March Meeting, 1963
A SPECIAL Meeting of the Society was held at its House, No. 87 Mount Vernon Street, Boston, on Thursday, 21 March 1963, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the President, Mr. Clifford Kenyon Shipton, in the chair.
The minutes of the Stated Meeting in February were read and approved.
The Corresponding Secretary reported the receipt of letters from Messrs. Sinclair Hamilton Hitchings, J. Bruce Sinclair, and Charles Van Ravenswaay accepting election to Resident Membership.
Mr. Robert Arnold Feer of Wellesley and Mr. Lawrence Kinvin Wroth of Cambridge were elected to Resident Membership. Professor David Beers Quinn of Liverpool was elected to Corresponding Membership. Mr. James Alexander Williamson of Chichester, Sussex, a Corresponding Member since 1937, was transferred to Honorary Membership in the Society.
Mr. Benjamin Woods Labaree read a paper on the Boston Tea Party, presenting material that has subsequently been incorporated in his book, The Boston Tea Party (New York, 1964).
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to those available in The Works, see Ruth Thorndike Clough, “A Study of the Life and Works of Robert Treat Paine, Jr.,” unpublished University of Maine M.A. thesis, 1930.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.