'^>^ -^ >'^.■^ Ta'N,/ •V'.^^ '>^ ^^a; CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY .M^' .miCs ^A^' y •Maa' > )WAA.^^ ■a^/f^m^ 1 .w- . '■ \^v:r. v/r>.^^^ .' .S^>/^M, '%:fe^^'!'*W ^HtNTCOINU-S.A. /..^AO 1K,^A/M //-A/^ -.^ fif;;s:.Pcorw ■^r\ ' '//^ lUflffiHdSWOlO^nff Cornetl University Library F 73.3.W78 1880 The memorial history of Boston, including 3 1924 006 056 984 r ¥2 Cornell University Library The original of this bool< is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924006056984 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON, Which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children. ... He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children ; that the generation to come might know them. — Psalm Ixxviii. Write this for a Memorial in a book. — Exodus xvii. 14, KEY TO LETTERS &FIGURES 0>f THE REVERSE. '^^ REFERENCES. o» OF HaRVAKD uNlVERSTTV IN FOUR VOLUMES. Vol. I. THE EARLY AND COLONIAL PERIODS. Issued under the business superintendence of the profecior, Clarence F. Jewett. BOSTON: ,auunH„„„,^^^ TICKNOR AND COMPANY, ^J vMlMV./'S an STreniMit Street. • , y. ' ,S'' \ ■'.V, ■ Copyright 1880, By James R. Osgood & Co. All Rights Reserved. John Wilson and Son, CAMr,RiUGE, U.S.A. PREFACE. nPHE scheme of this History originated with Mr. Clarence F. Jewett, who, towards the end of December, iSy'g, entrusted the further development of the plan to the Editor. On the third of January following, about thirty gentlemen met, upon invitation, to give countenance to the undertaking, and at this meeting a Committee was appointed to advise with the Editor during the progress of the work. This Committee consisted of the Rev. Edward E. Hale, D.D., Samuel A. Green, M.D., and Charles Deane, LL.D. The Editor desires to return thanks to them for their counsel in assigning the chapters to writers, and for other assistance ; and to Dr. Deane particularly for his suggestions during the printing. Since Messrs. James R. Osgood & Co. succeeded to the rights of Mr. Jewett as publisher, the latter gentleman has continued to exercise a supervision over the business management. The History is cast on a novel plan, — not so much in being a work of co-operation, but because, so far as could be, the several themes, as sections of one homogeneous whole, have been treated by those who have some particular association and, it may be, long acquaintance with the subject. In the diversity of authors there will of course be variety of opinions, and it has not been thought ill-judged, considering the different points of view assumed by the various writers, that the same events should be interpreted VI PREFACE. sometimes in varying, and perhaps opposite, ways. The chapters may thus make good the poet's description, — " Distinct as the billows, yet one as the sea," — and may not be the worse for each offering a reflection, according to its turn to the light, without marring the unity of the general expanse. The Editor has endeavored to prevent any unnecessary repetitions, and to provide against serious omissions. of what might naturally be expected in a history of its kind. He has allowed sometimes various spellings of proper names to stand, rather than abridge the writers' preferences, in cases where the practice is not uniform. Such annotations as he has furnished upon the texts of others have, perhaps, served to give coherency to the plan, and they have in all cases been made distinctly apparent. For the selection of the illustrations, which, with a very few exceptions, are from new blocks and plates, Mr. Jewett and the Editor are mainly responsible. Special acknowledgments for assistance in this and in other ways are made in foot-notes throughout the work. JUSTIN WINSOR. Cambridge, Harvard University Library, September, 1880. CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. Frontispiece. Boston, old and new, a topographical map . . . Facing titlepage PREFACE. The Editor to the Reader v INTRODUCTION. The Sources of Boston's History. The Editor xiii HISTORICAL POEM. The King's Missive, i66i. John G. Whittier. xxv Illustrations: Boston Town-house, Endicott and Shattuck, xxvii; the Jail Delivery, xxviii ; the Quakers on the Common, xxix : the Great Windmill on Snow Hill, XXX ; tail-piece, xxxii; Statue of John Winthrop, heliotype, xxxii. ^refjtstortc Perioir anli Natural llistorg. • CHAPTER I. The Geology of Boston and its Environs. Nathaniel Southgate Shaler . i CHAPTER II. The Fauna of Eastern Massachusetts. yoelA.Allen 9 Illustration : The Great Auk, 12. CHAPTER III. The Flora of Boston and its Vicinity. Asa Gray ........ 17 Illustration : The Great Elm on Boston Common, 21. vm THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. lEarlg l^tstors* CHAPTER I. Early EOeopean Voyagers in Massachusetts Bay. George Dexter ... 23 Illustration : A Norse Ship, 25. CHAPTER II. The earliest Maps of Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbor, yustin Winsor 37 Illustrations: Cosa'sMap (1500), 39; Stephanius'sMap (1570), 39; Fernando Columbus's Map (1527), 41 ; French Map (1542-43), 43; Lok's Map (1582), 44; Hood's Map (1592), 45; Wytfliet's Map (1597), 45; Champlain's Map (1612), 49; Lescarbot's Map (1612), heliotype, 49; John Smith's Map (1614), heliotype, 52; Portrait of Smith, heliotype, 52; Figurative Map (1614), 57; Jacobsz's Map (1621), 58; Governor Winthrop's Sketch of Coast, 61. Autographs: Champlain, 48; John Smith, 50; Isaac Allerton, 60. CHAPTER HI. The earliest Explorations and Settlement of Boston Harbor. Charles Francis Adams, Jr. 63 Illustrations : Squaw Rock, or Squantum Head, 64 ; Miles Standish, 65 ; Standish's Sword and a Matchlock, 66 ; Blackstone's Lot, 84. Autographs: Miles Standish, 63 ; Fhinehas Pratt, 70 ; Ferdinando Gorges, 72 ; Samuel Maverick, 78 ; Thomas Morton, 82. Wt^t .Colonial Sertoli* CHAPTER I. The Massachusetts Company. Samuel Foster Haven 87 Illustration : Seal of the Council for New England, 92. Autograph : Joshua Scottow, 97. CHAPTER II. Boston Founded. Robert C. Winthrop on Illustrations: The Winthrop Cup, heliotype, 114; Plan of Ten Hills (1636), heliotype, 1 14; Winthrop's Fleet, 115; " Trimountaine shall be called Bos- ton," heliotype, 1 16; St. Botolph's Church, 117; First page of the Town Records, heliotype, 122; Sir Harry Vane, 125; John Winthrop, 137; Letter of John Hampden in fac-simile, 140. Autographs: Matthew Cradock, 102; Margaret Winthrop, 104; John Winthrop, 114; John Wilson, 114; Isaac Johnson, 114; Thomas Dudley, 114; Hugh Peter, 124; John Haynes, 124; Harry Vane, 125; Sir Richard Saltonstall, 129; Richard Saltonstall, Jr., 129. CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER III. The Puritan Commonwealth. George E. Ellis 141 Illustrations: John Cotton, 157; Sir Richard Saltonstall, 183; Recantation o£ Wintock Christison, in fac-simile, 188. Autographs: John Cotton, 157; Samuel Gorton, 170; Roger Williams, 171 ; William Coddington, 174; ,William Aspinwall, 175; Edward Rainsford, 175; Thomas Savage, 175; John Underhill, 175; John Wheelwright, 176; John Clarke, 178; Mary Trask, 185; Margaret Smith, 185; William Dyer, 186; Nicholas Upsall, 187; Dorothy Upsall, 187; William Greenough, 187; Elizabeth Upsall, 187 ; Experience Upsall, 187 ; Susannah Upsall, 187. CHAPTER IV. The Rise of Dissenting Faiths. Henry W. Foote 191 Illustrations : Samuel Willard, heliotype, 208 ; Cotton Mather, heliotype, 208 ; Simon Bradstreet, 209 ; the first King's Chapel, 214. Autographs: John Davenport, 193; Thomas Thacher, 194; James Allen, 194, 206; Increase Mather, 194, 206; John Russell, 195; Robert Ratcliffe, 200; John Eliot, 206; Samuel Phillips, 206; Joshua Moodey, 206; Samuel Willard, 208. CHAPTER V. Boston and the Colony. Charles C. Smith •. ..217 Illustration : The Old Aspinwall House, 221. Autograph : Robert Keayne, 237. CHAPTER VI. The Indians of Eastern Massachuseits. George E. Ellis 241 Illustrations: Charles. Sprague's Ode (1830), in fac-simile, 246; Indian Deed of Boston, heliotype, 250; John Eliot, the Apostle, 261. Autographs: John Mason, 253; Israel Stoughton, 253; Lion Gardiner, 253; Miantonomo, 253 ; John Eliot, 263. CHAPTER VII. Boston and the Neighboring Jurisdictions. Charles C. Smith .... 275 Autographs: D'Aulnay, 285; Edward Gibbons, 286; La Tour, 288; William Hathorne, 292 ; Daniel Denison, 292 ; Commissioners of the United Colonies (Theophilus Eaton, John Endicott, John Haynes, Stephen Goodyear, Her- bert Pel ham, Edward Hopkins, John Brown, Timothy Hatherly), 300; another group ( Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Denison, Thomas Prence, James Cudworth, John Mason, John Tallcott, Theophilus Eaton, William Leete), 301. CHAPTER VIII. From Winthrop's Death to Philip's War. Thomas W. Higginson ... 303 . Illustration : John Endicott, 308. Autographs :. James Davids, 305 ; John Endicott, 307, 308 ; Richard Belling- hani, 307 ; Daniel Gookin, 307. VOL. L — B. THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. CHAPTER IX. Philip's War. Edward E. Hale 3" Illustrations: Secretary Rawson's Memorandum on Captain Richard, 313; John Leverett, 315; Thomas Savage, 318 ; a part of Hubbard's Map of New England (1677), 328. Autographs : Josiah Winslow, 311 ; Wussausman, 311 ; Richard Russell, 312; Thomas Danforth, 312; Daniel Denison, 313; Samuel Mosley, 313; Com- missioners of the United Colonies (Thomas Danforth, President, William Stoughton, Josiah Winslow, Thomas Hinckley, Jr„ John Winthrop, Wait Winthrop), 314; John Leverett, 316 ; Thomas Clark, 316; William Hudson, 316; Thomas Savage, 316; John Hull, 316; Daniel Henchman, 316, 317 ; James Oliver, 316; John Richards, 316; Isaac Johnson, 319; Thomas Wheeler, 320 ; Nathaniel Davenport, 323 ; Samuel Appleton, 323 ; William Turner, 325; Philip's mark, 325. CHAPTER X. The Struggle to maintain the Charter of King Charles the First, and ITS Final Loss in 1684. Charles Deane 329 Illustrations: The Massachusetts Charter, heliotype, 329; Oliver Cromwell, 348 ; Edward Rawson, 381, Autographs: Charles I., 331 ; John Hull, 354; Royal Commissioners (Richard NicoUs, Robert Carr, George Cartwright, Samuel Maverick), 358 ; Richard Bellingham, 360 ; Edmund Randolph, 364 ; Charles II„ 365 ; Simon Brad- street, 369 ; Thomas Danforth, 369 ; Joseph Dudley, 369 ; Daniel Gookin, Sen., 369; William Stoughton, 369; Elisha Hutchinson, 369; Elisha Cooke, 369; Samuel Nowell, 371 ; James II., 380; Edward Rawson, 381, CHAPTER XI. Charlestown in the Colonial Period. Henry H. Edes 383 Illustrations : Order, Feb, 10, 1634, establishing Board of Selectmen, heliotype, 388; Order, Oct, 13, 1634, relating to lands, &c., heliotype, 390; the Training- Field, 392 ; John Harvard's Monument, 395, Autographs: The Squaw-Sachem's mark, 383; John Greene, 384; Richard Sprague, 384; Thomas Walford's mark, 384; Thomas Graves, surveyor, 385; Walter Palmer, 386; Thomas Coitmore, 388; Thomas Lynde, 389; Samuel Adams, 389 ; Thomas Graves, the admiral, 389 ; Edward Burt, 389 j James Cary, 390; John Newell, 390; Abraham Palmer, 391 ; John Edes, 392; Edward Converse, 393; Robert Long, 393; Increase Nowell, 394; Zechariah Symmes, 394; Thomas Goold, 396; Thomas Shepard, 396; John Greene, 396 ; John Morley, 397 ; Ezekiel Cheever, 397 ; Samuel Phipps, 397 ; Lawrence Hammond, 399; Richard Sprague, the younger, 399; Robert Sedgwick, 399; Francis Norton, 399; Francis Willoughby, 399; Richard Russell, 399. CHAPTER Xn. RoxBURY IN THE COLONIAL PERIOD. Francis S. Drake 401 Illustrations: William Pynchon, 404; the Curtis Homestead, 406; John Eliot's Chair, 415; Certificate signed by John Eliot and Samuel Danforth, • 4i6l Autographs: William Pyncheon, 404; John Eliot, 414; Thomas Dudley, 417, CONTENTS. xi CHAPTER XIII. Dorchester in the Colonial Period. Samuel J. Barrows 423 Illustrations: Pierce House, 431; Minot House, 432; Blake House, 433; Tolraan House, 434 ; Bridgham House, 435 ; Richard Matlier, 437, AuTOGRAi'H.i : Roger Clap, 428 ; Humphrey Atherton, 428; James Parker, 428; Richard IVIather, 438 ; George Minot, 438 ; Henry Withington, 438, CHAPTER XIV. Brighton in the Colonial Period. Francis S. Drake . 439 ■ CHAPTER XV. Winnisimmet, Rumney Marsh, and Pullen Point in the Colonial Period. Mellen Chamberlain 445 Illustrations: Deane Winthrop House, 447; Yeaman House, 448; Floyd Mansion, 450. Autographs : Proprietors (Robert Keayne, John Cogan, John Newgate, James Penn, Samuel Cole, George Burden), 451. CHAPTER XVI. The Literature of the Colonial Period. Justin Winsor 453 Illustrations : Title of first book printed in Boston, 457 ; Memorandum of Richard Mather, 458 ; Stanza signed by Benjamin Tompson, 460. Autographs: Jose Glover, 455; Stephen Daye, 455; Henry Dunster, 456; Samuel Green, 456 ; Marmaduke Johnson, 456 ; John Foster, 456 ; Richard Mather, 458 ; Thomas Weld, 458 ; Anne Bradstreet, 461 ; Michael Wiggles- worth, 461 ; Thomas Shepard, 462 ; Edward Johnson, 463, CHAPTER XVII. The Indian Tongue and its Literature, y. Hammond Trumbull . . . 465 Illustrations: Title to the Indian Bible, 469; the Massachusetts Psalter, 476; the Indian Primer, 478. Autographs : John Cotton the younger, 470 ; James Printer, 477. CHAPTER XVIII. Life in Boston in the Colonial Period. Horace E. Scudder 481 Illustrations: Bill of Lading (1632), 490; Adam Winthrop's Pot, 491; the Stocks, 506; the Pillory, 507; Rebecca Rawson, 519. Autographs: Samuel Cole, 493; George Monck, 494; Nehemiah Bourne, 498; Hezekiah Usher, 500; John Usher, 500; John Dunton, 500; Samuel Fuller, 501. CHAPTER XIX. Topography and Landmarks of the Colonial Period. Edwin L. Bynner . 521 Illustrations.: Wood's Map of Boston and Vicinity (1634), heliotype, 524; the Tramount, 525; section of Bonner's Map (1722), 526; Plan of the Summit of Beacon Hill, 527; West Hill in 1775, 528; the Old Feather Store, 547; Old House in Salem Street, 551. xn tHe memorial history of bOsTon. CHAPTER XX. Boston Families Prior to 1700. William H. Whitmore 557 Illustrations : Isaac Addington, 576 ; Mrs. Jane Addington, 577 ; Simeon Stoddard, 583; Colonel Samuel Shrimpton, 584; Mrs. Shrimpton, 585; Increase Mather, 587. Autographs : Isaac Addington,- 575; Penn Townsend, 575 ; Humphrey Davie, 578 ; Edward Hutchinson, 579 ; Peter Oliver, 580 j Thomas Brattle, 580 ; Edward Tyng, 581; Anthony Stoddard, 583; Samuel Shrimpton, 584; Peter Sergeant, 585 ; Increase Mather, 587 ; Crescentius Matherus, 587. INDEX 589 INTRODUCTION. T^ JHEN, in 1730, a hundred years had passed from the foundation * * of the town, a commemoration was proposed ; but the community was then suffering under a visitation of the small-pox, and the anniversary was not observed, except by one or two pulpit ministrations. The Rev. Mr. Foxcroft preached a century sermon ^ at the First Church, and Thomas Prince, in the previous May, made the annual election sermon ^ an admoni- tion of the event. A fit celebration, however, took place on the second centennial, in 1830, and Josiah Quincy — who, after he had left the chief magistracy of the city, had taken the presidency of the neighboring uni- versity — was selected to deliver an address in the Old South, and Charles Sprague, who had shown his powers on more than one earlier occasion, read the ode,^ which is preserved in the volume of his Writings. The address was printed, and in some sort it became the basis of The Municipal History of Boston, which Mr. Quincy printed in 1852. This volume gives a full exposition of the city's history after the town obtained a charter, and during the administrations of the first and second mayors (Phillips and Quincy) ; but it contains only a cursory sketch of the earlier chronicles.* This part of its story, however, had already been but recently told. As early as 1794 Thomas Pemberton printed A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston^ A limit of sixty pages, however, could afford only a glimpse of the town's history. It nevertheless formed the basis upon which Charles Shaw worked, as shown in his little duodecimo 1 Observations, Historical and Practical, on ^ A fac-simile of a part of this ode is given the Rise and Primitive State of New England, on p. 246. with a special reference to the old or first gathered * Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, Church in Boston. pp. 444, 501. 2 7^1? People of New England put in mind * Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 241-304. There are of the Righteous Acts of the Lord to them and manuscripts of Pemberton 's in the Society's their Fathers. Cabinet. xiv THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of 31 1 pages which he published in 1817I under the same title, ^ Topo- graphical and Historical Description of Boston. In 1821 Mr. J. G. Hales, to whom we owe the most important map of Boston issued in his day, published a little descriptive Survey of Boston and Vicinity. Four years later, in 1825, Dr. Caleb Hopkins Snow printed his History of Boston, to- which an appendix was subsequently added, and in 1828 what is called a second edition seems to have been merely a reissue of the same sheets with a new title ^ and index, to satisfy the interest, perhaps, arising from the approaching centennial. Snow's labor was creditable, and his examina- tion of the records in regard to the sites of the early settlers' habitations and other landmarks was careful enough to make his work still useful.^. The next year, 1829, Bowen, its publisher, issued his own Picture of Bos- ton,^ which proved the precursor of numerous guide-books.^ In 1848 Nathaniel Dearborn printed his Boston Notions, a medley of statistics and historical descriptions ; and in the same year, 1852, in which Quincy's Mun- icipal History, already mentioned, appeared, Samuel G. Drake began the publication of his History and Antiquities of Boston, which was issued at intervals in parts, till the annals — for this was the form it took — were brought down to 1770, when the publication ceased, in 1856.^ No further special contribution of any importance ' appeared till the late Dr. Nathaniel Bradstreet ShurtlefF published, under sanction of the city, during his mayor- alty, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston. The volume is principally made up of papers previously published, chiefly in the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, which had been amended and enlarged. They relate to various topographical features of the town and harbor, forming a collection of valuable monographs, but in no wise covering even that re- stricted field. Two years later, in 1873, Mr. Samuel Adams Drake, a son of the elder annalist, printed an interesting volume. The Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston, in which the reader is taken a course through the city, while the old sites are pointed out to him, and he is 1 Reprinted in 1818 and 1843. American Review, vol. Ixxxiii., by William H. 2 A History of Boston, the Metropolis of Mas- Whitmore. Lucius Manlins Sargent printed a sachusetts, from its Origin to the Present Period, little tract, Notices of Histories of Boston, in 1857. with some account of the Environs. Boston: A. The City Government had taken steps to print Bowen. 1828. a continuation of Drake, when his death put a ' Dr. Snow also published, in 1830, a Geog- stop to the project. raphy of Boston, with Historical Notes, for the ' There was a small History of Boston, by J. younger class of readers. He died in 1835, at S. Homans, published in 1856, and an anony- less than forty years of age. , mous Historical Sketch in 1861, beside others of * Other editions in 1833 and 1838. even less interest. The account of Boston in ^ Among them may be classed Boston Sights, the ninth edition of the Encycloptedia Britannica by David Pulsifer, 1859. is by the Rev. G. E. Ellis, D.D. A Boston ^ An examination of it was made in the North Antiquarian Club has recently been founded. INTRODUCTION. ' XV edified with the story of their associations. This is the last acquisition to the illustrative literature of Boston, apart from the numerous guide- books which have filled from time to time their temporary mission. The outlying districts of Boston have each had their historians. A large History of East Boston, with Biographical Sketches of its early Proprietors was printed by the late General William H. Sumner in 1858, the author being a descendant of the Shrimptons and other early occupants and pro- prietors of the island. A History of South Boston, by Thomas C. Simonds, was published in 1857. General H. A. S. Dearborn delivered a second cen- tennial address at Roxbury in 1830. Mr. C. M. Ellis issued a History of Rox- bury Town in 1847. Mr. Francis S. Drake, another son of the annalist, did for Roxbury much the same service that his brother had done for the- orig- inal Boston, when The Town of Roxbury, its Memorable Persons and Places, appeared in 1878. For Dorchester, there is the History published by the Dorchester Historical and Antiquarian Society, and other publications bearing their approval, which are enumerated in another part of the present volume.^ Of Brighton there is no distinct history ; but a sketch prepared by the Rev. Frederic A. Whitney forms part of the recently published His- toty of Middlesex County, which contains also a brief sketch of Charles- town. This is based in good part, as all accounts of that town must be for the period ending with the Revolution, on the History of Charlestown, by Richard Frothingham, the publication of which was begun in numbers in 1845 and never finished, — seven numbers only being published. Avery elaborate work, The Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown by Thomas Bellows Wyman, the result of nearly forty years' application to the subject, was published in 1 879, the year following the author's death, the editing of it having been completed by Mr. Henry H. Edes. Mention should also be made of the earher Historical Sketch by Dr. Bartlett, 1814, and Mr. Everett's commemoration of the second centennial in 1830.^ Those regions, no longer within the limits of Boston but once a part of the town, have also their special records. Muddy River, now Brookline, has had its history set forth in several discourses by the late venerable Dr. Pierce, in an address by the Hon. R. C. Winthrop, and in the more formal Historical Sketches by H. F. Woods. The Records of Muddy River, extracted in part from the Boston Records, have also been printed by the town. Mount WoUaston, or " The Mount " as it was usually called when the people of Boston had their farms tl»ere, has recently given occasion to an elaborate History of Old Braintrcc 1 The church history of Dorchester has been '^ The church history of Charlestown has specially commemorated by Harris, Pierce, Cod- been particularly elucidated by Budington, man. Hall, Allen, Means, and Barrows. Ellis, Hunnewell, and Edes. XVI THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. and Quincy, by William S. Pattee, 1878, while there have been earlier con- tributions by Hancock, Lunt, Storrs, Whitney, and Adams. Of Pullen Point and Winnissimet there have been no formal records printed. As full a list as has ever been printed of the great variety of local publications which must contribute to the completeness of the history of Boston has been given by Mr. Frederic B. Perkins, in his Check-list of American Local History, 1876, many of which titles, of particular applica- tion, will be referred to in the foot-notes and editorial annotations through- out these volumes. Chief among such are the numerous discourses and other monographs which have been given to the history of the churches of Boston.^ Their history has also been made a part of such general accounts of the progress of religious belief in New England as Felt's Ecclesiastical History. This is in the form of annals ; and John EHot's " Ecclesiastical History of Plymouth and Massachusetts," as begun in the Mass. Hist. Collections, vii., has a similar scope. In this place it would be unpardonable to overlook one or two chap- ters of the elaborate treatises of the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Dexter on Con- gregationalism as seen in its Literature? Boston formed so considerable a part of the colony, and the theocracy which ruled its people influenced so largely their history, that it is not easy to separate wholly the local from the general, and it certainly was not done by the earlier writers. Win- throp's Journal, which is called, however, in the printed book, a History of New England, tells us more than we get elsewhere of the course of events in Boston for nearly twenty years after the settlement.^ This can 1 The principal of these are here enumerated : 1877. Trinity, — Brooks. South Congregational, Oathe First Church,— Yoxcroit, ijyi ; Emerson, — Hale. Twelfth Congregational, — Barrett, 1850 ; 1812; N. L. Frothingham, 1830, 1850; Rufus Pray, 1863. Park Street, — Semi-centennial, Ellis, 1868, 1869, 1873. Second, or Old North,— 1861. Bulfinch Street, — Alger, 1861. First Ware, 1821 ; Robbins, 1844, 1845, '850, 1852, Universalist, — Silloway, 1864. New South, — 1858. Third, or Old South, — K-os,iva., 1803; Ellis, 1865. Church of the Advent, — BoUes, Wisner, 1830; Armstrong, 1841 ; Blagden, 1870; i860, &c. Coggeshall's discourse on the intro- and Manning; a history of the meeting-house by duction of Methodism into Boston. Cf. articles Burdett, 1877. New North, — Eliot, 1804, 1822; in the Amer. Quarterly Register, vii., and Boston Parkman, 1814, 1839, 1843, 1849; Fuller, 1854. Almanac, 1843 and 1854. Manifesto, or Brattle Square, Church, — Thacher, 2 xhe Cotigregationalism of the last three hun- 1800; Palfrey, 1825; Lothrop, 1851, 1871. dred years as seen in its Literature, 'iitfi York, King's Chapel, — Greenwood, 1833; Foote, 1873. 1880. In an appendix there is a bibliography Christ Church, — Eaton, 1820, 1824 ; Burroughs, of the subject, giving 7,250 titles, arranged 1874. First Baptist,— l There is a printed index of city documents, 1834-74, compiled by J. M. Bugbee. INTRODUCTION. xxi Records of Committee of Safety, after the evacuation of Boston by the British troops, 1776- Then, of the records of adjacent towns, now a part of the metropoHs by annexation, there are the following; and for the enumeration I am indebted to John T. Priest, Esq., the Assistant City Clerk : — Charlestown. — Town Records, 1 6 29-1 84 7, in fourteen volumes. Selectmen's Re- cords, 1843-47, in one volume; previous to 1843 these records were kept in the Town Records. Mayor and Aldermen's Records, 1847-73, 'ii 'sn volumes. Common Coun- cil Records, 1847-73, ^^ seven volumes. [These and other records and papers have been rearranged by Mr. Henry H. Edes, acting under orders of the city of Charles- town, 1869 and 1870. See Third Report of the Record Commissioners, where the "Book of Possessions," 1638-1802, is printed in full. One of the other volumes in this series Is " An estimate of the losses of the inhabitants by the burning of the town, June 17, 1775." The volumes so far arranged make sixty-nine in number, and the papers yet to be arranged, few of which are earlier than 1720, will fill fifty or sixty volumes more.] Roxbury. — Town Records, 1 648-1 846, in six volumes [the records were burned in 1645, and of those remaining there are but few before 1652. Ellis, Roxbury, p. 7 ; Drake, Roxbury, p. 260]. Selectmen's Records, 1 783-1846, in four volumes; pre- vious to 1 783 these records were kept in the Town Records. Mayor and Aldermen's Records, 1846-67, in seven volumes, 1652-54. [The "Ancient Transcript,'' so-called, is the Roxbury Book of Possessions, and was made about 1652-54. It has been copied for the Record Commissioners and will be printed] . West Roxbury. — Town Records, 185 1-73, in two volumes. Selectmen's Records, 1851-73, in two volumes. Dorchester. — Town Records, Jan. 16, 1631-1869, in twelve volumes. [These are the oldest original records in the office ; a portion of the first volume will consti- tute the Fourth Report of the Record Commissioners']. Selectmen's Records, 1855-69, in two volumes ; previous to 1855 these records were kept in the Town Records. Brighton. — Town Records, 1807-73, 'i^ ^^^ volumes; the first volume contains the records of the " Third Precinct of Cambridge on the South side of Charles River," beginning in 1772, Selectmen's Records, 1807-73, i^i fo^^ volumes. The following statement of the records in the keeping of the City Regis- trar has been kindly furnished from that office : — Boston. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths (County Records), 1630-60, iij one volume, with a transcription made in 1856: Births, 1644-1744 (complete, over 20,000), in one volume, with a transcription made in 1874 ; 1 726-1814 (imperfect), in one volume; 1800-49 (imperfect), in one volume; 1849-79 (complete), in six- teen volumes. Marriages, 1651-1879, in twenty-seven volumes, with a gap fi-om 1662 to 1689 ; marriages out of the city, but recorded here, in one volume. Deaths, XXa THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. 1800-79 (complete from 18 10), in twenty-one volumes; of persons buried here but who died elsewhere, in one volume. Charlestown. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1 629-1 843, in two volumes, including marriages out of town before 1800, and indexes : Births, 1843-73, in three volumes. Marriages, 1843-73, i^^ three volumes. Deaths, 1843-73, in three volumes. Indexes, 1843-73, ii^ three volumes. Roxbury. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 163 2- 1849, in three volumes: Births, 1843-68, in four volumes. Marriages, 1632-1868, in four volumes ; marriages out of the city but recorded here, in one volume. Deaths, 1633-1868, in three volumes. Dorchester. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1631-1849, in four volumes : Births, 1850-69, in one volume. Marriages, 1850-69, in two volumes. Deaths, 1850-69, in one volume. Brighton. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1 771-1873, in one volume. West Roxbury. — Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1851-73, in one volume. Intentions of Marriages: Boston, 1 707-1879, in thirty-five volumes; Charles- town, 1 725-1873, in five volumes, with an index volume ; Roxbury, 1 785-1868, in two volumes; Dorchester, 1 798-1 869, in two volumes. The editor has endeavored in the map which accompanies this volume, called " Boston, Old and New," to depict, as well as he could, the physical characteristics of the original peninsula, with the highways and footways of the young town for its first thirty years or more, and to indicate a few of the sites most interesting in its early history. His chief dependence has been the first volume of the " Boston Town Records " and the " Book of Possessions," both of which are now in print in the Second Report of the Record Commissioners. The earliest published maps of the town were not made till eighty or ninety years after the settlement, and after the original water-line had been much obscured by the " wharfing-out " process, which began, so far as the records indicate, in 1634. Ever after that date the town records show that frequent permission was given to wharf out along the front of riparian lots. Still, some help has been derived from Bonner's map of 1722, Burgiss's of 1728, and even from later published surveys. More than one attempt has been made to construct a map of Boston as it was about the middle of the seventeenth century, but none has heretofore been published. Mr. Uriel H. Crocker was led to the study of the subject from his professional calls as a conveyancer, and constructed a map of the lots in the town, which he explained by extracts from the records in an accompanying volume. These he very kindly placed at the editor's service, and they have been of frequent assistance. So has a similar plan on a much larger scale, which was made by Mr. George Lamb of Cambridge, and which is now in the Public Library. Of this latter plan a lithographed fac-simile of full size has been made. INTRODUCTION. xxu: under the direction of the Trustees of the Library. If there are other plans existing based on the same sources, they have not come to the editor's knowledge, except a sketch of streets and estates, indorsed " William Appleton, 1866," a copy of which is in the Historical Society's Collec- tion. Any one working up this subject can but derive great assistance, in tracing the bounds of estates and placing the original habitations, from the " Gleaner " articles of the late Mr. N. I. Bowditch, which were pub- lished in the Boston Transcript in 1855-56, and which are to be republished in the near future. They are the key to the greater store of information preserved in Mr. Bowditch's manuscripts. Not a few hints and corrobora- tive statements which have also been of assistance were found in Snow, Drake, and Shurtleflf.^ 1 The modern map used as a background is a reduced section of a large one recently pub- lished by the Boston Map Company ; but it has been found necessary to modify a little the "original shore-line," .is indicated by its com- pilers, George F. Loring and Irwin C. Cromack, surveyors and draughtsmen in the City Sur- I/S\a)iJ^ veyor's office. The stones of the last previous authentic map of Boston were destroyed in the fire of 1872, and no satisfactory representation of the recent changes in the streets had been given till the issue of this map. The present re- duction of it has been made by the proprietor's kind permission. NOTE TO THE KING'S MISSIVE. Samuel Shattock, or Shattuck, of Salem, a Quaker, had been whipped in 1657 for interfering while another Quaker was gagged. He was subsequently banished under the law, which provided whipping for a first and second ofifence (biranding was later included), and finally banishment on pain of death. The Quakers in London, whither Shattuck had gone, gaining the ear of the King, procured a royal order, addressed to the authorities here, commanding them to send to England for trial all Quakers .detained for punishment. Shattuck was selected to take the mandate to Boston, and a ship was procured, of which another Quaker, Ralph Goldsmith, was commander. Upon their arrival in the harbor, Shattuck, with not a little of the dramatic instinct which directed many of the proceedings of the early Quakers, refused to tell -to those who boarded the ship the object of the voyage. On the second day after their arrival, accompanied by Goldsmith, he proceeded through the town, knocked at Governor Endicott's door, and sent word to him that they bore a message from the King. The interview followed, as told in the poem ; but the Governor's determination was not reached till he had gone out and consulted with the Deputy-Governor, Bellingham. The release from jail was tardily ordered, and happily at last there were no Quakers in detention to be sent to England; and none were sent. The persecution had nearly run its course, and the royal mandate proved a happy escape from the dilemma of positive enactments in contravention of previous orders. It is sad to say, however, that though the beginning of the end was come, there were still some whippings at the cart's tail through the streets of Boston before the persecution was over. The poet, with a fair Hcense, has placed the interview in the Town House, — that picturesque structure, which stood where now the old State House stands, and which was then but newly built, partly with the bequest of Captain Robert Keayne, who had lived opposite on the southerly comer of State and Washington streets. The artist has delineated it according to the descriptions we have of it, — the building standing on pillars, while a market was kept beneath. The view down what is now State Street shows the tide, as was then the case, flowing up to Merchants Row. Of the prison we have no description, other than that it was surrounded by a yard. It stood where the Court House now stands, on Court Street. The artist has given in the procession of the Quakers across the Common as good a delineation of the spot at that time as the records afford us, — the rounded summit of Gentry Hill, with the beacon on it, which finally gave it a name, and which was seventy feet or more higher than now ; the slope, broken in places by rocks (Sewall records getting build- ing-stones from the Common, at a later day) ; the elm, known in our day as the Great Elm, but even then very likely a sightly tree, and near which the executions, probably on one of the knolls, took place. The victims we know were buried close by. Snow Hill, as Copp's Hill was then called, projected into the river much as the artist has drawn it, topped by the principal windmill of the town. Just by a little cove stood the house which William Copp, the cobbler, had built there, and near by was the water-mill, which, with the causeway across the marsh, forming the dam, had been built some years previous. — Ed. THE KING'S MISSIVE. 1661. BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. T TNDER the great hill sloping bare To cove and meadow and Common lot. In his council chamber and oaken chair Sat the worshipful Governor Endicott, — A grave, strong man, who knew no peer In the pilgrim land where he ruled in fear Of God, not man, and for good or ill Held his trust with an iron will. He had shorn with his sword the cross from out The flag, and cloven the May-pole down, Harried the heathen round about. And whipped the Quakers from town to town. Earnest and honest, a man at need To burn like a torch for his own harsh creed. He kept with the flaming brand of his zeal The gate of the holy commonweal. His brow was clouded, his eye was stern, With a look of mingled sorrow and wrath : " Woe 's me ! " he murmured, " at every turn The pestilent Quakers are in my path ! Some we have scourged, and banished some, Some hanged, more doomed, and still they come. Fast as the tide of yon bay sets in, Sowing their heresy's seed of sin. XXVI THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. " Did we count on this ? — Did we leave behind The graves of our kin, the comfort and ease Of our Enghsh hearths and homes, to find Troublers of Israel such as these ? Shall I scare ? Shall I pity them ? — God forbid ! I will do as the prophet to Agag did : They come to poison the wells of the word, I will hew them in pieces before the Lord ! " The door swung open, and Rawson the Clerk Entered and whispered underbreath : " There waits below for the hangman's work A fellow banished on pain of death, — Shattuck of Salem, unhealed of the whip, Brought over in Master Goldsmith's ship, At anchor here in a Christian port With freight of the Devil and all his sort ! " Twice and thrice on his chamber floor Striding fiercely from wall to wall, " The Lord do so to me and more," The Governor cried, " if I hang not all ! Bring hither the Quaker." Calm, sedate, With the look of a man at ease with fate, Into that presence grim and dread Came Samuel Shattuck with hat on head. " Off with the knave's hat ! " An angry hand Smote down the offence ; but the wearer said. With a quiet smile : " By the King's command I bear his message and stand in his stead." In the Governor's hand a missive he laid With the Royal arms on its seal displayed, And the proud man spake as he gazed thereat, Uncovering, " Give Mr. Shattuck his hat." XXVlll THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. He turned to the Quaker, bowing low: " The King commandeth your friends' release. Doubt not he shall be obeyed, although To his subjects' sorrow and sin's increase. What he here enjoineth John Endicott His loyal servant questioneth not. You are free ! — God grant the spirit you own May take you from us to parts unknown." So the door of the jail was open cast, And like Daniel out of the lion's den, Tender youth and girlhood passed With age-bowed women and gray-locked men ; And the voice of one appointed to die Was lifted in praise and thanks on high. And the little maid from New Netherlands Kissed, in her joy, the doomed man's hands. THE KING'S MISSIVE. And one, whose call was to minister To the souls in prison, beside him went, An ancient woman, bearing with her The linen shroud for his burial meant. For she, not counting her own life dear. In the strength of a love that cast out fear. Had watched and served where her bretliren died, Like those who waited the Cross beside. One moment they paused on their way to look On the martyr graves by the Common side. And much-scourged Wharton of Salem took His burden of prophecy up and cried : ' Rest, souls of the valiant ! — Not in vain Have ye borne the Master's cross of pain ; Ye have fought the fight ; ye are victors crowned ; With a fourfold chain ye have Satan bound ! " XXIX XXX THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The Autumn haze lay soft and still On wood and meadow and upland farms ; On the brow of Snow-hill the Great Windmill Slowly and lazily swung its arms ; Broad in the sunshine stretched away With its capes and islands the turquoise bay ; And over water and dusk of pines Blue hills lifted their faint outlines. The topaz leaves of the walnut glowed, The sumach added its crimson fleck, And double in air and water showed The tinted maples along the Neck. Through frost-flower clusters of pale star-mist, And gentian fringes of amethyst. And royal plumes of the golden-rod. The grazing cattle on Gentry trod. THE KING'S MISSIVE. XXXI But as they who see not, the Quakers saw The world about them : they only thought With deep thanksgiving and pious awe Of the great deliverance God had wrought. Through lane and alley the gazing town Noisily followed them up and down ; Some with scoffing and brutal jeer, Some with pity and words of cheer. One brave voice rose above the din ; Upsall gray with his length of days Cried, from the door of his Red- Lion Inn, " Men of Boston ! give God the praise ! No more shall innocent blood call down The bolts of wrath on your guilty town ; The freedom of worship dear to you Is dear to all, and to all is due. " I see the vision of days to come. When your beautiful City of the Bay Shall be Christian liberty's chosen home, And none shall his neighbor's rights gainsay ; The varying notes of worship shall blend, And as one great prayer to God ascend ; And hands of mutual charity raise Walls of salvation and gates of praise ! " So passed the Quakers through Boston town. Whose painful ministers sighed to see The walls of their sheep-fold falling down. And wolves of heresy prowling free. But the years went on, and brought no wrong ; With milder counsels the State grew strong. As outward' Letter and inward Light Kept the balance of truth aright. XXXll THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The Puritan spirit perishing not, To Concord's yeomen the signal sent, And spake in the voice of the cannon-shot That severed the chains of a continent. With its gentler mission of peace and good-will The thought of the Quaker is living still. And the freedom of soul he prophesied Is gospel and law where its martyrs died. LIOTYPE PRINTING CO, Statue of John Winthrop. Scoi.LAY Square, Boston. THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON, ^u\)imvic ^ttion anD i^atural fiistorr* CHAPTER I. OUTLINE OF THE GEOLOGY OF BOSTON AND ITS ENVIRONS. BY NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER, S. D., Professor of Palteontology in Harvard University, THE topography, the soils, and other physical conditions of the region about Boston depend in a very intimate way upon the geological history of the district in which they lie. The physical history of this district is closely bound up with that of all eastern New England, so that it is necessary at the outset to premise some general statements concerning the geological conditions of the larger field before we can proceed to the description of the very limited one that particularly concerns us. In this statement we shall necessarily be restricted to the facts that have a special bearing upon the ground on which the life of the city has developed. The New England section of North America — viz. the district cut off by the Hudson, Champlain, and St. Lawrence valleys — is one of the most distinctly marked of all the geographical regions of the con- tinent. In* it we find a character of surface decidedly contrasted with that of any other part of the United States. While in the other districts of this country the soil and the contour of the surface are characterized by a prevailing uniformity of conditions, in this New England region we have a variety and detail of physical features that find their parallel only in certain parts of northern Europe, whence came the New England col- onists. This peculiarly varied surface of New England depends upon certain combinations of geological events that hardly admit of a very brief description. The main elements of the history are, however, as follows : — VOL. I. — I . 