Boston City (part 23 of 67)

Preface

HPHE scheme of this History originated with Mr. CLARENCE F. JEWETT, who, towards the end of December, 1879, 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 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.

Historical Poem

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.

Source changes here: from The Memorial History of Boston : Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, by Winsor, Justin, published 1885; 288,477 words in this source stream.

Boston City

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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 IxxviiL

Preface

T^HE scheme of this History originated with Mr. Clarence F. Jewett, who, towaids the end of December, 1879, 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 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 distiijptly 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.

Historical Poem

Illustrations: Boston Town-house, Endicott and Shattuck, xxvii; the Jail Delivery, xxviii ; the Quakers on the Common, xxix s the Great Windmill on Snow Hill, xzx ; tail-piece, xxxii ; Statue of John Winthrop, hdiotype^ xxxii.

Chapter Ii

Illustrations: The Winthrop Cup, heliotype, 114; Plan of Ten Hills (1636), heliotype^ 114; Winthrop's Fleet, 115; " Trimountaine shall be called Boston," hdiotype^ n6; 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.

Chapter Ix

Illustrations: Secretary Rawson's Memorandum on Captain Richard, 313; John Levcrett, 315; Thomas Savage, 318; a part of Hubbard's Map of New England (1677), 328.

Chapter Xi

Illustrations: William Pynchon, 404; the Curtis Homestead, 406; John Eliot's Chair, 415; Certificate signed by John Eliot and Samuel Danforth, 416.

Chaffer Xix

Illustrations: "Wood's Map of Boston and Vicinity (1634), heliatypet 524; the Tramount, 525; section of Bonner's Map (1722), 526; Plan of the Sumfnit of Beacon Hill, 527; West Hill in 1775, 528; the Old Feather Store, 547; Old House in Salem Street, 551.

Introduction

A ^ /"HEN, 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 admonition 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 university - 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 of 31 1 pages which he published in 181 7* under the same title, ^ Topographical 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 examination 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 Boston^ 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 J///;/- 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 mayoralty, 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 restricted 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

* A Hixtory of Boston, the Metropolis of Mas- Whitmore. Lucius Manlius Sargent printed a sachusetts, front its Origin to the Present Period, little tract, Notices of Histories of Boston, in 1857. with some account of the Eftvirons. Boston: A. The City Government had taken steps to print Bowen. 1828. a continuation of Drake, when his death put a

* Among then) may l)c classed Boston Sights^ the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica by David Pulsifer, 1859. is by the Rev. G. E. Ellis. D.D. A Ik)slon edified with the story of their associations. This is the last acquisition to the illustrative literature of Boston, apart from the numerous guidebooks 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 tlie Shrimptons and other early occupants and proprietors of the island. A History of South Boston, by Thomas C. Simonds, was published in 1857. General H. A. S. Dearborn delivered a second centennial address at Roxbury in 1830. Mr. C. M. Ellis issued a History of Roxbury Totvn 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 original 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 History of Middlesex County, which contains also a brief sketch of Charlestown. 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 pubUcation of which was begun in numbers in 1845 ^"^d 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 1879, 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 earlier Historical Sketch by Dr. Bartlett, 18 14, and Mr. Everett's commemoration of the second centennial in 1830.^ Those regions, no longei* 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 Wollaston, or "The Mount " as it was usually called when the people of Boston had their farms there, has recently given occasion to an elaborate History of Old Braintree specially commemorated by Harris, Pierce, Cod- been particularly elucidated by Budington, man. Hall, Allen, Means, and Barrows. Ellis, Hunnewell, and Edes.

and Quincy, by William S. Pattee, 1878, while there have been earlier contributions 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 application, will be referred to in the foot-notes and editorial annotations throughout 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 Eliot'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 chapters of the elaborate treatises of the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Dexter on Congrcgationalism 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. Winthrop'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

1877. Trinity, - Brooks. South Congregational, - I lale. Twelfth CongregutiofMl, - Barrett, 1 850 ; Pray, 1863. Park Street, - Semi-centennial, 1861. Bulfinch Street, - A\ger, 1861. First Universalist, - Silloway, 1864. New South, - Ellis, 1865. Church of the Advent, - lioUes, i860, &c. Coggeshairs discourse on the introduction of Methodism into Boston. Cf. articles in the Amer. Quarterly Register, vii., and Boston Almanac, 1843 and 1854.

^ The Congregationalism of the last three hundred years as seen in its Literature, New York, 1880. In an appendix there is a bibliography of the subject, giving 7,250 titles, arranged chronologically, - a most valuable contribution, showing most of the books one must consult on the early history of Boston.

