stock was frequently alarmingly high. Barrell had a Dutchman as his head gardener until he returned to Holland in 1793,362 after which he was replaced with an Englishman recommended by Pringle. This replacement was not an easy process, however. Barrell wrote to Pringle in January of 1794:

The person you procured for me as Gardner, Mr. James Rule, I believe is a clever man, but as I found on his arrival he had an utter aversion to be employed with any other Gardner, & as the person I have is a very good man, although I had full employ for 2 for the present season, yet to make him happy I consented he should engage with Mr. Jeffrey who stands in my employ.363

Many shrubs and flowers were imported for small gardens. Great attention was also given to farming operations. In addition, many ornamental and shade trees—such as the American elm and the then ubiquitous poplar—were planted on the long avenues laid out on the grounds, as were walnuts, mulberries, and other nut trees.364 A greenhouse “nearly two hundred feet in length” provided ample room for both experimentation and winter blooms for the house.365 It was here that Barrell grew successfully some of the first double white camellias in New England.366 Two stoves for the hothouse were ordered from England.367 Oleanders, olives, oranges, and lemons were also grown in it.

When McIntire was at Pleasant Hill, he must have received instructions to pay particular attention to Barrell’s icehouse, and he made a measured drawing of it.368 Before refrigeration came in, the problem of keeping ice in the summer was almost as great as getting rid of it in the winter. Barrell had dug down inside a hill, atop which was a terrace, and had a chamber 10 feet square and 7 feet high for his ice storage. With over twelve hundred bottles of liquor, wines, and cider listed in his inventory, this subterranean chamber assumes even more importance.

Garden figures had become very important after the Revolution and in his inventory are listed “2 urn pedestals, figures of cupids, Venus, a gardener and his wife, 4 wooden horses and a stone horse.”

IV.

At sometime in the late nineties, Barrell became gravely ill.369 His pace did not slacken entirely, however. He continued at work in Boston, traveling by either his splendid horses on land, or across the river from his boathouse on his barge with liveried boatmen.370 He let others carry on the main portion of his business, while he invested heavily in lands in the Pacific northwest, Ohio, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Finally, in 1804 he died, having already given many of his treasures to his daughter and five sons. In an eight-page will and codicil, he carefully spelled out the disposition of his estate—so carefully, in fact, that twelve years later his sons were still fighting with Benjamin Joy, the executor, about his not properly living up to the will. In a pamphlet battle they accused Joy of mismanagement, while he maintained his position most intelligently. Though the battle raged, it did not dim the luster of Pleasant Hill. It had cost Barrell $48,000, a large amount for that time, yet an amount which, I hope, we will agree was wisely spent.371

In May of 1805, Bentley wrote in his diary:

The valuable Library of Joseph Barrell at Corn Hill, is to be sold tomorrow. This excentric man was a man of uncommon taste & for many years while he resided in Summer street, Boston, was a man of the best taste & could exhibit the best specimens. No man in New England was before him in his hospitality, unbanity [sic], & polite accomplishments.372

In 1816 Pleasant Hill was sold by Joy to the Massachusetts General Hospital to become the McLean Asylum. Bulfinch, who was still living, added another story with a pediment to the house, continued the ends up to three stories, and made two large buildings, each 40 by 76 feet, flanking the main building.373

An engraving in Richard Frothingham’s History of Charlestown shows how the buildings looked in the early 1840’s. There may be seen the pier in the foreground, as well as some of the trees that Barrell had planted. A charming water color, owned by Nina Fletcher Little, entitled “Insane Hospital Charlestown,” shows the same scene with more vigor, though with less precision.374 Throughout the nineteenth century, the buildings remained the most important in Charlestown. One author wrote of the asylum:

Here the poor patients whose wits are out may ramble in the pleasant paths and “babble o’ green fields.” Here we may see a Lear, there an Ophelia,—old and young, rich and poor, but with an equality of wretchedness that levels all worldly condition.375

Photographs taken in the eighteen nineties, show the west, or carriage, entrance, the bottom two floors of which were the original house, and the river side.

In 1896, the Boston and Maine Railroad, in the midst of a frenzy of expansion, bought the estate, after the McLean Asylum had moved to Waverley. The house was demolished, the hill was leveled, the river was filled in, and today what was once Pleasant Hill is now part of the main Boston classification freight yard of the railroad.

Pleasant Hill now exists only on paper and in its later state in the childhood memories of a few. There is no doubting it was a magnificent house, and all the credit for it must go to its owner. Being a wealthy merchant with many distant connections, Barrell did not hesitate in ordering anything he wanted from anywhere he wished. He looked beyond his own area, as must have many others in his state, frequently letting his own taste be guided by impressive things he had seen in his own travels. While Revere might mend a cream pitcher, at the same time Barrell would send one of his daughter’s gold bracelets and a locker to London for repair, as well as some satin to be dyed.376 Since his world of business was an international one, the world of furnishing and building his house was likewise. Its design was done by a local architect, and the elements of the house came from everywhere, looking glasses from France, and carpets—and even composition ornaments—from England.377 He was an extremely astute man, paying constant attention to world affairs, idealizing his own country above all others, and loving his family deeply with the warmest affection. His ethics are nowhere more clearly shown than in a fourteen-page letter to his eldest son, giving advice on how to get along in the world. While this paper has not explored this side of his character, nevertheless I hope we have seen that he was an intelligent and a worthwhile patron who gave the fullest meaning possible to his employment “in the improvement of the land.”

1 The prohibitive law was not cancelled until 1797.

2 Joseph Tinker Buckingham described the sheriff’s visit in “Dramatic Reminiscences,” The New England Magazine (series 2, 1832), ii. 368.

3 Detailed description of theater in FO, 10 November 1794.

4 Paine was christened Thomas. His elder brother Robert Treat, Jr. died in 1801. In 1803 he petitioned to take the brother’s name and officially became Robert Treat Paine, junior. To avoid unnecessary confusion we consistently refer to him by the latter name. See Names Changed in Massachusetts, 1892 (Boston, 1893), ii.

5 Thomas O. Selfridge, The Works in Verse and Prose of the Late Robert Treat Paine, Jr. (Boston, 1812), lxxi.

6 Leon Edel, Henry James, The Untried Years (Philadelphia, 1953), 199.

7 William Allen, American Biographical and. Historical Dictionary (Boston, 1832), 630; William Dunlap, History of the American Theatre (New York, 1832), 133; George O. Seilhamer, History of the American Theatre (1792–1797) (Philadelphia, 1891), 233.

8 Paine was granted a generous number of pages in V. L. Parrington’s Main Currents of American Thought (New York, 1930), ii. 288–295, under “the Tie-Wig School.” See also Van Wyck Brooks, The World, of Washington Irving (New York, 1944), 62.

9 For a careful treatment of his poetry and the influences upon it, with additions to those available in The Works, see Ruth Thorndike Clough, “A Study of the Life and Works of Robert Treat Paine, Jr.,” unpublished University of Maine M.A. thesis, 1930.

10 Retrospections of America, 1797–1811, ed. Mrs. Bayle Bernard, with introduction, notes, and index by Lawrence Hutton and Brander Matthews (New York, 1887), 292. Contemporary account of Bernard in Poly. (April 1806), 1–13.

11 James D. Hart on “The Power of Sympathy,” The Popular Book (New York, 1950), 61 ff.

12 CC, 12 February 1794. Zimmermann described as “Counsellor and Physician to his Britannic Majesty at Hanover.” Cf. Harold S. Jantz, “German Thought and Literature in New England,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology (1942), xli. 28.

13 CC, 12 February 1794.

14 The material on Paine’s early life is based on the unpublished letters and diaries contained in the “Paine Papers” in possession of The Massachusetts Historical Society (accession, 1940). All citations from letters refer to this collection, unless otherwise indicated.