2 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The New England district has been more frequently and perhaps for a longer aggregate time above the level of the sea than any other part of the region south of the great lakes. This has permitted the erosive forces to wear away the unchanged later rocks, thereby exposing over its surface the deep-lying metamorphic beds on whose masses the internal heat of the earth has exercised its diversifying effects. This irregular metamorphism brings about a great difference in the hardness of the rocks, causing them to wear down, by the action of the weather, at very different rates. Then the mountain-building forces — those that throw rocks out of their original horizontal positions into altitudes of the utmost variety — have worked on this ground more than they have upon any other region east of the Cordille- ras of North America. Again, at successive times, and especially just before the human period, and possibly during its first stages in this country, the land was deeply buried beneath a sheet of ice. During the last glacial period, and perhaps frequently in the recurrent ice times, of which we find traces in the record of the rocks, the ice-sheet for long periods overtopped the highest of our existing hills, and ground away the rock-surface of the country as it crept onward to the sea. During the first stage of the last ice period this ice-sheet was certainly over two thousand feet thick in eastern Massachusetts, and its front lay in the sea at least fifty miles to the east of Boston. At this time the glacial border stretched from New York to the far north, in an ice-wall that lay far to the eastward of the present shore, hiding all traces of the land beneath its mass. These successive ice-sheets rested on a surface of rock, already much varied by the metamorphism and dislocations to which it had been sub- jected. Owing to the fact that ice cuts more powerfully in the valleys than on the ridges, and more effectually on the soft than on the hard rocks, these ice-sheets carved this surface into an amazing variety of valleys, pits, and depressions. We get some idea of the irregularity of these rock- carv- ings from the fretted nature of the sea-coast over which the ice-sheets rode. When the last ice-sheet melted away, it left on the surface it had worn a layer of rubbish often a hundred feet or more in depth. As its retreat was not a rout, but was made in a measured way, it often built long irregu- lar walls of waste along the lines where its march was delayed. When the ice-wall left the present shore-line, the land was depressed beneath the sea to a depth varying from about thirty feet along Long Island Sound to three or four hundred feet on the coast of Maine. The land slowly and by degrees recovered its position ; but, as it rose, the sea for a time invaded the shore, washing over with its tides and waves the rubbish left by the ice-sheet, stripping the low hills and heaping the waste into the valleys. While this work was going on, the seas had not yet regained their shore- life, which had been driven away by the ice, and the forests had not yet recovered their power on the land ; so the stratified deposits formed at this time contain no organic remains. At the close of this period, when the land had generally regained its old position in relation to the sea, there were OUTLINE OF THE GEOLOGY OF BOSTON. 3 several slight, irregular movements cf the shore, — local risings and sink- ings, each of a few feet in height. The last of these were accomplished in this locality not long before the advent of the European colonists ; some trace of their action is still felt on the coast to the northward. This brief synopsis of the varied geological history of New England will enable us to approach the similarly brief history of the Boston district. Looking on a detailed map of southeastern New England, the reader will observe that Massachusetts Bay and Boston Harbor form a deep but rudely shaped re-entrant angle on the coast. If the map is geologically colored, he will perceive that around this deep bay there is a fringe of clay slates and conglomerates, or pudding-stones. Further away, making a great horse-shoe, one horn of which is at Cape Ann and the other at Cohasset, the curve, at its bottom, near the Blue Hills, includes a mass of old granitic rocks. This peculiar order of the rocks that surround Boston is caused by the existence here of a deep structural mountain valley or synclinal, the central part of which is occupied by the harbor. Long after the formation of the Green Mountains, at the time just after the laying down of the coal-beds of the Carboniferous age, this eastern part of New England, and probably a considerable region since regained by the sea, was thrown into mountain folds. These mountains have by the frequent visitations of gla- cial periods been worn down to their foundations, so that there is little in the way of their original reliefs to be traced. They are principally marked in the attitudes of that part of their rocks that have escaped erosion. The Sharon aftd the Blue Hills are, however, the wasted remnants of a great anticlinal or ridge that bordered the Boston valley on the south side. The Waltham, Stoneham, and Cape Ann Bay granitic ridges made the mountain wall on its north side. Narragansett Bay and Boston Harbor are cut out in the softer rocks that were folded down between these mountain ridges. The lower part of the Merrimac valley is a mountain trough that has been simi- larly carved out, and there are others traceable still further to the northward. This mountain trough is very deep beneath Boston ; a boring made at the gas-works to the depth of over sixteen hundred feet failed to penetrate through it. If we could restore the rocks that have been taken away by decay, these mountain folds would much exceed the existing Alleghanies in height. Within the peninsula of Boston, the seat of the old town, these older rocks that were caught in the mountain folds do not come to the level of the sea. They are deeply covered by the waste of the glacial period. But in Roxbury, Dorchester, Somerville, Brookline, and many other adja- cent towns, they are extensively exposed. They consist principally of clay-slates and conglomerafes, — a mingled series, with a total thickness of from five to ten thousand feet. The slates are generally fine-grained and flag-like in texture, their structure showing that they were laid down in a sea at some distance from the shore. The conglomerates were evi- dently laid down in the sea at points near the shore ; and they^re proba- 4 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. biy the pebble-waste resulting from a glacial period that occurred in the Cambrian age, or at a time when the recorded organic history of the earth was at its very beginning. These rocks represent a time when the waters of this shore were essentially destitute of organic life. In the whole section we have only about three hundred feet of beds among the lower layers that hold any remains of organic life ; and these remains are hmited to a few species of trilobites, that lived in the deep sea. From the slates and conglomerates of the Cambridge and Roxbury series the first quarried stones of this Colony were taken. The flagging-slates of Quincy, at the base of Squantum Neck, were perhaps the first that were extensively quar- ried. A large number of the old tombstones of this region were from these quarries. The next in use were the similar but less perfect slates of Cam- bridge and Somerville ; and last to come into use were the conglomerates and granites, that require much greater skill and labor on the part of the quarryman to work them.^ At first the field-boulders supplied the stone for underpinning houses and other wall-work; so that the demand for gravestones was, during all the first and for most of the second century of the existence of the town, the only demand that led to the exploration of the quarry-rocks of this neighborhood. Indeed, we may say that the exploration of the excellent building and ornamental stones so abundant here has been barely begun within the last two decades. Although the rocks of this vicinity are extensively intersected by dykes and veins, — those agents that in other regions aid the gathering together of the precious metals, — no ore-bearing deposits have ever been found very near Boston. There is a story that a very thin lode of argen- tiferous galena was opened some fifty years ago in the town of Woburn, about eight miles from Boston, out of which a trifling amount of silver was taken. , But, unlike the most of the other settlers in this country, the Mas- sachusetts colonists seem never to have had any interest in the search for precious metals, and we know of no efforts at precious metal-mining in the eastern part of this Commonwealth until >ve enter the present century. The craze for gold and silver, which seems almost inevitable in the life of the frontiersman, was unknown in the early days of New England.^ Although the general features of the topography of this district arc determined by the disposition of the hard underlying rocks, the detail of all the surface is chiefly made by the position of the drift or glacial waste left here at the end of the last ice time, but much sorted and re-arranged by water action. If we could strip away the sheet of glacial and post- glacial deposits from this region, we would about double the size of Boston Harbor and greatly simplify its form. All the islands save a few rocks, the peninsulas of Hull and Winthrop Head, indeed that of Boston proper, would disappear; with them would go about all of Cambridge, Charles- 1 [Cf. Shurtleff's Desc. of Boston, p. 189. — whales and make trials of a mine of gold and Ei3.] copper ; "'but he added the alternative, " if those 2 [Captain John Smith, speaking of his voyage failed, fish and furs were then our refuge, to make on our coast in 1614, says he came "to take ourselves savers," — and so they proved. — Ed.] OUTLINE OF THE GEOLOGY OF BOSTON. 5 town, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, a large part of Maiden, Brighton, -Brook- line, and Quincy. Charles River, Mystic River, and Neponset River would become broad estuaries, running far up into the land. The history of the- making of these drift-beds is hard to decipher, and harder still to describe in a brief way. The following statement is only designed to give a very general outline of the events in this remarkable history. After the ice had lain for an unknown period over this region, climatal changes caused it to shrink away slowly and by stages, until it disappeared altogether. As it disappeared it left a very deep mass of waste, which was distributed in an irregular way over the surface, at some places much deeper than at others. At many points this depth exceeded one hundred feet. As the surface of the land lay over one hundred feet below the present level in the district of Massachusetts Bay when the sea began to leave the shore, the sea had free access to this incoherent mass of debris, and began rapidly to wash it away. We can still see a part of this work of destruction of the glacial beds in the marine erosion going on about the islands and headlands in the harbor and bay. The same sort of work went on about the glacial beds, at the height of one hundred feet or more above the present tide-line. During this period of re-elevation, the greater part of the drift-deposits of the region about Boston was worked over by the water. Where the gravel happened to lie upon a ridge of rock that formed, as it were, a pedestal for it, it generally remained as an island above the surface of the water. As the land seems to have risen pretty rapidly when the ice-burden was taken off, — probably on account of this very relief from its load, — the sea did not have time to sweep away the whole of these islands of glacial waste. Many of them survive in the form of low, symmetrical bow-shaped hills. Parker's Hill, Corey's Hill, Aspinwall, and the other hills on the south side . of Charles River, Powderhorn and other hills in Chelsea and Winthrop, are conspicuously beautiful specimens of this structure. Of this nature were also the three hills that occupied the peninsula of Boston, known as Sentry or Beacon, Fort, and Copp's hills. Whenever an open cut is driven through these hills, we find in the centre a solid mass of pebbles and clay, all confusedly intermingled, without any distinct trace of bedding. This mass, termed by geologists till, or boulder-clay, is the waste of the glacier, lying just where it dropped when the ice in which it was bedded ceased to move, and melted on the ground where it lay. All around these hills, with their central core of till, there are sheets of sand, clay, and gravel, which have been washed from the original mass, and worked over by the tides and rivers. This reworked boulder-clay constitutes by far the larger part of the dry lowland surface about Boston : all the flat-lands above the level of the swamps which lay about the base of the three principal hills of old Bos- ton — lands on which the town first grew — were composed of the bedded sands and gravels derived from the waste of the old boulder-clay. These terraces of sand and gravel from the reassorted boulder-clay make up by 6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. far the greater part of the low-lying arable lands of eastern Massachusetts; and of this nature are about all the lands first used for town-sites and tillage by the colonists, — notwithstanding the soil they afford, is not as rich nor as enduring as the soils upon the unchanged boulder-clay. The reason these terrace deposits were the most sought for town-sites and cul- tivation is that they were the only tracts of land above the level of the swamps that were free from large boulders. Over all the unchanged drift these large boulders were originally so abundant that it was a very laborious work to clear the land for cultivation ; but on these terraces of stratified drift there were never boulders enough to render them difficult of cultivation. The result was that the first colonists sought this class of lands. One of the advantages of the neighborhood of Boston was the large area of these terrace deposits found there. There was an area of fifteen or twenty thou- sand acres within seven or eight miles of the town that could have been quickly brought under the plough, and which was very extensively culti- vated before the boulder-covered hills began to be tilled. After the terrace-making period had passed away, owing to the rising of the land above the sea, there came a second advance of the glaciers, which had clung to the higher hills, and had not passed entirely away from the land. This second advance did not cover the land with ice ; it only caused local glaciers to pour down the valleys. The Neponset, the Charles, and the Mystic valleys were filled by these river-like streams, which seem never to have attained as far seaward as the peninsula of Boston. This second ad- vance of the ice seems to have been very temporary in its action, not hav- ing endured long enough to bring about any great changes. At about the time of its retreat, the last considerable change of line along these shores seems to have taken place. This movement was a subsidence of the land twenty feet or more below the former high-tide mark. This is shown by the remains of buried roots of trees, standing as they grew in the harbor and coast-lands about Boston. These have been found at two points on the shore of Cambridge, a little north of 'the west end of West Boston Bridge, and in Lynn harbor. Since this last sinking, the shore-line in this district shows no clear indications of change. With the cessation of the disturbances of the glacial period and at the beginning of the present geological conditions, the last of the constructive changes of this coast began. Hitherto mechanical forces alone had done their work on the geography of the region ; henceforward, to the present day, organic life, driven away from the shore and land by the glacial period, again takes a share in the constructive work. This is still going on about us. The larger part of it is done by the littoral sea-weeds and the swamp grasses. Along the estuaries of the Saugus, Mystic, Charles, and Ne- ponset rivers there are some thousands of acres of lands which hr^ve been recovered from the sea by these plants. The operation is in general as follows : The mud brought down by these streams, consisting in part of clay and in part of decomposed vegetable matter, derived from land and OUTLINE OF THE GEOLOGY OF BOSTON. 7 water plants, coats the sandy bottoms or under-water terraces. In this mud, even at considerable depths, eel-grass and some sea-weeds take root, and their stems make a dense jungle. In this grass more mud is gath- ered, and kept from the scouring action of the tide by being bound together by the roots and cemented by the organic matter. This mass slowly rises until it is bare at low-tide. Then our marsh-grasses creep in, and in their interlaced foliage the waste brought in by the tide is retained, and helps to raise the level of the swamp higher. The streams from the land bring out a certain amount of mud, which at high-tide is spread in a thin sheet over the surface of the low plain. Some- devious channels are kept open by the strong scouring action of the tide, but the swamp rapidly giins a level but little lower than high-tide. Except when there is some chance deposit of mud or sand from the bluffs along its edges, these swamps are never lifted above high-tide mark, for the forces that build them work only below that level. Their effect upon the harbor of Boston has been disadvantageous. They have diminished the area of storage for the tide-water above the town, and thereby enfeebled the scouring power of the tidal currents. Except at the very highest tides, the Charles, Mystic, and Neponset rivers now pour their mud directly into the harbor, instead of unloading it upon the flats where these marshes have grown up. There are other forces at work to diminish the depth of water in the harbor. The score or more of islands that diversify its surface are all sources of waste, which the waves tend to scatter over the floor. For the first two hundred years after the settlement, the erosion of these islands was not prevented by sea-walls ; and in this time the channels were doubtless much shoaled by river-waste. Just after the glacial period these channels were very deep. Borings made in the investigations for the new sewerage system showed that the channel at the mouth of the Neponset had been over one hundred feet deeper than at present, — the filling being the rearranged glacial drift brought there by just such processes as have recently shoaled the channels of the harbor. The depth of this port has also been affected by the drifting in of sands along the shores contiguous to the northeast and southeast. When the sea surges along these shores, it drives a great deal of waste towards the har- bor. A fortunate combination of geographical accidents has served to keep the harbor from utter destruction from this action. On the north side, whence comes the greater part of this drifting material, several pocket-like beaches have been formed, which catch the moving sands and pebbles in their pouches, and stop their further movement. But for these protections — at Marblehead Neck, Lynn, and Chelsea on the north, and Nantasket on the south — the inner harbor would hardly exist, since these lodgements contain enough waste to close it entirely. At Nantasket the beach is now full and no longer detains the accumulating sands, which are overflowing into the outer harbor ; yet, as the rate of flow is slow, its effect is not likely to be immediately hurtful. 8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Of the ancient life of this district there is hardly a trace. The two great and conspicuous formations in the basin — the flags and conglomer- ates of the Roxbury series and the drift deposits of the last geological age — are both very barren in organic remains, for the reason that they are probably both the product of ice periods. The rocks older than the Roxbury series are too much changed to have preserved any trace of the organisms they may have once contained. In the rearranged drift there are some very interesting remains of buried forests that have not yet received from naturalists the attention they deserve. These buried trees lie at a con- siderable depth below low-tide mark, and are not exposed, except by the chance of the few excavations along the shore that penetrate to some depth below the water-line. When found, these trees seem all to be species of coniferous woods. The cone-bearing trees appear from this and other evidence to have been the first to remake the forests of this region, after the cessation of the last ice time. Even the larger animals that once in- habited this district — the moose, caribou, etc. — have left little trace of their occupation. It is rare, indeed, that a bone of their skeletons is found, except among the middens accumulated around the old camping-grounds of the aborigines. On the extreme borders of the Boston basin there are extensive fossil- bearing strata. At Mansfield, on the south, which is just outside of this synclinal, and within the Hmits of the Rhode Island trough of the same nature, there is a broad section of the coal-measures exposed in some mines now unworked. These beds are exti;emely rich in fossil plants. At Gloucester there is a small deposit of beds, containing shells of mol- lusks that lived in the early part of the present period, that lie just above the high-tide mark. But neither of these interesting deposits extends into the limits of the Boston basin. Although this basin has lost the greater part of its rocks by the wast- ing action of the glacial periods, it owes more to these events than to all the other forces that have affected its physical condition. To their action we must attribute the formation of the trough in which the har- bor lies, the building of the peninsula occupied by the original town, and all the beautiful details of contour of the adjoining country. To them, also, it owes the peculiarly favorable conditions of drainage afforded by the deep sandy soils that underlie the terraces where the greater part of the urban population has found its dwelling-place. CHAPTER II. THE FAUNA OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS: FORMS BROUGHT IN AND EXPELLED BY CIVILIZATION. BY JOEL A. ALLEN, Museum of Comparative Zoology^ Harvard University. THE changes in the fauna of the region immediately surrounding Boston, wrought by civilization, are merely such as would be expected to occur in the transformation of a forest wilderness into a thickly papulated district, namely, the extirpation of all the larger indigenous mammals and birds, the partial extinction of many others, and the great reduction in numbers of nearly all forms of animal life, both terrestrial and aquatic, as well as the introduction of various domesticated species and those universal pests of civilization the house rats and mice. The only other introduced species of importance are the European house-sparrow and a few species of noxious insects. As there is nothing peculiar in the changes in question, it seems best to devote the few pages allotted to this subject to a presentation of data bearing upon the character of the fauna as it was when the country was first settled by Europeans, these data being derived from the narratives of Wood, Morton, Higginson, Josselyn, and other early writers. Mammals. — William Wood, in his New Englands Prospect, first pub- lished in 1634, thus begins his quaint enumeration of the animals occurring in the neighborhood of Boston : — " The kingly Lyon, and the strong arm'd Beare, The large h'm'd Mooses, with the tripping Deare, Quill darting Porcupines and Rackcoones be, Castell'd in the hollow of an aged tree. . ." " Concerning Lyons," a point of some interest in the present connection, he adds, " I will not say that I ever saw any my selfe, but some afifirme that they have seene a Lyon at Cape Anne, which is not above six leagus from Bostoti : some likewise being lost in woods, have heard such terrible roarings, as have made them much agast; which must either be Devills or Lyons; there being no other creatures which use to roare saving Beares, which have not such a terrible kinde of roaring : besides, Plimouth men have traded for VOL. I. — 2. lO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Lyons skinnes in former times." ^ To the above respecting " Lyons " may be added the following from an anonymous account of New Englands Plantation, published in 1630, and attributed to Francis Higginson: "For Beasts there are some Beares, and they say some Lyons also ; for they have been seen at Cape Anne. ... I have seen the Skins of all these Beasts since I came to this Plantation excepting. Lyons." These and other early allusions to " Lyons " at Cape Ann, Plymouth, and elsewhere in southern New England, doubtless relate to the catamount or panther (the Felis con- color of naturalists), which formerly ranged from near the northern boun- dary of the United States throughout the continent, but which long since disappeared from nearly the whole Atlantic slope north of Virginia. Lynxes were quite common, and bears rather numerous, the latter being, hunted for their oil and flesh, which were esteemed " not bad commodities." Wolves roamed in large packs, and were very destructive to sheep, swine, and calves. As early as 1630 the Court of Massachiisetts ordered rewards for their destruction. The wolves appear to have been unable or unwilling to leap fences in pursuit of cattle, a trait the settlers soon learned to profit by, as shown by the following from Wood, who, in describing the plantation of Saugus, refers to the " necke of land called iV«^a«/," and adds: "In this necke is store of good ground, fit for the Plow ; but for the present it is onely used for to put young cattle in, and weather-goates, and Swine, to secure them from the Woolves : a few posts and rayles from the lower water-markes to the shore, keepes out the Wolves, and keepes in the cattle." ^ He alludes to the same practice in his account of Boston, the situation of which, he says, " is very pleasant, being a Peninsula, hem'd in on the South-side with the Bay of Roxberry, on the North-side with Charles- river, the Marshes on the backe-side, being not halfe a quarter of a mile over ; so that a little fencing will secure their Cattle from the Woolves." * Foxes were also so numerous as to be a great annoyance, bounties being early offered for their destruction. Lewis states that the authorities of Lynn paid, between the years 1698 and 1722, for the destruction of four hundred and twenty-eight foxes killed in " the Lynn woods and on Nahant," the reward being two shillings for each fox. Among animals long since extirpated from Massachusetts is the " Jac- cal " mentioned by Josselyn,* who describes it as " ordinarily less than Foxes, of the colour of a gray Rabbet, and do not scent nothing near so strong as a Fox!' This account points unquestionably to the Virginian or gray fox ( Urocyon cinereo-argentatus) , which during the last hundred years bas receded southward and westward with great rapidity. In respect to the larger game animals, there appears to be no evidence of the presence of the elk or wapiti deer ( Cervus canadensis) in eastern Massa- chusetts within, historic times, although it occupied the country not far to the westward. There are, however, distinct references to the occurrence of 1 Wood, ed. of 1636, pp. 16, 17. 3 Ibid. p. 32. ■' Ibid. p. 35. i New Englands Rarities, p. 22. THE FAUNA OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. II the moose {Alces malchis) at, Lynn and elsewhere northward and west- ward within forty miles of Boston. It was sometimes referred to under the name " elk," as in the following, from Morton's New English Canaan} pub- lished in 1637, but the accompanying descriptions render clear the identity of the species. " First, therefore," says Morton, " I will speake of the Elke, which the Salvages call a Mose : it is a very large Deare, with a very faire head, and a broade palme, like the palme of a fallow Deares horn, but much bigger, and is 6. foote wide betweene the tipps, which grow curbing downwards : Hee is of the biggnesse of a great horse. There have bin of. them, seene that has bin 18. handfulls highe: hee hath a bunch of haire under his jawes. . . ." Wood^ says: "There be not many of these in Massachusetts bay, but forty miles to the Northeast there be great store of them." The common deer {Cariacus virgimanus) was, from its abundance^ by far the most important of the larger native animals, and for many years afforded a ready supply of animal food. Morton states that " an hundred have bin found at the spring of the yeare, within the compasse of a mile," ^ and other writers refer to their numbers in similar terms. With the excep- tion of a small remnant still existing in Plymouth and Barnstable Counties, thanks to stringent legislative protection, the species became long since extirpated throughout nearly the whole of southern New England. Among other mammals that have entirely disappeared are the beaver, the marten, and the porcupine. The otter and the raccoon are nearly ex- tinct, and nearly all the smaller species occur in greatly reduced numbers, including the muskrat, mink, weasels, shrews, moles, squirrels, and the various species of field-mice. The marine mammals have declined equally with the land species. There are many allusions to the abundance, in early times, of seals, whales, and the smaller cetaceans. One writer, in speaking of Massachusetts Bay, says, " for ij: is well knowne that it equalizeth Groin- land for Whales and Grampuses." It is a matter of history that a profita- ble whale-fishery was at one time carried on in the Bay itself, the whales being pursued at first in open boats from the shore. Birds. — The great auk and the Labrador duck are believed to have become everywhere extinct, especially the former, and five or six other species long since disappeared from southern New England. All the larger species, and many of the shore-birds, have greatly decreased, as have Hkewise most of the smaller forest-birds. The few that haunt culti- vated grounds have doubtless nearly maintained their former abundance, and in some instances have possibly increased in numbers. Prominent among those formerly abundant, but which now occur only at long inter- vals as stragglers from the remote interior, are swans and cranes. Respect- ing the former, Morton has left us the following: " And first of the Swanne, because shee is the biggest of all the fowles of that Country. There are of ' Page 74. 2 Page 18. ^ New English Canaan, p. 715. 12 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. them in Merrimack River, and in other parts of the country., greate store at the seasons of the yeare. The flesh is not much desired of the inhab- itants, but the skinnes may be accompted a commodity, fitt for divers uses, both for fethers and quiles." Of " Cranes," he says, " there are greate store. . . . These sometimes eate our corne, and doe pay for their presumption well enough ; and serveth there in powther, with turnips to supply the place of pow- thered beefe, and is a goodly bird in a dishe, and no discommodity." ^ The crane was probably the brown crane {Grus can- adensis), while the swans embraced both of the American species. The wild Turkey is well known to have been for- merly abundant. Wood speaks of there sometimes being " forty, three-score, and an hundred of aflockc," while Morton alludes to a " thousand " seen in one day. According to Josse- lyn, they began early to decline. After alluding to their former abundance, he says, writing in 1672, " but this was thirty years since, the English and the Indian having now so destroyed the breed, so that 't is very rare to meet with a Turkie in the Woods ; but some of the English bring up great store of the wild kind, which remain about their Houses as tame as ours in England.'"'' The complete extirpation of the wild stock appears to have occurred at an early date. The pinnated grouse {Cupidonia cufiido)- likewise soon disappeared. The few which still remain on Martha's Vineyard are beheved to be a rem- nant of the original stock, but this is rendered doubtful by the fact that birds introduced from the West have been at different times turned out on this or neighboring islands. The former presence of the great auk (Alca impennis') along the coast of Massachusetts is not only attested by history but by the occurrence of its bones in the Indian shell-heaps at Ipswich and neighboring points. It seems to have existed in the vicinity of Boston till near the close of the ' New English Canaan, p. 67. ^ ^^^ Englands Rarities, p. 9. THE GREAT AUK. THE FAUNA OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 13 seventeenth century, but probably did not survive to a much later date. The earhest reference' to it as a bird of our coast is contained in Archer's Relation of Captame Gosnols Voyage io the North part of Virginia, made in 1602, in which " Pengwins " are mentioned as found on the New Eng- land coast in latitude 43". The account further states that " near Gilbert's Point," in latitude 41° 40', " by the ships side we there killed Pengwins." In Rosier's account of a Virginian Voyage made An. 1605 by Captaine George Waymoutli, in the Arch-angell, "Penguins" are enumerated among the birds met with, in all probability near Nantucket Shoals. As the bird here called " Penguins " is not described in the accounts above cited, the following, from Captain Richard Whitboufne's Relation of Neivfoundland, may be of interest : " These Penguins are as bigge as Geese, and flie not, for they have but a little short wing, and they multiply so infinitely vpon a certaine flat Hand, that men drive them from thence vpon a boord 4nto their Boates by hundreds at a time ; as if God had made the innocencie of so poore a creature to become such an admirable instrument for the sus- tentation of man." ^ From Josselyn's account of the " Wobble," which is evidently the same bird, it may be inferred that it was not uncommon on the coast of Massachusetts Bay as late as 1672. He says: "The Wobble, an ill shaped Fowl, having no long Feathers in their Pinions, which is the reason they cannot fly, not much unlike a Penguin; they are in the Spring very fat, or rather oyly, but pull'd and garbidg'd, and laid to the Fire to roast, they yield not one drop." ^ The abundance of water-fowl and shore-birds seems worthy of brief notice. Morton describes three kinds of geese, and says: "There is of them great abundance. I have had often 1000. before the mouth of my gunne . . . the fethers of the Geese that I have killed in a short time, have paid for all the powther and shott, I have spent in a yeare, and I have fed my doggs with as fatt Geese there as I have ever fed upon my selfe in England." Of ducks he mentions three kinds, besides " Widggens," and two sorts of teal, and refers to its being a " noted Custome " at his house " to have every mans Duck upon a trencher." He speaks of the smaller shore-birds under the general term " Sanderling," and says they were " easie to come by, because I went but a stepp or to for them : I have killed betweene foure and five dozen at a shoot which would loade me home." 3 Wood observes, " Such is the simplicity of the smaller sorts of these birds [which he calls ' Humilities or Simplicities,'] that one may drive them on a heape like so many sheepe, and seeing a fit time shoot them ; the living seeing the dead, settle themselves on the same place againe, amongst which the Fowler discharges againe. I my selfe have killed twelve score at two shootes." * No bird appears to have been more numerous in early times throughout 1 Purchas his Pilgrims, iv. pp. 1885, 1886. ' New English Canaan, pp. 67-69. ■* New Englands Rarities, p. 11. ' New Englands Prospect, pp. 26, 27. 14 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. the whole Atlantic slope than was the wild pigeon. The early historians of the region here in question speak of flocks containing " millions of mil- lions," having seemingly, as Josselyn expresses it, " neither beginning nor ending," and " so thick " as to obscure the sun. Other writers speak of their passing in such immense clouds as to hide the sun for hours together. Reptiles. — The antipathy to snakes, which so generally impels their destruction at every opportunity, has left few of these in comparison with their former numbers. The rattlesnake, the only dangerous species, found now only at few localities, was formerly much more generally dispersed. The draining of ponds and marshy lands has greatly circumscribed the haunts of frogs, salamanders, and tortoises, which at many localities have become nearly extirpated. Fishes. — A few quotations respecting some of the more important kinds of edible fish will show to how great a degree our streams and coast waters have been depopulated. Respecting the codfish, the bass, and the mackerel, Morton speaks as follows : " The Coast aboundeth with such multitudes of Codd, that the inhabitants of New England doe dunge their grounds with Codd ; and it is a commodity better than the golden mines of the Spanish Indies. . . . The Basse is an excellent Fish. . . . There are such multitudes, that I have scene stopped into the river [Merrimack] close adjoyning to my howse with a sand at one tide, so many as will loade a ship of a lOO. Tonnes. Other places have greater quantities in so much, as wagers have bin layed, that one should not throw a stone in the water, but that hee should hit a fish. I my selfe, at a turning of the tyde, have scene such multitudes passe out of a pound, that it seemed to mee, that one might goe over their backs drishod. . . . The Mackarels are the baite for the Basse, and these have bin chased into the shallow waters, where so many thousands have shott themselves ashore with the surfe of the Sea, that whole hogges-heads have bin taken up on the Sands ; and for length they excell any of other parts: they have bin measured i8. and 19. inches in length, and seaven in breadth : and are taken ... in very greate quantities all alonge the Coaste." ^ Wood says, "... shoales of Basse have driven up shoales of Macrill from one end of the sandie Beach to, another [referring to Lynn Beach] ; which the inhabitants have gathered up in wheele-barrowes." Higginson, in speaking of " a Fish called a Basse," states that the fishermen used to take more of them in their nets than they could " hale to land, and for want of Boats and Men they are constrained to let a many goe after they have taken them, and yet sometimes they fill two Boats at a time with them." Other kinds of fish appear to have been correspondingly abundant. " There is a Fish, (by some called shadds, by some allizes)," says Morton, " that at the spring of the yeare, passe up the rivers to spaune in the ponds ; ' New English Canaan, pp. 86-88. THE FAUNA. OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 15 and are taken in such multitudes in every river, that hath a pond at the end, that the Inhabitants doung their ground with them. You may see in one towneship a hundred acres together, set with these Fish, every acre taking 1000. of them." Wood records that " In two Tydes they have gotten one hundred thousand of those Fishes" (referring to shad and alewives) " in a Wayre to catch Fish," built just below the falls of Charles River. Among other abundant species are mentioned halibut and floun- ders. Respecting the latter, Morton says " They (at flowing water) do almost come ashore, so that one may stepp but halfe a foote deepe and prick them up on the sands." I find no distinct allusion to the bluefish, but it is well known to have been for a long time of periodical occurrence in Massachusetts Bay. A century ago it was abundant about Nantucket and to some distance north- ward; later, it disappeared for about fifty years, and then again became more or less abundant, even in Massachusetts Bay. Their reappearance, says Mr. N. E. Atwood, has caused " the rapid diminution of the mackerel during the spawning-season, and the tenfold increase of the lobster, the •young of which were devoured by the mackerel." ^ Invertebrates. — There are, as would naturally be expected, few available data for a comparison of the present invertebrate fauna with that of two hundred and fifty years ago, and these relate mainly to a few of the edible " shell-fish." From the accounts left us by the authors already so frequently quoted, it appears that the lobster has declined greatly in num- bers and in size. In the quaint language of the times, they are said to have been " infinite in store in all parts of the land, and very excellent," and to have sometimes attained a weight of sixteen to twenty-five pounds. They appear to have been an important source of food to the Indians, as Morton^ says, "... the Salvages will meete 500, or looo. at a place where Lobsters come in with the tyde, to eate, and save dried for store, abiding in that place, feasting and sporting a moneth or 6. weekes together." Oysters were found in " greate store " " in the entrance of all Rivers," and of large size. Wood says the oyster-banks in Charles River " doe barre out the bigger ships." He thus describes the oysters : " The Oisters be grqat ones in forme of a shoo home, some be a foote long, these breede on certaine bankes that are bare every Spring tide. This fish without the shell is so big that it must admit of a division before you can well get it into your mouth." From some not well-known cause the oysters died out so long ago along most parts of the Massachusetts coast that some recent authorities have doubted whether they were ever indigenous here, those now cultivated having been introduced from other points. Of clams (" Clames," " Clammes," or " Clamps," as they were variously designated), it is said " there is no want, every shore is full." Besides their ordinary uses they were esteemed " a great commoditie for the feeding of ' Proc, Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist., xii. p. 403. '^ New English Canaan, p. 90. l6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Swine, both in Winter and Summer ; for being once used to those places, they will repaire to them as duely every ebbe, as if they were driven to them by keepers." Swine were doubtless instrumental in eradicating clams and mussels at the points they visited, since it is well-known that, at localities in the West where they are allowed to run at large, they quickly destroy the fresh-water mussels in all the streams where in seasons of drought they can gain access to these animals. The use of clams for fish-bait has also tended greatly to their decrease. At many points along the coast of Massachusetts Bay they have become wholly exterminated, since a com- paratively recent date, over areas embracing hundreds of acres in extent. Their extinction, however, seems not in all cases to have been the result of human agency, but is known, in some instances, to have been caused by exposure of the tracts they inhabited to extreme cold during very low tides. The changes in respect to insect-life have unquestionably been great, some species having decreased while others have become more numerous. Many obnoxious species have been fortuitously introduced from other countries, while some have reached us by migration from distant parts of the West. Of the latter, the Colorado potato-beetle is the best-known example, which has recently reached the Atlantic coast by a gradual migration from the Great Plains, and which at present constitutes the most dreaded foe with which the farmer has to contend. In early times, as is well-known, the locusts, or " grasshoppers," occasionally appeared in such numbers as to commit serious depredations. CHAPTER III. THE FLORA OF BOSTON AND ITS VICINITY, AND THE CHANGES IT HAS UNDERGONE. BY |ASA GRAY, LL.D., Fisher Professor of Natural History in Harvard University. THE changes of climate which are referred to in a preceding chapter have led to corresponding changes in the vegetation. It is only by- conjecture and analogy that we can form some general idea of the vegeta- tion of Massachusetts in the days which immediately preceded the advent of the glacial period, when the ancestors of the present trees, shrubs, and herbs of New England, which had long flourished within the Arctic Circle, were beginning to move southward before the slowly advancing refrigera- tion. But, as the refrigeration at the north increased, a warm-temperate vegetation, which may have resembled that oT the Carolinas and of Florida at present, must have been forced southward, and have been replaced very gradually by a flora very like that which we now look upon. This, in its turn, must have been wholly expelled from New England by the advanc- ing ice-sheet, under and by which our soil has been completely re- modelled. After this ice-sheet had melted and receded, and the new soil had become fit for land vegetation, — that is, at a time geologically re- cent, — the vegetation of Boston and its environs must have closely resem- bled that of northern Labrador or of Greenland, or even have consisted mainly of the same species of herbs and stunted shrubs which compose the present Arctic-alpine flora. The visitor to the summit of Mount Washing- ton will there behold a partial representation of it, as it were an insular patch, — a vestige of the vegetation which skirted the ice in its retreat, and was stranded upon the higher mountain summits of New England, while the main body retreated northward at lower levels. In time, the arborescent vegetation, and the humbler plants which thrive in the shade of trees, or such of them as survived the vicissitudes of a southern migration, returned to New England ; and our coast must have been at one time clothed with white spruces ; then probably with black spruce and arbor-vitae, with here and there some canoe birches and beeches ; and these, as the climate ame- liorated, were replaced by white and red pines, and at length the common pitch pine came to occupy the lighter soils ; and the three or four species VOL. I. — 3. l8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of oak, the maples, ashes, with their various arboreal and frutescent asso- ciates, came in to complete the ordinary and well-known New England forest of historic times.