' It was first printed in Hartford in 1790, from a copy collated with the original but incomplete, as the third volume of the manuscript was not then known to be in existence, though best be supplemented by the convenient group of contemporary writings which the Rev. Alexander Young, D.D., gathered in his Chronicles of Massachusetts Day, 1623-36, and by a part of the documents which Hazard printed in his Historical CoUectionSy and Hutchinson published in 1769 in his Collection of Original Papers} to fortify his history. Of the early accounts by Wood, Lechford, Johnson, Josselyn, and others, and of such diaries as Hull's and Sewall's, mention is elsewhere made. Although some of these were in print when Hubbard wrote his History of New England^ it was from the manuscript of Winthrop's Journal that this old historian obtained pretty much all that was valuable in his narrative; and for the thirty years that he continued it beyond Winthrop's death. Dr. Palfrey, following Hutchinson's judgment, calls his book "good for nothing," - a decision, perhaps, too denunciatory. Every historical student, however, recognizes the great importance of Hubbard for the period before Winthrop took up the story, and for which Hubbard must have had material at first hand.* Before the printing of Winthrop, Hubbard was looked upon as an original authority, but the recovery of his preface shows that he urged no claims but those of a compiler of " the original manuscripts of such as had the managing of those affairs," &c.

Prince is supposed to have had the three volumes in his keeping in 1754, and to have used them in his Chronology. This third volume, covering the last four years of Winthrop's life, was discovered among the Prince manuscripts about 1815, and was shortly after surrendered to the Winthrop family, in whose custody the other volumes were. Savage used it, however, in preparing his valuable edition of the entire manuscript (cf. Mr. Hillard*s " Memoir of Savage," in ^fass, ///>/. Soc, Proc.^ March, 1878, P- '35); but while the volumes were in his hands, the fire occurred in Court Street in 1825, in which the second volume was burned. The first and third volumes are now in the cabinet of the Historical Society. See their Proceedings^ June, 1872. The original letters of Winthrop and others, which Mr. Savage printed in his appendix, have recently become the property of the same Society. These and other letters and papers of the early Winthrops, brought to light of late years, and printed in the Society's Collections, as noted elsewhere, were used in the Hon. R. C. Winthrop*s Life and Utters of John Winthrofy which, with the papers, have Ixicn the subject of numerous reviews; No, Amer. Reif.^ January, 1864, and January and October, 1867 ; VOL. I. - C

Atlantic Monthly ^ January, 1864, and February, 1867; ifarpet's Monthly, November, 1876; BlackwooiPs Magatine, August, 1867 » Annual Register, 1867 ; Pn'ue Britannigue, &c. Additional references are given in Allibone's Dictionary,

* This was reprinted by the Prince Society in 1865, under the care of W. H. Whitmore and W. S. Appleton. Other papers of Hutchinson are printed in 2 Mass, Hist, Coll., vol. x.. and third series, vol. i. The Proceedings, February, 1868, and January, 1874, of the Society contain accounts of the controversy which preceded the transfer of these papers to the State Archives. Cf. also, ibid. ii. 438.

* It was not printed till 1815, and again in 1848, in 2 Mass, Hist, Coll. v. and vi. Savage, Winthrop, '- 357- The Historical Society has the rough draft and the corrected copy of Hubbard's manuscript, and has recently printed some opening and concluding pages of it, which had long been missing, until procured from England by Dr. F. E. Oliver. It would seem that the Society's copy, when perfect, had been copied by Judge Peter Oliver, and it is from his transcript that the text is completed. Mass. Hist, Soc, Proc, August, 1814, and February, 1878. Sibley, Harvard Graduates, p. 56.

The Memorial History Of Boston

Cotton Mather's Magitalia Christi Americana: The first book of the New- English History^ reporting the Desigfi whereon, tfie Manner wherein, and the People whereby, the several colonies of New England were planted. This book is an anomaly, even in those times of anomalous books. It was published in London in 1702, in a huge folio, but the introduction bears date Oct. 16, 1697. While there is much that is valuable in its heterogeneous contents, there is not a little that is absurd and irrelevant. It is largely made up of earlier separate publications of its author,^ and gives us the chief accounts we have of the lives of several of the Boston ministers, - Cotton, Wilson, Norton, Davenport, and others.

Next, there is a similar acknowledgment to Hubbard due from Thomas Prince, the pastor of the Old South, for the use he made of him in his Chronological History of New England.^ This work, as published, extends only over the earliest years of Boston's history, not going beyond 1633, as the author, seeking a start, began with the Flood. In his preface he enumerates the manuscripts he had used, and his paragraphs are credited to their sources.