15 Ms. letter of 28 February 1774.

16 Ms. letter of 12 July 1775.

17 Ms. letter from Cambridge, 2 June 1790.

18 Ms. letter from Hollis Hall, 29 December 1790.

19 The diary runs from 1785 to 1791.

20 Ms. letter by Joseph Willard from Cambridge, 18 November 1791. Also Faculty Records in Harvard Archives.

21 Ms. diary, 23 November 1791.

22 Ms. letter from Harvard, November 1791, addressed to Paine, senior, at Worcester.

23 Letters from Sanger, 27 February and 17 March 1792.

24 Plea in ms. letter from Bridgewater, 27 February 1792.

25 Library Charging Lists for 1790, 1791, 1792 in Harvard Archives.

26 Ms. letter from Tisdale to Paine, senior, 21 August 1792.

27 Joseph T. Buckingham in Specimens of Newspaper Reminiscences (Boston, 1850), ii, 148, identifies Paine as Menander. See also Charles Prentiss in Works of Robert Treat Paine (Boston, 1812), XXX.

28 “A Friend to Peace” was probably Benjamin Austin, who wrote for The Independent Chronicle under various names. Cf. Buckingham, “Dramatic Reminiscences,” New England Magazine (March 1832), ii. 223.

29 CC, 19 December 1792 and 22 December 1792. Another series of articles in the same paper (1792) advocated the repeal of the statute against stage plays.

30 Independent Chronicle, 24 November 1791, in clippings in Harvard Theatre Collection.

31 Robert Turnbull, The Theatre in its Influence upon Literature, Morals, and Religion (Boston, 1839), 109–110.

32 A A, 30 January 1794, iii. 18.

33 Prologue in Works, ed. Prentiss, 159–160.

34 CC, 12 February 1794.

35 Henry’s defense in CC, 15 February 1794.

36 CC, 23 April 1794.

37 Ms. Diary of Paine, senior (MHS).

38 Diary of William Bentley (Salem, 1907), ii. 127 and 132.

39 A A, 10 and 17 April 1794.

40 Ibid., 10 April 1794. Paine’s interest in Eliza Baker no doubt colored his judgment of Miss Harrison, who was a rival for some of the same parts.

41 CC, 8 March 1794.

42 Sir Henry Home (Lord Kames) on the “manifold . . . advantages of criticism” in Elements of Criticism (New York, 1866), 27–30. (The first American edition of Kames, published in Boston in 1796, reprint of 7th London edition, according to William Charvat, Origins of American Critical Thought, 1810–1835 [Philadelphia, 1936], 30.)

43 FO, 12 November 1795.

44 Orrery prospectus in CC, 6 September 1794.

45 Journal of Frances Anne Butler (Philadelphia, 1935), i. 154–155. Eighteenth-century American newspaper files merit further study.

46 Copied from Bell’s London Chronicle.

47 FO, December 1794, 70.

48 FO, 29 December 1794, 82.

49 FO, 22 December 1794, 74–75.

50 FO, 29 December 1794, 82.

51 FO, 8 January 1795, 94.

52 The Medium played 2 March 1795. Orrery notice, 2 March 1795, 155.

53 FO, 25 May 1795.

54 The address is an extension of an earlier signed version, which was employed as a prologue to The Mistakes of a Night; or, She Stoops to Conquer. The later version was “intended to have been spoken by Colonel J. S. Tyler, at the opening of the Boston Theatre” for the season of 1795–1796. Address quoted in FO, 9 November 1795, 22.

55 FO, i February 1796, 118.

56 MM, ii March 1796.

57 RG, 9 January 1800.

58 MM, ii March 1796.

59 Paine’s commentary on play in FO, 14, 21, 24 March 1796, 166, 175, 189.

60 Traveller Returned printed in The Gleaner, III. (February 1798), Act I, 116–117.

61 J. S. Murray’s note in FO, 17 March 1796, 171.

62 MM, 22 and 25 March 1796. In MM Paine was called “dog of the Orrery.” Third performance of play given for benefit of widows and orphans of Boston on 13 May 1796. Joseph T. Buckingham in his Newspaper Reminiscences (Boston, 1850), ii. 243–247, discusses the controversy. See also Arthur Hobson Quinn, History of the American Drama (New York, 1943), 126, note 2, and Vera Bernadette Field, Constantia, A Study of the Life and Works of Judith Sargent Murray, University of Maine Studies (Orono, 1931), xxxiii. 7.

63 One of the important contributors to FO was Joseph Dennie. See Harold Milton Ellis, Joseph Dennie and His Circle, A Study in American Literature from 1792 to 1812, University of Texas Bulletin (1915), 69–72.

64 FO, 30 October, 6 and 10 November 1794.

65 FO, 4 December 1794 and subsequent issues. The next year Thomas Hall and Joseph Nancrede were advertising a French and English bookstore in CC, 25 July 1795. After listing items like Molière and La Fontaine, they publicly stated their purpose: “. . . to transplant—to naturalize, into fertile America, the exotic seeds of European genius; to alleviate the burthen of American writers, by presenting them with all that has been written, on the subject they contemplate—to increase their number, by removing their fears of repeating what others have said . . . to free the New World from the Moral Tyranny, which Great-Britain has exercised for ages over the minds of Americans, by shutting every Avenue to European, and especially to French Literature.” Ellis identifies Nancrede as “a Frenchman, a bookseller, teacher, and editor” (Joseph Dennie and His Circle, 101).

66 Henry Home emphasized “incident” in a special sense: “A play analyzed is a chain of connected facts, of which each scene makes a link. Each scene, accordingly, ought to produce some incident relative to the catastrophe or ultimate event, by advancing or retarding it. A scene that produceth no incident, and for that reason may be termed barren, ought not to be indulged, because it breaks the unity of action; a barren scene can never be entitled to a place, because the chain is complete without it” (Elements of Criticism, 459).

67 FO, 29 December 1794, 82.

68 In a discussion of Mrs. Inchbald’s Every One Has His Fault, FO, 19 January 1795.

69 Commentary on acting in FO, 22 December 1795, 75; 19 January 1795, 107; 5 and 12 November 1795, 18, 25, 26.

70 Inkle and Yarico performance, 23 January 1795. FO, 26 January 1795, 114–115.

71 FO, 29 January 1795, 119.

72 FO, 10 April 1795.

73 FO, 28 September and 5 November 1795, 391, 18.

74 FO, 10 January, 5 November, 29 December 1795.

75 FO, 4 April 1796, 185.

76 CC, 28 June, 24 October, and 15 November 1794. By 16 December 1796 Baker was advertising another establishment in MM.

77 CC, 22 and 29 January, 1794.

78 CC, 22 January 1794.

79 CC, 26 February and 8 March 1794.

80 AA, 27 February 1794.

81 MM, 10 August 1798.

82 MM, 13 April 1798.

83 CC, 22 February 1794. (see also clippings in Harvard Theatre Collection).

84 FO, 18 December 1794, 71, and 29 December.

85 FO, 5 November 1795, 19.

86 FO, 29 December 1794, 82.

87 FO, 12 November 1795, 25.

88 BG, 21 November and 17 December 1804; 28 May 1807.

89 The Theatre, 83, 89.

90 Dunlap refers often to prostitutes in the audience in History of The American Theatre (cf. 211).

91 BG, 28 January 1802.

92 FO, 8 and ii January 1795. “The Service of the Prompter . . . less sonorous than usual” in 1802; BG, 7 January 1802.

93 Poly, May 1812, 235.

94 Frances Anne Butler, Journal (Philadelphia, 1835), ii. 132–133.

95 MM, 17 August 1798.

96 CC, 19 November 1796.

97 J. T. Buckingham, New England Galaxy, 21 March 1823, 284.

98 Play announcements for the 1796 season in CC.

99 New England Galaxy, 21 March 1823, 284.

100 MM, 21 March 1797.

101 Seilhamer (History of the American Theatre, 341) says this was “probably by Paine, as it was given for the joint benefit of Mr. Paine, the dramatist, and Mr. Campbell, the prompter of the theatre, with Mr. Baker, Paine’s father-in-law, as the Clown . . .” We have been unable to find more convincing evidence than these circumstances.