^ Even without historical evidence, we should infer with confidence that New England before human occupation was wholly forest-clad, excepting a line of salt marshes on certain shores, and the bogs and swamps not yet firm enough to sustain trees. The islands in our bay were well wooded under Nature's planting, although we now find it difficult, yet by no means im- possible, to reforest them. The Indian tribes found here by the whites had not perceptibly modi- fied the natural vegetation ; and there is no evidence that they had here been preceded by any agricultural race. Their inconsiderable plantation of maize, along with some beans and pumpkins, — originally derived from much more southern climes, but thriving under a sultry summer, — how- ever important to the raisers, could not have sensibly affected the face of the country ; although it was said that " in divers places there is much ground cleared by the Indians." But, whatever may have been the amount of their planting, if the aborigines had simply abandoned the country, no mark of their occupation would have long remained, so far as the vegetable kingdom is concerned. Very different was the effect of European immigration, and the occupa- tion of the land by an agricultural, trading, and manufacturing people. Yet, with all the change, it is not certain that any species of tree, shrub, or herb has been extirpated from eastern Massachusetts, although many which must have been common have become rare and local, and their continua- tion precarious ; and the distribution and relative proportions of the land flora, and even that of the streams, have been largely altered. Regarded simply as to number of species, no doubt an increase in the variety has been the net result, even after leaving all cultivated and pur- ^ Palfrey, in his History of New England, acteristicalness was soon expressed in the pine- i. i6, enumerates the characteristic trees of New tree money, its effigy being impressed upon their England. Most are indigenous to the vicinity only coinage. The wealth of the oak-genus, even of Boston. All were different in species from in the vicinity of Boston, must have been noted ; the trees of old England, except the white birch and among the larger shrubs or low trees the and the chestnut, which are here represented by magnolia and rhododendron (if, indeed, they American varieties; but the greater part were of were early met with here), the kalmia, the larger familiar genera. Those which must have been sumach, the hawthorns and the Juneberry with new to the settlers were such as the flowering edible fruit, several species of viburnum, the dogwood, the sassafras, the tupelo, and the sweet pepper-bush, the pink and the white azalea, hickory, — to which the tulip-tree would be must have attracted early attention. It would added on taking a wider range ; and, among be interesting to know how soon the epigaea, or evergreens, the hemlock-spruce, and the three May-flower — deliciously-scented precursor of trees of as many different genera to which the spring, blossoming among russet fallen leaves colonists gave the name of cedar, though it from which the winter's snow has just melted rightfully belongs to none of them. The white away — came to be noticed and prized. It is pine — the noblest and most useful tree of New not much to his credit as an observer that England — must also have been a novelty, no Josselyn takes no account of it. But he pine of that type having been known to the equally omits all mention of huckleberries and settlers; and their sense of its value and char- blueberries. THE FLORA OF BOSTON AND ITS VICINITY. 19 posely introduced plants out of view. For while it is doubtful if any spe- cies has been entirely lost from the environs of Boston (taking these to include the counties of Norfolk, Middlesex, and Essex), a very consid- erable number has been acquired, although the gain has not always been an advantage. Some of the immigrant plants, indeed, are ornamental or useful ; others are the pests of the fields and gardens, showy though seve- ral of them are ; and perhaps all of them are regarded by the botanist with dislike when they mix themselves freely or predominantly with the native " denizens of the soil, as if " to the manner born," since their incoming tends to confuse the natural limits and charapteristics of floras. The influx of European weeds was prompt and rapid from the first, and has not ceased to flow ; for hardly a year passes in which new comers are not noticed in some parts of the country. The earliest notices of the plants of this vicinity which evince any botani- cal knowledge whatever are contained in John Josselyn's New Englands Rarities discovered, pubhshed in 1672,' and in his Voyages, published in 1674. The next — after a long interval — are by Manasseh Cutler, of Ipswich (Hamilton), in his "Account of Some of the Vegetable Produc- tions naturally growing in this part of America, botanically arranged," published in the first volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1785, Next in order was Dr. Bigelow's Florulo Bostoniensis, issued in 18 14. More interesting to us than his account of the indigenous vegetation of the country is Josselyn'3 list " of such plants as have sprung up since the English planted and kept cattle in New England." Twenty-one of such plants are mentioned by their popular English names, and most of them are to be identified. And the list of " garden herbs " comprises several plants — among them sorrel, purslane, spearmint, ground-ivy, elecam- pane, and tansy — which have since become naturalized weeds. More- over, several herbs are mentioned as indigenous both to New England and to the mother country which are certainly not of American origin, but manifest introductions from the Old World. There is no need to specify the numerous plants of the Old; World wliich, purposely or accidentally imported by European settlers, have been added to the flora not only of Boston, but of the Atlantic United States generally. They are conspicuous in all o'ur manuals and catalogues, and indeed are even more familiar to people in general than are most of the indigenous plants. Yet attention may be called to those which are some- what peculiarly denizens of Boston, — that is, which have thoroughly estab- lished themselves in this vicinity, yet have manifested a disincHnation to spread beyond eastern New England. Some of them, however, occur in the seaboard districts of the Middle States. ' Reprinted ?nd carefully edited, with an 1638, and came again in July, 1663, then re- introduction and commentaries, very important maining eight years. He passed most of for the botany, by Professor Edward Tucker- his time at his brother's plantation at Black man. Josselyn first arrived in Boston in July, Point, Scarborough, Maine. So THE MEMOlilAL HiStORY OF BOSTON. If Josselyn is to be trusted, various introduced plants must have taken wonderfully prompt possession of the new soil; for (as just mentioned) he enumerates St. John's wort, catmint, toad-flax, Jerusalem oak (Chenopodiuni Botrys), and " wood-wax, wherewith they dye many pretty colors," as indi- genous to the country. But most of these could assert no such claim in much later times ; and it is probable that either the memory or the judg- ment of Josselyn may have been at fault. However this may be, the " last-mentioned plant may head the list of those introduced plants which are somewhat characteristic of the environs of Boston. Woad-waxen, or dyer's greenweed {Genista tinctorid), which covers the sterile hills between Salem and Lynn with a full glow of yellow at flowering-time, is very local at a few other stations, and is nearly or quite unknown beyond eastern New England. According to Tuckerman there is a tradition that it was introduced here by Governor Endicott, which may have been forty years before Josselyn finished his herborizing, — enough to account for its naturalization at that period, but not enough to account for its being then regarded as indigenous. Fall dandelion {Leontodon autumnale) is remarkable for its abundance around Boston, and its scarcity or total absence elsewhere. Bulbous buttercup {Ranunculus bulbosus^, whose deep yellow blossoms give a golden tinge to our meadows and pastures in the latter part of spring, has hardly spread beyond New England, and abounds only in eastern Mas- sachusetts, — unlike the tall buttercup {R. acris) in this respect, which is diffused throughout the Northern and Middle States. Succory, or chichory (Cichorium Intybus), which adorns our road- sides and many fields with cerulean blue at midsummer, is of rare occur- rence beyond this neighborhood, and when met with out of New England shows little disposition to spread. Jointed charlock {Raphanus Raphanistrum) is a conspicuous and trouble- some weed only in eastern Massachusetts. Bladder campion {Silene injlata), if not confined to this district, is only here abundant or conspicuous; and the list of such herbs could be con- siderably extended. Barberry {Berberis vulgaris) is the leading shrub of the same class. It is a surprise to most Bostonians to be told that it is an intruder. Beyond New England it is seldom seen, except as planted or as spontaneous in the neighborhood of dwellings, or near their former sites. Privet, or prim {Ligustrum vulgare), is somewhat in the same case; but it has obtained its principal foothold in the sea-board portion of the Middle States. The only trees which tend to naturalize themselves are one or two European willows, perhaps the Abele tree or white poplar, and the locust, — the last a native of the United States farther south. It would much exceed our limits to specify the principal trees and shrubs which, by being extensively planted for shade or ornament, have con- THE FLORA OF BOSTON AND ITS VICINITY. 21 spicuously supplemented our indigenous vegetation. Most of these are of com- paratively recent introduc- tion, and the number is still rapidly increasing. One of the earliest ac- cessions of this kind must have been the English elm, — some trees of which, in the Boston Mall and else- where, may have been only a century younger than the celebrated American elm, which was until re- cently the pride of .Boston Common. Perhaps the very first introduced trees were the white willow and the Lombardy poplar, both 1 [This cut follows a photograph taken about a score of years since, and before the tree was shorn of all its majestic proportions. The gate of the surrounding fence bore this inscription : " This Tree has been standing here for an un- known jjeriod. It is believed to have existed before the settlement of Boston, being full-grown in 1722, exhibited marks of old age in 1792, and was nearly destroyed by a storm in 1832. Pro- tected by an iron inclosure in 1854." The tree was again seriously dismembered in a storm, June 29, i86o. One of the remaining large limbs fell in another storm in September, 1869. Its final destruction took place Feb. 16, 1876, when it was broken off near the ground. Shurt- leff, Desc. of Boston, p. 335, says it is reasonable to believe it was growing before the arrival of the first colonists. A vague tradition, on the other hand, assigns its setting out to Hezekiah Henchman about 1670, or to his father Daniel, of a somewhat earlier day. No. Anier. Rev., July, 1844, p. 204. One hundred and ninety rings were counted in the great branch which fell in i860. Dr. Holmes, Autocrat of the Break- fast Table, p. 5, puts the tree in the second rank of large elms, those measuring, at five feet from the ground, from fourteen to eighteen feet in girth. The measurements recorded are : In 1825, sixty-five feet high ; twenty-one feet eight inches girth, at two feet and a half from the ground ; diameter of spread, eighty-six feet. Mr. George B. Emerson, in his Trees and Shrubs growing naturally in the forests of Massachusetts, 2d ed., 1875, vol. ii. p. 326, says : " The great elm THE GREAT ELM/ on Boston Common was measured by Professor Gray and myself in June of 1S4.4. At the ground it measures twenty-three feet six inches ; at three feet, seventeen feet eleven inches ; and at five feet, sixteen feet one inch. The largest branch, towards the southeast, stretches fifty-one feet." In 1855 it was measured by City Engineer Ches- borough, 'giving a height of seventy-two feet and a half, and sixteen and a half feet to the lowest branch ; girth, twenty-two feet and a half at one foot from the ground, seventeen feet at four; average spread of the largest branches, one hundred and one feet. Im86o its measure was taken by Dr. Shurtleff, twenty-four feet girth at the ground, eighteen feet and a quarter at three feet, and sixteen and a half at five feet. After its destruction a chair was made of its wood, and is now in the Public Library. Pic- tures of it on veneer of the wood were made by the city, and one of them is now in the His- torical Society's library. Dr. J. C. Warren printed an account of The Great 7'ree in 1855; this and the account in Shurtleft's Desc. of Bos- ton, p. 332, tell the essentials of the story. The Rev. R. C. Waterston reviewed its associations in the " Story of the Old Elm " in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, March, 1876. Pictures of it since the application ot photography are numerous; of the earlier ones may be mentioned those in the Boston Book, 1836 ; in Boston Common, 1838 ; in the view of the Common in Snow's Boston, 1824; in the Boston Book, 1850, drawn by Billings, &c. Shurtleff says there exists a picture of it painted by H. C. Pratt in 1825. — Ed.] 22 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. readily brought over in the form of cuttings, both of rapid growth, and more valued in the days of our great grandfathers than at present. The small- leaved variety or species of the European linden, or lime-tree, must also have been planted in colonial times. The horse-chestnut, the ailantus, the Norway maple, and the European larch are of more recent introduction. The earliest Norway spruces — not yet very old — were imported by Colonel Perkins, and planted upon the grounds around what was then his country residence at Brookline. The common lilac and the snowball were planted in door-yards, where these for a long time were almost the only ornamental shrubs, as they still are around New England farm-houses. Fruit trees were of more account, and in greater variety. But their consideration belongs rather to the chapter on horticulture.^ [By the Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, to appear in Vol. IV. — Ed.1 Catl^ l^iistott* CHAPTER I. EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASSACHUSETTS BAY. BY GEORGE DEXTER, Recording Secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society. THE earliest European visitors to New England, of whose alleged voyages any account is preserved, were the Northmen, who had re- discovered and colonized Iceland toward the close of the ninth century. The following is a brief outline of the story. Erik, surnamed the Red, was driven from Norway with his father, on account of a murder, and removed to Iceland. From thence Erik sailed to the westward and found Greenland, which he colonized about 985. Among his companions was one Herjulf, who also made a settlement in Greenland. The son of this Herjulf, by name Bjarni, or Biarne, was absent in Norway when his father left Iceland, and upon his return resolved to follow him to Greenland. Starting about the year 990, he was driven from his course by northerly winds, and reached his destination only after having seen new and strange lands at three distinct times.^ Leif, the son of Erik, excited by the relation of the new lands seen by Biarne, prepared for a voyage of discovery about the year 1000. The first land he reached was the one seen last by Biarne on his return northward after his rough handling by the northerly storm. Leif landed, and "saw there no grass. Great icebergs were over all up the country; but like a plain of flat stones was all from the sea to the mountains, and it appeared to them that this land had no good qualities." ^ To this country they gave the name of Helluland (flat stone land). The second land seen by Leif is described as " flat and covered with wood, and white sands 1 This Biarne is supposed to have been the Newfoundland. See Dr. Kohl's Discovery of first European to see the New England coast, Maine (2 Maine Hist. Soc. Coll. i.), pp. 62, 63. and the three lands he sighted may have been ^ Voyages of the Northmen (Prince Society), (it is thought) Cape Cod, Nova Scotia, and p. 31. 24 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. were far around where they went, and the shore was low."^ This they called Markland (Woodland). Thence they sailed with a northeast wind two days, and arrived at an island to the eastward of the main-land, where they found sweet dew upon the grass. They sailed from this island west through a sound or bay, and, landing, decided to build huts and spend the winter. This place, called Leifsbiidir in the story, is thus described : " The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good that cattle would not require house-feeding in winter, for there came no frost in winter, and little did the grass wither there. Day and night were more equal than in Greenland or Iceland, for on the shortest day was the sun above the horizon from half- past seven in the forenoon till half-past four in the afternoon." ^ Among Leif's crew was a German, named Tryker, who was missing one day, and who, returning " not in his right senses," announced the discovery of vines and grapes. From this discovery Leif called the country ViNLAND. The party returned to Greenland not long afterward. Thorvald, Leif's brother, was anxious to explore Vinland furtner, and, starting about the year 1002, spent two years there. The second summer of his stay he went from Leifsbiidir eastward, and round the land to the north. His vessel encountered a storm when off a ness or promontory, was driven ashore, and her keel broken. Thorvald called the place where this happened Kjalarness. Thence he sailed " round the eastern shores of the land, and into the mouths of the friths which lay nearest thereto, and to a point of land which stretched out, and was covered all over with wood."^ Here he had an encounter with the natives, and received a mortal wound. He gave his men directions to bury him, setting up crosses at his head and feet, and to call the place Krossaness. Thorvald's com- panions, after another winter spent at Leifsbiidir, returned home in the spring. Thorfinn Karlsefne prepared an expedition which started probably in 1008, and was absent about three years. It was an important one, com- prising three vessels and one hundred and sixty persons, and was planned to establish a colony in Vinland. There are three accounts of it, with some variations in details and some repetitions of parts of the story, just narrated, of Leif Helluland and Markland are reached and named ; a promontory, on which a keel of a boat is found, is called KjALARNESS, — the name which had been previously given to it by Thorvald, — and the sandy beaches along it FURDUSTRANDS. An island covered with a vast number of eider-ducks' eggs is named Straumsey, and at last Thorfinn builds winter quarters not far from Leifsbiidir, but on the'opposite side of the bay, at a place which he calls H6p. After some traffic with the natives and some expeditions of exploration, the Northmen, in the third winter, ifind " that although the land had many good qualities, still would they be always exposed there to the fear of hostilities from the earlier inhabitants," * and the settlement is abandoned. 1 Voyages of the Northmen (Prince Society), p. 31. ^ Ibid. p. 33. •' Ibid p. 38. ■< Ibid. p. 58. EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 25 Other voyages to Vinland took place, and it is supposed that there were several settlements, and even regular trade with Greenland and Iceland ; but in time all knowledge of the new country was lost. The accounts of these voyages of the Northmen remained the subject of oral tradition for nearly two centuries. They were handed down, how- ever, as precious heirlooms, and were preserved by successions of pro- fessional skalds and saga-men. Whatever variations and additions may have been incorporated into their stories by successive narrators, a founda- tion of facts and real events is supposed to have remained unchanged. Although known in a somewhat general way, it was not until 1837 that these Sagas were published. In that year the Sagas of Erik the Red and of Thor- finn Karlsefne, with other homogeneous materials, were printed at Copenhagen in the original Icelandic, and in two translations, — Danish and Latin, — by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries under the able editorship of Professor Charles Christian Rafn. ^ An English translation of the portions relating to Am- erica was published in Lon- don in 1 84 1 by Mr. North Ludlow Beamish; and this translation, with Professor Rafn's synopsis of evidence, and his attempts to identify the places visited, was incorporated among the publications of the Prince Society in 1877, under the care of the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter. Mr. De Costa had already collected in an EngHsh dress the various narratives of these voyages in his Pre-Columbian Discovery of America, published at Albany in 1868. The accounts of these voyages of the Northmen have been rejected by a few writers as unworthy of serious consideration,^ and accepted by others as true and accurate in their minute particulars.^ Helluland has been identified with Newfoundland ; Markland with Nova Scotia ; Kjalar- ness with Cape Cod. Krossaness is to some Gurnet Point, to others Point Allerton. Leifsbudir and Furdustrands, Straumsey, and Hop have been assigned definite locations on the map. A NORSE SHIP. 1 Aniiqititates Aviericanee, sive Scriptores Sep- tcntrionalei Rcruiii A nte-Columbiananim in America, — a noble 4tu volume of over 500 pages, enriched with fac-siniiles of the manuscripts, genealogical tables, maps, and engravings. VOL. I. — 4. ^ As by Mr. Bancroft, who styles them " myth- ological in form and obscure in meaning.'' ^ As by the Danish antiquaries and their fol- lowers. A project is on foot to erect in Boston a statue to Leif as the discoverer of this region. 26 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Two kinds of evidence have been brought forward to support the stories of these voyages. The first — that furnished by supposed remains of the Northmen still extant in New England — is not now often advanced. It is generally conceded that no vestiges of their visits remain. The famous Digh- ton Rock and the Newport Mill, offered once as positive proofs of the truth of these stories, are no longer thought to be works of the Northmen.^ The evidence upon which modern defenders of the narratives rely is that offered by the Sagas themselves. I have no space here to discuss the character of these documents.^ It is possible only now to say that, while they are ac- cepted generally as historical narratives by most historians, the data which they offer for the identification of places are considered by many scholars as too slight to warrant the conclusions sometimes drawn from them. The direction of the wind and the time occupied in sailing from point to point are not enough to prove the exact position of the place reached. The descriptions of the countries are not thought by all to be applicable to New England. The astronomical observation of the length of the winter day, on which so much stress has been laid, is still obscure, and capable of more than one interpretation.^ Some argument has been based on the supposed similarity of Indian and Norse names of places, but no great stress has been laid upon it* While, then, it is very probable that the Northmen reached America, it is not safe to assert that they discovered Massachusetts Bay, much less so to say that Thorvald, Erik's son, was killed at the mouth of Boston Harbor.^ It is not my purpose to recount all the supposed pre-Columbian discoveries of America. Only the voyagers who are thought to have visited New England claim notice here.^ I pass by, therefore, the story of the discoveries of the Welsh Prince Madoc ap Owen Gwyneth. He is supposed to have reached 1 See an excellent note in Dr. Palfrey's Hist, lished critically] I fancy a person who knows of New England, i. 55. the natural appearance of the coast of Labrador, 2 The interested reader may be referred to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, &c., will be able to Wheaton's History of the Northmen, ch. v. ; ascertain the places tolerably correctly from the Laing's Heimskringla, introduction; Sir George descriptions given of each of them in the Sagas; W. Dasent's introduction to his NjaVs Saga, never from the length of the shortest day, it Story of Burnt Njal; Slafter's introduction to being liable to so different interpretation." the Prince Society's Voyages of the Northmen ; * Antiquitates Americana, p. 455 ; Proc. Mass. and to the Prolegomena to Vigfussen's Stur- Hist. Soc., February, 1865, pp. 193-199. lunga Saga. ^ Krossaness, the place of Thorvald's death 2 See Laing's Heimskringla, \. 172; Foreign and grave, has been identified with Point AUer- Quarterly Review, xxi. 109, no; Palfrey's New ton by Rafn (Antiquitates Americana:, pp. 430, England, i. 55, note; Cleasby and Vigfussen's 431), who leans more, however, toward Gurnet Icelandic-English Dictionary, s. v. Eykt. The Point, and by Dr. Kohl (Discovery of Maine, arguments of Finn Magnusen and Rafn are in p. 69). See also Bryant's Popular History the Mhnoires of the Danish Antiquaries' Society, of the United States, i. 44, note. The French 1836-39, p. 165, and 1840-44, p. 128. The fol- translation of Wheaton's History of the North- lowing extract from a letter written by the great men, made by Paul Guillot and sanctioned by jjhilologist, Erasmus Rask, in i83i,to Mr. Henry Mr. Wheaton, leans also toward this view. Wheaton is not without interest. I have printed ^ Mr. Major's introduction to \\i& Select Let- the whole letter in the Proceedings of the Massa- ters of Columbus (Ilakluyt Society, 2d edition chusctts Historical Society iox K^x\\,\?&a: "Then 1870), contains a good account of the earliest [when the text of the Sagas shall have been pub- voyages to America. EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 27 only the southern parts of the United States, or perhaps Mexico. I come next to the story of the Zeni brothers, which is briefly as follows : — Nicolo Zeno, a Venetian of noble family and considerable wealth, started on a northern voyage — perhaps the not uncommon one to Flanders — late in the fourteenth century.^ He was driven out of his course, and finally cast away on the island of Frislanda (Faroe Islands). Here he was rescued from the rude inhabitants by a chieftain named Zichmni,'^ who received him into his service as pilot, and in time entertained a great regard for him. Nicolo sent a letter home to Venice, urging his brother Antonio to join him in Zichmni's dominions, which he did. Four years after his arrival Nicol6 died, and ten years later Antonio returned to his native city. Meantime the brothers had accompanied Zichmni in an attack on the Shetland Islands, on one of which, according to the narrative, Nicol6 Zeno was left after the victory. The following summer he sailed from the island on a voyage of discovery toward the north, and reached a country called Engroneland (Greenland). A settlement which he discovered there, sup- posed to have been one founded many years before by the Northmen, is described at length in the story, with its monastery and church, its volcanic mountain, and hot springs whose waters served for all domestic purposes. The climate proved too severe for the Italian, and he returned to Frislanda, where he died. The other brother, Antonio Zeno, was detained in the service of Zichmni, who desired to make use of his nautical skill and daring to ascertain the correctness of the stories of some fishermen who had reported the discovery of rich and populous countries in the west. The Zeni narrative gives the fishermen's story at some length. Twenty-six years before this time, four fishing boats had been driven helplessly for many days, and found them- selves, on the tempest abating, at an island a thousand miles west from Frislanda. This island they called Estotiland. The fishermen were carried before the king of the island, who, after getting speech with them with difficulty through the medium of an interpreter who spoke Latin, com- manded them to remain in the country. They dwelt in Estotiland five years, and a description of it and of its inhabitants is preserved. From Estotiland they were sent in a southerly direction to a country called Drogeo, where they fared very badly. They were made slaves, and some of them were murdered by the natives, who were cannibals. The lives of the remainder were saved by their showing the savages how to take fish with the net. The chief of the fishermen became very famous in this occupation, and proved a bone of contention among the native kings. He Was fought for, and transferred from one to another as the spoils of war, 1 The date given in the narrative is 1380, and pp. xlii.-xlviii., that a mistake of ten years has this date, incompatible with some of the inci- been made, and that Nicolo Zeno's journey took dents of the story, has been a serious obstacle in place in 1390. the way of accepting the adventures of the Zeni. ^ Mr. Forster suggests, and Mr. Major ac- Mr. R. H. Major has shown, in his introduction cepts the suggestion, that Zichmni was Henry to the llakluyt Society's reprint of the Voyages, Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness. 28 THE MEMORIAL rilSTORY OF BOSTON. not less than twenty-five times in the thirteen years which he is supposed to have passed in Drogeo. In this way he saw nauch of the country, which he says became more refined in climate and in people as he travelled toward the southwest. At last the fisherman escaped back through the length of the land, and over the sea to Estotiland, where he amassed a fortune in trading, and whence he returned finally to Frislanda with his wonderful story. The narrative goes on to tell how Antonio Zeno accompanied his patron Zichmni on a voyage of discovery to find Estotiland and Drogeo ; how the fisherman, who was to have been their guide, died just as the expedition was ready to sail ; how the vessels encountered a severe storm, and were driven to an island called Icaria,' where they were refused shelter by the inhabit- ants. After six days' further sail westward the wind shifted to the southwest, and four days' journey with the wind aft brought the fleet to Greenland. Here Zichmni decided to establish a settlement, but some of his followers having become anxious to return home, he agreed to send them back under the charge of Antonio Zeno, who brought them safely to Frislanda. I have given a full outline of the story of the Zeni, suppressing none of its exaggerations. The narrative was published with a map, on which much reliance is placed in the identification of places. The countries called Estotiland and Drogeo are supposed with some probability, if the story is not an absolute fabrication, to have been part of America. Dr. Kohl thinks the former Nova Scotia, and Drogeo New England. Mr. Major prefers Newfoundland for Estotiland, and considers Drogeo, " subject to such sophistications as the word may have undergone in its perilous trans- mission from the tongues of Indians via the northern fisherman's repetition to the ear of the Venetian, and its subsequent transfer to paper," a native name for a large part of North America.^ Many historians reject the narrative entirely. The difficulties attending the identification of particular places are certainly great. The bibliography of the controversy about the Zeni voyages is given by Mr. Winsor in the Bulletin of the Boston Public Library, No. 37, for April, 1876. The strongest opponent of the narrative has been perhaps Admiral Zahrtmann ; ^ its strongest upholders Cardinal Zurla, John ReinholdForster, 1 Icaria has been supposed to be some part by that name in the chart of the Zeni is the of America, — Dr. Kohl thinks Newfoundland. Feroe Islands. Mr. Major, following Mr. Forster, identifies it "Second. That the said chart has been com- with Kerry in Ireland, and gives some reasons piled from hearsay information, and not by any for his opinion. seaman who had himself navigated in those seas 2 Voyages of the Z«?/' (Hakluyt Society), p. xcv. for several years. Dr. Kohl's views are given in \\\^ Discovery of "Third- That the 'History of the Voyages Maine, pp. 105, 106. of the Zeni,' — more particularly that part of it ^ The following summary of Admiral Zahrt- which relates to Nicolo, — is so replete with mann's essay is taken from Mr. J. Winter Jones's fiction that it cannot be looked to for any infor- introduction to the Hakluyt Society's reprint of mation whatever as to the state of the north at Hakluyt's Divers Voyages, pp. xciii, xciv. The that time, admiral contends, — " Fourth. That both the history and the chart " First. That there never existed an island of were most probably compiled by Nicolo, a de- Frisland ; but that what has been represented scendant of the Zeni, from accounts which came EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 29 and Mr. Major. Nothing of importance has appeared, I think, since the Hakluyt Society of London reprinted the original narrative, with an Enghsh translation and an elaborate introduction by Mr. Major, in 1873. Mr. Major contributed a resume of his editorial labors in this work to the Massachu- setts Historical Society, which is printed in their Proceedings for October, 1874. The original narrative, founded on a letter from Nicolo Zeno to his brother Antonio, and on subsequent letters from Antonio to a third brother. Carlo, is said to have been prepared by Antonio after his return to Venice. It was preserved in manuscript among the family papers until a descendant, also named Nicolo, while still a boy, partially destroyed it. From what escaped of the papers, this Nicolo Zeno the younger afterward rewrote the narrative, which with a map copied from one much decayed, found in the family palace, was published in 1558 by Francisco Marcolini at Venice. It is a small i2mo volume of sixty-three leaves, and contains, besides this narrative, the adventures of another member of the family, Caterino Zeno, who made a journey into Persia. It was reprinted in the third edition of the second volume of Ramusio's Collection of Voyages, Venice, 1574; and Hakluyt included a translation of this in his Divers Voyages, published in 1582. The story of the voyages of the Cabots, which come next in the list of the early voyages, requires a different treatment from that pursued in con- sidering the stories of the Northmen and the Zeiii. Instead of having to condense a detailed narrative, real or fictitious, I am called upon to con- struct, if possible, a connected story from very scanty and very scattered materials, — many of them of doubtful value. These voyages of the Cabots present great difficulties, and have given rise to much discussion. To recapitulate even a small part of this discussion would overrun the limits of my space. It is only within a few years, since the publication of the researches of Mr. Rawdon Brown and Mr. Bergenroth among the archives of Venice and of Spain, that positive evidence has been brought to light which enables the historian to settle beyond reasonable doubt even such fundamental points as the date of the voyage in which the main-land of America was discovered, and the name of the commander. To John Cabot this honor is due ; and he saw the coast of North America, June 24, 1497, more than a year before Columbus reached the main-land. John Cabot, a native of Genoa, or of some neighboring village,^ settled in Venice, where he obtained a grant of citizenship from the Senate, after a residence of fifteen years, March 29, 1476.^ He was a man of some acquirements in cosmography and the science of navigation, and had been a traveller in the East.^ He married in Venice, and there probably his to Italy in the middle of the sixteenth century, 1 Letter of M. D'Avezac, 2 Maine Hist. Soc. being the epoch when information respecting Coll. i. 504. Greenland first reached that country, and when ^ Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, 1202- interest was awakened for the colony which had 1509, p. 136. disappeared." •' M. D'Avezac's letter, p. 505. He cites an Mr. Winter Jones expresses his own convic- Italian authority without giving the name, tion of the conclusiveness of the argument. 30 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. second son Sebastian was born.^ John Cabot emigrated with his family from Venice to England, where he settled in Bristol, then, next to London, the most flourishing seaport of the kingdom and a great resort for mer- chants and navigators. It was already possessed of a trade with Iceland, and was favorably situated for exploring voyages in search of Kathay.^ The date of this removal to England is uncertain, but it was probably about the year 1477,^ when Sebastian Cabot, if born at all, was a very young child. The object of the removal is supposed to have been the embarking in mercantile pursuits, in which many foreigners were then engaged in Bristol.* That voyages from Bristol toward the west in search of new countries or of a new route to Kathay were not unusual, and that John Cabot was a mov- ing spirit in some of these voyages, appear from a despatch of the Span- ish ambassador in England to his sovereigns. Under date of July 25, 1498, he writes: "The people of Bristol have, for the last seven years, sent out every year two, three, or four light ships (caravelas) in search of the island of Brazil and the Seven Cities, according to the fancy of the Genoese."^ Possibly some encouraging result was obtained in one of these pre- liminary voyages, if I may call them by that name. It is certain that application was made to King Henry VII. for aid, and that a patent was issued to John Cabot and his three sons by name, bearing date March 5, 1496, by which they were authorized to discover new lands for the king, to set up his ensigns therein, and they were granted, under restrictions, some control over future trade with such new countries.® By this patent the Cabots were to bear all the expenses of the voyage ; and this may have caused the delay of a year in the sailing of the expedition, which did not leave Bristol until the following spring. The name of one vessel, the " Matthew," has come down to us. With this vessel John Cabot, accompanied by Sebastian, reached some point in America, most probably Cape Breton, on June 24, 1497.' No long stay could have been made ; for the " Matthew," 1 M. D'Avezac's letter, p. 505. Sebastian American Antiquarian Society, October, 1865, Cabot is said to have made contradictory state- p. 25. [These islands belong to the myths which ments as to the place of his birth, having told puzzled the early cartographers. Brazil or Eden (Decades, p. 255) that he was born in Bresil was usually represented as lying two Bristol, and Contarini (Letter in Cfl/i?»(/r7?-»/'.S'/ai'? or three hundred miles off the coast of Ireland. Papers, Venetian, 1520-1526, p. 293) that he was It is said not to have disappeared from the a Venetian. The date of his birth can be only British Admiralty charts till within ten years, approximated. He accompanied his father on The Seven Cities had a floating station, but was the voyage of 1497, and assisted a " good olde . usually put down farther to the south. — Ed.] gentleman ' at wishing God-speed to Stephen " The patent, in Latin and English, is in Burrough in the "Search-thrift" in 1556. See Hakluyt's Divers Voyages (reprinted by the 'mk^Myi's Principal Navigations (\tff^,\. z-]^. Hakluyt Society in 1850). It is also in his ^ Dr. Kohl, Discovery of Maine, ch. ili. ; Principal Navigations, ed. 1589, pp. 509, 510, Corry, Hist, of Bristol, i. ch. v. and again in the 1 599-1600 edition, iii. 4, 5. It •• M. D'Avezac (Letter, p. 505) says 1477J has been reprinted by Hazard and others. Dr. Kohl {Discovery of Maine, p. 123) says prob- ' There is some difference of opinion as to ably before 1490. the landfall of the Cabots, but the best evidence '' Nicholls, Life of Sebastian Cabot, p. 18. points to Cape Breton. See J. C. Brevoort's ^ This letter is published, from the English article in the Historical Magazitu, March, 1868; State Paper Calendars, in the Proceedings of the F. Kidder's contribution to the Ne-M England EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 31 after sailing along the coast three hundred leagues, was back in Bristol early in August, as appears from a letter of a Venetian gentleman, and from the entry in the privy-purse expenses of a payment of ;£io "to him that found the new isle." ' A second patent or license was issued to John Cabot the next year (Feb. 3, 1498), in which he was authorized to impress six vessels, and "them convey and lead to the land and isles of late found by the said John in our name and by our commandment." ^ John Cabot does not appear to have profited by this license. He is said to disappear from history at this point.^ He is supposed to have died soon after the grant was made. Sebastian Cabot sailed in 1498 under this license, the king having been at the charge of one vessel of the fleet. He is supposed to have taken out at least three hundred men, and to have entertained some plan of a colony or settlement.* What the exact events of this voyage were, — how much of the coast of North America was explored, — yet remain uncertain. There is no contemporary account of the voyage, and what we find which may possibly relate to it presents many difficulties, and is, in part at least, of doubtful character. It is probable that Cabot reached in this voyage a high degree of latitude, seeking always a passage through the land to Kathay. It is possible that, as Dr. Kohl suggests, finding the coast trend to the East at the modern Cumberland, which answers to the highest latitude which any of the stories state him to have attained, and finding also his way blocked by heavy ice, he may have turned and run down the American coast to the south. The farthest point in this direction which he is supposed to have reached was in the latitude of the Straits of Gibraltar, — 36° north.^ Historical and Genealogical Register, October, -See hi.s letter in Dr. Kohl's Discovery of Maine, 1878; H. Stevens's Sebastian ^.Cabot — John pp. 502-514. Caiiol = o ; and Mr. Deane's paper on Cabot's 2 Biddle, Memoir of Sebastian Cabot, p. 76. " Mappe Monde " in the Proceedings of the ' Unless the Spanish Ambassador's despatch American Antiquarian Society for April, 1867, gives trace of him : " I have seen the map which where the earliest suggestion of Cape Breton the discoverer has made ; who is another Genoese, (drawn from the map) is made. like Columbus. . . . The Genoese has continued 1 The patents issued to John Cabot ; the de- his voyage." The date of the despatch is July spatch of the Spanish Ambassador quoted above ; 25, 1498, and Sebastian Cabot is supposed to the letter of the Venetian gentleman Lorenzo have sailed on the second voyage early in the Pasqualigo (Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, spring. But dates and all other particulars of 1 202-1 509, p. 262, and reprinted with other doc- this voyage are uncertain. That the expedition uments in Proceedings Avier. Antiq. Society, had started before the despatch was written is October, 1865) ; and Cabot's " Mappe Monde," certain from the despatch itself, and from the published by M. Jomard, are ample evidence for passage in the Cotton MSS. See Mr. Hale's the truth of the voyage of 1497. The map should paper in the Antiquarian Sochety's Proceedings, be examined with the aid of Mr. Deane's learned April, i860, p. 37. comments on it, made to the mefeting of the Anti- * Biddle, Cabot, jj. 87. qnarian Society in April, 1867, and of his careful * From the scanty original authorities for the note to the Hakluyt Discourse on Western Plant- voyages of Sebastian Cabot many elaborate ac- iug (Maine Hist. Soc, 2d series, ii. 223-227) ; counts have been built. Mr. Biddle, in his valu- and Mr. Major's contribution to the Archccologia, able Memoir, gives an account of a third voyage xliii. 17-42, on the "True date of the English in 1517, and M. D'Avezac agrees with him. Dr. Discovery of the American Continent under Kohl thinks that this voyage never took place, John and Sebastian Cabot." M. D'Avezac and he is followed by other critics. The reader adhered to his early belief in a voyage of 1494. must be referred to Kohl's Discovery of Maine. 32 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The voyages of the Cabots were barren of immediate results. The claim of England to her North American territory rested upon them filially, but no present advantage accrued to their commander. Sebastian Cabot's subsequent career does not fall within the scope of this chapter. It is known that he lived for many years after his discoveries, serving successively Spain and England. He entered the service of the former in 1512,1 and was advanced to the dignity of Grand Pilot in 1518. In this capacity he presided at the celebrated Congress of Badajos in 1524. Two years later he sailed for the Moluccas in command of an expedition which did not result successfully. He returned to England about 1548, and was granted a pension by Edward VI. the next year. He became Governor of the new Company of Merchant Adventurers, who opened the trade to Russia. The date of his death is uncertain and the place of his burial unknown.^ I must pass over, without relating their stories, the voyages of the Cor- tereals in 1500 and 1501. Mr. Biddle thinks that Caspar Cortereal's landfall was in New England,^ but Dr. Kohl, who has made a careful study of these voyages, places it to the north of Cape Race. The interested reader will find in the fifth chapter of Dr. Kohl's Discovery of Maine the fullest and latest information regarding the Cortereal voyages. I approach next the voyage of Verrazano, whose narrative is said to contain the earliest particular description of the eastern coast of North America.* Giovanni Verrazano, an Italian in the service of Francis I. of France, had made for that monarch some predatory voyages with a view to Spanish Indian commerce, and possibly one or more voyages in search of new countries;^ On his return from one of these latter voyages he wrote to the King from Dieppe, July 8, 1524, an account of his discovery and exploration of a new country. His letter relates that with one. ship, the "Dauphine," well manned and equipped, he sailed westward from the Ma- deira Islands about Jan. 17 (27), 1524. He encountered a severe tempest, from which he escaped with difficulty, and at length, after a voyage of forty- nine days, he came in sight of a land hitherto unknown to navigators." First he coasted to the south in search of a harbor, but finding none he turned about, and running beyond the point of his landfall, anchored and sent a boat ashore.''' Continuing northward along the coast, a second landing was attempted, and a youth who was cast upon the shore in the attempt was kindly received and cared for by the natives.** Their kindness was 1 BidcUe, Cabot, p. 98. f" Dr. Kohl places Verrazaiio's landfall at 2 "She character of the times, if not of the Cape Fear (Discoz'ery of Maine, p. 252) ; Mr. J. man, is shown by Cabot's intrigues with Venice, Winter Jones, in the neighborhood of Charleston of which we get glimpses in the Calendar of or Savannah (Hakluyt Society's Di^iers Voyages, State Papers, Venetian, 1520-1526, pp. 278, 293- p. 56) ; Mr. Brevoort, off Little Egg Harbor beach 295, 304, 315, 328; and also in the volume 1534- (Verrazano the Navigator, p. 37). '554. P- 364- ' At Onslow Bay, near New River Inlet; 3 Biddle, Cabot, book ii. ch. iv. Discovery of Maine, p. 254. * Hakluyt, Divers Voyages (Hakluyt Soc. 8 p,. k„i,1 and Mr. Jones place this incident ed.), p. Ixxxviii. at Raleigh Bay;' Mr. Brevoort, at Kockaway '•> 'lirevoort,Verrazanot/ieA'a-c'igator,]ip. 19,35. Beach, Long Island. EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 33 repaid by the abduction by the French, at their next landing, of an Indian boy.^ Verrazano describes a harbor, a pleasant place among small hills, in the midst of which a great stream of water ran down into the sea ; so deep at its mouth that any great vessel might pass into it.^ From this harbor the shore line was followed to the eastward, and at a distance of fifty leagues an island was discovered and called Louisa, the only place named by Verrazano.* Fifteen leagues from Louisa Island the explorer found a good harbor, where he remained two weeks, and became somewhat acquainted with the natives, of whose manners and customs he gives an account.* From this point the voyage was continued, and another landing made, where the natives were found much more savage than those before seen, and where the Europeans were roughly received.* At last the land "discovered by the Britons, which is in fifty degrees"^ was reached, and then, having spent all their provisions, the expedition sailed for France. The story of Verrazano's voyage contained in the letter from the explorer to the King already mentioned was first printed by Ramusio in the third volume of his Collection of Voyages in 1556. From this it was translated by Hakluyt for his Divers Voyages, published in 1582. A manuscript copy of the letter, differing in some particulars from Ramusio's printed text, and containing a cosmographical appendix,'^ was found later in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. This was printed, with a translation by Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell, in the Collections of the New York Historical Society in 1841 (2d series, i. 37-68),^ and the translation was incorporated by Dr. Asher into his Henry Hudson the Navigator, published by the Hakluyt Society in i860 (pp. 197-228). With the Magliabecchian manu- script there was found a letter from Fernando Carli to his father, from Lyons, dated Aug. 4, 1524, in which he transmits the copy of Verrazano's letter.® There exists no French original of this letter. This narrative has been generally considered as worthy of credit until a few years ago, when its authenticity was attacked by Mr. Buckingham Smith, who accounted the whole letter a fraud. Mr. Smith's view has been followed and supported by Mr. Henry C. Murphy, who published an 1 Somewhere on the Delaware coast (Jones); been identified with Narragansett Bay, and or south of it (Dr. Kohl); or on Long Island particularly with Newport. (Brevoort). ^ Not far from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 2 Identified generally with New York Har- according to Dr. Kohl and Mr. Jones. Mr. Bre- bor and the Hudson River. See Dr. Kohl's voort places this landing between Nahant and Discovery of Maine, pp. 256-258; Hakluyt So- Cape Ann. ciety's edition, Divers Voyages, p. 63 ; Asher's ^ Hakluyt Society's edition, Divers Voyages, Henry Hudson the Navigator, p. 211, note. But p. 71. Brevoort thinks that this description applies to '' Dr. Asher considers this appendix a very the mouth of the Thames in Connecticut (Ver- important document (Henry Hudson the Navi- razano the Navigator, p. 43), and identifies New gator, pp. 198, 199, 222, note). York with a point reached earlier (Ibid. p. 40). ^ gee also Professor G. W. Greene's article 8 Block Island (Brevoort, p. 43); Martha's m t\ie North Ainerican Review, y.\v . 2^2- Vineyard (Dr. Kohl, p. 260, and Mr. Jones, ' Carli's letter is in Buckingham Smith's p 64). Inquiry, Y^. 2T-Tp; H. C. Murphy's Voyage of ^ Verrazano's letter says that this harbor Verrazzano,■f^.\^-\<)•, and in Brevoort's Fifrra- was in the parallel of Rome, 41° 40'. It has zano the Navigator, pp. 151-153. VOL. I. — 5. 34 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. elaborate monograph on the subject in 1875. On the other side, the genuineness of the letter has been maintained by Mr. J. C. Brevoort, whose Verrazano the Navigator, read before the American Geographical Society in November, 187 1, was printed in 1874; by Mr. Major, who reviewed Mr. Murphy's book in the Geographical Magazine (London) for July 1876; and by Mr. De Costa in articles in the Magazine of American History for February, May, and August, 1878, and for January, 1879. Mr. Murphy thinks that the Verrazano letter was concocted to increase the glory of Florence, and that its geography was taken from the dis- coveries made by Gomez, whose voyage I shall touch upon next. In the discussion of this, as of all early voyages, much depends upon the maps. There is a Verrazano map preserved in Rome, supposed to have been made by a brother of the navigator ; and Hakluyt speaks of an " olde mappe in parchmente, made as yt shoulde seme by Verarsanus," and of a " globe in the Queene's privie gallery at Westminster, which also semeth to be of Verarsanus' mekinge." ^ I have purposely avoided touching upon the maps of the'se early voyages, as the early cartography of this region will be treated in a succeeding chapter. Mr. Deane's note to the passages cited from Hakluyt's Discourse (pp. 216-219) should be consulted. Mr. De Costa, in his contribution to the Magazine of American History for August, 1878, gives for the first time the names on the American section of the Verrazano map. Much doubt hangs over the subsequent career of Verrazano. He is said to have made a second voyage to America, and to have been killed by the savages here. He is said also to have been taken by the Spaniards and hanged as a pirate. The reader must consult the works of Murphy and Brevoort, where all that can be said is related. The year following Verrazano's voyage, but, so far as is known, without any connection with it, Estevan Gomez, a Portuguese by birth, who had served Spain as pilot, and had been a member of the Congress of Badajos, sailed in search of a passage to India less difficult than that discovered by Magellan in 1520. Gomez had been of Magellan's expedition, but had deserted his commander and returned home. There is no narrative of his voyage. It is uncertain where he landed, and whether he sailed up or down the American coast. Dr. Kohl has examined more carefully than any one else the various allusions to this voyage, and its results as laid down on the maps.^ His opinion is that Gomez struck the coast toward the North and sailed along it southward as far as the fortieth or forty-first parallel of latitude. He saw, probably, much of the New England coast, and may have entered many bays and even harbors, for his voyage, lasted ten months. A map of the world made in 1529 by Diego Ribero, the imperial cosmographer, gives the name " tierra de Estevan Gomez " to that part of America answering nearly to New England and Nova Scotia. 1 Discourse on Western Planting (2 Maine ^ Discovery of Maine, pp. 271-281, and an- Hist. Soc. ii. 113, 114). pendix to chapter viii. EARLY EUROPEAN VOYAGERS IN MASS. BAY. 35 For some time nothing seems to have been done in England, after Cabot's discovery, in the way of exploration of the new continent. I am inclined to reject the voyage of 15 17 under the supposed command of Sebastian Cabot and Sir Thomas Part.^ But in 1527 two ships, the " Mary of Guilford" and the "Samson," sailed for the New World under the connmand of John Rut. The object of the expedition was probably the discovery of a northwest passage. One vessel, the " Samson," was lost; the other is said to have visited parts of the American coast, and Dr. Kohl supposes that she carried the first Europeans who are known to have trodden the shores of Maine.^ No detailed account of this voyage exists beyond Rut's letter from Newfoundland to the King, which is very meagre.^ It has been supposed by some that Verrazano was the pilot, and that he lost his life in this voyage. Rut's expedition was followed in 1536 by that of " Master Hore," under- taken with the same object and very tragic in its details.* After this unfortunate experience, the attention of the English was directed for a time to attempts to find a passage to Kathay by the northeast, in one of which Willoughby met his sad fate. Andrd Thevet, a Franciscan monk who accompanied Villegaapon's expedition to Brazil, is said to have sailed along the American coast on his return voyage to Europe in 1556. In his works written after his arrival home he gives a description of Norumbega, which Dr. Kohl considers interesting.^ But Thevet has not been esteemed a trustworthy authority, and much doubt exists as to his visit to New England.^ The French expeditions to Canada under Cartier and Roberval, the Huguenot colony in Florida, and the discoveries of the Spaniards and others at the southward do not come within the scope of this chapter. After the English had turned their attention to the search for a northeast passage, the idea of further exploration of America slumbered for many years. The plan of colonization was not yet conceived. Later in this same sixteenth century, however, England awakened to the value of the Ameri- can possessions which she might claim under the discovery of Cabot. Sir Humphrey Gilbert wrote a treatise to prove the possibility of a northwest passage in 1576, and lost his life seven years later in an attempt to estal- hsh England's supremacy in the Western World. And Richard Hakluyt, after publishing in 1582 his Divers Voyages, prepared in 1584 an elabo- rate Discourse on Western Planting, in aid of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was Gilbert's successor in the scheme for American colonization. 1 See Dr. Kohl's argument in Discovery of ^ Purchas, Pilgrimes, iii. 809. Maine, pp. 206-225. The opposite view is main- ^ For Hore's voyage see Dr. Asher's intro- tained by Biddle, Memoir ofS. Cabat, chs. xiii.-xv. duction to He7iry Hudson the Navigator, p. xcv ; ''■Discovery of Maine, f^. 2?ii-2?ii). Mr. De Dr. Kohl, Discovery of Maine, pp. 337-340; Costa controverts- Dr. Kohl's claim that Rut lii3k\uyt, Principal Navigations, m. 12<)-12^. landed in Maine, Northmen in Maine, pp. 43-62. '' Discovery of Maine, pp. 416-420. In the same volume, pp. 80-122, he asserts for " Northmen in Maine, pp. 63-79 ; Hakluyt, Jean Allefonsce the honor of the discovery of Western Planting, pp. 184, 185. Massachusetts Bay. 36 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTO^f. Dr. Palfrey, after recounting these early voyages, when he comes to the story of Gosnold's expedition, says, with that admirable caution which is characteristic of a true historian, " Gosnold, Brereton, and three others went on shore, — the first Englishmen who are known to have set foot upon the soil of Massachusetts." ^ The twenty years that have passed since Dr. Palfrey wrote do not make it possible to contradict with deci- sion this statement. Gosnold's expedition, planned with a view to a settlement, took place in 1602. He landed first at a point not far from Cape Ann, sailed thence across the bay, and entered the harbor of Provincetown. Rounding the end of Cape Cod, he sailed along its " back side," and at last pitched the site of his colony on the small island of Cuttyhunk in Buzzard's Bay. Here a fort, or protected house, was built, and the settlement begun. It was soon abandoned, however, for want of proper supplies, and the " Concord," Gosnold's vessel, returned with the people to England, where she arrived, says her commander, without " one cake of bread, nor any drink but a little vinegar left." ^ Q * Palfrey, Hist, of N. E., i. 71. 2 Gosnold's letter to his father; Purchas, Pilgrimes, iv. 1646. CHAPTER 11. THE EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY AND BOSTON HARBOR. BY JUSTIN WINSOR, Librarian of Harvard University. THE broad indentation of the New England coast, of which Cape Sable and Cape Cod form the outer promontories, has of late years acquired the name of the Gulf of Maine. In the southwest part of this expanse, enclosed by Cape Ann and Cape Cod, is the water which on modern maps is called Massachusetts Bay. This name was, however, by the earliest frequenters and planters, and subsequently by the settlers, confined to what is now called Boston Harbor. It is, moreover, probable that the name was even restricted to what we know as the inner harbor, if not indeed to that portion of it represented by Quincy Bay.^ Chiefly upon the shores of this minor inlet dwelt the Massachusetts Indians, a designation borrowed, it is said, primarily from a hillock on the shore, the name of which was later given to the high eminence known to Captain John Smith and others as Massachusetts Mount, and to us as the Blue Hill.^ This name — Massa- chusetts Bay — gradually extended, subsequent to the settlement, over the entire harbor, and finally took the range now appropriated to it.^ It is the cartographical history of these waters which is the subject of this chapter. ' Wood, in 1634, speaks of the land on Quincy in 1827, with a distant view of Boston, Quincy Bay: "This place is called Massachu- taken from the late President Quincy's estate, sets fields, where the greatest Sagamore in the It is in this cajled Moswetuset, or Sachem's Hill. Countrey lived before the plague, who caused Smith says that the plague, shortly after his it to be cleared for himself." visit, reduce4 this tribe to thirty individi»als, ■■^ The origin and significance of the name and of these twenty-eight were killed by heigh- has given rise to some conflicting views. See boring tribes, leaving two, who fled the country E. E. Hale's note, and a letter of J. H. Trum- till the English came. Smith's Advertisements, bull in American Antiquarian Society's Proceed- &c., in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vii. 16. ings, Oct. 21, 1867, p. 77. For earlier views see ' Drake, Hist, of Boston, p. 59, says it is not Everett's OraZ/owj, ii. 116, Hutchinson, in 1764, clear when the name Massachusetts was first speaks of the sachem's abode being on " a applied to the great bay. The early writers small hill or rising upland in the midst of a body seemed to look upon Charles River as begin- of saltmarsh, near to a place called Squantum ; " ning at Point Allerton, and Smith, in 1629, makes and adds, "it is known by the name of Massa- that designation an alternative, — "the bay of chusetts Hill or Mount Massachusetts to»this Massachusetts, otherwise called Charles River." day." There is a small lithographic view of So Dudley, in 1630, speaks of Charlestown as this hillock, after a sketch by Miss Eliza Susan " three leagues up Charles River; " and yet, in 38 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The outline of the Massachusetts coast was never drawn upon any map so as to be recognized, except from its relative position, before John Smith sailed along it in 1614; but it is curious to see how, from the very begin- ning of explorations, the headland of Cape Cod attracted attention.'^ The Northmen of the tenth century left no charts known to us ; but Torfaeus, in his Grotilandia Antigua, published in 1706, gives some old Icelandic delin- eations of the North Atlantic, which presumably may have followed some ancient Scandinavian charts, although made, of themselves, five or six hundred years after the Northmen voyages. Sigurd Stephanius, an Ice- lander, made such a one in 1570, but at that date more than two hundred years had passed since the last of these Norse voyages, if the Sagas are to be believed. This map represents the promontory of Vinland (Cape Cod?), jutting from the main to the north and east, shaped much like a the same writing ("Letter to the Countess of Lincoln"), he connects the two names, as dis- tinguishing harbor from stream, "the Massa- chusetts Bay and Charles River." Roger Clap, speaking of the arrival of the first vessel of Winthrop's fleet, May 30, 1630, says of the captain of it, that he " would not bring us into Charles River, but put us ashore on Nantasket Point;" and, after going to the Charlestown pe- ninsula in a boat, then they went " up Charles River." Winthrop, i. 144, sought to make a distinction in 1633, when he speaks of " the bay, or rather the lake, for so it were more properly termed, the bay being that part of the sea without, between the two capes, Cape Cod and Cape Ann." On Wood's map, 1634, the name is given as if it covered the great bay ; but this was for the engraver's convenience prob- ably, for in his text he says, " the chiefe and usuall Harbour is the still Bay of Massachusets, which is close aboard the plantations, in which most of our ships come to anchor." The bill of lading of 1632, given later in this volume, signifies Boston by the " aforesaid port of Mas- sachuset Bay." Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, p. 368, confines the name to the present harbor, in 1639-40. In 1676, a paper in Hutchinson's Collection speaks of " the Plantation of Massa- chusetts Bay, commonly called the Corporation of Boston." Deeds of Spectacle and Rainsford islands, respectively dated in 1684 and 1691, speak of them as " scituate in Massachusetts Bay." N. E, Hist, and Geneal. Reg., January, 1868, p. 47. The British Admiralty charts of about the Revolutionary time often apply to the present Massachusetts Bay the term Boston Bay, in distinction to Boston Harbor. On some of these maps the Gulf of Maine is called Massa- chusetts Bay. As late as 1852, Josiah Quincy, Municipal Hist, of Boston, p. 2, conforms to the old usage, and speaks of Boston peninsula as formed by Charles River and Massachusetts Bay. ' The most effective study of this early car- tographical problem is given in Dr. John G. Kohl's Discovery of Maine, published by the Maine Historical Society. Cf. Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc, April 28, 1869, p. 37. Dr. Palfrey, History of New England, i. 96, gives but a meagre list of the early maps. A few of them are named in S. A. Drake's Nooks and Cor- ners of til e New England Coast, ch. i. ; and their want of fitting delineation is discuseed in B. F. De Costa's article on the Verrazzano map in the Magazine of American History, August, 1878, p. 455. The great atlases of Jomard, Kunstmann, and Santarem contain several of the early maps showing the New England coast. The most complete enumeration of the French maps makes part of the section " Cartographie " in Harrisse's Notes sur la Nouvelle France, Paris, 1872, pp. 191-239. A collection of maps, formed by Har- risse, embracing early MS. and engraved maps, with copies of maps in the French archives, was offered some years since to the United States Government, but, on the failure of the negotiations, they became the property of S. L. M. Barlow, Esq., of New York, who kindly sent them to me for inspection. I have also seen the excellent collection of copies of early French maps made by Mr. Francis Parkman in the prose- cution of his studies. With the exception, how- ever, of Champlain, the French map-makers usu- ally concerned themselves only incidentally with the New England coast, their chief study being with Acadie, the course of the St. Lawrence, and the great lakes, and, later, of the Missis- sippi Valley. The resources for this study, with chance light on the New England coast, are also great in the Parliamentary Library (Ottawa, Canada) ; in the collection in our own State House, formed under authority by Mr. Ben. Perley Poore in Paris. As private collec- tors,^Mr. O. H. Marshall, of Buffalo, and Mr. C. C. Baldwin, of Cleveland, have well cultivated this field. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 39 ft'^i*" ship's nose. An appellation of this meaning is said in the old Norse story to have been given to a cape in this region. The bay lying to the west of it has an unindented continental line, and Dr. Kohl argues that some older Icelandic original must have been before Stephanius, as no European map previous to 1570 presents such a configuration. The Sagas name a point of land, Krossaness, lying within this bay ; but this map gives nothing to correspond. It has been identified, as Mr. Dexter has pointed out, either with Point AUerton or the Gurnet Point.^ The Zeno map, drawn not long before 1400, but not published till 1558, shows in the southwest corner a bit of coast-line, skirted with islands, which those who believe in its authenticity interpret as a part of our New England coast.^ Of Sebastian Cabot's voyage, 1498, there are no charts remaining; ^ but Juan de la Cosa, one of Columbus's companions, who made in 1500 the earliest existing map showing any part of the American continent, is supposed to have had access to Cabot's charts, or to copies of them. Cosa's map is now preserved in the Royal Library at Madrid, and was brought to light by Humboldt, when exploring Baron Walckenaer's library in Paris, in 1832. It shows, in an island off a promontory, what seems to be Cape Cod, but, according to the prevailing opinion of that time, it represents these landmarks as on the northeast coast of Asia, washed by " the sea discovered by the English," as the legend on it reads. That this configura- tion really represents the Gulf of Maine would be borne. out by Peter Martyr's statement that Sebastian Cabot reached, sailing south, the latitude of Gibraltar ; and Gomara's, that Cabot turjied back at 38° north latitude. Still, some excellent later commentators have doubted if he came south of the St. Lawrence gulf Yet it is upon Cabot's discoveries that the English for a long while claimed their rights to the coasts of New England and Nova Scotia.* 1 This map is sicetched in Kohl, p. 107. 2 The map appeared in a little volume now scarce, published, as said by Mr. De.xter, at Venice in 1558, Dei Comntentarii del Viagt^io; and it has been reproduced by R. H. Major in the Royal Geog. Society's yournal, 1873 ; in his ed. of the narrative, published by the liakluyt Society, 1873 > ^""^l '" ^^'^ paper in ■ the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, October, 1874. There are other fac-similes in the Catalogue of the yohn Carter Brown Library, p. 211 ; in Malte Brun's Annates ties Voyages; in Kohl's Disc, of Maine, p. 97; and in Bryant and Gay's United States, i. 84, &c. ^ Hakluyt's Western Plaitting, ed. by Chas. Deane, p. 224. The portrait of Cabot preserved by our Historical Society is a copy of an original now destroyed. Cf. Mass. Hist, Soc. Proc, Jan- uary, 1865. * Sir William Alexander, in 1630, set forth this claim, as given in the Bannatyne Collection of Royal Letters, Edinburgh^ 1867, p. 61. Cf. Chas. Deane's note to Hakluyt's Western Plant- ing, p. 194, and Hakluyt's argument in his ch. xviii. Purchas also discussed the claim. Cosa's map has often been re- produced since Hum- boldt gave it in his Exainen Critique, and again, reduced, in his App. to Ghillany's Be- haitn, Nuremberg,i853. The best fac-simile is in Jomard's Monu- ments de la Glographie, and a lithographic re- production of the American region is given in Henry Stevens's Hist, and Geog. Notes, pi. i. Tt cosa's map. 40 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Cabot's discoveries, and his reparts of the large quantities offish in these waters, led to many Norman, Breton, and Biscayan fishing vessels following in his track. With from one third to one half of the days in the Calendar fast-days, fish was at that time an important article of food, and the fishing fleet along the coast as early as 1504 was surprisingly large.-" It can hardly be possible that from the Grand Banks these fishermen should not l|ave stretched their courses to George's Bank, and have made the acquaintance of the harbors of our bay. It seems evident that the fishermen made out the contour of the coast from Labrador south much before those exploring under royal commissions. Their sailing-charts, however, have all disap- peared, or, at least, none are known giving any delineation of our bay. In 1508 the map of Ruysch was issued at Rome in an edition of Ptolemy's Geography. This is the rare but well-known earhest engraved map showing the new discoveries, and connecting them of course with the coast of Asia.^ Cape Race is clearly made out, but the coast trends westward from that point in a way hardly to be identified with any of the minor contours known to modern maps.^ Following this came an interval, when the region known through the discoveries of Cabot, and subsequently of Cortereal, the Portuguese, came out on the maps as an island or as an indefinite section of the main, while the Atlantic swept over the region now known as New England. This idea prevailed in the globe preserved in the Lenox Library in New York, made probably 1510-12; in Sylvanus's map to the Ptolemy of 1 5 1 1 ; in the sketch-map of Leonardo da Vinci, preserved in the Queen's Collection at Windsor; in the map in Stobnicza's Ptolemy, a Polish edition of 1512 or later; in Schoner's globe, preserved at Nurem- berg, 1520, and in various other deUneations. A more correct idea prevailed in 1527, when Robert Thorne, an English merchant then living in Seville, transmitted to England the map, showing recent Spanish and Portuguese discoveries, which, with Thome's letter to Henry VIII., instigated the expedition under Rut, who according to Hakluyt coasted the shores of Norumbega or Arambec, and landed men " to examine into the condition of the country." Maine, and even the whole of New England, was known by this name, and it is barely possible that our bay may have been explored by the first English known to have is also in Lelewel's Giog. du Moyen Age, No. 41 ; 2 cf. E. E. Hale's paper, with a section of De la Sagra's Cuba ; Kohl's Discovery of Maine, the map compared with the Asia coast, in Amer. p. 151, &c. Cf. Appendix to Kunstmann's Ent- Antiq. Soc. Proc, April 21, 1871. decktmg Amerikas. , 3 A copy of the origin'al of this map, which 1 Lorenzo Sabine, Report on the Principal belonged to the late Charles Sumner, is in Har- Fisheries of the American Seas,^as.hmgt.on,i?,S-i. vard College Library, and fac-similes or repro- Cf. Wytfliet's Descriptionis Ptolemaica Augmen- ductions will be found in Humboldt's Exameu turn; Lescarbot's A^OTW. France, i6l8, p. 228; CnV/?*/^, v. ; in his App. to Ghillany'si5i7(a/>« ; in Biard's Relation, 1616, ch. i j Champlain's Voyages, Santarem's Alias ; in Stevens's /list, and Geog. 1632, p. 9; Navarrete's Collection, &c., iii. 176, Notes, pi. 2; in Lelewel's Moycn Age, and a sec- who denies the French claim ; Parkman's Pioneers tion in Kohl's Disc, of Maine p. i c6 The of France, \.\T\;V.o\iVs, Disc, of Maine, ^^.20\, original map measures twenty-one inches by 280; Estancelin's Rkherches sur les Voyages des sixteen, and is thought to have followed one by Navigateiirs A'onnands. Columbus, now lost. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 41 set foot on the soil of this region. If Rut made any sailing-charts, none are known; but Thome's map was engraved in Hakluyt's first publication, the Divers Voyages, London, 1582.^ It shows a continuous coast-line from Labrador to Florida, but it can hardly be said that it has any indication of Massachusetts Bay. In 1527 we have the map^ ascribed to Fernando Columbus, the son of the admiral, which is preserved at Munich, and bears a close resemblance to the chart made in 1529 by the royal carto- grapher, Ribero, by the order of Charles V., to embody existing knowledge. They are supposed to represent the results of the ex- pedition of Gomez, which had been sent out after the Congress at Badajos, where, on a com- parison of views of geographers then present, it appeared there had been up to that time no adequate examination of the coast of the pres- ent United States, to discover if some passage through to the Indies did not exist. The dis- coveries of Gomez first introduced into maps the connection between Cabot's surveys and those of the Spanish, who had sailed as far^ north as the Chesapeake. In Ribero's chart, _ „ , , ,,,/-, ^ / BY FERNANDO COLUMBUS, I^Z?. Cape Cod seems to be well denned as Labo de Arenas'^ (Sandy Cape), enclosing a circling bay called St. Christoval, which stretches with a northern sweep to the estuary of the Penobscot.'* If Boston Harbor can be made out at all, it would seem to be that fed by a river and called Bale de S. Antonio. The same date (1529) is given to a planisphere, preserved in the Collegio Romano de Propaganda Fide at Riome, which by some is thought to be an original, and by others a copy, by Hieronimus Verrazzano. It has of late years been brought into prominence in support of the authenticity of a letter 1 It is also fac-similed in J. W. Jones's ed. o£ this book, published by the Hakluyt Society. ''■ Figured in Kohl's Aeltesten General Karten von Amerika. ^ The Spanish names of Ribero, as well as his error in placing Cape Cod so low as 39° or 40°, was followed in many maps for a long time. * There is, however, some difference of opin- ion on this point. Originals of this Ribero map are preserved at Rome and at Weimar, and Dr. Kohl gives a fac-simile in his Aeltesten General Karten von Amemka, and a reduction in his Dis- covery of Maine, p. 299. Sprengel, in 1795, had already given a large fac-simile in his Ueber Riberos alteste Weltkarte. Lelewel, Moyen Age, gives a reduction. Murphy, Verrazzano, p. 129, gives it with English names, and this writer thinks VOL. I. — 6. that it is followed in the map given in Ramusio's Indie Occiiientali, Yemct, 1534. De Costa, Mag. of Amer. History, August, 1878, p. 459, on the con- trary, traces this Ramusio map to another pre- served in the Propaganda at Rome, of which he gives a sketch. Thomassy, Nouvelles Annales lies Voyages, xxxv., had already described this Propaganda map in 1855, and it is attributed — De Costa thinks wrongfully — to Verrazzano in the Studi Bibliografici, &c., p. 358. De Costa also contends that Oviedo, when he described the coast in 1534 from the map of Chaves, now lost, repudiated Ribero, as did Ruscelli in 1544 (Kohl, p. 297), and Gastakli in the Ptolemy of 1548. The map of Fernando Columbus is also given in fac-simile in Kohl's Aeltesten General Karten von Ameriha, Weimar, i860, and a sec- tion is given in Kohl's Disc, of Maine. 42 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ascribed to Giovanni de Verrazzano, which purports to describe a cruise by that navigator along the coast of the present United States in 1524.' The map in question, if it shows our bay at all, puts it much too far to the north, and the outstretched spit of land which bounds it on the south is represented as much broken along its straight length.^ The Asian theory came out again very singularly, in 153 1, in the plani- sphere of Orontius Finseus, in which the eastern shore is given with close resemblance to that of the older continent. It is hardly possible to find our bay, however, in any of its sinuosities.^ Dr. Kohl gives from a MS. in the collection of the la(te Henry Huth, of London, of about this date, a Spanish map of the coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, which resembles the outline of Ribero, with the same want of definiteness.* Much the same may be said of a map of an Italian cosmog- rapher, Baptista Agnese, 1536, preserved in the Royal Library at Dresden.^ In this and in other maps of about this time the continent in the latitude of New England is drawn as an isthmus, which is made to connect the Cabot discoveries at the north with the Spanish discoveries about ancient Florida. It usually shows on the Atlantic side a vague likeness of Massachusetts Bay, resembling the Ribero draft. A map giving this representation did much service during the middle of that century, appearing first in the Ptolemy of 1540, subsequently in the Cosniographia of Sebastian Miinster, and in various other places for a period of fifty years. I think the map was the first from a wood-block, in which cavities were cut for the insertion of type for the names. Impressions of it accordingly appear with the names changed into several languages.^ The engraved sheets of a globe, an early work of Mercator, 1541, show a similar bay.'^ It is quite impossible to make the coast-line, as shown in the globe of Ulpius, into any semblance of the bay. This globe, which bears date 1542, was found in Spain by the late Mr. Buckingham Smith, and is ifow in the New York Historical Society's rooms, and it was cited by Smith in his contribution to the Verrazzano controversy.** ' Ortelius, in 1570, in giving a list of maps of it to Mercator's projection. The reduction is known to him, does not mention any of Verraz- given in Henry Stevens's Bislorkal and Geo- zano. The main points of the Verrazzano con- graphical Notes. troversy are slietched in Mr. Dexter's chapter. * Koh], Disc, of Maine, p. 315. 2 Two imperfect photographs of this map, 5 Depicted in Kohl, p. 292. which measures 102 X 51 inches, were procured « A sketch of this map, incorrectly dated by the Amer. Geog. .Soc. in 1871, and Murphy, 1530, is given in Kohl's Disc, of Maine, p. 296, in his Voyage ^ Verrazzano, and Brevoort, in with some others of similar features for our his Verrazano the Navigator, gwt engravings, New England coast. See Kohl, p. 315. but without the coast names, which are un- ^ These sheets — the only ones known — were decipherable in the photographs. De Costa, bought by the Royal Library at Brussels in 1868, however, has since added the coast names and a small edition of a fac-simile has since been from the original to an enlarged section of issued under the auspices of the Belgian gov- the map, which is given in the Mag. of Amer. ernment. History, August, 1878, with sketches of other « It is engraved in Smith'S*///{r«?>-j/ into the and later maps, influenced, as he claims, by this authenticity of Verrazzano' s claims, and in Mur- of Verrazzano. . phy's Verrazzano, p. 114. A full description of * The original representation shows the it, with an engraving, is given by B. F. De Costa strange union of the two continents by no means in the Magazine of Amer. History, Tanunr'-, so clearly as is done in'Mr. Brevoort's reduction 1879. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 43 How far Alfonce, in 1542, came into the bay it is not easy to determine, though he has been credited with being its first actual discoverer, and there is a sketch of the Norumbega or Maine coast, given, after Alfonce's drafts, in Murphy's Verrazzano.^ Of about this date ( 1 542-43 ) is a map which was perhaps made, as Davezac thinks, under orders from Francis I. On it the Spanish " Cabo de Arenas" becomes the French C. des Sablons, and it encloses a bay in the same way, which has a river — R. de la Tourn^e, possibly our Charles — at its inner point.^ Another map of this time (1543) seems to be of Portuguese origin, and is preserved in the collection of the late Sir Thomas Phillipps. It gives the same bay, but calls the outer cape C. de Croix, and it has a river — Rio Hvndo — about where the Merrimac should be. The designation Cabo de Arenas is given to a projection further south. ^ A year later is the date (1544) of the large engraved map of which the single copy known is preserved in the great Paris library. The influence of Jomard brought it from Germany, where it was discovered in 1855. It is usually called Sebastian Cabot's Mappemonde, but the better authorities* doubt Cabot's connection with it in the state in which we have it. It gives our cape and bay rather after Ribero's plat, but without names. In 1556 the Italian Ramusio gave a map of the two Americas in the third volume of his Collection of Voyages, but the sketch of the coast-line from Ti.rra de Bacalaos (Newfoundland) to Florida has simply a general south- westerly trend. The same map was again used in his 1565 edition. Again, in 1558, a Portuguese chart, by Homem, indicates the bay, but yields nothing distinctive.® In 1561, Ruscelli, a learned Italian geographer, produced his edition of Ptolemy, and included in it a map ^ borrowed seemingly, so far as the coast- lines of New England go, from a previous map of Gastaldi ; but he carries the coast to the west, and gives the bay this time with two headlands, bestowing the name of Cabo de Santa Maria on the one corresponding to to Hakluyt's Western Planting, p. 224; and Kohl's Disc, of Maine, p. 358. There is also a small sketch of it in Bryant and Gay's United States, i. 132; Jomard, Monuments de la Geo- graphie, gives it in fac-simile ; and Judge Daly gives a reduction of the entire map in his Early History of Cartography, an address before the American Geographical Society, 1879. 5 The original is in the British Museum. It is figured in Kohl, p. 377. "• This map is figured in Lelewel, p. 170, and Kohl, p. 233. The Ptolemy in question is in the Boston Public Library. The same character- istics of nomenclature appear in Ahruigationi del mondo nuovo, by NicoUo del IJolfinato, which is also given in Kohl, p. 317. ' See B. F. De Costa's Northmen in Maine, p. 92 ; Davezac in the Bulletin de la Sociiti de Ceographie, 1857, p. 317; yim^fs Les Naviga- tions Franfaises, p. 228; Gu^rin's Navigateurs Fraiifais,^. 109; Hakluyt's Principall NavigOr tions, iii. 237 ; and Le Routier de Jean Alphonse, pub. by the Quebec Lit. and Hist. Soc, 1843. 2 Given in Jomard's Monuments de la Geog., and in Kohl's Disc, of Maine, p. 351. * Kohl, Disc, of Maine, p. 354. * R. H. Major's "English Discovery of the American Continent," in the Archieologia, xliii., p. 17; Geo. Bancroft in Appleton's Cyclopadia ; Chas. Deane in his Remarks on Sebastian Cabofs Mappemonde, in Amer. Antiij. Soc. Proceedings, April 24, 1867, also Oct. 20, 1866, and his note 44 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOStON. Cape Cod, and not to Cape Ann, as the Spanish maps commonly do. In the small map of the New World, given in Levinus Apolonius, published at Antwerp, 1566, Cape Ann is called C. de S. Maria; Cape Cod, C. de Trafal- gar ; 1 and Massachusetts Bay is named B. de S. Christoval. In 1569 the great German map-maker, Mercator, produced his most famous work, — that great chart in which he first gave his well-known projec- tion publicity, and which is now to be seen in the National Library at Paris. For our Massachusetts Bay he represents an almost enclosed expanse of water, guarding it on the south with the then well-known C. de Arenas. He puts it, however, much too far to the south, giving it a latitude of 38° north. Unfortunately, as Kohl says, this great chart tells us but little of our own New England coast,^ The next year (1570) Ortelius brought out his Theatrum orbis tcrrarum, which was the first general atlas since the revival of letters. The maps of the world and of the two Americas were not changed in several successive editions.^ Penobscot Bay is given prominence with C. de lagus islas on its westerly entrance, while a general southerly trend of coast, called Buena Vista, gives the old Spanish name of C. de Arenas further down, with hardly a protuberance to correspond. Ortelius followed, in large measure, the views of Mercator, and in turn affected for many years the cartographical knowledge of the world, but he had less influence in England than on the continent. When Hakluyt issued his first pub- lication in 1582, — Divers Voyages, — he gave in it what was known as Michael Lok's map, a strange conglomeration of cartographical notions. Our bay is still shown with its Cape Carenas, but the Penobscot was changed into a strait connecting Massachusetts Bay with the St. Lawrence, or the gulf-like water that stood for that river, while the " Mare de Verrazana, 1524," making an isthmus of New England, lay like a broad sea over most of New France.* There is in the Munich Library; in the collection of manuscript maps which belonged to Robert Dudley, one marked " Thomas Hood made this platte, 1592." It gives a shape to the bay common to maps of this time, and calls Cape Cod C. de Pero, — a name Dudley corrects in the manuscript to Arenas, while Hood had placed the old name further down the coast. cording to Verrazano's plat," and with it the great western sea called in early maps by his name passed out of geographers' minds. The map is rarer than the book. The copies of the Divers Voyages in Harvard College Library, in the Lenox Library, and in Chas. Deane's collec- tion, have it in fac-simile. The Hakluyt Society's reprint of the book gives it in fac-simile, and it can also be found in the Catalogue of the John Carter Brown Library, p. 288. There are small sketches of it in Kbhl's Disc, of Maine, p. 290, and in Fox Bourne's English Seamen. lok's map, 1582. ' This name is usually applied on the Caro- lina coast to Cape Hatteras or Cape Fear, but the sliding scale on which names run in those days was very slippery. 2 It is given in Jomard's great work in fac- simile, and is reduced in Lelewel, p. 181, and in part in Kohl, p. 384. Cf. Amer. Geog. Soc. Bul- letin, No. 4, on Mercator and his works. Judge Daly gives a reduction of the entire map in his Early History of Cartogi-aphy, N. Y., 1879. ' 1575. 