102 MM, 23 May 1797 and CC, 24 May 1797.

103 CC, 20 May 1797. Werter, followed by scenes from The Mountaineers, Bickerstaff’s Absent Man, and a Grand Fandango Dance. For summary of the Reynolds’ play see Stuart Pratt Atkins, The Testament of Werther in Poetry and Drama (Cambridge, 1949), 180–189 (also for bibliography of Werther poetry). William James, The Letters of Charlotte during Her Connexion with Werter (1786) was being sold by John West, November 1797. (Graves’s translation of Werther and Charlotte. The Sorrows of Werther, A German Story, to which is annexed the letters of Charlotte to a female friend, [by W. James] Boston: Thomas and Andrews, 1798: in B. Q. Morgan listing.)

104 MM, 13 April 1798. Daranzel was performed twice in 1800.

105 David Everett, Daranzel; or, The Persian Patriot (Boston, 1800), Act II, scene i, 16.

106 RG, 9 January 1800.

107 RG, 4 June 1798 and MM, 8 June 1798.

108 Dedicatory address reprinted in Works, 199–201.

109 MM, 22 February 1799 and CC, 23 February 1799. Re “Adams and Liberty” see James Spear Loring, The Hundred Boston Orators from 1770 to 1852 (Boston, 1853), 286. The Ode in Works, 245–247. Dunlap’s adaptation of Lovers’ Vows opened in New York, ii March 1799.

110 She worked from a literal translation which came to her in “broken English.” See Lovers’ Vows, from the German of Kotzebue by Mrs. Inchbald (London, 1799), iv. Inchbald translation also printed in Boston 1799. Original in Theater von August v. Kotzebue (Leipzig, 1840), ii. Valuable material on Kotzebue translations can be found in Oral Summer Coad, William Dunlap (New York, 1917), 208–237; B. Q. Morgan, A Critical Bibliography of German Literature in English Translation, 1481–1927 (Stanford, 1938), 280–290; Frederick H. Wilkins, “Early Influence of German Literature in America,” Americana Germanica (1899), iii. 110–1365 and American Plays Printed 1714–1830, compiled by Frank Pierce Hill (Stanford, 1934), 25–36.

111 Menzel accused him of converting Parnassus into a brothel, and Gervinus said, “. . . we cannot dispense with, but we can despise him.” See L. F. Thompson, Kotzebue, A Survey of His Progress in France and England (Paris, 1928), 6–7; and Walter F. Schirmer, Der Einfluss der deutschen Literatur auf die englische im. 19. Jahrhundert (Halle/Saale, 1947), 23–24. German critical attacks summarized in Chapter I of Albert William Holzmann, Family Relationships in the Dramas of August von Kotzebue (Princeton, 1935).

112 Kotzebue’s averaging, in Vienna, forty-five showings annually in eighty years to 1867 “was by no means a flash in the pan,” says W. H. Bruford, Theatre, Drama and Audience in Goethe’s Germany (London, 1950), 264. See also Lawrence Marsden Price, English Literature in Germany (Berkeley, 1953), 163.

113 Orie William Long, Literary Pioneers, Early Explorers of European Culture (Cambridge, 1935), 28–29.

114 Lovers’ Vows, 1799, v.

115 Act II, scene i, 26.

116 Act V, scene 2, 88.

117 Act V, scene 2, 91.

118 Act II, scene 2, 33.

119 See also “Biographical Notice of Mrs. Whitlock, the American Siddons,” The Thespian Mirror, 4 January 1806, 9–10.

120 Payne, Lovers’ Vows (Baltimore, 1809; copy in Houghton Library). Gabriel Harrison, John Howard Payne (Philadelphia, 1885) and Willis T. Hanson, The Early Life of John Howard Payne (“with contemporary letters heretofore unpublished,” Boston, 1913). Hanson includes letter from Payne to Robert Treat Paine from New York 11 June 1809, 124–125. See also Sarah C. Paine, Paine Ancestry, ed. C. H. Pope (Boston, 1912), and Grace Overmyer, America’s First Hamlet (New York, 1957).

121 Poly, February 1812, 65. Emerald in an attack refers to Lovers’ Vows, “admitting it to be more free from faults than any other production of Kotzebue” (25 October 1806, 304).

122 Mansfield Park, I, in Novels and Letters of Jane Austen (New York, 1906), v. 187–199.

123 E, 27 December 1806, 412, and new series, 23 January 1808, i. 161. Works, 353.

124 George O. Willard, History of the Providence Stage (Providence, 1891), 73.

125 Kotzebue, The Stranger (tr. B. Thompson, Boston, n.d. [1807?]), Act I, scene i, 8. Original in Theater von A. v. Kotzebue, i. Papendick trans, published in Boston and Salem in 1799. Copy of Salem edition in Huntington Library.

126 Joseph N. Ireland, Mrs. Duff (Boston, 1882); Clapp, History of the Boston Stage, 116; Willard, History of the Providence Stage, 78; Dramatic Mirror, 3 February 1829.

127 Anna Cora Mowatt, Autobiography of an Actress (Boston, 1853), 247–248.

128 Kotzebue felt that the anecdote would sweeten his last hour: Theater von August von Kotzebue (Leipzig, 1840), ii. 125.

129 W. M. Thackeray, Pendennis (London, n.d., Chiswick Edition), i. 57.

130 Paine’s admission to the bar “at the Court of Common Pleas, for the county of Suffolk,” announced in BG, ii January 1802.

131 E. Vale Smith, History of Newburyport (Newburyport, 1854), 326.

132 Theophilus Parsons, Memoir of Theophilus Parsons, by his son (Boston, 1859), 136.

133 Newburyport Herald and Country Gazette, 15 February 1799, ii.

134 RG, 30 December 1799.

135 RG, 26 December 1799.

136 Ms. letter from Newburyport, 19 January 1800 (MHS). Paine’s earlier oration on the dissolution of the alliance with France had been highly praised by Washington himself.

137 RG, 26 September 1799 and 13 February 18005 BG, 9 December 1799.

138 BG, 17 and 20 November 1800.

139 E, ii April 1807, 173. According to Mrs. Inchbald, Cumberland lifted The Wheel of Fortune from “a critique of Kotzebue’s drama in a review.” First Boston performance of Wheel of Fortune, 4 January 1796.

140 Dunlap, Thirty Years ago; or, Memoirs of a Water Drinker (New York, 1837), 79. Coad, in William Dunlap, 278, refers to “striking resemblance” between Treadwell and Paine.

141 R. B. Sheridan adaptation. RG, 17 October, 9 and 12 December 1799 (first Boston performance, 9 December). (Thompson, Kotzebue’s Progress, 66, discusses Sheridan’s alterations: “The play is Kotzebue’s, not Sheridan’s.”)

142 BG, 16, 23, and 26 February 1801. (Paine’s criticism reprinted in Works, 39 off.) By the end of 1804 the demand for this “localized habitation” was to be carried so far that a quibbler asked of the scenery used in Paul and Virginia: “Should not the Trees exhibit the foliage of that country, and not the leaves of Europe or America?” (BG, 13 December 1804).

143 BG, 26 February 1801.

144 Pizarro; a tragedy taken from the German drama of Kotzebue and adapted to the English stage by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (tenth edition, London, 1799), Act V, scene 3, 62. A Boston reprint of Sheridan adaptation in 1809. Original in Theater von A. v. Kotzebue, iv.