1584, &c. * The map claims to have been made "ac- Earliest maps of Massachusetts bay. 45 The names around the bay in succession, going north, are Santiago, B. de S. Cfmstoforo, R. de S. Antonio, Monte Viride, and R. de Buena Madre} J>fc>nte- Jiinti ■«<*-5l«; e-fer-o Ic JVnifS hood's map, 1592. WYTFLIET, 1597. A new cartographer appeared, 1597, in Wytfliet, who then pubHshed his Descriptionis Ptoleniaicce Augmentum, and gave a new delineation to the coast, with some curious mistakes. A large estuary is represented in the correct latitude for Massachusetts Bay, fed by various rivers, and called Chesipook Sinus, while the genuine Chesapeake has no existence. Along the main river, at the bottom of this bay, Comokee is written ; while to the north, where the Merrimac might be, is the R. de Buena Madre? with an island, Y. Primera, off the mouth. C. de Santa Maria is carried well north into what looks like Casco Bay, with the usual estuary of Norumbega (Penob- scot) still to the east.^ Confusion meets one at every turn in tracing the development of the coast-lines at this time. Maps were produced and followed here and there often long after other and better surveys were made ' This map is fac-similed (No. 13) in Kunst- mann's atlas to his Entdeckung Amerikas, Mu- nich. 2 A name which goes back at least to the Gomez explorations. ^ The same map appeared in subsequent editions, — 1598, 1603; in French at Douai, 1607 and 161 1. Copies of the last are in the Public Library of Boston and in Harvard College Library; and the map of 1597 is also in the latter library. The America sive Nevus Or- bis of Metellus, issued at Cologne, 1600, has a map which seems to have been drawn wholly from Wytfliet. It is also in the Col- lege Library. Cf. Harrisse's Nouv. France, No. 298-301. 46 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. known. Kohl,^ for instance, gives three maps of about 1590, which are hardly improved on Ribero of sixty years before, showing how Hondius, as late as 1619, used an old plate of Mercator's, which can be contrasted with a map in the Atlas Minor Gerardi Mercatoris, also issued by Hondius in 1607; while the Novus Atlas of Blaeu, Amsterdam, so late as 1642, shows a coast-line of a very much earlier date.^ Again, the same atlas shows differing sources in separate maps of the coast; as, for instance, in Hondius's Mercator, Amsterdam, 161 3, the map Virginia and Florida gives to the Chesepioock Sinus the same shape that it bears in Wytfliet, while being put in 37J^°, it raises a doubt if it may^not, after all, be the modern Chesapeake ; but in the same atlas, on a map of the two Americas, the C. de las Arenas encloses a large B. de S. Christofle, going back to Ribero for the name, while Chesepiook now does duty to a small inlet a Httle further south.^ De Bry's map of the two Americas, in 1597, makes the coast-line stretch west from the Penobscot, loop into a bay, and then trend south. This is our bay again with the C. de S. Maria at the north, but Plancius's name for the southern peninsula, C. de S. Tiago, was a forerunner of Prince Charles's Cape James of twenty years later, when he fruitlessly tried to supplant the homely nomenclature of Gosnold. It is usually said that this English navi- gator was the earliest to stretch his course from England directly to New England, others having before followed the circuitous course by the Azores and the West Indies. It seems to be quite certain that he made his land- fall near Salem, May 14, 1602, when, striking across to the opposite Cape, he was surprised at a large catch of fish, and gave the now well-known name of Cape Cod to the headland.* He and his men are the first English posi- tively known to have landed on Massachusetts soil.^ If Gosnold made any drafts of the coast as he found it, they have not come down to us. They would doubtless have shown the peninsula of Cape Cod as an island, " by reason of the large sound [called by him Shoal Hope] that lay between it and the main." We know that Hudson and Block subsequently supposed it such. ' IwVva Discmiery of Maine, ■^.■T,\'ii. upon this coast better fishing and in as great 2 Some of the atlases passed through many plenty as in Newfoundland." So also Rosier editions. Muller's Catalogues (Amsterdam) de- reported, two or three years later, scribe many of them, under Mercator. Ortelius, ^ Gosnold's short letter to his father, Sept. 7, Hondius, &e. 1602, Archer's Relation in Purchas, iv., and Bre- ' So late as 1638, in Linschoten's Histoire de reton's Brief and True Relation are the chief hi Navigation, a map by Petrus Plancius, dated original authorities. The Harvard College copy 1 594, preserves this same .9. Christoval Bay, shut of Brereton is imperfect ; there is one in the Bar- in by C. de S. Maria on the north, and C. de S. low Collection ; and the Brinley copy (Catalogue, y/a^^) on the south. It had appeared on various No. 280) brought eight hundred dollars. Brere- intervening charts, and came out even later in ton is reprinted in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. 69. Visscher's map of the two Americas, dated There are other accounts in Strachey's Historie 1652. Blaeu, when he was making his sectional of Travaile, ii. ch. 6; reprinted in 4 Mass. Hist. charts follow the reports of Block (1614), would Coll. i. 223, and in N. Y. Hist. Coll.; and in give the old contour in his general maps, with the Smith's Generall Historie, i. 16. For Gosnold's B. de Christofle, &c., as see his 1635 edition. landfall, see John A. Poor, in his Vindication of * His chronicler Brereton says: "There is Co/y«, 30, and Drake's ^w/o«, p. 1 2. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 47 It is interesting to note that the earliest English name attached to our coast should later point to one of the chief industries of the future Com- monwealth.^ Captain Pring, the next year, 1603, following in the track of Gosnold, seems to have landed somewhere ^ in the bay, without entering, however, the present Boston Harbor, and to have made a map, if we can so inter- pret Gorges's language when he says Pring made " the most exact dis- covery of that coast that ever came to my hands." It has never, however, come into later hands, so far as we know, and it is fair to presume bore more resemblance to the reality than did the sketches of the New England coast which this same year — 1603 — appeared in Juan Botero's Relaciones Universales? published at Valladolid, which is of no further interest than as introducing a new word, Modano, against a barely protuberant coast, where Cape Cod might well be. Again, another English captain, Weymouth, leaving England in May, 1605, under the patronage of the Earl of Southampton, seems to have struck the coast at our Cape Cod, and then to have borne away to the north, leaving to our friends of the Maine coast a disputed ques- tion concerning his navigating.* Our next records are French. Henry IV., in 1603, gave to De Monts a patent of La Cadie, as a country lying between 40° and 46° north lati- tude.^ In De Monts' expedition for exploration, in 1605, Champlain sailed with him as his pilot, and they seem to have landed at Cape Ann,^ where Champlain tells us he got the natives to draw for him the coast farther south. They made it in the form of a great bay, and placed six pebbles at intervals along its shores to indicate so many distinct chieftaincies. It has been noted that this agrees with the number of chief sachems which, later, Gookin and others said the early settlers found about Massachusetts ' The effigy of a codfish, which now hangs in 280) brought eight hundred dollars. There are the Representatives' Chamber in the State other copies in the Barlow Collection, and in the House, was transferred from the Old State N. Y. Hist. Soc. Library. The copy in the House in 1798, where it was hung up in 1 simi- Grenville Collection (British Museum) was lar position, by vote in 1784, "as a memorial of transcribed for Sparks to print in the 3 Mass. the importance of the cod-fishery ; " and it would Hist. Coll., viii. 125 ; and George Prince has also appear, from the same vote, that such an em- printed it in his pamphlet on Weymouth. Cf. blem had earlier "been usual." A previous Purchas, iv. 1659; Strachey in Mass. Hist. Coll. effigy may have been burned in one of the fires i. 228 ; Smith's Gcuerall Historic, p. 18. to which that building or its predecessor had * \jes,Z2.xhoi, Hist. (^, been subjected in 171 1 or 1747. A colonial ii. 410. This covered the New England coast, stamp in 1755 figured a cod as "the staple of • 6 Z also given herewith. peared from the French archives, gives Boston, ' Smith's reference must be to drafts made with the hook of Cape Cod, but nothing else dis- by English ex])lorers or fishermen on the coast, tinctively. An earlier map shows an undulating The only engraved majjs to which he could line from Maine to Jersey. Mr. Parkman has have referred were Lescarbot's and Champlain's; lately placed liis collection of maps in Harvard and it seems improbable that he knew the lat- College Library. VOL. 1. — •]. 50 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ships ^ carried his company and his supplies. He sailed away for North Virginia, as the country was then called, and struck the coast near the Penobscot. Leaving his vessels to fish and trade, he took eight men in a boat, and started to map out the bay. He speaks of passing " close aboard the shore in a little boat," and of drawing " the map from point to point, isle to isle, and harbor to harbor, with the soundings, sands, rocks, and landmarks," and adds that he " sounded about twenty-five excellent good harbors." We follow him in his coursing pretty accurately round Cape Ann, which he named Cape Tragabigsanda, after an old Turkish flame of his, while the neighboring isfends were set down on his plot as the Three Turks' Heads, the doughty navigator having memorably decapi- tated an equal number of Moslems at some past time.^ Our present interest in his narrative is to ascertain how closely he explored Boston Harbor. His language is usually held to signify that he struck across from the north shore and touched the south shore some- where in the neighborhood of Cohasset, and that he mistook the entrance by Point AUerton as the debouching of a river. He J wrote afterwards that he thought " the fairest reach ' J^ (Sh^Zi^ ■ '" ^^^ bay" was a river, "whereupon I called it ^^ Charles River." The map which two years later he published clearly shows a bay with eight islands in it, into which this river flows. From this one would infer that he at least got within the outer harbor, and mistook one of the inner passages for the river's mouth.^ It is, of course, possible that he embodied in this map what information he obtained from the descriptions of the natives at that time, but he does not say he did. He afterwards made use of later explorers' reports, when he extended on his map this same bay farther inland, and increased the num- ber of its islands ; describing at the same time " that fair channel " as divid- ' These vessels were of fifty and sixty tons. zme,]uly, 1861. Mr. Deane says the body of the Mr. Deane has gathered a nnmber of instances letter is not in Smith's hand ; but he thinks the of the sizes of the ships of these early naviga- signature above given is. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. tors. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, October, 1865. Proc, January, 1867. Summarized accounts of ^ The authorities for this exploration are his this New England voyage will be found in Belk- ovtn Description of New England, 1616, oi yi\ac\\ nap's American Biography; Hillard's Life of there are copies in karvard College Library ; John Smith ; Palfrey's New England, where (i. in the Prince Collection (Boston Public Library) ; p. 89) there is a note on the authenticity and in Charles Deane's Collection, &c. It was re- veracity of Smith's books. Accounts of his printed at Boston — seventy-five copies — by published works are to be found in Allibone's Veazie in 1865, and is in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. Dictionary of Authors ; in Ilillard, p. 398 • and 95 (the Prince copy being followed), and in an estimate of their literary value in M. C. Force's Tracls,\\. It was afterwards included in Tyler's Hist, of American Literature i. his Generall Historic, of which there are copies ' His language already quoted would seem of different editions in Harvard College Library, to imply that he was in the bay when he descried in the Prince Collection, and in Mr. Deane's. Cf. its "fairest reach," and we know he makes In also his Advertisement to Planters, 1631, of another place Massachusetts Bay and Charles which there are copies in the College Library River one and the same. The question at and in Mr. Deane's Collection. This also was issue seems to be what Smith saw and tliouaht reprinted by Veazie in 1865; and it is also in- to be a river's mouth, — the lighthouse chan- cluded in 3 Mass. [Fist. Coll. iii. i. Smith's nel, or the passage between Long Island Head letter to Lord Bacon (1618), giving an account of and Deer Island. I incline to the latter New England, is printed in the Historical Maga- view. Lbscakbot's Map, 1612. Champlain's Map, 1612. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 51 ing itself " into so many fair branches as make forty or fifty pleasant islands within that excellent bay." ^ Smith thence sailed across Massa- chusetts Bay, made his draft of the Cape Cod peninsula, and then, rejoin- ing his vessels to the eastward, set sail for England, and reached port in August. Smith was, or professed to be, well pleased with what he saw ; but- as he next engaged in a project for settling the country, which first took from him the n£^me of New England, his enthusiastic description may savor perhaps of self-interest. " Of all the parts of the world I have yet seen not inhabited," he said, " I would rather live here than anywhere." The site of Boston before this had been successively found within a region variously designated. To the Northmen it was Vinland. In 1520 Ayllon could not have sailed much above 30'^ north latitude, yet in Ribero's map Tierra de Aylloti stretched up into New Epgland. So again, a little later, the Tierra de los Bretones was extended west and south from the region where Cabot made his landfall. After Verrazzano and Cartier, Francisca, Nopci Francia, La Terre Franqaise, and Nouvelle France was stretched to the south over New England, and sometimes the Spanish Florida, as in RusceUi's map, 1561, came well up to the same latitude. The earliest native name to be applied to the country by Europeans was Norumbega, which appears in the narrative of the French captain quoted in Ramusio, in 1537, and, by the time Mercator made his great chart in 1569, this name began to be general. It seemed at first to cover a terri- tory stretching well along our eastern seaboard, but gradually became fixed on the region of the Penobscot.^ Smith, in 1620, makes Virginia a part of Norumbega. Virginia first appeared on maps in Hakluyt's edition of Peter Martyr's Decades, 1587, and later Gosnold and his successor considered they were exploring the northern parts of Virginia, and so it was known to Sn|ph before he gave it the designation it now bears, — New England. " My first voyage to Norumbega, now called New England, 1614," is his marginal note in his Advertisement to Planters. Hunt and other navigators called it Cannaday. Smith's designation did not wholly supplant the Dutch New Netherland in European maps (which began to be used also about this time), till the Hollanders were finally expelled from New York; and even after that the Dutch name vanished slowly. To further his colonization scheme. Smith set sail from England again in March, 161 5, with two ships, one commanded by himself and the other by Dermer. The latter alone succeeded in reaching the coast, and returned after a successful business in August.^ Meanwhile Smith's ship was dis- 1 There is a narrative on the early records of himself says rather unguardedly that " Smith Charlestown, which represents Smith as having entered Charles River and named it." come up to that peninsula. It is printed in - Cf. De I. aet's A'ow/j- jl/aWaj ; Kohl's Z>zV. \o\xa^& Chronicles of Massachusetts. It can be, of Maine; Hakluyt's Western Planting; De however, of no authority. Frothingham, in his Costa's Northtnen in Maine, p. 44 ; Congris des History of Charlestown (unfortunately never to be Americanistes, 1877, p. 223, &c. completed), says that it was written in 1664 by ^ The absolute continuity of the New Eng- John Greene, and not, as Thomas Prince had land and Virginia coasts was later proved by affirmed, by Increase Nowell. Frothingham Dermer first among the English. Cf. Purchas's 52 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. abled in a storm; returned to refit; again set sail, June 24, but only to be captured by a French cruiser. After many mishaps in his captivity, Smith got back to England late in 161 5, bringing with him the narrative of his first voyage, which he had written while a prisoner to the French. In June, 1 61 6, he published it in London, as A Description of New England: or The Observations, and Discoveries, of Captain lohn Smith {Admiral! of that Country^, in the North of America, in the year of our Lord, 1614. — London. Humfrey Lownes, for Robert Gierke, 1616. It was a little quarto volume, of a size and shape common to that day, of about eighty pages. A folding map of New England, extending from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod, went with it. With this publication Smith sought to incite a movement for colonization. He journeyed about the western counties distributing it. " I caused," he says, " two or three thousand of them [the book] to be printed ; one thousand with a great many maps, both of Virginia and New England, I presented to thirty of the Chief Companies in London at their halls." No immediate results came from Smith's efforts. He never again was on the coast, and his endeavors were but a part of the causes that finally worked together to establish the English race permanently upon Massachusetts Bay. Smith's map, as the real foundation of our New England cartography, deserves particular attention. To the draft which he made he affixed the Indian names, or such as whim had prompted him to give while he sur- veyed the shores. There is rarely found in copies of the Description of New England a leaf, printed on one side only, which reads as follows : " Because the Booke was printed ere the Prince his Highnesse had altered the names, I intreate the Reader peruse this schedule ; which will plainly shew him the correspondence of the ol(l names to the new." Below this are two columns, one giving the old names, the other the new ones ; the latter such as Prince Charles, then a lad of fifteen, had affixed to the different points, bays, rivers, and other physical features, when Smith showed him the map. As engraved, the map has the Prince's nomen- clature; the book has Smith's or the earlier; and this rare leaf is to make the two mutually intelligible.^ So far as is known to me, this map exists in ten states of the plate, and I purpose now to note their distinctive features.^ I. The original condition of the map bears in the lower left-hand corner, Simon PascBus sculpsit; Robert Gierke excudit ; and in the lower right-hand corner, London, Pilgrivis; 2 N. V. Hist. Soc. Coll. i. ; Thornton's Mr. Deane having caused such a fac-simile to be Ancient Pemaquid. In 1616 the settlement of made from the Prince copy. Mr. Deane's copy, Richard Vines at Saco, and other ineffectual that in Harvard College Library, and the three plantations, enlarged the knowledge of the coast, copies in the British Museum, want it. Cf. Gorges's Narrative ; Palfrey's New England, ^ In this study I make use of some memor- i. ch. 2 ; Folsom's Saco and Biddeford, &c. anda of Mr. James Lenox and Mr. Chas. Deane 1 The Prince copy and the Peter Force copy printed in Norton's Litexary Gazette, new series (Library of Congress) are the only copies known i. (1854) 134, 219; but I add one conditioji (VIII.) to nie which have this leaf, unless in fac-simile, to their enumeration. 4 fi J^ Earliest Maps of Massachusetts bay. ^^ Printed by Geor: Low. The title NEW ENGLAND is in large letters at the top, to the right of it the English arms, and beneath it. The most remarqueable parts thus named \ by the high and mighty Prince CHARLES, | Prince of great Britaine. The latitude is marked on the right-hand side only : there are no marks of longitude. Boston Harbor is indicated by a bay with eight islands, and a point of land extending from the southwest within it. The River Charlis extends inland from the northwest corner of the bay, a short distance. A whale, a ship, and a fleet are represented upon the sea. There is no date beneath the scale. There are many names on later states not yet introduced, and some of the present names are changed in the later impressions, as will be noted below. Of the names which the Prince assigned, but three became permanently attached to the localities, and these are, — Plymouth to the spot which Champlain had called Port St. Louis, which the natives called Accomack, and which the Pilgrims continued to call by this newer name, seven or eight years later ; Cape Anna, for which Smith had sacrificed the remembrance of his Eastern romance ; and The River Charles, which had been previously known as Massachtisets River ; while the name Massa- chusets Mount, earlier applied to our Blue Hill, became, under Charles's pen, Cheuyot hills} Gosnold's Cape Cod proved better rooted than Charles's monument to his dynasty. Cape James, and so the Prince's Stiiard's Bay has given place to Cape Cod Bay. Our own name, — Boston, — as is the case with many other well-known names of this day, appears in connection with a locality remote from its present application. It supplanted Smith's Accominticus , and stood for the modern York in Maine. Two of the Captain's names were suffered to stand, — Neiv England as the general designation of the country, and Smith's Lsles, within ten years afterwards to be known among the English as the Lsles of Shoals.^ London was put upon the shore about where Hingham or perhaps Cohasset is ; Oxford stood for the modern Marshfield ; Poynt Suttliff is adjacent, and does duty for Champlain's C. de S. Louis and the present Brant Rock ; and Poynt George is the designation of the Gurnet. Of the copies of the book known to be in America, but one has the map in thi^ state, and that is the Prince copy, in which the map is unfortunately imperfect, but not in an essential part.' From this copy C. A. Swett, of Boston, engraved the fac-simile which appeared in Veazie's reprint of the Description of New England, in iSes.* In 1617, Hulsius, the German collector, translated Smith's Description for his Voyages, and re-engraved the map ; but the names in the lower corners were omitted, and Smith's title, the verses concerning him, and some of the explanations were given in German. Hulsius's map, beside accompanying his Part XIV., first edition, 161 7, and second edition, 1628, is often found in Part XIII. (Hamor's Virginia), and is also given in Part XX. (New England and Virginia), 1629.^ 1 Smith, in iiis text, spealss of "tlie high Brinley sale, March, 1879, had maps of a later mountaine of Massachusetts." state, and so do all the other copies in Ameri- 2 A monument to Smith was erected on can collections, — Harvard College Library, Star Island, one of the group, in 1864. It is Lenox Library, the Carter Brown Library, Chas. pictured in Jenness's Isles of Shoals, and in S. Deaue's collection, &c. A. Drake's Nooks and Corners of the New Eng- * The reduction in Bryant and Gay's Pof'. land Coast. Hist, of the U. S., i 518, is from Swett's fac- ' A copy without the map was advertised in simile, which can also be found in some London in 1879 f°'' £'° 'O-^- >' while Quaritch copies of Chas. Deane's reprint of New Eng- in 1873 advertised a copy with what he called land's Trials. the original map (perhaps, however, not the ^ "Voyages of Hulsius," in Contributions to original state) for ;^50. The copies sold in the a Catalogue of the Lenox Library, part i., 1877. 54 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. II. The date, 1614, is for the first time inserted under the scale, and the names P. Travers and Gerrards lis are put in near Pembrocks Bay (Penobscot). A copy of this second state is in the Harvard College copy of the Description of 1 616. We give a heliotype of a portion of it. A lithographic fac-simile of the whole, but without the ships, &c., is given in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. iii., and in a reduced form by photo-lithography in Palfrey's New England, i. 95.' Mr. Lenox supposed that this state of the plate may have been first used in the 1620 edition of Smith's New England's Trials, no copy of which was known to be in this country when Mr. Deane, in 1873, reprinted it '^ in the Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Society, Feb. 1873." III. Smith's escutcheon, but without the motto, was introduced in the lower left- hand corner. This state is found in Mr. Deane's copy of the Generall Historie, 1624, and in the Lenox copy of the Description of 16 16. Mr. Lenox supposed this state may have been first used in the 1622 edition of New England's Trial's.^ IV. The motto Vincere est vivere is put in a scroll to the left of Smith's escutcheon. The degrees of latitude and longitude are noted on all sides. Copies of this state are found in the Charles Deane and Carter Brown copies of the Description of 1616, and it was also in the Crowninshield copy, taken from Boston to England some years since. Mr. Lenox supposed this state to have originally belonged to the first edition of the Generall Historie^" 1624, in which Smith gathered his previous independent issues. There was no change in the several successive editions of this book (1624, 1626, 1627, 1632, the last in two issues) except in the front matter; and, speaking of this book, Field, in his Indian Bibliography, p. 366, says of the original issue, " It is so commonly the case as almost to form the rule, that even the best copies have been made up by the substitution of later editions of some of the maps." Some of the copies were on large paper.' V. The name Paynes lis is put down on the Maine coast. Cross-lines are made on the front of the breastplate in the portrait of Smith, in the upper left-hand corner, and the whole portrait is retouched. Robert Gierke's name is partly obliterated. This state is supposed to belong to the 1626 edition of the Generall Historie. The edition of this date in Cornell University Library (Sparks Collection) has Both editions, each with map, are also in Har- a private reprint of it. The text is given in vard College Library. Chas. Deane has the Force's Tracts, ii. 1617 edition. A copy was sold in the Brinley ^ Mr. Deane has printed the prospectus of sale, March, 1879, No. 362. this book, which he found in London. Mass. ' We give a heliotype of the portrait of Hist. Soc. Proc, January, 1867. Smith on his map from the same state, and before * Such is S. L. M. Barlow's copy, but it has it was retouched. The only other photograjihic state V. of the map. A large-paper dedication reproduction of it is, we think, the reduction copy, bound for Smith's patron, the Duchess of given by Palfrey while reproducing the map. It Richmond and Lenox, was bought at the Brinley is unsatisfactory, however, the art of photo-lith- sale (No. 364), March, 1879, for the Lenox ography being then young. There have been Library, for $1,800. Mr. Deane's copy of the various engraved copies of it, — in Bancroft's 1624 edition has state III. of the plate. This United States ; in the New England Hist, and book is a favorite subject for the artful manipu- Gen. Register, 1858 ; in Drake's Boston ; in lations of modern dealers in second-hand books. Veazie's reprint of the map, &c. There were important changes in the title, maps! 2 From a transcript of a copy in the Bodleian and other parts of the successive issues ; but in Library, which differs in the names of the dedica- making up deficient copies, these fabricators tion from the British Museum copy. have inserted whatever they could find irrespec- 3 Also separately issued. tive of its state of issue. The General! Historie * This second edition was enlarged from is reprinted in Pinkerton's Voyages xiii and in eight to fourteen leaves of text. Mr. Deane great part in Purchas's Pilgrims. It was care has a copy. The late John Carter Brown issued lessly reprinted in Riclimond Va in 1819 EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 55 but a part of the map, which, however, so far conforms. It is in Mr. Barlow's 1624 edition.* VI. The name of lames Reeue in the lower right-hand corner is substittfted for that of George Low. The name of the engraver is given with an additional s, — Passmus. This state is supposed by Mr. Lenox to belong to the 1627 edition of the Generall Jlistorte, oi 'vih.\c\i there are copies in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Library, and in the Prince Library (with notes by Prince). This state is in the 1632 edition in Harvard College Library. VII. The last hne of the inscription at the top is changed to read : newe King of great Britaiiie. In the portrait the armor is figured. West's Bay is placed on the outer side of Cape lames. P'. Standish corresponds to the modern Manomet Point. The word NEW is inserted above Plimouth. P. Wynthrop is put north of Cape Anna. P. Reeues is put near Ipswich. Salem is laid down just north of Cape Anna. Fullerton lie is changed to Frauncis Ile;"^ Cary lis to Claiborne lis (off Boston Harbor) ; and P. Murry to P. Saltonstale (south of Boston Harbor). The bay (Boston Harbor) is enlarged westward, a point of land within it erased, and the islands increased from eight to eighteen.^ Mr. Lenox held that this state first appeared in Smith's Advertisements to Planters* 1 63 1, and it is found in the Carter Brown copy of this tract. The Harvard College copy, however, has the state X., and the Charles Deane copy has IX. Mr. Lenox has questioned if this state did not sometimes make part of Higginson's New England's Plantation, of which there were three editions printed in 1630, the first of twenty, and the second enlarged to twer^y-six pages. The two copies of the book in Harvard College Library, the three editions in the Lenox Library, and the copy which was in the Brinley sale, all, however, want the map.^ Sparke, who printed the second edition of Higginson, probably owned the plate, as he printed the Generall Hisiorie of 1624, 1626, and 1627, and the Historia Mimdi of 1635, which all \aA the map. Yet, if it properly belongs to Higginson, it is sti-ange that a map mis- placing Salem, where Higginson lived, should be used ; and the names Wynthrop and Saltonstale could have been given only in anticipation of the arrival of those gentlemen. VIII. Martins lie is given in Penobscot Bay. Perhaps some of the changes named under IX. were made in this state (except the Plymouth Company's arms) ; for the only example of it which I have found is a fragment (two thirds) of the map belonging to Harvard College Library, the westerly third being gone. It belonged, perhaps, to the first issue of the 1632 edition of the Generall Historie. IX. The arms of the Council for New England are given in the centre of the plate." The following changes may first have appeared in the preceding number. 1 The Harvard College copy of this date simile of the map by Veazie, Boston, 1865, and (1626) wants the maps. There is a copy in the is also included in 3 Mais. Hist. Coll. iii. .Smith Mass. Hist. Society's library. died June 21, 1631, and this must have been the ''■ This is just north of the entrance to Bos- last state of the plate he was personally con- ton Harbor, and is supposed to be Nahant, re- cerned in. ferred to in Smith's account as "the isles of * The tract was reprinted in Mass. Hist. Mattahunts." Coll. i. ■* This was because of the reports of later ^ Mr. Charles Deane supposes these arms to visitors, which Smith, hi his Advertisements to be those of the Council. See his letter in Mass. Planters, says had represented the "excellent //«/. Soc. Proc, March, 1867. Dr. Palfrey en- bay " to have "forty or fifty pleasant islands." graves them as such on the title-page of his ■* This tract has been reprinted, with a fac- History of New England. 56 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. The name Charlto7i » is inserted just south of the mouth of The River Charles. Salem misplaced is obliterated, and the name is inserted in its proper place. Two unfinished arms of the sea, on the north of Talbotts Bay, are extended inland, covering the position of a church in previous states. This may have belonged to the second 1632 issue of the Generall Historic, and it appears in such copies in Harvard College Library and in Mr. Barlow's copy. It is in Mr. Deane's Advertisevtent to Planters of 1631. X. The River Charles is extended to the left-hand edge of the plate, and symbols of towns with figures of men, animals, and representations of Indian huts are scattered near it. On its north bank the following names are inserted, beginning at the west : Watertowne, Newtowne, Medford, Charlestown^ and beyond the Fawmouth of the original plate Saugus is put in. The south bank shows Roxberry, Boston (repre- sented as five leagues up the river,*by the scale), and Wintiisime. Cheuyot hills is erased and the name Dorchester is inserted along the eastern slope of the picture of the hill which still remains. London and Oxford still stand. A school of fish is delineated under the single ship. Under the compass these words appear : He that desyrcs to know mgre of the Estate of new England lett him read a new Book of the prospecte of new England Gf ther he shall have Sattisfaction. Although the old date, 1 6 14, is still kept on the plate, this inscription shows that this state followed the publication of Wood's Ne7ei England's Prospects^ 1634, and it seems to have been made for the following work : Historia Mundi, or Mercator's Atlas . . . Enlarged with new Mapps and Tables by the studious industne of Jodocus Handy. Englished by W\y€\ 5[altonstall] . London, Printed for Michaell Sparke and Samuel Cart- wright, 1635, folio-* This state is found in the Harvard College copy of the Advertisement to Planters, 1 631. The modem fac-simile, by Swett, of the first state was also altered for Veazie to suit this condition, but the engraver did not observe that a third s had been inserted in the name of Passceus. This altered engraving is found in J. S. Jenness's Isles of Shoals, New York, 1873. A new element entered into the progress of New England cartography when the Dutch laid claim to her territory. We have already mentioned how Hudson, in 1609, came upon Cape Cod. He thought the promontory an island; and, naming it Nieuw Hollande, he sailed about within the bay, baffled in his efforts to find a passage to the south. Five years later from the settlements of the Dutch at Manhattan, Adrian Block, in the spring of 1614, sailing in the first vessel built in that region, — the yacht " Onrust," or the "Restless," — explored the Connecticut shores and inlets; passed by 7>.«-^/ (Martha's Vineyard), Vlielande (Nantucket); rounded the southern 1 This pronunciation of Charlestown was 1 Insomeof the copies of a "second Edytion " usual in the 17th century. Hull, the mint-mas- of this book, 1637, a new map of New Virginia, ter, in his diary, 1663, writes Charltown. Amer. announced before as in preparation in America' Antiq. Soc. Coll. lii. 209. engraved by Ralph Hall, [636, was inserted. Cf' 2 This is the same as C/iflT-ton, which is still Quaritch's Catalogue, No. 11,728, who errs in left in erroneously, as in IX. calling the map "New England."' There is a 3 Wood had spoken of the harbor as "made copy in the American Antiquarian .Society's by a great Company of islands, whose high cliffs library. The original edition is in Harvard shoulder out the boisterous seas." College Library. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 57 point of the Cape Cod peninsula, which he called Vlacke Hoeck ; passed the easterly highlands on the back of the Cape, which he called Staten hoeck; rounded the Cape itself, naming it Caep Bevechier ; passed into the bay {Fuyck) ; named the southerly reach off the Barnstable shore Staten -7ac?c& ih^e^y^ r THE FIGURATIVE MAP, 1614. Bay ; stopped at Crane Bay, as he called Plymouth, proceeding to Fox haven} seemingly Boston Harbor; and ended his northerly course at Pye bay, in latitude 42° 30', which appears to be what we know as Nahant 1 We shall find these names o£ Crane Bay and " Little Crane," licensed by the States Gen- and Fox or Vos Haven clinging long to these eral, Feb. 21, i6ll, for exploring, ostensibly to localities in maps. I judge them to have been find a passage to China. They never found named after two ships, " Little Fox " (het vosje) their place, however, in English maps. VOL. I. — 8. 58 THE Memorial history of boston. Bay, making it the northerly limit of the Dutch claim, based on his dis- coveries. Brodhead, the New York historian, found in 1841, m the archives at the Hague, a map, which is supposed to be the one mentioned by De Laet, in 1625, as " a chart of this quarter made some years since. It is conjectured that it was prepared in 1614 from Block's data, and was the "Figurative Map," covering the country from 40° to 45° north latitude, presented to their High Mightinesses at the time they granted the charter for this region, — Oct. 11, 1614, — in which they acknowledge the English claim below 40° and the French claim above 45 ■" and took to themselves the intervening territory. Thus it would seem that, at about the time Prince Charles was reaffirming the name New England, the Dutch digni- taries were assigning the name New Netherland to the same territory. This " Figurative Map " gives a misshapen Cape Cod peninsula, and cuts it off from the main by a channel; ^ the bay becomes the Noord Zee ; Boston is Vos haven, with the Charles stretching west to Irocoisia, lying east of what stands for our present Lake George ; Salem Bay seems to be Graef Hendryck's Bay; Smith's P. Wynthorp becomes Wyngaerds hoeck ; the Merrimac is Sant revier, emptying into Witte bay? There was issued at Amsterdam in 162 1, by Jacobsz, a West Indische paskaert, of which a section showing New Netherland, as claimed by the Dutch, is given in fac-simile by Dr. O'Cal- laghan, after a copy in his possession.* It corresponds nearly in outline (excepting the -J,eCbi'^ channel that makes Cape Cod an island) and '' in names to the " Figurative Map." The fea- tures common to the two were reiterated by JACOBSZ, 1621. , T^ 1 , r the Dutch geographers for some time. Joannes De Laet issued the first edition of his Nienwe Wereldt, Leyden, in 1625,^ which contained maps by Hessel Gerritz. A second edition, in 1630, had new maps ; and there were various later editions in Latin and in French.® £}c tcli cH 1 Brodhead, Hist, of New York, gives a map with modern outlines, showing New Netherland according to the charters of Oct. ii, 1614, and June 3, 1621, covering what is now known as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. 2 There seem to have been passages through the peninsula at a later day, upon good evidence, and there were probably similar ones earlier. Captain Cyprian Southack, in his chart of the " Sea of New England," giving the coast from Ipswich to Buzzard's Bay, makes a passage at the elbow of Cape Cod, and calls it " The place where I came through with a whale boat, being ordered by y"^ Governm't to look after y"= Pirate Ship, Whido Bellame, command', cast away y' 26 of April, 1717, where I buried one hundred and two men drowned." There is a similar passage shown ill The Eiit^lish Pilot, London, 1794. ' Fac-similes of this map are given in Docu- ments relative to the Colonial History of New York,\. 13, and.in O'Callaghan's Hist, of Nnv Netherland. According to F. Muller's Books on America, iii. 147, and his Catalogue of 1877, No. 2,270, a chromo-lithograph of it was issued by E. Spanier in 1856 (?). * Docuvients relating to the Colonial Hist, of N. Y. i. ; also given in Valentine's New York City Manual, 1858, and in Pennsylvania Archives, second series, v. MuUer, Books on America, iii. 143, and Catalogue of 1877, No. 3,484, de- scribes the only other copy known. '' Stevens, Bibliotheca Geographica, p. 183, gives fac-simile of title and portrait. Mr. Deane has a perfect copy without map of New England. " Latin, in 1633, Novus Orlns; French, in 1640, Histoire du Nouveau Monde. Cf. Ashci's Bibliographical and Historical Essay ; F. Miil lei's Earliest mAps of Massachusetts bay. ^9 These works constitute an important step in the progress of cartographi- cal knowledge. The Noiiis Orbis of 1633, however, shows two maps of our bay, which seem to divide the geographical honors between Champlain and Block. That of "Nova Francia" gives the Frenchman's names; and R. dii Gaz stands for the Charles. That of " Nova AngHa, Novum Belgium et Virginia" follows the Dutch reports, putting Vossen Haven for Boston Harbor ; but, with further impartiality, it perpetuates Smith's designation of Stuarts Bay and Bristow (which proved singularly perennial for a non- existing town about where Beverly is), while Tragabigzanda dragged after it the alias of Cape Anna} In 163 1, an important series of Dutch atlases was begun at Amsterdam by W. J. Blaeu ; and they continued to be issued with Dutch, French, Span- ish, and Latin texts till near the end of the century, — some purporting to be continuations of Mercator and Ortelius.^ The map of " Nova Belgiea et Anglia Nova," in his Nieuwe Atlas of 1635, repeats the general contours of the " Figurative Map " of twenty years earlier ; but Cape Cod peninsula is not severed, as in that. Boston is still Vos haven ; there are still some traces of Smith remaining, as in Tragabigzanda. As in the Champlain map, the Charles, or rather the Merrimac, leaves at its head-waters but a small portage to the Laciis Irocociensis, or Lake Champlain. A new name comes in for the Gurnet Point, — C. Blanco Gallis, — which seems to be repeated in another form {C. Banco) in a map which appeared in Robert Dudley's Delia Arcano del Mare, Firenze, 1647.^ Dudley, who seems to have followed the " Figurative Map " in general, has made a strange mix- ture of the names. To Block's nomenclature he has added various desig- nations from Smith's map, like Bristow, Milford Haven (put outside the Cape). Some of the Dutch names are translated, like Henry s Bay; others are left, like P' Vos along the Charles ; while Boston stands against the harbor of islands, and occasionally an Italian termination appears, — due, perhaps, to his engraver, A. E. Lucini.* Before closing this section it may be well to trace the more immediate influence of Smith's map among the English. Dermer, who had sailed in company with Smith on his last unfortunate voyage, had been again on the coast in 1620, and seems to have landed at Nauset, and at the place "which, in Captain Smith's map, is called Plymouth."^ This was in June; and, in Catalogues ; Quaritch's Catalogues, Sec MuUer in a note its source is not recognized. A second says the editions have become rare even in edition of Dudley is dated 1661. Holland. * The Rev. E. E. Hale reports in the Ameri- ' This map is given in fac-simile in the Lenox can Antiquarian Society's Proceedings, October, edition of Jogues'siViJz/»/« 5«/^/«OT, prepared by 1873, that there are in the Royal Library at J. G. Shea in 1862. Munich some of Dudley's drawings for the '^ Cf. Clement's Bibl. Curieuse, iv. 267 ; Bau- maps published by him in the Arcano. The det'si^zV'y.p/' i?/a?K, Utrecht, 1871, p. 76; MuUer's map -corresponding to this one has more Books on America, part iii. 128, &c. names than were engraved. Cape Cod is La ' Of this book, now rare, there is a good Punta, &c. In the engraved map Horicans is copy in Harvard College Library. The map in put down west of Plymouth as the name of a question is fac-similed in Documents relative to region or tribe. the Colonial History of New York, vol. i., where ^ Cf. Bradford's History, p. 96. 