145 Act V, scene 3, 64.

146 Works, 393–394.

147 RG, 26 September and 31 October 1799. Count Benyowsky was played in Salem and Providence in 1803 (Buckingham, Personal Memoirs, 1. 52). 1800 Boston reprint of B. Thompson translation listed by Morgan. Original in Theater von A. v. Kotzebue, iv.

148 BG, 10 and 13 November 1800. Hoare translation printed by S. Etheridge for E. Larkin in Boston, 1800. Copy in Houghton Library.

149 Peter Oliver, “The Boston Theatre, 1800,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxxiv. 554–570.

150 William Dunlap, False Shame and Thirty Years, ed. Oral Sumner Coad (Princeton, 1940); Act IV, 50.

151 Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad (Leipzig, 1880), 1. 185.

152 RG, 15 and 29 September 1800; BG, 22 December 1800.

153 BG, 1 July 1802.

154 In Atheneum; or, Spirit of the English Magazines, v. [1819], 321–3235 vi. [1820], 358–360, called “the greatest dramatic genius of the age.” Dispatches from various German cities detailing the assassination, in Boston Weekly Messenger, viii. 528, 530, 564. Kotzebue references in American magazines in S. H. Goodnight, German Literature in American Magazines Prior to 1846, University of Wisconsin Bulletin (1907), iv. 247.

155 The Boston edition, in Huntington Library, differs in pagination from the London edition of the same year, though Wilkens and Morgan call it a probable reprint. The Constant Lover; or, William and Jeannette: a Tale “From the German of Augustus von Kotzebue, author of The Stranger, Lovers’ Vows, Self-Immolation, Virgin of the Sun, &c. To which is prefixed, An Account of the Literary Life of the Author. Two volumes in one. Printed for Joseph Bumstead, Boston, 1799” (trans. anon.).

156 I, vii.

157 Page viii.

158 Page ix.

159 Pages 25–26.

160 Columbian Phoenix and Boston Review (June 1800), i. 365–366.

161 The account of the proposed drama tells of Appenine scenery, an exiled Spanish prince, a lady of inferior rank but infinite virtue, a vengeful father, all involved in a Kotzebue-like climax: “Humanity saved his enemy; his enemy became his friend; and the divine impulses of friendship induced him to forego the rights of a conqueror.” Works, lvii.

162 BG, 18 February 1802.

163 Ibid.

164 BG, ii February 1802.

165 BG, 17 May 1802.

166 Review of Harlequin Ranger, BG, 7 March 1803.

167 [Sargent], Boston (Boston, 1803). (Copy in Houghton Library.) Re Abaellino, BG, 19 and 22 November 1802. (Boston printing of Dunlap’s Abaellino in 1802.)

168 BG, 13 January, 2 May, 4 July 1803. See Coad, William Dunlap, 171–173.

169 Paine’s relationship with his father and his clients had been passable in 1802. When Paine, senior, was in Worcester that year, the son wrote him about fever conditions in Boston and told of a grandchild just recovered from illness. Ms. letter signed “Your obedient son,” Boston, 30 September 1802 (MHS).

170 Thespian Mirror (New York, 1805), xi. 89.

171 Boston Weekly Magazine, ii February 1804, 63; BG, 17 October and 3 November 1803.

172 BG, 12 December 1803.

173 The Monthly Mirror, signed “N.Y., 1805” by “Terence.”

174 BG, 3 November 1803.

175 T. Allston Brown, History of the American Stage (New York, 1870), 197.

176 Ms. letter from Selfridge, Boston, 7 December 1811 (MHS). We have been unable to find any comment from Eliza Baker Paine.

177 George C. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage (New York, 1927), ii. 247.

178 BG, 28 November 1803.

179 BG, 3 November 1803.

180 BG, 24 October and 8 December 1803. (Works, 397.)

181 BG, 14 and 21 November 1803. (Only second section reprinted in Works, 396.)

182 BG, 28 November 1803.

183 BG, 5 December 1803.

184 BG, 27 February 1804.

185 BG, 15 March 1804.

186 Boston Weekly Magazine, 25 February 1804.

187 Mrs. Stanley (the Honorable Mrs. Twisleton) played Elvira to Caulfield’s Rolla. BG, 3 November 1806. Re American debut of The Stranger see The American Theatre as Seen by Its Critics, 1752–1934, ed. Moses and Brown (New York, 1934), 27.

188 Carpenter’s Epilogue to White’s Foscari spoken by Mrs. Whitlock, Poly, April 1806, 58. On 30 November 1807 Mrs. Warren played Elvira “to a large and fashionable audience,” says Clapp, 91. Miss Brunton, Mrs. Merry, Mrs. Wignell, Mrs. Warren, all same actress. See Bernard, 72, note.

189 BT, 26 December 1807, 9. See Thackeray on Fotheringay’s Cora: “She had not much to do in her part, but to look handsome, and stand in picturesque attitudes encircling her child . . .” (Pendennis, i. 185).

190 Poly, April 1807, 64. Typical comment of period in Comet, 14 December 1811, 100: “This play, though immoral in its tendency, is nevertheless very interesting.”

191 E, 5 July 1806, 109. E conducted by Joshua Belcher and Samuel T. Armstrong until turned over to Oliver C. Greenleaf in October 1807.

192 Poly, July 1806, Paine’s song and Woodworth’s Ode, 275–278. (Paine’s reprinted in Works, 272–273.)

193 Boston Union Circulating Library List, July 1806.

194 Port Folio, i January 1801. See Ellis, Joseph Dennie and His Circle, 141–142.

195 E, 7 March 1807, 118; 3 May 1806, ii; 28 March 1807, 149. Kotzebue’s platitudinous remarks on various aspects of life were frequent inserts in other journals. By 1820 there were Boston excerpts from “A Mr. Muchler at Berlin” who “extracted from 107 works of Kotzebue, a collection of 905 thoughts, observations, &c. which will doubtless be very popular” (E. Athenaeum, vi. 358).

196 E, 18 October 1806, 296; 25 October 1806, 304 (review of Lovers’ Vows). Speed the Plough first played in 1800.

197 “A brief sketch of the life of Frederic Schiller, the German Dramatist; condensed from the Monthly Magazine,” E, 24 May 1806, 41; 31 May 1806, 53.

198 E, 6 December 1806, 382.

199 E, 15 November 1806, 347.

200 Poly, June 1806, 153–157 [Theatrical Recorder].

201 “Character of the Principal European Languages,” E, 17 October 1807, 500.

202 “Genius and Poetry,” E, 25 July 1807, 359.

203 E, 24 January 1807, 42.

204 E, new series (15 October 1808), i. 620. See George Bancroft’s later accusation that Kotzebue substituted for “the springs of pure and uncorrupted feeling . . . the strange, the unexpected, the extravagant” and imitated “humanity most abominably.” (Review of Taylor’s Historic Survey of German Poetry, III, in American Quarterly Review [September 1831], X. 194–210.)

205 O, 13 and 20 May 1809, 290, 291, 293, 307, 392. The blasphemous grouping went on until a Boston review of The Stranger as “a piece of snivelling vice cringing to affected virtue” could say its style “is a libel on the names of such men as Goethe and Schiller, to call German.” (Dramatic Mirror, 12 February 1829) Original Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement in Anti-Jacobin; or, Weekly Examiner, 4 June 1798, 236–239; ii June 1798, 242–246. (British concern with error re “American War” in Cabal and Love, 237.) Rovers reprinted in Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, ed. L. Rice-Oxley (Oxford, 1924), xxx.

206 Alexander Flohr in Die Satire, The Rovers; or, The Double Arrangement, Weimar, 1907 (Diss. Greifswald) indicates the specific German targets for the British attacks.

207 “George Saintsbury: Gourmet and Glutton” in Classics and Commercials (New York, 1951), 369–370.