6o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. November, the " Mayflower," borne by the wind and the currents north of her destination, which had been somewhere on the Jersey coast or by the capes of Delaware, sighted the cHffs of Cape Cod, and came to anchor in the harbor of Provincetown. The Pilgrims had declined, while in Holland, the offers of the Dutch to settle in New Netherland ; but, if they had seen Block's map, they must have known they were now in what ^udson had called New Holland. Smith's map they doubtless knew; and, notwithstand- ing their exile, they had English sympathies. There were among the crew of the ship those who had been on the coast before in fishing-craft ; and one such advised them to make a settlement at Agawam, the modern Ipswich. That they went to Plymouth, however, is well known; and, almost at the same date with their arrival, James I. had challenged the Dutch on the one side and the French on the other, by granting to the Council of Plymouth in England the patent of Nov. 3, 1620, which con- firmed to that Company the territory between 40° and 48° north latitude. Of these the Pilgrims sought to hold, and from them they received their patent. The next few years saw an increase in the visitors to the coast ; and of the large numbers of his maps which Smith had distributed in the country back .of Bristol some doubtless found their way hither in the venturesome craft which came among these waters to fish and to barter for beaver.^ Settle- ments were forming, too, — Weston at Wessagusset (Weymouth) in 1622; those at Nantasket in 1623-24, who removed to Cape Ann the next year; Morton at Merry Mount in 1625 ; Conant and others at Naumkeag (Salem) in 1626; and, when Higginson came in 1629," he spoke of those already settled at Cherton, or Charlestown, ''on Masathulets Bay," — the Prince's name still governing the designation of the earliest settlement on the Charles, — and which the next year received the company of Winthrop. Somewhere in these few years must be fixed another excursion of the Plymouth people, when, on their way to visit their neighbors at Salem, they stopped in Boston Harbor, and left names upon headland and island that still remain. One of their chief men, Isaac Allerton, gave his name to the bluff more frequently in these days called, by corruption, Point Alderton ; ^ and upon neighbor- ing rocks and islets was bestowed the name of his wife's family. She was a daughter of the Pilgrim elder, Brewster. Meanwhile, as Smith said in 1624,^ the country was " at last engrossed by twenty patentees, that divided my map into twenty parts, and cast lots for their shares." What Smith refers to is an abortive scheme of this time, by which the coast was to be parcelled out to prominent members of the Coun- 1 Dudley, Letter to the Countess of Lincoln, 2 It is called "Allerton Poynt" in Wood's 1630 ; Smith, Generall Historie; White, Planter's map, 1634, the earliest giving details. ^''''^^ ' In his True Travells, cap. xxiii., p. 47. EARLIEST MAPS OF MASSACHUSETTS feAY. 6l cil for Planting, Ruling, and Governing New England.^ Smith's map was certainly not implicitly followed ; for the map thus cut up seems also to bear some traces borrowed from another, — perhaps from Lescar- bot's of 1612. Sir WiUiam Alexander, to whom the King had granted a charter in 162 1, made this new map public in his Encouragement to Colonists, London, 1624 (some copies, 1625), and again in 1630 annexed it to a new edition of the tract, in which he had changed the name to The Mapp and Descrip- tion of Neiv England? Some of the names which Prince Charles bestowed had a singular vitality, — cartographically speaking at least. Though there were no communities to be represented by them, geographers did not willingly let them die. De Laet and Blaeu, within the next score of years, used several of them. They got into the Carta II. of Robert Dudley's Arcana del Mare, published at Florence in 1647. Sanson used some of them through a long period of map-making, and even as late as 17 19; and during the latter part of the seventeenth century they constantly appear in the geographical works of Visscher, Homann, Jansson, De Witt, Sandrart, Danckers, Ottens, Allard, and others. They stood forth in the maps of Montanus's Nieuwe Weereld, apd adorned the great folio translation known as Ogilby's America in 1670. Some of them are found so late as 1745, in a Disteh Atlas von Zeeiiaert, published at Amster- dam.^ It is curious to observe how the imaginary Bristow and London appear as Bristoium and Londinum, in the Latin map of Crceuxius's book on Canada in 1664. In Visscher's and Jansson's maps, the intruding Cheviot Hills becomes Cheuyothillis, — not readily recognized, except for the Mons Massachusetts, given by their side. A strange migration occurs in one of Hen- nepin's maps. The Dutch claimed that Pye Bay (Nahant) marked their northern limit, and so the upper boundary of Nouveau Pays Bas runs west- erly from Boston Harbor. It could hardly be de- nied, in Hennepin's time, that the English had a substantial hold upon Boston, and ought to have had upon Bristow and London, — which were Eng- lish enough in name, if aerial in substance. So, to gov. winthrop's sketch. 1 This division is treated of in Mr. Adams's section. 2 Tlie tract is reprinted, witli a fac-simile of tlie map, in E. F. Slafter's Sir WiUiam Alex- ander, published by the Prince Society. Har- vard College Library has the 1630 tract without the map. The map was repeated in Purchas's Pilgrims, iv., and has been reproduced in S. G. Drake's Founders of New England, i860; in David Laing's Royal Letters, &c., Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1867 ; and in part in J. W. Thorn- ton's Landing at Cape Antie. It is also given, with documents appertaining, in the American Antiquarian Society's Proceedings, April 24, 1867. ^ Ignorance in Holland in 1745 is certainly more pardonable than the English blunder of 1778, when the North American Gazetteer oi that year spoke of Bristol, R. I., as being famed "for 62 TME memorial history of feOSTON. cause no dispute, Boston is put down somewliere in the latitude of Ports- mouth, where Prince Charles had placed it, and Bristow and London flank the mouths of what must be the Merrimac. This was not long before 1700. It is interesting to note that Winthrop, in the " Arbella " in 1630, mak- ing the shore just south of Cape Ann, sketched on a blank leaf of his journal — as on preceding page — the earliest outline of the coast from Gloucester to Salem harbor, which is preserved to us in any original drawing. The same page bears a description of the islands and reefs about Cape Ann.^ cS)oUiU\ the King of Spain having a palace in it and 1685, still keeps Charles's London on the south being killel there." The Indian " King Philip " shore of the bay. was meant. A popular account of the English ' Savage's ed. of Winthrop's Hist, of New empire in America, published by N. Crouch in England, ii. 418. ohznJi/^ CHAPTER III. THE EARLIEST EXPLORATIONS AND SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. BY CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Jr. ON the afternoon of Wednesday, the 29th of September, 162 1, a large open sail-boat, or shallop, as it was then called, entered Boston Harbor, coming up along the shore from the direction of Plymouth. In it were thirteen men, — ten Europeans, with three saviages acting as their guides. The whole party was under the immediate command of Captain Miles Standish, and their purpose was to explore the country in and about Massachusetts Bay, as Boston H-arbor was then called, and to establish friendly trading relations with the inhabitants, /y^ C/ <_^^1-^ They had started from Ply- *-^ f mouth on the ebb tide shcirtly before the previous midnight, expecting to reach their destination the next morning ; but the wind was light and the dis- tance greater than they supposed, so that the day was already old when they made the harbor's mouth. Passing by Point Allerton they laid their course for what appeared to them to be the bottom of the bay, and, finding good shelter there, came to anchor oflf what is now known as Thomson's Island.' Here they lay during the night, which they passed on board their boat ; though it would seem that Standish and others landed and explored the little island, even naming it Trevore, after one of their number, — William Trevore, an English sailor. ' The course of this exploring expedition has been in the custom Of navigating it, how- has been differently surmised by the several au- ever, the phrase " the bottom of the bay " is, as thorities. The words used in Mourt are : " We a description, almost unmistakable. A boat com- came into the bottom of the bay." Young sup- ing from Plymouth would enter the harbor by the poses this to mean that they anchored off Copp's channel between Shag-rocks and Point Allerton ; I fill, at the north end of Boston (Ckronides of the and from there the view in the direction of Thom- Pilgrims, p. 225, «., following, in this statement, son's Island is wholly unobstructed, while the Dr. Belknap in his American Biography) ; while ship-channel to Boston and Copp's Hill is de- Dexter, in his edition of Mourt, says : "That is, vious, and masked by islands. Explorers would run in by Point Allerton into Light-house Chan- naturally go directly through the open water to nel " (p. t25, «.). Neither Dr. Young nor Dr. Squantum near the mouth of the Neponset, — the Dexter, it is fair to presume, were practically apparent " bottom of the bay." very familiar with Boston Harbor. To one who Many years subsequently (in 1650), Stand- 64 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Early on the morning of the next day the party made ready to extend their explorations to the main-land. As they had come to establish rela- tions with what remained of the once powerful tribe of the Massachusetts, SQUAW R. Haven',s chapter. -Ed.] THE Earliest settlement of boston Harbor. 15 siastical powers, but he brought with him a clergyman of the Church of England, having a commission conferring upon him, as Bradford after see- ing it subsequently wrote, " I know not what power and authority of super- intendencie over other churches . . . and sundrie instructions for that end." As at this time there was but one church — that at Plymouth — in all New England, the significance of the authority thus conferred is apparent. It was no part of the present scheme to place the seat of the new gov- ernment within the limits of either New Hampshire or Maine, though in both Gorges either then had or was planning settlements. The Plymouth colony was no enterprise of his ; but he now clearly proposed to absorb it, civilly and ecclesiastically, in his more ambitious scheme, — making of it a convenient instrument to his end. His son's destination, therefore, was fixed for a point in Massachusetts Bay, in close proximity to Plymouth. Though modesty itself, so far as titles and dignitaries were concerned, when compared with Gorges' previous short-lived settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec fourteen years before, the new government was organized on a scale sufficiently grandiose. At its head was the Lieutenant of the Coun- cil, with powers of life and death. He was further provided with a council of his own, of which the Governor of the Plymouth colony for the time being was ex officio a member ; as was also Francis West, who had already been commissioned as " Admiral for that coast during this voyage," and Captain Christopher Levett, — both of the two last-named being then in America or voyaging in American waters.^ The Robert Gorges expedition, when it departed from Plymouth in the midsummer of 1623, represented, therefore, the whole power and dignity of the Council for New England. Specially favored by King James, it num- bered among its patrons and associates the most powerful noblemen in England. It went out also in the full confidence of being the mere fore- runner £)f a much larger movement of the same character, soon to follow. It was, also, as respects those who composed it, wholly different from Wes- ton's party of the preceding year, for Robert Gorges took with him a number of his relatives and personal friends ; ^ and there is every reason to suppose that the Rev. William Morell, the ecclesiastical head of the new govern- ment, was accompanied by at least one Cambridge graduate, — William Blackstone. Among Gorges' other followers was a Captain Hanson and one Samuel Maverick, then a young man of means and education in his twenty-second year.^ As the design of the expedition was to effect a settle- 1 An account of Levett's voyage was issued Historical Society for June, 1878 (pp. 194-206). in London, 1628. Cf. 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii., Detailed citations of the original authorities are and Maine Hist. Coll., ii. there given. 2 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 70. [The paper thus referred to was a contri- 2 The evidence upon which Blackstone;- bution by Mr. Adams, and a most searching Maverick, Walford, Jeffrey, and Bursley have examination and collation of the accounts of been included in the Gorges expedition and these earliest settlers about the harbor. The settlement of 1623 is set forth in the paper en- previous writers who had glanced with more or titled "The Old Planters about Boston Harbor," less care at the intricacies of tlie subject were mcluded in the Pioceedings of the Massachusetts a writer in the Charlestown Records (copied in 76 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. ment in an unbroken wilderness, care seems to have been taken to include in it a certain proportion of mechanics, among whom was probably Thomas Walford, the blacksmith. Otherwise it was composed of the usual traders and tillers of the soil, — respectable and well-to-do persons, some of them accompanied by their families ; and among these may have been William Jeffrey and John Bursley, subsequently of Weymouth. They reached their destination about the middle of September. Although the grant covered by his patent lay upon the opposite side of the bay, Gorges, not improbably alarmed by the nearness of the winter and tempted by the shelter ready to his hand offered by Weston's deserted block-house, landed his. party at Wessagusset. There they established themselves ; and, as the place was never again wholly abandoned, the permanent settlement about Boston Harbor must be dated from this time, — September, 1623. The residence of the new Governor-General within his jurisdiction does not seem to have been what he expected. Possibly, for he died not long after his return to England the next year, he was already in declining health. He seems, however, to have made some attempts to exercise his authority, first summoning the Governor of the Plymouth Colony to Wessagusset to consult with him, and then, before that dignitary could answer the sum- mons, departing suddenly for the coast of Maine in search of Weston, whom he proposed to call to account for various trading misdemeanors. On his way thither he encountered a storm and put back, running into Plymouth, where he landed and passed a fortnight. Here he met Weston coming from the eastward, and a heated discussion seems to have followed ; which, how- ever, resulted in nothing. Returning then by land to Wessagusset, his anger, after a time, seems to have gotten the better of his judgment, and he sent a warrant to Plymouth for Weston's immediate arrest and the seizure of his vessel. The arrest and seizure were made, and it would seem that Weston must have passed the winter of 1623-24 at Wessagusset,^ for dur- ing it he and Gorges went again to the coast of Maine, this time together. Finally, towards the spring, they reached an understanding. Weston, his vessel having been restored to him with some compensation for its seizure, thereupon departed for Plymouth, whence he shaped his course to Virginia. This angry quairrel with Weston appears to have been the principal inci- dent in Gorges' New England life. His jurisdiction on paper was wide and complete ; practically he had no power to enforce it. The fishermen and traders were stubborn fellows. They had paid no attention to the orders of Francis West,^ though commissioned as Admiral of New England ; and they paid none to Robert Gorges, though he was recognized as General Governor and was provided with a Council. Gorges accordingly sickened of his undertaking. Governor Bradford observed that he did not find " the Budington's Hist of the First Church, and in Felfs Eccles. Hist, of N. E.; Drake's Boston; \ oung s ChronulesofMass., and n, part in Froth- Palfrey's Me.. England; Barry's Massachusetts ; m%\\3.msHist.ofCharlestown)\yi3X\i^x\ Magna- Savage's Winthrop i 52— Ed! lia, bk i. ch. iv ; V^-mze^ Chronology ; Holmes's 1 Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, p. ,53. Annals; ChaUners':^ Political Annals, ch. vl; ^ Ibid, p. 141. 'tUe earliest settlement 6f b6st6n harbor. 77 state of things hear to answer his qualitie and condition." His father, Sir Ferdinando, was also in serious trouble. The difficulty was an obvious one. The enterprise in England was great only in the names and titles of its nominal projectors and patrons. The Council for New England was, after all, but another name for Sir Ferdinando Gorges ; and the high dignitaries whom he so strenuously endeavored to bring into prominence and active participation in it, though in no way reluctant to have their names recorded as the proprietors of vast tracts of territory, evinced little disposition to advance the funds necessary to quicken the settlement of their new domains. The meeting of the Council in the King's own presence, at Greenwich, in June, 1623, and the drawing of the lots, was, after all, but a stage effect, skil- fully arranged. The whole burden of carrying forward the undertaking now, therefore, devolved upon Gorges ; and he was not equal to it. He seems, nevertheless, during the months which followed the departure of his son, to have made every effort in his power to infuse something of his own zeal into his friends, even announcing his determination to go to New Eng- land himself with the party of the following year.^ It was, however, of no avail; and before the close of 1623 it seems to have become apparent, even to him, that no second party was to follow. A reluctant intimation of this fact was at last sent to Robert Gorges, reaching him, probably by way of the fishing-stations on the coast of Maine upon the arrival there of the forerunners of the fleet, in the early spring of 1624. He decided at once to return to England. A portion of his followers returned with him. Others, however, among whom was Morell, remained at Wessagusset. Beyond the fact of their receiving some assistance from Plymouth to enable them to overcome the hardships necessarily incident to every new settlement, the records contain no mention of those thus left at Wessagusset during the year which immediately succeeded the departure of Robert Gorges. The following spring — that of 1625 — he was followed by the Rev. Mr. Morell, who, having passed the intervening time among his own people, went to Plymouth for the purpose of taking ship from thence. It was then that he first informed the authorities there of the ecclesiastical powers which had been confided to him. He seems, during his residence in Massachu- setts, to have passed his time in a quiet and unobtrusive way, attending to his own duties and giving trouble to no one. As the fruit of his New Eng- land sojourn he has left behind him a Latin poem, showing scholarly acquirements of a good order, in which he, in a genial and somewhat imaginative way, describes the country and gives his impressions of it.^ Notwithstanding his early departure, also, those impressions were extremely favorable. He was indeed as much charmed by the region about Boston Harbor as he was disgusted with its aboriginal inhabitants. Nevertheless, even before his departure, it had become apparent to the little settlement that a great mistake had been made when they had placed themselves at ' Sir Wm. Alexander's Map and Description of New England, p. 31. ^ 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., i. 125. 78 THE MEMORIAL HISTORV OF BOSTON. Wessagusset ; and Morell speaks with something like feeling of the hard lot of men who are " landed upon an unknown shore, peradventure weake in number and naturall powers, for want of boats and carriages," being for this reason compelled, with a whole empty continent before them, " to stay where they are first landed, having no means to remove themselves or their goods, be the place never so fruitlesse or inconvenient for planting, building houses, boats, or stages, or the harbors never so unfit for fishing, fowling, or mooring their boats." The settlers at Wessagusset were in fact repeating on a smaller scale the experience of those of Plymouth. The great scheme of colonization having failed, they were there to trade ; and for trading pur- poses Wessagusset was in every way unfavorably placed. The only means of communication with the interior, from whence came the furs they coveted, was by the rivers ; for the region thereabouts was a wilderness devoid of natural ways and interspersed with swamps. Wessagusset was just below the mouth of the little Monatoquot, it is true ; but the Monatoquot was hardly more than a brook, and could scarcely have been navigable for any distance, even by an Indian's canoe. Meanwhile the Charles, the Mystic, and the Neponset each commanded the interior for many miles. Nor was Wessagusset any more favorably situated so far as the ocean was concerned. Even then a fleet of no less than fifty vessels annually traded along the coast, and their appearance in Boston Harbor was a matter of such ordinary occurrence as to have long ceased to excite surprise among the Indians. Wessagusset, however, was accessible to these vessels only by a narrow and devious river channel, so inconvenient for navigation that almost from the outset Hull was regarded as its seaport. There the Wessagusset planters met the coasting traders. Accordingly there is some reason to suppose that, about the time Morell returned to England, the settlers he left behind him divided, — Jeffrey and Bursley, with some few others abiding at Wes- ^ sagusset, while Blackstone, Maverick, and ^^m.uS^ '^<^'*'^^i-fk-^ Walford removed across the bay; the former establishing himself at Shawmut,i opposite the mouth of the Charles, while Walford placed himself on the Mystic, and Maverick took up his abode on Noddle's Island,^ at what 1 [Trumbull thinks Shawmut, or rather Mi- ton, p. 45. It would seem the island had dimin- shawmut, meant a place to go to by boat. Cf. ished about one third in area from 1633, when it his letter in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, December, was reckoned at a thousand acres, to 1800, when 1866, and his chapter in this volume, — Ed.] a survey gave six hundred and sixty-six. It has 2 [The island at this early date seems to have of course since increased by filling in. The been known by this name, which is conjectur- General Court confirmed the island to Maverick ably derived from one William Noddle, who had in 1633, for a yearly consideration of "» fat earlier occupied it, and, remaining in the colony, wether, a fat hog, or 40J-. in money," paid to the was made a freeman in 163:. The island seems Governor. Sumner, in his second chapter, traces, to have been granted by John Gorges (brother as well as he can, the early Mavericks in New Eng- of Robert) to Sir William Brereton in January, land, and makes Samuel of Noddle's Island, born 1628-29, and was then called by the baronet's in 1602, the son of the "godly " Mr. John Maver- name ; but, during 1629, Jolwison, Wonder Work- ick, who was of the party that settled Dorchester ing Providence, speaks of it as Noddle's Island, just before the arrival of Winthrop He also as does Winthrop in 1630. Sumner, East Bos- proves him to be identical with the Royal Com THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 79 is now East Boston. The exact date of these removes cannot be fixed, but the probabilities would seem to be strong that they took place not later, certainly, than 1626, and very probably in 1625.' In 1625, however, two additional settlements seem to have been made within the limits of the bay, — one at Natascot, as Hull was then called ; the other at Pasonagesset, since known as Mount Wollaston, in the town of Quincy. The Hull settlement was a singular affair, arising out of certain incidents, both laughable and scandalous, which occurred at Plymouth. It has been stated,^ though the authority for the statement is not now known to exist, that as early as 1622 — that is about the time of the arrival of Weston's party — three men, named Thomas and John Gray and Walter Knight, pur- chased Nantasket of Chickataubut,the sachem of the " Massachusetts Fields," and there settled themselves. If they did so, which, in view of the subse- quent occurrences at Wessagusset, seems improbable, the next addition to their number was in the spring of 1625. John Lyford, a clergyman of doubtful moral character and a confirmed mischief-maker, and John Old- ham, an energetic but self-willed and passionate private adventurer, had shortly before this time got into serious trouble with the Plymouth magis- trates, and had been ignominiously expelled from the settlement. They then came to Hull, Lyford bringing his wife and children with him. It would seem that they must have found some few persons residing there, for Lyford is reported to have had an " auditory " for his preaching ; and, though the next year both Oldham and Lyford went elsewhere, those they left behind them were still able to contribute to the expense of an expedition sent up some two years later by the Plymouth authorities to put a stop to certain disorderly proceedings which had, meanwhile, occurred in the neighborhood of Wessagusset, and which will presently he described. A year later, in 1629, — the year which preceded the arrival of Governor Winthrop and his colony, — Bradford, having occasion to mention Nantas- ket in his history,^ described it as an " uncoth place " with " some stragling people," but scarcely, it would seem, deserving to be called a settlement. The other settlement made in the summer of 1625 — that within the present limits of Quincy — was of a wholly different character. Like Wes- ton's, it was a purely trading enterprise. At its head was a Captain Wollas- ton, of whom nothing is known except that among the Plymouth people he bore the reputation of being " a man of pretie parts " and of " some emi- nencie." The party Wollaston brought with him consisted of three or four men, not without means, — his partners, apparently, in the venture, — and some thirty or forty servants, as they were called, or persons who had sold their services for a term of years, and during that period occupied towards missioner of a later date (see Mr. Deane's chap- tion thereof by y"= English." Clarendon Papers, ler). Mr. Savage (notes to Winthrop) took a dif- in JV. Y. Hist. Coll., 1869, p. 49- — Ed.] ferent view. The following bears upon this point, ' Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, 1878, p. 200. being a deposition about the Commissioner: 2 "An unpublished deposition" referred to " Mr. Samuell Maverick hath a long tyme dwelt in Drake's Boston, p. 41. in New England, allmost since the first planta- " Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, p. 263. 8o THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. their employers the position of minors to their parents, or ^apprentices to their masters. Among Wollaston's company was one Thomas Morton, a lawyer by pro- fession, for he signed himself " of Clifford's Inn, Gent," though the grave elders of the Plymouth colony contemptuously referred to him as " a petie- fogger of Furnivall's Inn." There seems some reason for supposing that Morton had been one of Weston's company. If so, he came over with it in June, and may have gone back to England in the following September in the " Sparrow," on her return voyage, without passing the winter at Wessa- gusset or sharing in the wretched ending of the settlement there. ^ In any event he carried back with him the most pleasing impressions of the country which no subsequent experience ever changed, and which he has himself recorded in glowing language. It was, in his eyes, a land of " delicate faire large plaines, sweete cristall fountaines, and cleare running streames, that twine in fine meanders through the meads " where " millions of Turtledoves one the greene boughes : which sate pecking of the full-ripe pleasant grapes." ^ It was Morton, therefore, who in all probability guided WoUas- ton to Boston Bay, On the arrival of the party, however, some time in the summer of 1625, Wessagusset was already occupied by the remnants of Gorges' colony, and they accordingly selected Pasonagesset as the site for their plantation. There they proceeded to establish themselves. Situated some two miles in a direct line from Wessagusset, and upon the other, or north, side of the Monatoquit, Pasonagesset, or Mount Wollaston, was a hill of moderate elevation, sloping gently on its eastern side towards the bay, and commanding an unobstructed view of the widest anchorage-ground of the harbor. For trading purposes its single draw-back was the absence of deep water from its immediate front.^ The spot had, however, the ad- vantage of being cleared of trees, for previous to the great plague it had been the home of the Sachem Chickatabut, and there his mother had been buried.^ The adventurers had no charter and no grant of the soil on which they ' settled. They apparently troubled themselves little about questions of title. A season probably was passed in the work of laying out their plantation and erecting their buildings, at the close of which it would seem that Wol- 1 Address on the 2tpth Anniversary of the mentions the book (Wood not leaving New Eng- Settlement of Weymouth, p. 8, n. land till Aug. 1 5, 1633), shows the 1632 date to be 2 The New English Canaan, p. 61. |This erroneous; and Lowndes' citing of a 1634 date is book of Morton's, describing his experiences, likewise wrong, certainly as regards the Gordons- has a curious history. It has been said that it toun copy. About twenty copies which have was issued in 1632, presumably at London, and come to my knowledge all purport to be printed the date is so given by White-Kennet and Meu- at Amsterdam by Jacob Frederick Stam in 1637 sel. Force claimed to have reprinted it from such and Muller, the Amsterdam bookseller, contends a copy; but the Force copy is now without title, it was printed there, though the place' has been and he probably copied the date from White- held to be falsely given for London. Cf. Har- Kennet. The Statiotters' Register (Arber's vard College Library Bulletin, No. 10, p. 244. — Transcripts, iv. 283) proves it was entered for Ed.] copyright Nov. 18, 1633, and this, as well as the 3 Young, Chronicles of Mass., p. 39c fact that Wood, in his Neiu Englands Prospect, * Morton, Nav English Canaan, bk. iii. ch. iii THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 8 1 laston had become satisfied that there was little legitimate profit to be looked for in the enterprise. Accordingly he determined to go elsewhere. Leaving one Rasdell in charge of the plantation, and taking with him a number of the articled servants, he set sail, sometime in the winter of 1625-26, for Virginia. He there disposed of those of his servants whom he brought with him to the planters on terms so satisfactory to himself that he at once sent back word for Rasdell to turn over the plantation to one Pitcher, and to bring on to Virginia another detachment of servants. This was done, and they also were disposed of. The number of those left at the plantation was now reduced to ten. The supplies had begun to run short, and a spirit of discontent prevailed. Taking advantage of this, Morton incited a species of mutiny, which resulted in Pitcher's being thrust out of doors, while he himself got control. He then changed the name of the place to Merry Mount, or, as he called it. Mare Mount, designating himself as " mine host" of the establishment; but the Plymouth people spoke of him as the " Lord of Misrule." According to his own account, he and his followers were a roystering, drunken set, trad- ing with the savages for beaver-skins, and freely supplying them with spirits, arms, and ammunition, — holding most questionable relations with the Indian women, and leading, generally, a wild frontier life. On what is now the tenth of the month, in the year 1627, the anniversary of May Day was cele- brated here by these people with revels and merriment, after the old English custom. Not only has Morton himself left us a minute description of the proceedings on this occasion, — declaring that the pole was "a goodly pine tree of 80 foote longe, . . . with a peare of buckshorns nayled one, somewhat neare unto th^ top of it," but Governor Bradford also says they " set iip a Ma,y^pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many days togeather; inviting the Indean women for their consorts, dancing and frisking togither (like so many fairies, or furies rather), and worse practises." According to the evidence of both sides, therefore, it would seem there can be ho question as to the nature of the proceedings at Pasonagesset during the year 1627.^ The number of Morton's followers was small as yet, but the danger was great lest the place should become a refuge for loose and disorderly char- acters, whether runaway servants of the planters or deserters from the fishing-vessels. The practice, too, of bartering with the savages firearms for furs not only destroyed the value of all other commodities in exchange, but it added a new danger to a situation already perilous enough. The straggling settlers along the coast, therefore, impelled by a common sense of alarm, came together to consider the subject ; but Morton would listen to no reason, and in strength was more than a match for all of them. The question, however, was one in which the whole region was interested. An appeal was therefore finally made to the authorities at Plymouth, and they sent a messenger to Mount Wollaston, bearing a formal letter, ' [Hawthorne pictures this revelry in " The Maypole of Merry Mount," — one of his Tiuic,:- Told Tales. — Ed.] VOL. I. — II. 82 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. in which they, in a friendly and neighborly way, admonished Morton as to his evil courses, and called his attention to the fact that his dealings in firearms were in direct contravention of King James's proclamation of 1622. Their admonition was, however, treated with contempt. In fact they were plainly told to mind their own business, and the dangerous trade was about to be carried on upon a larger scale than ever, when, in the spring of 1628, it was decided to have recourse to more severe measures for its repression. Miles Standish was, accordingly, again sent to Wessagusset, with orders to arrest Morton. Acting, probably, on information received from the other settlers, this expedition started towards the end of May or early in June, when the larger portion of Morton's followers were in the interior looking for furs. He was found at Wessagusset, and there captured. It was, however, either too late in the day, or no part of the plan, to carry him at once to Plymouth, and during the night which followed the prisoner succeeded in slipping away from his captors, and made his escape to his own house. Thither Standish followed him the next day, and finally suc- ceeded in arresting him. This, however, was accomplished only after a ludicrous attempt at resistance on the part {_ Jfy;T/0/7A iyffoYf^Tt^ of Morton and such tipsy and frightened followers as he had with him, which re- sulted in injury only to one of their number, who " was so drunke y' he run his own nose upon y*^ pointe of a sword y' one held before him as he entred y" house ; but he lost but a litle of his bote blood." ^ Morton was taken to Plymouth by his captors, and thence subsequently sent to England. He returned, however, the next year with Isaac Allerton, the agent of the colony; and, after hanging about Plymouth — acting as Allerton's clerk — for some time, he found his way back to Mount Wol- laston. In the meanwhile, however, — on the 6th of September, 1628, just three months after his arrest by Standish, — John Endicott had landed at Salem ; and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, which included Merry Mount within its chartered limits, had come into existence. One of Endi- cott's first acts had been to visit Mount Wollaston, where he cut down the May-pole, and sternly admonished the remnants of the party who still lingered about the place. Whether any of them were yet there at the time of Morton's reappearance a year later, in the autumn of 1629, does not appear. He, however, repossessed himself of his old home, which he occupied until the arrival of Winthrop, a year later. He even seems to have been tolerated by Endicott, as he attended one or more of the earlier General Courts held at Salem. According to his own account, however, he was a thorn in the side of the authorities ; and he escaped a second arrest only by concealing himself in the woods.^ 1 Bradford, Plymouth Plantation, p. 241. The 2 [Samuel Maverick gives a curious story of history of the Merry Mount episode is narrated Morton's tribulations at the hands of the colon- in detail in two articles in the Atlantic Monthly ists in one of his letters to Lord Clarendon. N. Magazine, for May and June, 1877 |by C. F. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1869, p. 40. — En.] Adams, Jr. — Ed.]. THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON HARBOR. 83 In addition to those already referred to, there was at this time but one other plantation in the vicinity of Boston, — that of David Thomson, on what is now Thomson's Island. This man is referred to by Morton as a Scottish gentleman, — both a traveller and a scholar, — who had been quite observant of the habits of the Indians. Unlike Morton, who seems to have had no con- nection with the Gorges family until a subsequent period, Thomson was a distinct dependent of Sir Ferdinando and the Council for New England. In London he had been its agent or attorney, and seems to have represented it before the Privy Council. In November, 1622, a patent covering a con- siderable grant of land in New England was issued to him ; and early in the next year he seems to have come over to take possession of it, bringing with him his wife and a few servants. In the Robert Gorges grant of Dec. 30, 1622, he is mentioned as " David Thomson, Gent.," * and named as attorney to enter upon and take possession of the grant, with a view to its legal delivery to Gorges. In 1623, when Robert Gorges reached Wessagus- set, Thomson was already at Piscataqua in New Hampshire ; and there, • later in the year, Gorges visited him, meeting Captain Levett, of his council. Subsequently, in 1626, Thomson removed to Massachusetts. He died in 1628, leaving a wife, who was one of those who contributed to the expense of Morton's arrest by Standish, and an infant son, to whom the island occupied by his father; and which has ever since borne his name, was subsequently granted by the General Court of Massachusetts.^ In the early summer of 1630, therefore, — just prior to the arrival of Governor Winthrop, coming to " Mattachusetts " from Salem on the 7th of June to "find out a place for our sitting down," — the location of the " old planters," as they were called, was as follows : At the parent settlement of Wessagusset, or Weymouth, there still lived a few families, not unprosperously it would appear; as, when Governor Winthrop and others visited the place two years later on their way to Plymouth, they were, both going and coming, " bountifully entertained with store of turkeys, geese, ducks, &c."^ Of the Wessagusset residents, William Jeffreys and John Bursley appear to have been the most prominent; and their names only have come down to us. They had then been living there nearly seven years. At the entrance to the harbor, at Hull, there also dwelt a few "stragling" people; but whether the Grays were among them does not appear. In what is now Quincy, Morton was still hanging about Mount WoUaston, though his trade with the Indians had been broken up, and he was already marked by the authorities at Salem for destruction. He had been there five years. Thomson's widow occupied what is now the Farm-school island, having with her an infant son, and owning, probably, one or more English servants. In what is now Bos- ton, WiUiam Blackstone, a solitary, bookish recluse, in his thirty-fifth year, 1 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 77. ' Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, May, 1876. Cf. Shurt- ' [All that is known of Thomson is given m left's Description of Boston, p. 502. — Ed.] Chas. Deane's notes to an Ii^Ienture, printed in ^ Winthrop, New England, i. 93. 84 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. had a dwelling somewhere on the west slope of Beacon Hill, not far from what are now Beacon and Spruce streets, from which he commanded the mouth of the Charles. Here he had lived ever since his removal from Wessagusset in 1625 or 1626, trading with the savages, cultivating his garden, and watching the growth of some apple-treea ,^ Thqpias Wal- ' [It is known that Blackstone, in 1634, re- serving only six acres, sold out to the colonists his right to the remainder of the peninsula, being tired of the " lord brethren," as he had before his emigration wearied of the "lord bishops," and that at this date he removed to an estate, which he named " Study 11. il," situated near the railroad station in the present village of Lons- dale, Rhode Island, where he became the first white inhabitant of that State. In 1684 Francis Hudson, ferryman, aged sixty-eight ; John Odlin, aged eighty-two; William Lytherland, aged seventy-six; and Robert Walker, aged seventy- eight, — all made deposition as to the purchase of the peninsula from Blackstone. Suffolk Deeds, xxiv. 406; Shuitleff, Desc. of Boston, p. 296. Sewall records Hudson's death, Nov. 3, 1700, as " one of the first who set foot on this peninsula." Sewall Papers, ii. 24. Blackstone later revisited Boston more than once, and married the widow of John Stephenson, who lived on Milk Street on the site of the building in which Franklin was born. Shurtleff, Boston, p. 616. He died in Cum- berland, R. I., May 26, 1675. Roger Williams records it, June 13: "About a fortnight since your bid acquaintance Mr. Blackstone departed this life in the fourscore year of his age ; four days before his death he had a great pain m his breast, and back, and bowells; afterward he said he was well, had no paines, and should live ; but he grew fainter, and yealded up his breath without a groane." 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 299 ; also cf. 2 Mass. Hist Coll., x. 170. Two boulders are to this day pointed out as marking his grave. He left among his effects " 10 paper books," whose destruction shortly after, when the Indians burned his house, we must regret, as containing possibly some record of his mysterious career. The late N. I. Bowditch, in his Gleaner articles in the Bostgn Transcript, 1855-56 (which will soon be reprinted at the cost of the city), traced back the titjes of the territory reserved by Black- stone in 1634, and his results would place his house and orchard on a plat stretching on Beacon Street from near Spruce to the water, and back so as to include what was later known as West Hill, the most westerly of the summits of " Tri- mountain." His name continued long attached to a bold point of land some- where near the foot of Pinckney Street, just inside the line of Charles Street. Sewall, Papers, i. 186, notes in August, 1687, "going into the water alone at Blackstone's Point," and again in 1709 he speaks of "behind Blackstone's Point." — Ibid. ii. 260. It is thought his famous spring was situated not far from the present Louisbourg Square. The Burgiss map of 1728 is said to present in Bannister's garden the site of Black- stone's orchard. It is sometimes in the later days called Humphrey Davy's orchard. The relations to modern streets can be seen in the annexe^ sketch, which follows a marking-out of the lots of the peninsula according to the Book of Pos- sessions, as figured by U. H. Crocker, Esq. The six-acre lot is here bounded by Bea- con Street, the dotted line, and the original shore line. It is made out in part from a deposition of Anne Pollard, aged eighty-nine, in 1711, who says that Blackstone visited her house on this lot, after he had removed to Rhode Island. Snoall Papers, i. 73. It is an area upon which many distinguished Bostonians have lived, — Copley, Phillips (the first mayor), Harrison Gray Otis, Channing, Prescott, David Sears, Charles Francis Adams, John Lothrop Motley, Francis Parkman, and others. Cf. Shurtleff's Boston, pp. 106, 295, 383- 39' i T. C. Amory's notes to his poem, THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT OF feOSTdN HARBOR. ^5 ford, the blacksmith, with his wife, were his nearest neighbors, living at Mishauwum, or Charlestown, in an " English palisadoed and thatched house; " while a little further off, at East Boston, Samuel Maverick, a man of twenty-eight, dwelt in a sort of stronghold or fort, which probably also served as the settlers' trading-post. This he had built with the aid of Thom- son, some three years previously ; and it was armed with four large guns, or " murtherers," as a protection against the Indians. It was in fact the first of-the many forts erected for the protection of those dwelling about Boston Harbor; and it is not unnatural to suppose that it was constructed at the common cost of the old planters, with the exception of Morton, and was regarded as the general place of refuge in case of danger. It only remains to be said ^Sat all of these settlers belonged to the Church of England, and either had been or afterwards became associates and adherents of Sir Fer- dinando Gorges. They were all that was left of what had been intended as the mere forerunner of a great system of colonization, emanating from the Blackstone, Boston's First Inhabitant; W. W. Wheildon's Beacon Hill. What information we have of Blackstone can be gleaned from Bliss's Rehoboth, p. 2; Daggett's Attleborough, p. 29; Callender's Hist. Discourse, app. ; S. C. New- man's Address at Study Hill, July 4, 1855; Arnold's Rhode Island, i. 99, ii. 568; and par- ticularly of his Boston life in Savage's Winthrop, i. 44, and Geneal. Dictionary ; Young's Chronicles of Mass. ; S. Davis, in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., x. 170; Drake's Boston, p. 95 ; L. M. Sargent, quoted in Hist. Mag., December, 1870; North American Review, Ixiii., by G. E. Ellis,, and Ixviii., by F. Bowen. Motley the historian, in his early ro- mance, Merry Mount, introduces Blackstone as riding on a bull about his peninsula. He briefly tells Blackstone's story in "The Soli- tary of Shawmut," in the Boston Book of 1850. The document above referred to is endorsed, "John Odlin, &c., their depositions ab' Black- ston's Sale of his Land in Boston," and is printed by Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, p. 296, as follows : — "The Deposition of John Odlin, aged about Eighty-two yeares; Robert Walker, aged about Seventy-eight yeares ; Francis Hudson, aged about Sixty-eight yeares; and William Lyther- land, aged about Seventy-six yeares. These Deponents being ancient dwellers and Inhabit- ants ot the Town of Boston, in New England, from the time of the first planting and setling thereof, and continuing so at this day, do jointly testify and depose that in or about the yeare of our Lord One thousand Six hundred thirty and ffour, the then present Inhabitants of s'' Town of Boston (of whome the Hono'''= John Win- throp, Esq'- Governo'' of the Colony, was Clieife) did treate and agree with M'- William Blackstone for the purchase of his Estate and right in any Lands lying within the s'' neck of Land called Boston ; and for s^" purchase agreed that every householder should pay Six Shillings, which was accordingly Collected, none paying less, some considerably more than Six Shillings, and the s"* sume Collected was delivered and paid to M' Blackstone to his full content and satisfaction; in consideration whereof hee Sold unto the tljen Inhabitants of s<' Town and their heires and assignees for ever his whole right and interest in all and every of the Lands lying within s'l peck, Reserving onely unto himselfe about Six ^cres of Land on the point commonly called Bl^ckstoii's Point, on part whereof his then dwelling house stood ; after which purchase the Town laid out a place for a trayning field, which ever since and now is used for that pur- pose and for the feeding of Cattell. Robert Walker & W'"- Lytherland further testify that M' Blackstone bought a Stock of Cows with the Mon^y he rec'' as above, and Removed and dwelt near Providence, where he liv'd till y"= day of his de&th. "Dejjosed this loth of June, 1684, by John Odlin, - Robert Walker, Francis Hudson, and William Lytherland, according to their respec- tive Testimonye, " Before us, S. Bradstreet, GouTn"- Sam. Sewall, Assist.'^ Shurtleff notes that Odlin was a cutler by trade, and died Dec. 18, 1685. Hudson was the fisherman who gave his name to the point of the peninsula nearest Charlestown. Walker was a weaver, and died May 29, 1687. Lyther- land was an Antinomian, who removed to Rhode Island and became town clerk of Newport, and died very old. — Ed.J 86 THE MfeMORIAL HISTORY dF BOSTON. Royalist and Church party in England. The scheme had come to nothing ; and it now only remained for the next wave of emigration — which was to originate with the other party in Church and State — to so completely sub- merge it as to obliterate through more than two centuries every historical tradition even of its continuity with what followed. Cj^e Colonial l^ertoD. CHAPTER I. THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. BY SAMUEL FOSTER HAVEN, LL.D. Librarian of the American Antiquarian Society. CARLYLE, in his book on Cromwell,' refers to our city of Boston thus : — " Rev. John Cotton is a man still held in some remembrance among our New Eng- land firiends. He had been minister of Boston in Lincolnshire ; carried the name across the ocean with him ; fixed it upon a new small home he had found there, which has become a large one since, — the big, busy capital of Massachusetts, — Boston, so called. John Cotton, his mark, very curiously stamped on the face of this planet ; likely to continue for some time." The passage is a very good specimen of Carlyle's mannerism ; but it must not be mistaken for correct history. Many errors in recording minor particu- lars may be found in the narratives of early New England authorities, which have been adopted and transmitted by later writers ; this is one of them. The placing of Endicott's expedition after the procuring of the charter, when he really sailed more than eight months before, is another. It is a want of precision in them, which indicates that their minds were more occu- pied with the great results they had witnessed than with the order of events. Hence, a little readjustment of the time and manner of occurrences is some- times necessary. Governor Dudley's almost official letter to the Countess of Lincoln is described by himself as written by the fireside on his knee, in the midst of his family, who " break good manners, and make me many times forget what I would say, and say what I would not ; " and that he had " no leisure to review and insert things forgotten, but out of due time and order must set them down as they come to memory." ^ 1 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elu- came above eight months before." — Prince, An- cidations, iii. rg;^. nals, edition of 1826, p. 249. 'Governor Brad- 2 " Deputy-Governor Dudley, Mr. Hubbard, ford and Mr. Morton seem to mistake in saying and others, wrongly place Mr. Endicott's voyage he (Endicott) came with a patent under the after the grant of the Royal Charter, whereas he broad seal for the Government of the Mass.v 88 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Hubbard is responsible for the assertion that the neck of land on the south side of Charles River was called " Boston," " on account of Mr. Cot- ton." ^ Yet the circumstance of bestowing upon the principal town of Massachusetts the name of the principal town of the English county of Lincolnshire has an historical significance which deserves to be more carefully stated. Dr. Young ^ was probably right in his opinion that the name "Boston" was given, not out of respect for Mr. Cotton particularly, but because so many of the prominent men of the colony were from that part of the coun- try. It was at a Court held at Charlestown, Sept. 7, 1630, that ifewas sim- ply ordered that Tri-Mountain be called Boston. Mr. Cotton was not men- tioned ; and no reason was assigned for selecting that name. It is rather singular that Winthrop, in his very particular diary, does njt record this important act of the General Court. He uses the name for the first time about a month later, in stating the fact that a goat died there from eat- ing Indian corn, — which affords to his editor an occasion to remark : " Here is proof that the name of our chief city of New England was given, not, as is often said, after the coming of Mr. Cotton, but three years before." Governor Dudley intimates that it had been predetermined to adopt that name for whatever place should be chosen for the first settlement, — "which place we named Boston (as we intended to have done the place we first resolved on)." He gives no reason for it.^ Perhaps a motive may be found in the relations of the several interests that were combined in the organiza- tion of the colony. Various influences were united in the constitution of the Massachusetts Company that also affected the policy of the colony. The religious and political elements are more marked in the views and purposes of the men from the eastern counties of England, — usually termed " the Boston men." The commercial element existed more visibly among the adventurers from the western counties of Dorset and Devon, who were commonly designated as " the Dorchester men." The merchants and capitalists of London min- gled hopes of profit with the desire to do good and advance the cause of rehgion. Between the Dorchester men, with whom the movement for a plantation originated, and the Boston men, who were new associates, there is an appearance of competition — amicable, doubtless — in the matter of first establishing and naming a settlement in the new country. The Dor- chusetts." — Ibid. p. 250. Harris, in his edition the charter itself. Mr. Savage says of Hubbard : of Hubbard, tries, we think unsuccessfully, to " He seems to have slighted most of the occur- give a different construction to Hubbard's state- rences in which he should have felt the deepest ment. Hubbard says in the same place : "The interest, and for anything of date preceding 1630 Company having chosen Mr. Cradock Governor his information is sometimes authentic, and (&c.), sent over Mr. Endicott." Cradock was often curious." Winthrop, New England, i. not chosen by the Company till May 13, 1629 297, note. (Easter week), the day assigned for elections by 1 Hist, of New England, ch. xxv. the charter, after letters had been received from 2 Chronicles of Mass., pp. 48, 49. Endicott. The first officers were designated by ' Letter to the Countess of Lincoln. THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. 89 Chester emigrants came in a large and well-appointed ship by themselves. They arrived a fortnight sooner than the rest of Winthrop's fleet, and fixing upon Mattapan (now South Boston)', called it "Dorchester," — expecting it to become the principal town ; and there were good reasons for that anticipa- tion. Rev. John White, of Dorchester, in England, was the acknowledged father of New England colonization ; and the existence of the proposed colony was chiefly due to his exertions. No other man and no other county were so well entitled to such a memorial of services in the first introduc- tion of permanent settlements here. The situation selected was well supplied with pastures and fields for till- age, possessing also a convenient harbor and facilities for trade ; and for a time it took the lead among the new plantations. Wood ' calls Dorches- ter "the greatest town in New England." Prince says that Dorchester became the first settled church and town in the county of Suffolk, "and in all military musters or civil assemblies used to have the precedency." ^ In 1633, when four hundred pounds were assessed upon the colony, Dorches- ter was called upon for one fifth of the whole, — eighty pounds, — while Boston paid only forty-eight pounds.^ On the other hand, when the Boston men joined the Massachusetts Com- pany, after the two preliminary expeditions had been provided for, and after the royal charter had been prepared for signature, their superior wealth and standing gave them the ascendency in its councils ; and their election to the offices of the government placed in their hands the management and con- trol of the enterprise. They came over holding the power and responsi- bility of an organized community ; and to their authority all previous and all. subsequent operations became subordinate. When they decided upon " Tri-Mountain " as the seat and centre of their jurisdiction, they simply gave it the appellation by which, as a body, they were best known in the mother country, — the name of the place around which their home associa- tions were chiefly gathered. Thus it came to pass, legitimately enough, that Lincolnshire and its neighborhood of counties acquired the birthright of Dorset and Devon. The adopted metropolis naturally became, — as Wood describes it in the early period, — "although neither the greatest nor the richest, yet the most noted and frequented, — being the centre of the Plan- tations where the monthly Courts are kept." But a Boston already existed — nominally — on the coast of New England, for which King Charles himself, then only Prince Charles, stood godfather fourteen years before. In 1616, when Captain John Smith dedicated his famous map, made in 1614, to the Prince, he begged the favor of him to change the native names of places for more euphonious I New England's Prospect, London, 1635. England, he having placed the city of London ^ Annals, edition of 1826, p. 287, note. in this neighborhood. Jfist. of Dorchester, by a ^ The vicinity of Dorchester, Mass., was re- committee of the Dorchester Antiquarian and garded by Smith (perhaps we should say by Historical Society, p. 8. [A glance at Smith's Prince Charles, who gave the English names) map does not wholly confirm this view of Smith's as the probable site of the future capital of New location of London. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 12. 90 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. appellations.^ Of course the prospective head of the Church did not intend to honor particularly the Non-conformist capital of Lincolnshire, and doubt- less, without any special motive, suggested such names as happened to occur to him, — "Berwick," "Plymouth," "Oxford," "Falmouth," "Bristol," "Cam- bridge," ''Boston" &c. It is possible that, when asked for a charter to the Massachusetts Company, his mind reverted to his examination of Smith's map ; and this, in connection with the intrinsic advantages of the locality for one of the most valuable branches of trade of his dominions, perhaps led to the favorable conditions granted to the applicants. It is certain that on several subsequent occasions Charles exhibited a mind of his own on the subject, and independent sentiments more liberal and friendly than those of his ministers and advisers.^ The transition from a trading copartnership engaged in the business of fishing to the embryo of a religious and political Commonwealth is the history of the Massachusetts Company, whose steps are to be now concisely traced. While the deeply wooded shores of the northern portion of the continent continued in undisturbed barbarism, the fisheries were frequented by gen- erations of hardy mariners of diff"erent nations, through whom a knowledge of their abundant riches was gradually communicated to European countries.^ A century of familiar acquaintance with the harbors and islands of the sea 1 " Humbly intreating his Highness he would please to change their barbarous names for such English as posterity might say Prince Charles was their Godfather." " Whose barbarous names you changed for such English that none can deny but Prince Charles is their Godfather." Smith, Desc. of New England. [See Mr. Win- sor's chapter in the previous section. — Ed.] * See Winthrop's New England, i. 102, 103. Before leaving this point I wish to refer to a paper upon "Anthropology, Sociology, and Na- tionality," by D. Mackintosh, F.G.S., read at the forty-fifth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in August, 1875. In that portion of his lecture which re- lated to the ancestors of the British, the writer endeavored to show that " between the northeast and southwest portions of England, the difference in the character of the people is so great as to give a semi-nationality to each division. Rest- less activity, ambition, and commercial specula- tion predominate in the northeast ; contentment and leisure of reflection in the southwest." He concluded by a reference to the derivation of the settlers of New England from the southwest, mentioning as a fact that, while a large propor- tion of New England surnames are still found in Devon and Dorset, there is a small village called Boston near Totness, and in its immediate neigh- borhood a place called Bunker Hill ! Did some English political dissenter of 17753! the Devon- shire Boston (near, which may now be found meeting-houses for Independents, Methodists, and Unitarians) thus signify his sympathy with the Boston of New England by christening a neighboring hill after the famous battle-field of our Revolution } Local differences of manners, of dialects, and of temperament are strongly marked in England, and betray diversity of an- cestral derivation. It is a suitable task for our New England Historic Genealogical Society to determine whether the southwestern or the north- eastern sections of the mother country, or the intermediate point of London and its vicinity, contributed most largely to the numbers that ulti- mately formed the Massachusetts Colony. Hlg- ginson, in the journal of his voyage, written from New England, July 24, 1629, describes the Com- pany of Massachusetts Bay as consisting of many worthy gentlemen in the city of London, Dor- chester, and other places. He does not mention Lincolnshire. The merchants of London already took a leading part, but the Lincolnshire men had not come to the front when he wrote. Hig- ginson writes again, in September, 1629, "There are certainly expected here the next spring the coming of sixty families out of Dorsetshire. Also many families are expected out of Lin- colnshire, and a great company of godly Chris- tians out of London." Young, Chron. of Mass. p. 260. 8 It is claimed that the first French settle- ments originated from this source, and that the active participation of Holland in the trade drew THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. gi had passed away without plantations or durable stations on land for settle- ment or traffic. During this period there would be more or less exchange of articles of pse or ornament with the natives for furs or provisions. Occasionally a ship or boat would be wrecked, and the brass kettles of the fishermen, transmuted into breast-plates and decorations of metal, fur- nished materials for " The Skeleton in Armor," and other supposed relics of the Northmen.^ Mr. Sabine, in his learned Report to Congress, in 1853, on American fisheries, carries back the trade as a regular employment as far as A. D. 1504. The Biscayan sailors of France and Spain led the way, while the merchants of Holland were more prompt than those of England in securing its profits. The earlier American fisheries were chiefly in the neighborhood of Newfoundland. The particular fisheries of Massachusetts Bay did not commence till about 1618 or 1619. The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, and govern- ing of New England in America, succeeded to the Northern Company of Virginia as proprietors of the portion of the continent between the fortieth ii^nd forty-eighth degree of latitude on the 3d of November, 1620, and all British subjects were prohibited from visiting and trafficking into or from the said territories, unless with the license and consent of the Council first obtained under seal. In 1622 the President and Council of New England published an account of their condition, the difficulties they had encountered, their proposed plans, &c., which was dedicated to Prince Charles, on whom they relied for encouragement and assistance.-^ It contains a summary of the past history of the Council, and affords very satisfactory reasons why thus far they had made no progress ; and also tends to explain why it is that the attention of the Pilgrims to this particular the same in life and being, so ought we to render place of refuge ; while, again, the cod-fisheries an account of our proceedings from the root of the New England seaboard'; whose emblem thereof unto the present growth it hath," &c. has so conspicuously figured in our popular hall It seems that after their patent passed the seals of legislation, first brought hither the merchant in 1620, "it was stopped, upon new suggestions ships of the southern ports of Great Britain. to the King, and referred to the Privy Council ' It seems safe to say at this time that no to be settled." " These disputes held us almost authentic vestiges of Scandinavian occupancy two years, so as all men were afraid to join with have ever been discovered in New England, us," &c. " But having passed all these storms See Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, April, 1880, for re- abroad, and undergone so many home-bred op- marks of George Dexter, Esq., on communicat- positions and freed our patent, which we were ing a letter of Erasmus Rask to Henry Wheaton. by order of state assigned to renew for the [A chapter by Mr. Dexter in this volume covers amendment of some defects therein contained, this question. — Ed.] we were assured of this ground more boldly to - A Brief Relation of the Discovery and Flan- proceed on than before." It is just at this point tation of New England, London, 1622, reprinted that the records begin, and it was just at this in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll. ix. The beginning of the period that the fisheries were becoming very dedication is significant of the good will of profitable. Hence it was the time of effort and Prince Charles towards American colonization, activity on the part of the Council, and also as well as of his knowledge of the country, the time when inducements to emigration were "And for the subject of this relation, as your the strongest. Thus it happened for a year or highness hath been pleased to do it the honor two that there was a demand for grants from the by giving it the name of New England, and by Council, and a swarming of adventurers to the your most favorable encouragement to continue Bay of Massachusetts. 92 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOStOM. the two copies of their records which have been brought to light within a few years have their first entries so late as May, 1622.1 During the few years of prosperity in the fishing business, the Council made great exertions to secure their monopoly and to establish their authority on land; but they lost courage and energy as soon as the business of fishing was broken up by the Spanish and French wars, causing a loss of the best customers and great hazard to navigation. The re- action began in 1624, when the war with Spain commenced, and was made com- plete by the additional war with France in 1626, and the civil dissensions at home. But all those things were preparing the way for the rise of a very different series of operations under very different auspices. John White, of Dorchester, a Puritan minister, but not a Non-conformist, whose parishioners and friends were actively en- gaged in the business of fishing, being troubled at the godless life and unruly condition of the men employed by them (and having some views of his own about plantations, which he subsequently embodied in a tract), conceived the idea of establishing a settlement on the land. His purpose was to furnish assistance to the crews in the busy season, to provide supplies of provisions and other necessaries by cultivating the soil and trafficking with the natives, and to afford religious instruction to both planters and sailors. To this end, about 1624, he raised a common stock of three thousand pounds, and pur- SEAL OF THE COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND.^ 1 Among the irregular proceedings of the Council for New England was an early attempt to divide the territory embraced in their patent among their members ; a measure which did not acquire a legal validity. But the Earl of Shef- field, in whose portion Cape Ann was included, acting upon his anticipated right, conveyed five hundred acres there to Robert Cushman and Edward Wiiislow, their associates and assigns, with the "free use of the Bay and islands, and free liberty to fish and trade in all other places in New England." It was this conveyance (which came to nothing) that led to John Smith's state- ment in his Generall Historic, p. 247, " that there is a plantation beginning by the Dorchester men which they hold of those of New Plymouth." The story is very well told by Mr. Thornton in hSs Landing at Cape A/tne, \62^. His principal mistake was in giving too much significance to what was in reality one of the least important ther explained in Mr. Adams's chapter of this volume, and the map showing it is explained in Mr. Winsor's. For further, on Conant's Com- pany, see Felt's Salem; George D. Phippen in Essex Institute Collections, i. 97, 145, 185; N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., July, 1848 ; Bradford's Ply- mouth Plantation, Deane's note, p. 169. Hub- bard's most valuable chapter is that on Conant, and his facts may have been derived from Conant himself. It is given in part in Young's Chron- icles of Massachusetts. — Ed.] 2 [An account of the seal, with the reasons for believing this to be the seal, is given by Charles Deane in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, March, 1867. Dr. Palfrey adopts Mr. Deane's conclusions. The patent creating the Council will be found in Hazard's Collections, i. 103 ; in Brigham's Ply- mouth Laws; in Baylies's Plymouth Colony, i. i5o; in the Popham Memorial, p. no, and in Trumbull's Connecticut, i. 546. The petition incidentsof the period, having little or no bearing for it can be found in the Colonial History of on subsequent events. [The matter of this abor- New York, iii., and the warrant in Gorges' New live division of territory above referred to is fur- England. — Ed.] THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. 93 chased first a small ship which brought over fourteen men, who were left at Cape Ann. The New Plymouth men, and perhaps others, had stages at that place for drying and curing fish, and it was now selected for a per- manent plantation. He did not hesitate to make use of the disaffected persons from the little colony at Plymouth who had located themselves there and at Nantasket, and selected the most trustworthy among them to manage the new enterprise. The associates in England struggled for three years against constant loss, till their capital was expended with no favorable results, when, becoming discouraged, they dissolved the company on land and sold their shipping and provisions. " The ill choice of the place for fishing, the ill carriage of the men at the settlement, and ill sales for the fish " ^re assigned by iVIr. White as reasons for the bad results of the adventure. In brief, the stock was ex- pended with no returns, the settlers quarrelled with those from New Ply- mouth, and among themselves, till the community of three years' duration fell to pieces, and its members who desired to leave the country were helped to do so. In the mean time, however, there were four " honest and prudent men" — Roger Conant, John Woodberry, John Balch, and Peter Palfrey, from the settlement — who had removed to Naumkeag (now Salem), and resolved to stay in Massachusetts if they were sustained by encouragement from England. On receiving an intimation to this effect, Mr. White wrote to them that if they would remain he would " provide a patent for them, and send them whatever they should write for, either men, or provisions, or goods, for trade with the Indians." Through the influ- ence of Conant they were kept to their engagement, and are entitled to the consideration of being among the originators of the Massachusetts Company.^ There are three contemporary statements of what was done at this par- ticular juncture, representing three different points of view. One of these is that of Mr. White, the leader of the movement in the counties of Dor- set and Devon. Another is by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the President of the Council for New England, and the chief manager of its affairs. The third is the letter of Thomas Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln, showing his impression of the time and manner in which the " Boston men " of the eastern counties became connected with the scheme of a settlement in Massachusetts Bay. Hubbard, the historian, wrote fifty years later, having been a young man when the events occurred. 1 "Conant," says Hubbard, "secretly con- answer his people before they call, as he had ceiving in his mind that in following times (as filled the heart of that good man, Mr. Conant, since has fallen out) it might prove a receptacle in New England, with courage and resolution for such as upon the account of religion would be to abide fixed in his purpose, notwjthstanding willing to begin a foreign plantation in this part all opposition and persuasion he met with to the of the world, of which he gave some intimation to contrary, had also inclined the hearts of several his friends in England." — Hist, of New England, others in England to be at work about the same And " that God," says White, " who is ready to design." — Planter's Plea. 94 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Mr. White's account, in the Planters Plea, printed in 1630, is brief, and does not refer to his own services.^ " Some then of the adventurers that still continued their desire to set forward the plantation of a Colony there, conceiving that if some more cattle were sent over to those few men left behind, they might not only be a means of the comfortable subsist- ing of such as were already in the country, but of inviting some other of their Friends and Acquaintance to come over to them, adventured to send over twelve Kine and Bulls more ; and conferring casually with some gentlemen of London, moved them to add as many more. By which occasion the business came to agitation afresh in Lon- don, and being at first approved by some and disliked by others, by argument and dis- putation it grew to be more vulgar ; insomuch that some men shewing some good affection to the work, and offering the help of their purses if fit men might be pro- cured to go over, inquiry was made whether any would be wiUing to engage their per- sons in the voyage. . . . Hereupon divers persons having subscribed for the raising of a reasonable sum of money, a Patent was granted with large encouragements every way by his most Excellent Majesty." It will be observed that no mention is made by Mr. White of the grant from the Council for New England. After the Royal Charter the grant from the Council apparently was regarded as of little consequence, and it has not been preserved except in citations from it contained in the Char- ter. The conveyance, bearing date March 19, 1627-28, was made to six persons, doubtless the friends alluded to by Mr. White as offering the use of their purses, — Sir Henry Rosewell and Sir John Young, knights, both of Devonshire ; Thomas Southcoat, presumed to be of Devonshire ; John Humfrey, who had been treasurer of the fishing company, whose wife was daughter of Thomas, third Earl of Lincoln ; John Endicott, of Dorchester, the leader of the first party of emigrants ; and Simon Whet- comb, perhaps of London, subsequently an Assistant, constant in his attendance at the meetings of the Company in London, and a liberal con- tributor to its expenses. The first portion of the records of the Council for New England, as we have them, extends from Saturday, the last of May 1622, to Sunday, June 29, 1623, inclusive. The second portion begins the 4th of November, 163 1. The patent to the friends of the Massachusetts Company comes between these periods, and no official account of the circumstances attending the applica- tion for it and its being granted is known to exist. The years 1622 and 1623 were those of hopeful expectation on the part of the New England Council. They were looking for an amended charter for themselves from the Crown, and trying to raise money for their operations in the failure of their members to pay their dues. They clung to their aristocratic ideas, but were anxious to admit untitled persons to fellowship so far as might be 1 Mr. White is described as " a person of great Chester," &c. — Echard, Hist, of England, p. 653. gravity and presence," and as always having great To these titles have been added those of " Father influence with the Puritan party, " who bore him of the Massachusetts Colony," and " Patriarch of more respect than they did to their diocesan." New England." — Fuller, Worthies of England ; He is styled "famous," "the Patriarch of Dor- Callender, Hist. Discourse. THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. 95 necessary to secure their capital and their services. In their new " Grand ■ Patent, to be held of the Crown of England by the Sword," it was resolved to call the country " Nova Albion," and to have power given to create titles of honor and precedency. They proposed to admit new associates on the payment of ^iio, " provided that they, so to come in, be persons of Honor or Gentlemen of blood (except 'only six Merchants, to be admitted by us for the service and special employment of the said Council in the course of trade and commerce, who shall enjoy such liberties and immunities as are thereunto belonging."^ It is not impossible that the grant to the six friends of Mr. White, for purposes of settlement, was a modification of the idea of admitting six mer- chants to partnership for the sake of their practical utility; There is a degree of mystery attending the transaction for which no means of positive solution exist. It is expressly charged by Sir Ferdinando Gorges that changes were privately made in the terms and extent of the grant, through some influence of which he was not cognizant, affecting his own interests and those of his son. He says that the Council for New England were in a state of " such a disheartened weakness as there only remained a carcass in a manner breathless, when there were certain that desired a patent of some lands in Massachusetts Bay to plant upon, who presenting. the names of honest and religious men easily obtained their first desires ; but, these being once got- ten, they used other means to advance themselves a step from beyond their first proportions to a second grant surreptitiously gotten of other lands also justly passed unto some of us, who were all thrust out by these intruders that had exorbitantly bounded their grant from East to West through all that main land from sea to sea. . . . But herewith not yet being content, they obtained, unknown to us, a confirmation of all this from His Majesty, by which means they did not only enlarge their first extents . . . but wholly excluded themselves from the publick government of the Council authorized for those affairs, and made themselves a free people." ^ In their irregular modes of doing business, the execution of papers was often left to different officers or members of the Council, the seal serving as a sufficient emblem of authority. Especially must this have been the case in the period of which no record remains, between 1624 and 1629,. when the Council was compared by Gorges to " a dead carcass." It seems to have been the impression of the Council, as represented by Gorges, their most active member, that the grant to the friends of Mr. White was intended to be merely a place for a settlement in Massachusetts Bay, where they were to be subject to the authority of the Council and to serve the interests of that body as the six merchants before mentioned might have done ; the enlargement of territory and privileges being the private work > Resignation of tlie Great Charter of New [The document of resignation is given in Haz- England, April 25, 1635, in Proceedings of the ard's Historical Collections i. 390. — Ed.] American Antiquarian Society, April, 1867. 96 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of some friend or friends, whose position in the Council gave the power to make such changes. There is but one person, so far as known, whose offi-- cial relation to the Council would enable him to accomplish that purpose, and whose personal interest in the object would have prompted the act. The Earl of Warwick was an ardent promoter of the Puritan movement. When the records, which closed in June, 1623, with a formal division of New England among the remnant of the patentees, (twenty from the original forty), commence again in November 1631, the Earl of Warwick is president, his predecessor. Gorges, being treasurer. The old names have mostly dis- appeared from the minutes of the meetings, which were held at Warwick House, where very few, chiefly new members, were accustomed to attend. The books and papers and the seal were in possession of the Earl, who for some reason, when called upon to produce them, omitted to do so. He was, of course, treated with great respect; but when he was in vain desired to " direct a course for finding out what patents have been granted for New England," and when the Great Seal had been repeatedly called for without effect, those who represented the pecuniary interest of the remaining asso- ciates, growing uneasy, voted to hold their meetings elsewhere, and Warwick appears no more among them. Gorges' narrative of transactions at the time of the grant to the Massa- chusetts Company, printed in 1658, when affairs had long been settled, shows that he was then absent from London, and had been applied to by Warwick for his consent : — " Some of the discreeter sort, to avoid what they found themselves subject unto, made use of their friends to procure from the Council for the affairs of New England to settle a colony within their limits ; to which it pleased the thrice-honored Lord of Warwick to write to me, then at Plymouth, to condescend that a patent might be granted to such as then sued for it. Whereupon I gave my approbation so far forth as it might not be prejudicial to my son Robert Gorges' interests, whereof he had a patent under the seal of the Council.' Hereupon there was a grant passed as was thought reasonable ; but the same was afterwards enlarged by His Majesty and con- ^ firmed under the great seal of England." It might very well happen, in their careless way of conducting such oper- ations, that a vote of those present at the meeting of the Council would empower the President, or a Committee, to execute an instrument according to their judgment of what was advisable and proper. The alleged interests of Robert Gorges were doubtless believed to possess no legal validity. Under the circumstances of the case, and regarding the Council as incapa- ble of accomplishing any successful results by its own efforts, the bold idea of creating an independent proprietorship, of liberal extent, for actual settle- ' The patent of Robert Gorges, conveying Afajj. p. 51 ; Mass. Arc/iives, hands, \. i ; ^Mass. ten miles in length and thirty miles into the //is(. Coll. vi. [Cf. Mr. C. F. Adams Jr 's chap- land on the northeast side of Massachusetts ter in the present volume. A reprint of Gorges Bay, was disregarded by subsequent grantees will be found in 3 Massachusetts Historical Col- as invalid, partly for its uncertainty. Hutchin- lections, vi., and in !\Iainc Historical Collections son. Hist, of Mass. i. 14; Young, Chronicles of iii. — Ei).] THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY. 97 ment by an earnest body of men, might naturally and honestly appear to the Earl of Warwick to present the wisest course for the Council to adopt. In view of the Council's probable dissolution, he might also deem it advisable that the records of the many irregular* proceedings, causing confusion and conflict of titles, should not be left as the seeds of future controversy. The account books and registers of the corporation have disappeared, and what are called the Records are supposed to be only transcripts used in the Parliamen- tary examinations to which the Council were subjected. Whether placed in some secret depository at Warwick House, or committed to the flames, they carry with them the history of a multitude of ineffectual endeavors, from which only two of their members. Gorges and Mason, reaped any perma- nent results ; and these were in localities not interfering with the claims and rights of the Massachusetts Company. The rfse of this company, limited as it was, comparatively, in its jurisdiction, is considered as giving the death- blow to the Great Council for New England. That unwieldy corporation, after seeking in vain to cause a revocation of the Massachusetts Charter, ultimately declared it to be a reason for the surrender of their own.^ Besides the persons named in the charter from the Crown, additional to the six original grantees, many persons of wealth and consideration came forward to promote its design. Headquarters, as had been the case with the Council for New England, were established at London, and before the royal sanction had been officially secured operations were fairly in progress. Yet it was only at great cost and by means of high influence that the over- ruling grant from the Throne was carried through its formalities, and passed the seals on the 4th of March, 1629. Thus nearly a year had passed since the grant from the Council on the 19th of March, 1628.^ But the Company did not wait for either of these legal securities. The first date in their records is March 16, 1628, when without organization they were en- gaged in fitting out Endicott's expedition. He sailed on the 20th of June following. Favorable letters being received from him on Feb. 13, 1629, preparations were hastened for another and larger emigration. Endicott was made Governor of the Colony, and a form of government drawn up for his direction.^ On the 23rd of March, letters >vere received from Isaac 1 [The diclaration of reasons, &c., will be ' It was just at this point of time that the found in Hazard's Collections, i. A manuscript men from Lincolnshire and other eastern coun- of this declaration is in the Massachusetts His- ties, encouraged by Endicott's letters, present- torical Society's cabinet. — Proceedirigs, April, ed themselves for admission to the Company. 1868, p. 161. — Ed.] "2'' March, 1628-29. Also it being propounded '^ [It was under this grant that the limits of by Mr. Coney in behalf of the Boston men Massachusetts were fixed three miles north of (whereof divers had promised, though not in the Merrimac, — a trace of which remains in the our book underwritten) to adventure .£400 for zigzag line of our present northeastern boundary, the common stock, that now their desire was following a parallel of the river. The southern that 10 persons of them might underwrite -£25 a bounds were three miles south of the Charles, and man in the joint stock, they wilhal promising gave rise to much dispute with the Ply- mouth people. The tortuous river, with all its southern affluents, offered ground for much diversity of opinion. See Brad- ford's Plymouth Plantation, p. 369. — Ed.] VOL. I. — 13. ^^-^^ 98 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Johnson, a son-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, giving notice that " one Mr. Higgeson, of Leicester, an able minister, proffers to go to our plantation." On the 8th of April Francis Higginson and Samuel Skelton sign an agreement to that end; and on the 2Sth the second expedition set sail, carrying those ministers and three hundred passengers with them.^ On the 28th of July Governor Cradock " read certain propositions, con- ceived by himself," giving reasons for transferring the government to Mas- sachusetts ; but at this point another writer takes up the story in the follow- ing chapter. Thus the Massachusetts Company in England, having accomplished its great purpose, was merged in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. Tho^e members who remained in the mother country retained an organization, and endeavored by small appropriations of land and some advantages of trade to leave chances of compensation for the money they had expended. Nothing, however, ever came of those uncertain provisions. No list of members was entered in their records ; but among the names casually men- tioned (about one hundred in number), as contributors or associates,' will be found many prominently connected with the revolutionary events which changed the kingdom of Great Britain to a commonwealth.^ ^^.i^a^^ with those ships to adventure in their particular alone above -^250 more, and to provide able men to send over for managing the business." — Mass. Company Records. [The instructions to Endicott are given in the Mass. Records, i. 2, ii. 383 ; Amer. Aiititj. Soc. Coll., iii. 79; and in Hazard's Collec- tions, i. 236, 359. The original authorities on this settlement are these: A Narrative of the Planting of the Massachusetts Colony, which Joshua Scottow, then in a somewhat senile frame of mind, but who had been a well-to-do and active Boston merchant for many years, printed in 1694. There are copies of the orig- inal edition in the Massachusetts Historical Society's library (Proceedings, \. iAl), and it is printed in their Collections, fourth series, iv. (Mr. Savage gives a notice of Scottow in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., iv. 100. Cf. 