208 Buckingham, Personal Memoirs, ii. 51–52 (note). Account of starting Ordeal with Benjamin Pollard, 62–63.

209 W. D. Howells, Criticism and Fiction (New York, 1892), 86–87.

210 First appeared under Paine’s Macklin signature in BG, 8 December 1803 (Works, 400). See also “The Rights of the Players” in Buckingham’s Comet, 7 December 1811, 91: “What right has he whose imagination in its most daring flights never soared above the shelf which contains the ledger and waste book, to insult and put to confusion the player. . . .”

211 See Joseph N. Ireland, Life of Thomas Abthorpe Cooper (New York, 1888) and Fennell, Apology for the Life of James Fennell (Philadelphia, 1814).

212 BT, 12 December 1807, i.

213 BT, 23 January 1808, 27 (Works, 353ff.).

214 R. Cooper’s visit, BG, 7 March, 8, 15, 25 April 1805.

215 BT, 30 January 1808, 30–31 (Works, 357ff.).

216 Ibid.

217 BT, 6 February 1808, 35 (Works, 366ft.).

218 Cooper and Fennell as Othello, BT, 27 February 1808, 47 (Works, 377ff.).

219 Cooper and Fennell as Iago, BT, 5 March 1808, 51 (Works, 384ff.).

220 BT, 13 February 1808, 39 (Works, 373).

221 BT, 20 February 1808, 43.

222 Article by “E. S. O.” in BT, 13 February 1808, 26.

223 BT, 5 March 1808, 51 (Works, 386–387).

224 Irving’s criticism, “Theatricks” by William Wizard, Esq., reprinted in two issues of BT, 14 and 21 May 1808, 90, 94, 95.

225 BT, 6 February 1808, 35.

226 BG, 8 April 1802.

227 BT, 6 February 1808, 35.

228 BT, 13 February 1808, 39 (Works, 37off.).

229 E, new series, 16 April 1808, i. 310–311.

230 BT, 6 February 1808, 35.

231 Ms. letter in MHS, Boston, 7 December 1811.

232 Port Folio, 7 November 1807, 299. See also lengthy posthumous review of Paine’s poetry in same journal, series 4 (1813), i. 441–457.

233 BG, 9 February 1809 and 23 March 1809. O, 29 April 1809.

234 A decade ago Douglas was revived at the Eaglet Theater in Sacramento (20, 21, and 29 October 1949).

235 Monthly Anthology and Boston Review (February 1810), viii. 91 and (February 1808), V. 97–98.

236 BG, 8 January 1810. Sixth performance given 23 February 1810.

237 Ibid.

238 Bioren wrote for The Whim, ed. Fennell and Thomas Waterman (Philadelphia, May 1814), i. 13.

239 Works, 214ff.

240 Dramatic Mirror, 12 February 1829.

241 BG, 8 November and 13 December 1810.

242 The Poor Lodger (Boston, 1811), Act V, scene i, 80.

243 Ibid., 90.

244 American Captive performed in Boston, ii December 1811. For Paine’s connection with it see CC, 7 December 1811. Play reviewed in Comet, 14 December 1811, 100–101. In 1808 Paine had assisted another native playwright, John D. Turnbull, with The Wood Daemon; or, The Clock has Struck!, Boston, 1808 (first performance, 9 May 1808).

245 BG, 19 April 1810. For posthumous renditions of Paine’s songs see The New England Palladium, 22 April 1814.

246 BG, 4 February 1811.

247 BG, 3, 14, 24 January and 7 February 1811.

248 William Dunlap, Memoirs of George Frederick Cooke (London, 1813), ii, 208–211.

249 BG, 14 October 1811.

250 Comet, 26 October 1811, 14, 16; 14 December 1811, 100.

251 “The evning [sic] at ¼ past 8 o’clock my Son Rob. T. Paine passed this after a short illness at my house.” Ms. Diary of Robert Treat Paine from 1785 on (MHS).

252 BG, 14 and 18 November 1811 and CC, 16 November 1811

253 Ms. letter from Boston, 7 December 1811 (MHS).

254 Buckingham in Newspaper Reminiscences, ii. 274, says Prentiss was “at sundry times a correspondent of . . . (the) Boston Gazette.” For Prentiss’ own work see Haven; or, The Merited Gallows, in A Collection of Fugitive Essays in Prose and Verse (Leominster, Mass., 1797). (Houghton Library.)

255 Ms. letter from Boston, 23 November 1811 (MHS).

256 Comet, 7 December 1811, 94–95, reported that the theater was “handsomely filled” for Boston’s “favorite poet,” that “every lover of native genius” mourned his passing to “his narrow house.” Paine had worked over original prologue, intending to add sketches of the principal English dramatists.

257 William Dean Howells, The Vacation of the Kelwyns, an Idyl of the Middle Eighteen-Seventies (New York, 1920), 114–116.

258 Walter Camp, incidentally, was one of its alumni.

259 Curator of Printing and Graphic Arts in the College Library.

260 Tolstoy, it would seem, is leaner in 1957 than in The Farnsworth Room in 1921.

261 Iveagh MSS. O.35, printed in Appendix 7. MSS. O.4 is an itemized statement of solicitor’s costs between Michelmas term 1708, when the suit was begun and Hilary 1715. The amount was £192 - 6 - 4, of which about half was allowed by the court out of the Hopkins estate, and the other half paid by the Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel. Matthew Evans receipted the bill on 30 March 1715.

262 The Maharajah Duleep Singh, ex-ruler of the Punjab, settled at Elveden in 1863, and became lord of the manor of Eriswell by purchasing the Company’s estate in 1869. No other Company records seem to have been handed over, apart from a few estate documents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

263 Elveden is owned by the Earl of Iveagh, K.G., C.B., C.M.G., through whose courtesy these documents have been consulted. It is a pleasure to acknowledge this kindness, and the excellent facilities provided by Mr. James Speed. I owe my introduction to the records to Mrs. Alan Rowe, The Elms, Ixworth, Suffolk, who deserves the credit for discovering them.

264 An abstract of Sir Henry’s will was printed in New England Historical and Genealogical Register (Boston, 1884), V. 38, 313–316, together with those of his nephews, Henry and Edward Hopkins.

265 A complete copy of Henry Hopkins’ will is in Iveagh MSS. O. i. He left “all that household stuff he has of mine in Clare Hall” to one fellow, and memorial rings to a number of others.

266 See footnote 9.

267 John Winthrop, The History of New England, James Savage, ed. (Boston, 1853), ii. 266. For Governor Hopkins, see D.N.B., D.A.B., J. H. Trumbull, Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (Hartford, 1850–1890), and Charles P. Bowditch, An Account of the Trust administered by the Trustees of the Charity of Edward Hopkins (privately printed, 1889). E. Oviatt is surely mistaken in supposing that it was the death of his brother Henry, Warden of the Fleet, that took Edward home in 1652; The Beginnings of Yale (New Haven, 1916), 82. Judging from the date at which his will was proved, Henry was still living.

268 This is inferred from a statement in the later evidence that the income was about £50 a year; the price of land was usually based on a twenty-year purchase.

269 These statements are based on a study of the accounts of Thomas Cullum (1587–1664), draper, sheriff of London, and baronet. Starting with less than £300 at the end of his apprenticeship in 1616, he was worth about £50,000 in the year of Hopkins’ death, 1657. His cousin, Nicholas Crisp, an altogether bigger operator, who was caught on the losing side of the Civil Wars, put his losses at £200,000 A. Simpson, “Thomas Cullum, Draper,” Economic History Review, second series, xi. No. 1, 1958.

270 This form of words is adopted from the Information filed in Chancery by the Corporation for the Propagation of the Gospel (Iveagh MSS. O.5). It is the same as appears in the abstract of the will cited note 4, above. For a copy of the will in the possession of the trustees, see Bowditch, op. cit., 52–56.