'Tyler's American Literature, ii. 94.) Johnson's Wonder-working Providence, noticed elsewhere in this volume. Higginson's New England Plantation, July to September, 1629, of which three editions were is- sued in 1630 (all are in the Lenox Library ; copies also in Harvard College Library, &c.) ; and it is reprinted in Young, Force's Tracts, i., and in Mass. Hist. Coll., i. There is a second-hand ac- count in Morton's Memorial. There has been some unsatisfactory controversy as to Whom the title of first Governor of Massachusetts rightfully belongs, but it has all arisen from a lack of clear perception of the facts, or from inexactness of terms. The conditions are clearly stated in the following chapter. Cf., further, .S. F. Haven in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Coll., iii. p. c. ; Savage's note to Winthrop's New Etigland, ii. 200; Gray, Mass Repoi-ts, ix. 451 ; R. C. Winthrop's Life of fohn Winthrop, \. ch xvii., ii. ch. ii. ; Essex In- stitute Hist. Coll., V. and viii. — Ed.] ' Mass. Company Records. '^ The Records (so called) of the Council for New England may be found in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society of April, 1867, and October, 1875, edited by Mr. Deane, whose able exposition of the character and ter- mination of both corporations occupies a follow- ing chapter of the present work. [The reader is also referred to Dr. Haven's paper on the origin of the Massachusetts Comjiany in the American Antiquarian Society's Collections, iii., and to his "History of the Grants under the Great Council for New England," in I he Lowell Lectures, 1869, by the Massachusetts Ifistorical Society. The Records of the Massachusetts Company are printed in the Mass. Records, pub- lished by the State, i. 21, and in Young's Chron- icles of Mass. — Ed. I CHAPTER II. BOSTON FOUNDED. 1 630- 1 649. BY THE HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, LL.D., President of ike IffassachHseits HisioricaZ Society. THE Hi^toty of The Massachusetts Bay Company has been brought dowi), in a previous chapter, to the last week of the month of July, 1629. On the 28th day of that month, a momentous movement, fraught with most important results for the infant Colony, was made in the General Court of the Company. At a meeting holden at the house of the Deputy- Governor (Thomas Goffe) in London, Matthew Cradock, the Governor of the Company, " read certain propositions conceived by himself; viz., that for the advancement of the plantation, the inducing and encouraging persons of worth and quality to transplant themselves and families thither, and for other weighty reasons therein contained, to transfer the govern- ment of the plantation to those that shall inhabit there, and not to con- tinue the same in subordination to the Company here, as it now is." It is much to be regretted that the Paper containing these propositions is not to be found, but the language thus given from the original Records indicates, clearly and precisely, the condition of things then existing in the Plantation at Salem, and the radical change which was contemplated by Governor Cradock. The Government then existing at Salem is styled a Government " in subordination to the Company here ; " that is, in London. The proposition of Cradock was, that this Government shall no longer be " continued as it now is," but shall be " transferred to those that shall inhabit there." The proposition was too important to be the subject of hasty decision, and the Records state that, " by reason of the many great and considerable consequences thereupon depending, it was not now resolved upon." The members of the Company were requested to consider it " privately and seriously ; " " to set down their particular reasons pro et contra, and to produce the same at the next General Court ; where, they being reduced to heads and maturely considered of; the Company may then proceed to a final resolution thereon." In the mean time, the members were " desired to carry this business secretly, that the same be not divulged." lOO THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTO>f. This call for " private and serious " consideration ; this demand for par- ticular reasons, on both sides, set down in writing; and this solemn in- junction of secrecy, — furnish abundant proof that the Company understood how important and how bold a measure their Governor had proposed to them. It was no mere measure of emigration or colonization. It was a measure of government; of self-government; of virtual independence. It clearly foreshadowed that spirit of impatience under foreign control which, at a later day, was to pervade not only the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, but the whole American Continent. The General Court of the Company now adjourned, as usual, to the following month. They met again, to consider this momentous matter, on the 28th day of August, 1629; but the interval had not been unimproved by those who desired to have it wisely smd rightly decided. It had cost them, we may well believe, many an anxious hour of deliberation and consultation; and, two days only before the nieeting of the Court, an Agreement had been finally drawn up and subscribed, which was to settle the whole question. «, This Agreement was entered into and executed at Cambridge, beneath the shadows, and probably within the very walls, of that venerable University of Old England, to which New England was destined to owe so many of her brightest luminaries and noblest benefactors. It bore date August 26, 1629; '^iid was in the following words : — The Agreement at Cambrtoge. " Upon due consideration of the state of the Plantation now in hand for New- England, wherein we, whose names are hereunto subscribed, have engaged ourselves, and having weighed the greatness of the work in regard of the consequence, God's glory and the Church's good ; as also in regard of the difficulties and discourage- ments which in all probabilities must be forecast upon the prosecution of this busi- ness ; considering withal that this whole adventure grows upon the joint confidence we have in each other's fidelity and resolution herein, so as no man of us would have adventured it without assurance of the rest ; now, for the better encouragement of ourselves and others that shall join with us in this action, and to the end that every man may without scruple dispose of his estate and affairs as may best fit his prepara- tion for this voyage ; it is fully and faithfully Agreed amongst us, and every one of us doth hereby freely and sincerely promise and bind himself, in the word of a Christian, and in the presence of God, who is the searcher of all hearts, that we will' so really endeavor the prosecution of this work, as by God's assistance, we will be ready in our persons, and with such of our several families as are to go with us, and such provision as we are able conveniently to furnish ourselves withal, to embark for the said Plantation by the first of March next, at such port or ports of this land as shall be agreed upon by the Company, to the end to pass the Seas, (under God's protection,) to inhabit and continue in New England : Provided always, that before the last of September next, the whole Government, together with the patent for the said Plantation, be first, by an order of Court, legally transferred and established to remain with us and others which shall inhabit upon the said Plantation ; and provided, bOSTCK FOUNDED. I5l also, that if any shall be hindered by such just and inevitable let or other cause, to be allowed by three parts of four of these whose names are hereunto subscribed, then such persons, for such times and during such lets, to be discharged of this bond. And we do further promise, every one for himself, that shall fail to be ready through his own default by the day appointed, to pay for every day's default the sum of ;£^, to the use of the rest of the company who shall be ready by the same day and time. "(Signed) Richard Saltonstall, Thomas Sharpe, Thomas Dudley, Increase Nowell, William Vassall, John Winthrop, Nicholas West, William Pinchon, Isaac Johnson, Kellam Browne, John Humfrey, William Colbron." The leading Proviso of this memorable agreement must not fail to be noted : — " Provided always, that before the last of September next, the whole Government, together with the patent for the said Plantation, be first, by an order of Court, legally transferred and established to remain with us and others which shall inhabit upon the said Plantation." This was the great condition upon wh'ch Saltonstall, and Dudley, and Johnson, and Winthrop, and the rest, agreed so solemnly " to pass the seas (under God's protection), to inhabit and continue in New England." They were not proposing to go to New England as adventurers or traffickers ; not for the profits of a voyage, or the pleasure of a visit ; but " to inhabit and continue " there. And they were unwilling to do this while any merely subordinate jurisdiction was to be exercised there, as was now the case, and while they would be obliged to look to a Governor and Company in London for supreme authority. They were resolved, if they went at all, to carry " the whole Government" with them. Accordingly, at the meeting of the General Court of the Company on the 28th of August (two days only after this Agreement was signed), Mr. Deputy, in the Governor's absence, acquainted the Court "that the especial cause of their meeting was to give answer to divers gentlemen, intending to go into New England, whether or no the Chief Government of the Plantation, together with the Patent, should be settled in New England, or here." Two Committees were thereupon appointed to pre- pare arguments, the one "for" and the other "against" "the setthng of the chief government in New England," with instructions to meet the next morning, at seven of the clock, to confer and weigh each other's arguments, and afterwards to make report to the whole Company. On the next morning, at the early hour which had been appointed, the Committees met together, and debated their arguments and reasons on both sides ; and after a long discussion in presence of the Company, Mr. Deputy put it to the question as follows : — 102 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON, " As many of you as desire to have the patent and the government of the Plan- tation to be transferred to New England, so as it may be done legally, hold up your hands ; so many as will not, hold up your hands." And thereupon the decision of the question is thus entered upon the Records : — " Where, by erection of hands, it appeared, by the general consent of the Com- pany, that the government and patent should be settled in New England, and accordingly an order to be drawn up.'' Nearly -two months more were still to intervene before this declaration of Independence was to assume a more practical shape. Many incidental arrangements occupied the attention of the Company at their meetings in September and October. On the 20th of this latter month,, however (1629), a further step forward was taken, and one which betokened that there were to be no steps backward, — " nulla vestigia retrorsum." On that day. Governor Cradock " acquainted those present that the especial ^_^ occasion of summoning this Court was for I /y\//J/Ai,j^ ft ^?, / ^^ election of a new Governor, Deputy, Vy\ ^^^kfc_^ e shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it ; Therefore let us choQse life, that we and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity." When the Massachusetts Company arrived at Salem, with the Charter of the Colony, in June, 1630, the ever-honored Pilgrims of Plymouth had already, for nine years and a half, been in happy and quiet possession of a part of the territory now included within the State of Massachusetts. They were an independent colony, however, and continued such until the Pro- vincial Charter of Oct. 7, 1691. Coming over in a single ship, and count- ing only about a hundred souls, in all, at their landing from the " May 112 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Flower," their numbers had increased only threefold during this first decen- nial period ; and the population of Plymouth, when Winthrop arrived, is accordingly estimated as not exceeding three hundred, — men, women, and children. The settlement at Salem, it seems, had reached about the same number. Higginson, in his New England's Plantation, gives the number of persons in the colony, previous to his own Eirrival in 1629, as only about one hundred. But he brought two hundred persons with him, and he was thus able to say, in September of that year : " There are in all of us, both old and new planters, about three hundred ; whereof two hundred of them are settled at Nehum-kek, now called Salem, and the rest have planted themselves at Massathulets Bay, beginning to build a town there, which we do call Cherton or Charlestown." Roger Conant had presided over the Naumkeag plantation for two years, and had been succeeded or superseded by Endicott in 1628. Endicott had been sent over, at first, in the ship " Abigail," as the agent of the Massachusetts Company and the leader of a small band, under the patent obtained from the Plymouth Council, March 19, 1628. In the following year, after the royal charter had been obtained, March 4, 1629, a commission was sent out to him, dated April 30 of the same year, as " Governor of London's Plantation in the Mattachusetts Bay in New England." In the exercise of this commission he was subordinate to " the Governor and Company " in London, by whom he was deputed, and who, from time to time, sent him elaborate instructions for the regu- lation of his conduct. Massachusetts, as we have seen, was a very little colony at this time, still in embryo ; but it seems to have taken two governors to rule her ! Cradock and Endicott were governors simultane- ously from April 30, 1629, or, more correctly, from the time when Endi- cott's commission as governor reached Salem, two or three months later, until the 20th (30th) of October of the same year; and Winthrop and Endicott were simultaneously governors from that date until the arrival of the " Arbella " at Salem. There was thus a chief governor in London, and a subordinate or local governor in the Plantation. The Instructions to Endicott, dated April 17, and May 28, 1629, are among the most valuable of our early colonial papers, as showing precisely the relation which existed between the Plantation at Naumkeag and the Gsvernor and Com- pany in England. But all this double-action machinery had now been abolished. The chief government had been transferred, agreeably to the Cambridge Agreement, and the local government was, of course, absorbed in it. Winthrop came over at once as the Governor of the Company, and to exercise a direct and personal magistracy over the colony. Not less than a thousand persons were added to the colony about the period of his arrival. Seven or eight hundred of these came with him, or speedily followed as a part of his immediate expedition. Two or three hundred more arrived almost at the same time, though not in vessels included in the Company's fleet. A second thousand was soon afterwards added under BOSTON FOUNDED. II3 the same influence and example. A precarious Plantation was thus trans- formed at once into a permanent and prosperous Commonwealth; and henceforth, instead of two or three hundred pioneer platers, thinly sca}:- tered along the coast, looking to a governor and company across the ocean for their supreme authority and instructions, two pr three thousand people are to be seen, with a governor and legislature upon their own soil and of their own selection, — erecting houses, building ships, organizing villages and towns, establishing churches, schools, and even a college, and laying broad and deep the foundations of an independent Republic. Such was the result of that transfer of the chief government ^hich Matthew Cradock, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Company in Old England, proposed on the 28th of July, 1629, and which John Winthrop, the first Governor of the Company in New England, was the instrument of carrying out to its completion on the 12th (22d) day of June, 1630. On that day the transfer was consummated, and the consequences soon began to develop themselves. But there was much to contend against at the outset. Thomas Dudley, who had come over as Deputy-Governor to Winthrop, in the place of John Humfrey who had declined the service, in a letter to the Countess of Lincoln, the mother of the Lady Arbella Johnson, dated March 28, 163 1, writes of the condition of things as follows': — " We found the Colony in a sad and unexpected condition, above eighty of them being dead the winter before, and many of those alive weak and sick ; all the com and bread amongst them all hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight, insomuch that the remainder of a hundred and eighty servants we had the two years before sent over, coming to us for victuals to sustain them, we found ourselves wholly unable to feed them, by reason that the provisions shipped for them were taken out of the ship they were put in ; and they who were trusted to ship them in another failed us, and left them behind : whereupon necessity enforced us, to our extreme loss, to give them all liberty, who had cost us about j£i6 or ;^20 a person, furnishing and sending over." It would thus appear that of the residents under Endicott, one hundred and eighty had been the bond-servants of the planters who were to follow, and that one of the first acts of Winthrop's administration was to emanci- pate all who had survived the winter ; not from any abstract considerations of philanthropy, but from absolute inability to provide for their main- tenance. The little Colony was clearly in a weak and almost starving condition when the " Arbella " arrived, and it is by no means surprising that Dudley speaks of the " too large commendations of the country," and adds, " Salem, where we landed, pleased us not." Five days only after their arrival we find Governor Winthrop recording in his Diary : " Thurs- day, 17 (June). We went to Mattachusetts to find out a place for our sitting down." This journey of exploration, made on foot, resulted in the immediate removal' of the Governor and Company to what is now called VOL. I. — 15. 114 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Charlestown. " A great House " had been built here the year before, and in this " the Governor and several of the patentees dwelt," as we learn from the old records of the town, while " the multitude set up cottages, booths, and tents about the Town -Hill." Here, in Charlestown, on the 30th of July, six weeks after their landing at Salem, after appropriate religious exercises, Governor Winthrop, Deputy- Governor Dudley, Isaac Johnson, and John Wilson, adopted and signed the following simple but solemn church covenant : — " In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in obedience to his holy will, and divine ordinances : "We, whose names are here underwritten, being by his most wise and good providence brought together into this part of America, in the Bay of Masss^chusetts ; and desirous to unite into one congregation or church, under the Lord Jesus Christ, our head, in such sort as becometh all those whom he hath redeemed, and sanctified to himself, do hereby solemnly and religiously, as in his most holy presence, promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our ways according to the rule of the Gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy ordinances, and in mutual love and respect to each other, so near as God shall give us grace." oj^- •~'^A AUTOGRAPHS OF THE SIGNERS.* The Church thus formed is now known as the First Church of. Boston, on one of the painted windows of whose new and beautiful house of worship this covenant is inscribed ; while among its ancient communion plate may still be seen an embossed silver cup, with " The gift of Governor Jn°. Win- throp to y': i' Church" engraved on its rim.^ And here, at Charlestown, on the 23d of August, 1630, was held the earUest " Court of Assistants '' on this side of the Atlantic, at which the ^ [This group does not represent the actual signatures of this document, but reproduces other autographs of the signers. Wilson was at this time forty-two years old, and had grad- uated at King's College, Cambridge. He was ordained at Charlestown, August 27, and again in Boston in November. He returned to Eng- land for his wife the next year, and was a third time installed in November, 1632. — Ed.] 2 [The heliotype herewith given of this cup was made by the kind permission of the present pastor, and shows it on a reduced scale. It measures eleven and three-fourth inches high, of which the bowl makes five inches, and the diameter at the top is four and three-quarters inches, and at its base four inches. The Church Records have the following account of it: "A tall embossed cup, with engraving and figures in relief. Weight, 16 oz., 1 dwt. No date." — Ed.] s « <1 b CO «o ^ ^ B :^ >5 a &: ;z i>^ ^ o CS U o o B BOSTON FOUNDED. 115 very first matter propounded was, " How the Ministers should be main- tained," — when it was ordered, that houses should be built for them with convenient speed, at th£ public charge. Everything so far seemed thus to indicate that Charlestown was to be the capital of the colony, and, accordingly, the town records tell us that the Governor " ordered his house to be cut and framed there." There is reason, however, for thinking that the " Great House" was still the Governor's abode on the 25th of October, WINTHROP'S FLEET.' when he entered in his Diary the following record of what was unques- tionably the original temperance movement in Massachusetts, if not in America : - - " The Govemour, upon consideration of the inconveniences which had grown in England by drinking one to another, restrained it at his own table, and wished others to do the like, so as it grew, by little and little, into disuse." Meantime discouragenaents and afflictions were falling heavily upon the Colony. Sickness and death had begun their ravages. The following entry in Winthrop's Journal, under date of September 30, tells its own sad story in language wTiich could not be improved : " About two in the ^ [This cut is a reduction, by permission, from an oil-painting recently completed by Mr. Wil- liam F. Halsall, representing a part of the fleet which brought Winthrop and his company to Salem just as they had come round to Boston Harbor, and were dropping anchor. The ves- sels are a careful study of the ships of the period. The "Arbella," the admiral of the fleet, a ship of three hundred and fifty tons, carrying twenty-eight guns and fifty-two men, is in the foreground, being towed to her anchor- age. The " Talbot," the vice-admiral, riding at anchor, hides Governor's Island from the spec- tator. The " Jewell," the captain of the fleet, is the distant vessel on the right, where Castle Island appears. The time is late in a July day. The spectator's position is between Boston and East Boston. — Ed.] Il6 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. morning Mr. Isaac Johnson died ; his wife, the Lady Arbella, of the house of Lincoln, being dead about one month before. He was a holy man and wise, and died in sweet peace, leaving some part of his substance to the Colony." About the same time, also, died " good Mr. Higginson," the zealous and devoted minister of Salem ; Dr. William Gager, the chosen physician of the Company, and one of the deacons of the little church; and others of both sexes, more or less conspicuous among the colonists. The loss of associates and friends, however, was not the only trial to which the com- pany were subjected at this early period. Provisions had again been growing scarce, and the springs at Charlestown seemed beginning to fail. Edward Johnson, an eye-witness, speaks of this precise period in his Wonder-working Providence, as follows : — " The griefe of this people was further increased by the sore sicknesse which befell among them, so that almost in every family, lamentation, mourning, and woe was heard, and no fresh food to be had to cherish them. It would assuredly have moved the most lockt-up affections to teares, no doubt, had they past from one hut to another, and beheld the piteous case these people were in. And that which added to their present distresse was the want of fresh water ; for although the place did afford plenty, yet for present they could finde but one spring, and that not to be come at but when the tide was downe." This want of water it was which finally determined Governor Winthrop and others to abandon their present location, to quit Charlestown, and to establish themselves on the neighboring peninsula. Of this step, the following brief but ample account is found in the early records of Charles- town : — " In the meantime, Mr. Blackstone, dwelling on the other side Charles River alone, at a place by the Indians called Shawmutt, where he only had a cottage, at or not far off the place called Blackstone's Point, he came and acquainted the Governor of an excellent Spring there ; withal inviting him and soliciting him thither. Where- upon, after the death of Mr. Johnson and divers others, the Governor, with Mr. Wilson, and the greatest part of the church removed thither : whither also the frame of the Governor's house, in preparation at this town, was also (to the discontent of some) carried ; where people began to build their houses against winter ; and this place was called Boston." William Blackstone had until now been the only known white inhab- itant of Shawmut, as the peninsula was called by the Indians, and will always be remembered as the pioneer settler of the peninsula.^ The order of the Court of Assistants, — Governor Winthrop presiding, — " That Trimontaine shall be called Boston," was passed on the 7th of September, old style, or, as we now count it, the 17th of September, 1630.2 The name of Boston was specially dear to the Massachusetts colonists 1 [The story of Blackstone's residence is told 2 [By favor of the Hon. Henry B. Peirce at length in Mr. C. F. Adams, Jr.'s section of Secretary of the Commonwealth, a heliotype of the present volume. — Ed.] this famous order is herewith given. — Ed.] ■^•f^^'^fV "T^p^ apjstjwiiu-p'^--' ■''!-i^»'«!i 'X^VTTtf ■S^L-t-^C" l^^t^./^-f^CB^. ■ a_- /!/Li^ i-A'"'- ' ™fi!wr3?^^?tf^^'?w^^r-^ GoLONy Records, Sept. 7, 1630 (old style). Oedek naming Boston. P-^e Tt^ i±^f-^* >f^* PT/^ ^ -ttf i — -0 ■ Heading of above Record, showing Magistrates present at the Time. BOSTON FOUNDED. 117 from its associations with the old St. Botolph's town, or Boston, of Lincoln- shire, England, from which the Lady Arbella Johnson and her husband had come, and where John Cotton was still preaching in its noble parish church. But the precise date of the removal of the Governor and Company to the peninsula is nowhere given. The Court of Assistants continued to hold its meetings at Charlestown until the end of September; but on the 19th (29th) of October we find a General Court holden at Boston, and on the 29th of November we find Winthrop for the first time dating a letter to his wife in England, " Boston in Mattachusetts," in which he says: "My dear wife, we are here in a paradise. Though we have not beef and mutton, etc., yet (God be praised) we want them not; our Indian corn answers for all. Yet here is fowl and fish in great plenty." In a previous letter he had said to her : "We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ. Is not this enough?- What would we. have more?" ST. botolph's church. Boston, however, was not destined to be " a paradise " quite yet, to any one except its hopeful and brave-hearted founder. The Winter, then just opening, was to be one of great severity and continued suffering. The Charlestown records tell us that " people were necessitated to live on clams and muscles, and ground-nuts and acorns." The Governor himself " had the last batch of bread in the oven," and was seen giving " the last handful Il8 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. of meal in the barrell unto a poor man distressed by the wolf at the door." A ship had been sent to England for provisions six months before, but nothing had been heard of her. - A day had been appointed for a general humiliation, " to seek the Lord by fasting and prayer." And now, at the last moment, in the very hour of their despair, the ship is descried entering Boston Harbor, and " laden with provisions for them all." The Governor's Journal, accordingly, has the following entry: " 22 (February). We held a day of Thanksgiving for this ship's arrival, by order from the Governour and Council, directed to all the Plantations." This must have been the first regularly appointed Thanksgiving Day in Massachusetts. A second Thanksgiving Day was observed in Boston on the nth day of November following, on occasion of the next return from England of the same ship, — the "Lion," — bringing Governor Winthrop's wife, Margaret (Tyndal), with his eldest son, John, the future Governor of Connecticut, accompanied by the Rev. John Eliot, soon to be known, and never to be forgotten, as the Apostle to the Indians, and the translator of the Bible into theJndian language. Massachusetts's Thanksgiving Days seem thus to have originated in the public acknowledgment of some immediate special causes of gratitude to God, and not as mere formal anniversary observances. On the 1 8th of May, 1631, the second General Court was holden at Boston, when Winthrop was re-elected Governor, and Dudley Deputy- Governor, and when a memorable order was unanimously passed by the people assembled on the occasion, — an order which was to furnish the subject of no little controversy and contention a few years later. It was recorded as follows : " And to the end (that) the body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it was ordered and agreed that for time to come no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are members of some of the Churches. within the limits of the same." Winthrop, in his Journal, adds to this record that " all the freemen of the Commons were sworn to this government." Among the few incidents of this year which have any historical or local interest, as showing the progress of the Plantation and the condition of things in Boston, it must not be omitted that on the 4th day of July, " the Governor built a bark at Mistick, which was launched this day, and called ' The Blessing of the Bay.' " Nor must the record be passed over, that, on the 25th of October, " the Governour, with Captain Underbill and others of the officers, went on foot to Sagus, and next day to Salem, where they were bountifully entertained by Captain Endecott, etc., and, the 28th, they returned to Boston Jay the ford at Sagus River, and so over at Mistick." The occupation of three whole days in a visit from Boston to Salem, by fords and on foot, gives an impressive picture of the locomotion of that early period of the colony. The Records of the third " General Court," holden at Boston, on the 9th of May, 1632, open as follows: — BOSTON FOUNDED. 119 " It was generally agreed upon, by erection of hands, that the Governor, Deputy- Governor, and Assistants should be chosen by the whole Court of Governor, Deputy- Governor, Assistants, and freemen, and that the Governor shall always be chosen out of the Assistants. "John Winthrop, Esq., was chosen to the place of Governor (by the general consent of the whole Court, manifested by erection of hands), for this year next ensuing, and till a new be chosen, and did, in presence of the Court, take an oath to his said place belonging." At the same session of the Court it was ordered, " that there should be two of every plantation appointed to confer with the Court about raising of a public stock." Accordingly, two persons were appointed from Water- town, Roxbury, Boston, Saugus, Newtown, Charlestown, Salem, and Dor- chester. The recognition of the " freemen " of the colony in the first clause of this Record, and the designation in the last clause of representatives of the several plantations to confer about taxes, indicate the gradual advance of the little colony towards popular institutions ; while the naming of the plantations shows that there were now eight separate communities in Massachusetts claiming consideration as towns. Of these towns Boston was named in the Records, intentionally or accidentally, third ; ^ but at a Court of Assistants, in the following October, the Record runs : " It is thought, by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for public meetings of any place in the Bay." Perhaps the most memorable incident of this year was the official visit of the authorities of Massachusetts, civil, mihtary, and ecclesiastical, to the Pilgrims at Plymouth. Winthrop's description of it, in his Journal, gives a vivid idea of the condition of both colonies, and of their cordial relations towards each other. We should not be forgiven for omitting a word of it: — " 25 (September) — The govemour, with Mr. Wilson, pastor of Boston, and the two captains, etc., went aboard the ' Lyon,' and from thence Mr. Pierce carried them in his shallop to Wessaguscus. The next morning Mf. Pierce returned to his ship, and the govemour and his company went on foot to Plimouth, and came thither within the evening. The govemour of Plimouth, Mr. WiUiam Bradford (a very discreet and grave man) , with Mr. Brewster, the elder, and some others, came forth and met them without the town, and conducted them to the governour's house, where they were very kindly entertained, and feasted every day at several houses. On the Lord's Day there was a sacrament, which they did partake in ; and in the afternoon Mr. Roger Williams (according to their custom) propounded a, question, to which the pastor, Mr. Smith, spake briefly; then Mr. Williams prophesied; and after the ' [Boston seems to have had no special build- out by Francis Jackson of late years, is in the ing for public worship until, during the year library of the N. E. Hist."" and Genealogical 1632, was erected the small thatched-roof, one- Society. See the Register, April, i860, p. 152. story building which stood on State Street, where Wilson, the pastor, lived where the Merchants' Brazer's Building now stands. A plan of the Bank is, and Wilson's Lane until recently trans- church lot as existing at this time, but as made mitted his name to us. — Ed.] I 120 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. govemour of Plimouth spake to the question ; after him the elder ; then some two or three more of the congregation. Then the elder desired the govemour of Massa- chusetts and Mr. Wilson to speak to it, which they did. When this was ended, the deacon, Mr. Fuller, put the congregation in mind of their duty of contribution; whereupon the govemour and all the rest went down to the deacon's seat, and put into the box, and then retumed." What a grand group of New England worthies is presented to us here ! Governor Bradford and Elder Brewster, Roger Williams, John Wilson, and Governor Winthrop, — all gathered at Plymouth Rock ; all partaking together of the Holy Communion ; engaging in religious discussion, and joining in a contribution for the wants of the poor! What a subject it suggests for American art ! But, alas ! authentic likenesses of all except Winthrop would be wanting for such a picture.^ The most cordial relations existed between Massachusetts and her elder sister Colony at Plymouth. Bradford and Winthrop exchanged letters often, and visits more than once. The two Colonies were one in spirit, as they were one in destiny; and the repeated interchanges of friendly offices, at that early day, were a pleasant prelude to their becoming members incorporate, a little more than half a century later, of the same noble Commonwealth. But all was not harmony for the Massachusetts Colony within her own limits. A controversy sprung up early between Governor Winthrop and Deputy-Governor Dudley, about many personal and many public matters, which involved serious discomfort both to themselves and their friends. This controversy has sometimes been absurdly exaggerated and caricatured by descriptions and by pictures. It is only worth alluding to, in these pages, as an evidence that it has not been overlooked, and as furnishing an opportunity to introduce the following brief account of the conclusion of the whole matter, a few years afterwards, as contained in Winthrop's ^Journal under date of April 24, 1638: — " The govemour and deputy went to Concord to view some land for farms, and, going down the river about four miles, they made choice of a place for one thousand acres for each of them. They offered each other the first choice, but because the deputy's was first granted, and himself had store of land already, the govemour yielded him the choice. So, at the place where the deputy's land was to begin, there were two great stones, which they called the Two Brothers, in remembrance that they were brothers by their children's marriage, and did so brotherly agree, and for that a little creek near those stones was to part their lands." The " two great stones," which were the witnesses to this charming scene of reconciliation, are standing to this day, and are still known as the " Two Brothers." Few more delightful incidents are to be found in history than Winthrop's returning an insulting letter from Dudley with the simple 1 [What was once considered a portrait of cut of it. Dr. Appleton, in the Mciss. Hist. Soc. Wilson hangs in the Gallery of the Historical So- Proc, September, 1867, doubted its authenticity; riety. Drake, Hist, of Boston, gives a poor wood- but see Proc, December, 1880, p. 264. —Ed.] BOSTON FOUNDED. 121 remark, " I am not willing to keep such an occasion of provocation by me." Nor could a better companion-piece easily be found than the reply of Dudley, when Winthrop offered him a token of his good-will : " Your overcoming yourself hath overcome me." But there were other contro- versies, meantime, of a more public concern, and between other parties, which were less happily and less speedily settled. Winthrop was again chosen Governor for the fourth time, and Dudley Deputy-Governor, at the General Court held in Boston May 29, 1633. In the following October it was ordered that there shall be four hundred pounds collected out of the several plantations to defray public charges, and eleven plantations are set down in the Records to be assessed accord- ingly, — Winnesimmet, Medford, and Agawam or Ipswich, having been added to the eight which have been previously recognized. Boston is now named at the head of the list, and is one of the five towns assessed at forty- eight pounds. Dorchester is named sixth, but with an assessment of eighty pounds. These sums may give some idea of the expenses of the colony and of the relative wealth of the plantations. But the great event of this year 1633, for Boston and for the whole colony, was the arrival of the Rev. John Cotton ; accompanied, too, by the Rev. Thomas Hooker and John Haynes, soon to be Governor of Massa- chusetts, and, not long afterwards, of Connecticut. The arrival of these im- portant characters is thus chroniclarf by Winthrop in his Journal : — " Sefi'. 4. The ' Griffin,' a ship of three hundred tons, arrived (having been eight weeks from the Downs) ... In this ship came Mr. Cotton, Mr. Hooker, and Mr. Stone, ministers, and Mr. Peirce, Mr. Haynes (a gentleman of great estate), Mr. Hoffe, and many other men of good estates. They got out of England with much difficulty, all places being belaid to have taken Mr. Cotton and Mr. Hooker, who Had been long sought for to have been brought into the High Commission ; but the master being bound to touch at the Wight, the pursuivants attended there, and, in the mean- time, the said ministers were taken in at the Downs. Mr. Hooker and Mr. Stone went presently to Newtown, where they were to be entertained, and Mr. Cotton stayed at Boston." This was the year in which the poems of George Herbert were pubHshed, and there is some reason for the conjecture that the proposed emigration of Cotton and other eminent English ministers suggested those well-known lines of his, — " Religion stands a tiptoe in our land, Ready to pass to the American strand." '■ This was the year, too, when an Order was issued by the Privy Council to stay several ships in the Thames, in which some distinguished opponents of the Crown were supposed to be embarked for New England, — as, later, there has been a tradition that even Hampden, Pym, and Cromwell medi- tated such a flight. 1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, January, 1867. VOL. I. — 16. 122 THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON. Coming from Boston in Old England, where he had ministered for more than twenty years in the Church of St. Botolph, whose lofty tower is still the pride of all the regions round about, the great Puritan preacher did not fail to receive the most cordial welcome in the little transatlantic town, which has often been said to have been named out of respect to his character, and in hopeful anticipation of his soon becoming one of its inhabitants. His welcome was all the more fervent from his having so narrowly escaped the pursuivants and the High Commission Court. He seems, however, to have brought over with him from England some views in regard to civil government which were by no means palatable in Massachusetts. He took occasion to express and enforce these views in the Election Ser- mon which he delivered before the General Court in the following May (1634), when he maintained "that a magistrate ought not to be turned into the condition of a private man without just cause," any more than the magistrates may turn a private man out of his freehold. The subject was thereupon discussed in the Court, and the opinion of the other min- isters asked. Winthrop paid the penalty of the decision. The immediate practical answer was that the General Court elected a new Governor, and a wholesome rebuke was thus given to the suggestion of a vested right on the part of any incumbent in the political office which he may happen to hold. Thomas Dudley ^ was now elected Governor of Massachusetts, and Roger Ludlow Deputy-Governor ; while Winthrop was chosen at the head of the Board of Assistants. Meantime, we have the record of a great advance in the political con- dition of the little Colony, — nothing less than the establishment of a Repre- sentative System in New England. It was ordered, " That four General Courts should be kept every year; that the whole body of the freemen should be present only at the Court of Election of Magistrates, and that, at the other three, every town should send their deputies, who should assist in making laws, disposing lands, &c." Town governments were thus already in existence, and in this year are found the earliest remaining records of the town of Boston, written by Winthrop himself, and dated " 1634, moneth f^, Daye i."^ Relieved from the cares of the chief magis- 1 [Dudley lived where the Universalist Durrie's Index to American Genealogies. The Church in Roxbury stands, at the end of Shaw- full text of the life of Thomas Dudley, which mut Avenue. His well is said still to exist was abridged by Cotton Mather when he print- under the building. Here he entertained Mian- ed his Magnalia, is given in the Mass. Hist. tonomoh in 1640. Hedied July 31, 1654. Drake, Soc. Proc, January, 1870, with notes and col- Town of Roxbury^ ■^^. T,1t^, T,\o\ 'EWis, Koxhiry lations with the text of the same given in Town, p. 97. The family line is traced in N. E. George Adlard's Sutton-Dudlcys of England. ATw/. rt??(/ Gc«(?a/. /"j;^. viii. and ix., supplementing Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, April, 1858. The Dean Dudley's Z)«(//(y COTi?a/(7j7Vj, Boston, 1848. N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg., October, 1856, There is a tabular pedigree in Drake's Boston, p. 342, has a paper on the portraits of the folio edition. Ci. Bndg^man, Pilgrims of Boston ; Dudleys. — Ed.] Heraldic Journal, i. 35, 185 ; Herald and Gene- ^ [This first page of the Town Records is alogist, part xvi. p. 308 ; Savage, Dictionary ; J. given herewith in heliotype. Engravings of it B. Moore, Governors of Nrai Plymouth and have appeared in Shaw's Description of Boston. Mass. Bay, p. 273; and further references in and in Drake's 5oj-/(7«, p 172. — Ed.] a. J ^!>-"v. /-•^ 1,^ -^> (I t^ lS~^isf- '■< -■ , .v^a^AwJ"'^ "2/ 7 Jt*-- - t^-V^'^^^-^ "^ ^ j>»~-*- -i^*--' ,^-tf^-j ^i^>»J I- S*-». - J -^ «^ »*- ^^■, t4A«,. j*2 r7u.tfrt-t- 1 . rT/^ 'r^t^ <^^-.^^f v^r/ - , ^ ^ 6^ ^7^^ ^^^^^ f^.':;2^^;!'Xr<-y^-r^'^^^ X*^^/;-^ /t^^^:::^^^:^^S^^^ '6tf-^ C r-- ■^ ,,^.-^'>*-^^ w <;^- C^' •^ ^= ^■.^//-V^; «.-^-/.^-^,<- •"/^-'v^^ ,^ .