271 For the Yale-Eaton relationships, see E. Oviatt, op. cit., 18–19.

272 Iveagh MSS. O.5; see note i, above.

273 For further details, see E. Oviatt, op. cit., 84–85; J. H. Trumbull, op. cit., i. 341, 374, 578; S. E. Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), ii. 362; Harvard College Records (Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xv, xvi [1925]), i. 199, 215.

274 These facts are summarized in the Information (Iveagh MSS. O.5) and the subsequent proceedings of the court.

275 Ibid.

276 Iveagh MSS. O.13.

277 See Appendix 4.

278 Everard Exton made certain admissions in his answer to the bill which caused the Corporation to wonder if the legacy from the New England estate had ever been discharged. They took counsel’s opinion and were advised that they could sue for a discovery of what happened to the New England estate through the Attorney General there (Statement of the Case, with Mr. How’s opinion, 14 March 1708/9; Iveagh MSS. O.3).

279 This is one interpretation which may be placed on the remark in his letter (see Appendix 7). On the other hand, he may only be claiming credit for the success of the action, which depended in part on his use of the proceedings in the Exchequer case. Iveagh MSS. O.14, O.17.

280 Iveagh MSS. O.13. Exton said, among other things, that the Fitches had insisted the £500 was theirs, because the trustees originally appointed by Edward Hopkins were all dead and nobody had come forward to claim the legacy. For his own part, he said he had advanced the Fitches more than they would probably get under the final settlement, and therefore never felt able to do anything about the legacy.

281 Joint and Several Answers of Patience Fitch, widow, Phillippa Coleman and Judith Page, Iveagh MSS. O.18. See also O.19, O.20.

282 Iveagh MSS. O.7.

283 See Appendix 2.

284 Recorded in the statement of costs, Iveagh MSS. O.4.

285 See Appendix.

286 On ii December 1710 Matthew Evans applied for permission to use the Exchequer proceedings (Fitch v. Exton) as a means to discover what assets of Edward Hopkins came into the hands of Henry Dally, on the grounds that the inventory of Hopkins’ estate had perished in the fire.

287 Decree of 7 March 1710/11. Iveagh MSS. O.13.

288 Harvard College Records, op. cit., ii. 836–837.

289 Ibid.

290 Ibid., I. 388

291 Henry Newman’s petition, Iveagh MSS. O.15.

292 See Appendices 3 and 4.

293 Harvard College Records, op. cit., i. 398.

294 I.e., the document printed in Appendix 6, below; see Bowditch, op. cit., 12–14.

295 S. E. Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 90.

296 See Appendix 6.

297 S. E. Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 56.

298 See Appendix 7.

299 See Appendix 8.

300 An earlier draft continued at this point with the following sentence, which was later struck out: “and that the said Trustees be Accountable to the General Assembly of the said Province for the management of their said Trust, when they shall be thereto required.” Iveagh MSS. O.28, endorsed, “A copee of Agreement between Mr. Newman and Mr. Gunston for the settlement of Mr. Hopkins Charity.”

301 The earlier draft (see note 4, above) originally read: “to commence the 1st day of May after opening their Commission.” This was queried as follows: “Qu: What is meant by Commission above mentioned? Is it intended that the Trustees be appointed by Commission under the Great Seal and thereby incorporated? Or that they be only named Trustees by my Lord Keepers Decree or order in Chancery? If the last, then it should be expressed to the following effect viz:—that Samuel Sewall Esquire be Treasurer for the first year to commence from the first day of May after the first Meeting of the said Trustees pursuant to my Lord Keepers Decree or order.”

302 The object of this petition, made to the Court of Chancery on 15 September 1713, was to prevent losses; “the said money hath laine dead in the Master’s hands which is a Losse to the said School and Colledge and the Exchange between London and New England is likely to fall very considerably in a short time which will be a further Lessening the said Charity.” However, it was 22 December 1714. before the court order was obtained. Iveagh MSS. O.36; Bowditch, op. cit., 14–15.

303 Mr. Howlett had used an English grace at the dinner on 21 November 1957.

304 Mr. Foote happily returned for the dinner on 21 November 1958, although in the following years he was unable to be present.

305 Printed in [L. H. Butterfield et al., ed.] Walter Muir Whitehill, A Record Compiled by His Friends (Minot, Massachusetts: privately printed, 13 September 1958), 3–6.

306 Printed in The Review of Politics, xxi (1959), 646–656.

307 Published in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, lxxv (1963), 27–38.

308 Letter from Barrell to Major John Webb, 3 February 1794, Letter Book, 105. Copies of this and many other letters referred to in this article are in a letter book (hereafter cited as L.B.) by Joseph Barrell, covering the years 1792 to 1797, at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

309 Letter at Massachusetts Historical Society.

310 See The Memorial History of Boston, ed. Justin Winsor (Boston, 1883), iv. 208; and Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., Second Series, vii (May, 1892), 416–421.

311 Copy, in the handwriting of John Hoskins, of letter from Barrell to Captain Gray of the Columbia at Macao, Mass. Hist. Soc.

312 The medals were struck at the time of the departure of the vessels, since Dr. William Bentley of Salem describes them in his diary on 30 September 1787. See William Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley, D.D. (Salem, 1905–1914), i. 76. See also Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., i (December, 1791), 25, 26.

313 Revere papers, Mass. Hist. Soc.

314 Bentley, Diary, i. 264. In 1793, Barrell ordered “Also one of the largest globes you can get with partitions for fish, birds, and mice,” from John Horshand & Co. (L.B., 61). He mentioned the globe sent before was handsome, but had a crack. A globe of this sort can be seen at the Salem Towne House at Old Sturbridge Village.

315 See Samuel Adams Drake, Historic Mansions and Highways Around Boston (Boston, 1904.), 172.

316 Bentley, Diary, i, 395.

317 This description of the house is drawn largely from Rev. Edward G. Porter, “Demolition of the McLean Asylum at Somerville,” Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., Second Series, x (April, 1896), 548–552. Porter viewed the building at the time of its demolition. The best illustrated article on the house is Frank C. Brown, “The Joseph Barrell Estate, Somerville, Massachusetts: Charles Bulfinch’s First Country House,” Old-Time New England, xxxviii (January, 1948), 52–62.

318 The stairway was saved after the house was torn down in 1896 or 1897. It was then incorporated in a house built for Mr. Francis Shaw in Wayland. This house, too, was taken down in 1942 and the stairway was given to the Somerville Historical Society, where it has recently been re-erected.

319 20 December 1792, L.B., 4.

320 25 May 1793, L.B., 54, 55.

321 L.B., 13.

322 Barrell to Thomas Martin, 13 February 1793, L.B., 25.

323 10 March 1793, L.B., 31.

324 21 March 1793, L.B., 39.

325 26 March 1793, L.B., 40.

326 Charles A. Place, Charles Bulfinch, Architect and Citizen (Boston, 1925), 148.

327 31 March 1793, L.B., 44, 45.

328 17 May 1793, L.B., 45.

329 28 May 1793, L.B., 55, 56.

330 9 December 1794, L.B., 154.

331 18 June 1793, L.B., 60.

332 Barrell to Shaler and Hall, 1 July 1793, L.B., 64.

333 18 May 1794, L.B., 115.

334 Bentley, Diary, ii. 28.

335 Barrell to Thomas Dickson, 4 November 1793, L.B., 78.

336 Barrell to Daniel McCormick, 26 February 1794, L.B., 110.

337 Barrell to Benjamin Joy, 2 December 1794, L.B., 148.

338 L.B., 158.

339 McIntire papers, F.P. 5. McIntire made sketches of details of the Barrell house and the Thomas Russell house, both in Charlestown, and both designed by Bulfinch.

340 6 February 1795, L.B., 163. Barrell had tried to order suitable stones in 1793 from New York, but could not get what he wanted (L.B., 78).

341 29 October 1793, L.B., 76.

342 1 March 1795, L.B., 172.

343 9 November 1795, L.B., 213.

344 21 December 1795, L.B., 225.

345 25 August 1793, L.B., 67.

346 See Thomas Bellows Wyman, The Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown (Boston, 1879), 60, 61.

347 Dennie to Jeremiah Mason, 6 August 1797, reprinted in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., xvii (March, 1880), 363. Hannah married Benjamin Joy the following year.

348 29 January 1796, L.B., 238.

349 Barrell to John Hoskins, 21 December 1795, L.B., 225.

350 15 April 1795, L.B., 189.

351 29 January 1796, L.B., 238.

352 1 March 1795, L.B., 172.

353 See Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., i (January, 1799), 124; and ibid., i (December, 1834), 482n.

354 Revere papers, Mass. Hist. Soc.

355 2 January 1797, L.B., 337.

356 15 November 1793, L.B., 84.

357 Barrell to Colburn Barrell, L.B., 233.

358 Quoted in Gardens of Colony and State, ed. Alice G. B. Lockwood (New York, 1931), i. 34.

359 30 July 1796, L.B., 291.

360 3 August 1793, L.B., 71.

361 Dwarf peaches, letter to John Horshand & Co., London, June, 1793, L.B., 61. Espaliered peaches, letter to Nathaniel Barrell, 29 September 1793, L.B., 73.

362 25 August 1793, L.B., 67.

363 5 December 1794, L.B., 150.

364 A copy at Winterthur bears the Revere bookplate of John Gardiner of Gardiner’s Island.

365 19 December 1793, L.B., 93.

366 3 June 1794, L.B., 122.

367 Barrell to Nathaniel Barrell, 29 October 1793, L.B., 76; and Barrell to Thomas Dickson, London, 28 May 1793, L.B., 55. At one time, Pleasant Hill was also called Poplar Grove.

368 Barrell to J. M. Pintard, 13 March 1795, L.B., 179.

369 Windsor, Boston, iv. 622.

370 Barrell to Thomas Dickson & Co., 28 June 1793, L.B., 63.

371 For information on the connection between Pleasant Hill and the Derby Mansion, see Fiske Kimball, Mr. Samuel McIntire, The Architect of Salem (Portland, 1940). Plans and sketches of Pleasant Hill are shown in figs. 122, 123, and 128. See also Fiske Kimball, “The Elias Hasket Derby Mansion in Salem,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, lx (October, 1924), 273–292.

372 His illness was of a mental nature. On 29 August 1796 (L.B., 298), he wrote, “Any seeming inattention in me you will please to impute to the right cause, a distress of the mind, which for the moment, makes everything on earth appear of little value.”

373 Porter, 549, 550.

374 See Charles, Henry F., George and Samuel B. Barrell, “Statement of Facts Relative to the Conduct of Mr. Benj. Joy, Executor of the Last Will and Testament of Joseph Barrell” (Boston, 1816); and Benjamin Joy, “A True Statement of Facts in Reply to a Pamphlet lately published by C., H. F., G., and S. B. Barrell” (Boston, 1816). Both at Mass. Hist Soc. Joy stated that Pleasant Hill had cost $48,000, and that Barrell was indebted to him for $92,000 resulting from poor land speculations.

375 Bentley, Diary, iii. 155.

376 See Place, 222, 223. Also see N. I. Bowditch, A History of the Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, 1851), 27.

377 The same view, engraved by George Girdler Smith from a painting of Hammit Williams which was based on a sketch done by Edward Seager, is shown in Bowditch, opposite p. 376. A view showing the McLean Asylum in the background and the Bulfinch building of the Massachusetts General Hospital in the foreground, engraved by James W. Watts, is shown on the frontispiece of Bowditch. Both views are reproduced in MGH-Massachusetts General Hospital–150th Anniversary, Boston Herald (9 April 1961), 13 and 4 respectively (special section).

378 Drake, 178.

379 Barrell to Colburn Barrell, 1 December 1794, L.B., 148.

380 Composition ornaments, see letter of 18 June 1795, L.B., 193.

381 The dinner, cooked by the Society’s caretaker, Mrs. Joseph Greene, consisted of a beef consommé, coquille St. Jacques, roast squab, and meringue glacé, with Chablis Grand Cru Moutonne 1955 and Remy Chambolle Musigny 1953 to accompany it. If there is a problem in the cost of the dinners, it is the number of members who enjoy coming to eat them, rather than “the wine and food you choose,” “you” referring presumably to the Dinner Committee, of which the Editor is Chairman.

382 Published as Independent Historical Societies An enquiry into their research and publication functions and their financial future (Boston: Boston Athenæum, distributed by Harvard University Press, 1962), xviii + 593 pages.

383 Mr. McCorison has published related material in “The Bayley-Hazen Military Road,” Vermont History, xxvii (June, 1959), 57–68, and “Colonial Defense of the Upper Connecticut Valley,” Vermont History, xxx (January, 1962), 50–62.

384 According to its By-laws, the museum was established, “For literary, educational and benevolent purposes, chiefly in interpreting and communicating the history of the wool textile industry in America, in collecting, preserving and exhibiting objects of historical, antiquarian, artistic or technological interest or value, in publishing, acquiring and maintaining books, records and other writings on any subject or subjects having any such interest, in maintaining archives and reference libraries, and in acquiring, maintaining, exhibiting and publishing pictures, photographs, drawings and models of any and all kinds.”

385 J. Leander Bishop, A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 (Philadelphia, 1864), i. 310.

386 Bishop, i. 305.

387 The weaver William Rix was working in Boston by 1640 and evidence indicates that the trade was practiced early in the establishment of other settlements. Arthur H. Cole, The American Wool Manufacture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926), i. 14.

388 Abiel Abbot, History of Andover from its Settlement to 1829 (Andover, 1829), 50.

389 Cole, i. viii; 48 ff.

390 Cole, i. 16.

391 As quoted in William R. Bagnall, The Textile Industries of the United States (Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1893), 57.

392 A typical gathering was the one held in Rowley, Massachusetts, in 1769. “A number of thirty-three respectable ladies of this town met about sunrise, with their wheels, to spend the day at the house of the Rev’d Jedediah Jewell, in the laudable design of a spinning match. At an hour before sunset, the ladies then appearing neatly dressed, principally in homespun, a polite and generous repast of American production was set for their entertainment, after which, being present many spectators of both sexes, Mr. Jewett (sic) delivered a suitable and instructive discourse from Rom. xii, 211: ‘Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord.’” Bagnall, 58.

393 Bagnall, 37.

394 Bagnall, 70.

395 Bagnall, 260.

396 Bagnall, 150.

397 American Watchman (Wilmington, Delaware), 12 August 1812.

398 Norman Ware, The Industrial Worker, 1840–1860 (Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1959), xiv.

399 Thomas C. Cochran and William Miller, The Age of Enterprise (New York, 1961), 21.

400 John R. Commons, A Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1910), vii. 50–51.

401 Victor S. Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States (New York, 1949), i. 529.

402 There were more indentures, but the rest have disappeared. At present there is only one between 1734 and 1739. Between 21 April 1756, and 1 November 1773, there were 483 children bound out, but only 390 indentures are extant. Thus, there may have been as many as 25 per cent more than the 1,100 apprentices, 1734–1805. But between 2 April 1785, and early January, 1790, the lists and indentures correspond exactly in numbers. Hence, all that can be said for sure is that there were at least 93 more children bound out than there are indentures for the whole period. Compare the indentures abstracted below with the fragmentary lists in “Admissions, 1760–74,” Records of the Boston Overseers of the Poor, Massachusetts Historical Society. Here after cited as Overseers Records.

403 The copy of Thomas’s indenture abstracted below carries only the signatures of Fowle, two overseers, and two justices. Thomas’s personal copy, now at the American Antiquarian Society, has the signatures of eight overseers and two justices.

404 See Clifford K. Shipton, Isaiah Thomas, Printer, Patriot, and Philanthropist, 1749–1831 (Rochester, 1948). For Peter Thomas’s offices, see Robert Francis Seybolt, The Town Officials of Colonial Boston, 1634–1775 (Cambridge, Mass., 1939), 124, 149, 156, 182. Mr. Marcus McCorison, librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, kindly allowed me to consult the typescript of the recently located “Diary” of Isaiah Thomas, soon to be published. Thomas recorded that his grandfather had also been an Overseer of the Poor.

405 Lawrence W. Towner, “A Good Master Well Served, A Social History of Servitude in Massachusetts, 1620–1750,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1955, appendix J.

406 Even in the case of slavery, the English were not without recent experience. English ships had dabbled in the slave trade, and Paul Baynes, who died in 1619, spoke familiarly of Blackmoor slaves. See his An Entire Commentary Upon . . . Ephesians . . . (London, 1643), 694.

407 Towner, “A Good Master,” Ch. I.

408 Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family . . . (Boston, 1956), Chs. IV–V.

409 For representative legislation, see Records of the Governor and Company of . . . Massachusetts Bay . . . , ed., Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, 5 vols. in 6 (Boston, 1853–1854), (1633), 109, (1636), 186; ii (1646), 180. Hereafter cited as Mass. Recs. See also The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts . . . , ed. Max Farrand (Cambridge, Mass., 1929, p. 11).

410 Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County Massachusetts, ed. George Francis Dow, 8 vols. (Salem, 1911–1921), i–v, passim. For the particular instances cited see: 1. 25, 68, 82–83, 158, 209; ii. 60. For the order to bind out Guppy’s children see the Essex Institute Historical Collections, ix (1869), 151.

411 Mass. Recs., iv. part ii, 395–396.

412 File 49 (1668), Files of the Middlesex County Court (Middlesex County Court House, Cambridge, Mass.).

413 Record Commissioners of the Town of Boston, Reports, 39 vols. (Boston, 1881–1909), vii. 67. Hereafter cited as Boston Records.

414 Records of the Hampshire County Court, i (1680), 36, Hampshire County Court House, Northampton, Massachusetts.

415 Ibid.

416 Records of the Suffolk County Court, 1671–1680, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xxix–xxx (1933); ii (1676), 751. Hereafter cited as Suffolk County Court.

417 Ibid., i (1674), 442.

418 Ibid., i (1672), 184, (1673), 258; ii (1677), 870–871; Records of the Middlesex County Court, iii (1679), 290; case of Mary Henly, 1691/92, ibid., vols. 1689–1699, n.p.

419 Suffolk County Court, ii (1675), 646–647.

420 Mass. Recs., v. 240–241. I have followed the wording of this law as reproduced in The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts . . . , ed. William H. Whitmore (Boston, 1887), 270.

421 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), passim.

422 Criminals, particularly thieves, and a few poor debtors were exceptions. See Towner, “A Good Master,” Ch. IV. In 1756 a law was enacted, for three years, allowing the overseers or selectmen of a town to bind out a poor adult for one year, his wages to be used to support his family. In 1759, a law was enacted for five years allowing the mother of a bastard child to be indentured for five years if her charges had been born by the town or if her child became a charge to the town before it was five years of age. Neither law was re-enacted. Acts and Resolves . . . of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay . . . , 21 vols. (Boston, 1869–1922), iii. 926–928; iv. 178–179. Hereafter cited as Acts and Resolves.

423 Acts and Resolves, i. 67.

424 Ibid., i. 538–539, 654–655; II. 242. These acts were usually temporary, renewed from time to time, but not always soon enough to avoid lapsing.

425 Boston Records, viii. passim; Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness . . . (New York, 1938), 393–394; Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Cambridge, Mass., 1873–), vi. 448. Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 3rd Ser., i (1825), 152.

426 Acts and Resolves, ii, 756–758. Except for a law in 1771, which required that boys be taught reading, writing, and ciphering, no significant change was made in this law during the colonial period. In 1778 and 1794 the state of Massachusetts empowered all towns to appoint overseers of the poor and the overseers to bind out the children of the poor as apprentices or servants. The educational provisions were the same as revised in 1771. Parents who were assessed town or district taxes were not liable to having their children bound. Ibid., v. 161–162; The General Laws of Massachusetts from the Adoption of the Constitution to February, 1822, ed., Theron Metcalf, 2 vols. (Boston, 1823), i. 438–449.

427 This and the following paragraphs concerning the poor apprentices are based on the the table of indentures below.

428 See Ann Cromartie (1769) and Ann Wilkinson (1784), below.

429 In some cases, where they had been left off, they were inserted afterwards.

430 See the Miscellaneous Files (by date) of the Overseers of the Poor, Department of Public Welfare, Boston, Massachusetts.

431 “Admissions, 1768–1774,” Overseers Records.

432 This estimate is based on a random sampling of the names of four hundred apprentices checked against Elsdon C. Smith, Dictionary of American Family Names (New York, 1956). In 1790, it may be pointed out, Massachusetts’ population was composed roughly of the following linguistic and national stocks: English, 82 per cent; Scotch, 4.4 per cent; Ulster Irish, 1.6 per cent; Irish, 1.3 per cent; German, .3 per cent; Dutch, .2 per cent; and French, .8 per cent. See “Report of the Committee on Linguistic and National Stocks in the Population of the United States,” American Historical Association, Annual Report for 1931 (Washington, D. C., 1932), i. 124.

433 The Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681–1724, ed., Worthington C. Ford, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 7th Ser., vii–viii (Boston, 1911–1912), i. 226 n. Report of Committee of Repairs, 25 September 1819, “Register of Letters, etc., 1817–1834,” 2, Overseers Records.

434 Completed copies of this form are scattered throughout the volumes in which the indentures, below, are bound. Boston Indentures, 1734–1805, 6 vols., City Clerk’s office, City Hall, Boston.

435 Ibid., iv. 143.

436 Ibid., iv. 63.

437 John Ruggles to Overseers, n.d., ibid., iv. 103.

438 Ibid., v. 22.

439 William Williams to Royall Tyler, 23 January 1770, ibid., iv. 15.

440 The apprentice was Anthony Haswell (1771), below. For Thomas, see note 3 on page 418 above.

441 Overseers of the Poor of Canton, Massachusetts, to Overseers of Boston, 25 June 1805, “Papers, 1733–1854,” Overseers Records.

442 Isaiah Thomas claimed that his master did not instruct him in reading or writing. In fact, he claimed that Fowle was unable to spell or punctuate. See Thomas’s “Diary,” American Antiquarian Society. Between 1786 and 1792, most girl apprentices were to be taught reading, writing, and ciphering.

443 Carl Bridenbaugh, The Colonial Craftsman (New York and London, 1950), 135–137.

444 “The Boston Directory . . . ,” (1796), Boston Records, x. 221–296.

445 Ibid., x. 263, 274, 267.

446 Only one apprentice was assured land in his indentures. Francis Dizer (7/22/66), who was apprenticed to both husbandry and surveying, was promised twenty acres of unimproved land and, if he behaved himself, a set of surveying instruments. Two boys were promised cattle: Richard Caswell (8/3/48), a yoke of oxen or £40 O.T., and Barzallai Eddy (10/10/98), two three-year-old oxen and a heifer of the same age.

447 W. Graham Millar, “The Poor Apprentices of Boston; Indentures of Poor Children Bound Out by the Overseers of the Poor of Boston, 1734–1776 . . . ,” M.A. Thesis, College of William and Mary, 1958.