1 It has since been reprinted in this country, in 1820 and in 1853. Mr. Deane has indicated the light thrown upon it by Mather's diary in Afius, I/isL Soc. Proc., Decern l)cr, 1S62. C.'f. Mr. AVinthrop's apt characterization of the book in his lecture of the Lowell Institute course, p. 21. Dunton, the London bookseller who came to Boston, says of Mather and his book: "His library is very large and numerous, but had his books been fewer when he writ his history, 'twould have pleased us better;*' and again he speaks of Mather's library as " the glory of New England, if not of all America. I am sure It was the best sight that I had in Boston." Some part of this library, as is well known, is now in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, and fragments of it even to this day occasionally find their way into public sales or dealer's catalogues. The Mather manuscripts in the library of that Society are described in their Proceedings, April 30, 1873, p. 22. The papers known as the Malher manuscripts, belonging to the Prince Library, have been fully calendared in the catalogue of that library, and the best part of them printed in 4 Mass. Hist Coll, viii. Some part of the diaries of Increase and Cotton Mather are preserved in the Historical Society's cabinet. - Proceedings, March, 1 858, and A pril, 1 868. ( )t her portions are in the library of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. It does not seem likely that they will be printed until men are better pleased with confessions of shortcomings and with the display of sclf-dcl»ascmcnt. Drake, in his introduction to lncrcu.sc Mather's History of Philip's IVar, speaks of the Mather library as the product of the care of four generations, and refers to some letters of Samuel Mather, D.D., the last of the four, which were a part of a MS. volume afterwards noted in the Brinley Caitilogne, No. 1,329. Accepting the statements of these letters, it appears that Samuel Mather furnished Hutchinson "with most of the material of which his history was composed." His son says of the library, that it was "by far the most valuable part of the family proi>erty. In consisted of 7,000 or 8,000 volumes of the most curious and chosen authors, and a prodigious number of valuable manuscripts, which had been collected by my ancestors for five generations." A considerable portion, if not the whole, of Increase Mather's library is said to have been burned in the destruction of Charlestown in 1775.

* The first volume was published in 1736, and a second volume was begun in 1755, of which only three serial numbers were issued before the author's death. The completed volume is not a scarce book, but the subsequent parts had l)ecome so rare that it was deemed desirable to reprint them in 2 Mass. Hist. Coll. vii.

Introduction. Xix

Great value must confessedly be put upon Governor Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay. No one before his day, and perhaps no one since, has had reflected on him more credit as a local historian. His first volume was published in 1764, and was the subject of a correspondence, preserved to us,* between the author and Dr. Stiles. His second volume was nearly ready for the press when his house was sacked by a mob, Aug. 26, 1765. He left the manuscript to its fate, as he bore off a daughter fifom their fury ; thrown into the street, it was saved by the interposition of the Rev. Dr. Andrew Eliot, and was not so much injured but that the author readily repaired the loss: it was printed in 1767, bringing the story down to 1749. A third volume - detailing events preceding the Revolution with a surprising fairness when we consider the treatment he had received, and of course without sympathy for the patriot cause - was not published till long after its author's death (1780), when a grandson, at the instigation of some Boston gentlemen, gave it to the world in 1828.^

It is not worth while to enumerate here a long list of histories, all more or less general as regards our State and country, but all throwing light in considerable sections upon our own Boston history, and which the eager student of her fameful annals will not neglect, - the histories of New England by Neal, Backus, Palfrey (hardly to be surpassed), and Elliott; those of Massachusetts by Barry (the complctcst), Minot, and Bradford, not to mention other works. Of the foreign writers, who in days not recent have visited Boston and left accounts of the town, there are enumerations in ShurtlefTs Description of Boston^ and in Henry T. Tuckerman's America and her Commentators, with extracts from such narratives.

The Commonwealth has done its work nobly in causing the printing of those early records,® to which the historian of Boston must constantly resort. In our State House, too, are tier upon tier of volumes, labelled "Massachusetts Archives," so arranged, indeed, in an attempted classification,* that it is irksome and unsatisfactory to consult them. They are rich, however, to the patient inquirer in the evidences of Boston's power and significance in our colonial history. The city has, fortunately, estab- lishcd of late years a Record Commission. Under the supervision of the gentlemen who have thus far constituted it, Messrs. William S. Applcton and William H. Whjtmorc, three reports have been printed. The first consists of various lists of early inhabitants, and the second, third, and fourth are mentioned below.

Of the records and papers in the office of the City Clerk, the following statement is furnished by SAMUEL F. McCleary, Esq., the present clerk:

The Town Records, 1634 to 1821, in ten volumes. Also a copy on paper of vol. i. (1634-60), by Charles Shaw, made in 1814. Also a copy on parchment of vol. i., and fully indexed, made by S. B. Morse, Jr., in 1855. [This first volume is now in print in the Second Report of the Record Commissioners^

The Original Papers forming the foundation of the Town and City Records, from 1634 to 1880. [Those from 1634 to 1734 (1716 missing) are bound in two volumes ; the rest are in files.]

The Book of Possessions, being the original entries of the earliest recorded division of land within the town, written about 1 643-44, in one volume. Also a copy made on parchment in 1855 by S. B. Morse, Jr., in one volume. [The volume is now in print in the Second Report of the Record Commissioners, Its probable date is discussed elsewhere in this history.]

Minutes of Meetings of the Selectmen, 1 701-1822, inclusive, in twenty-four volumes. Selectmen's Memoranda, being the original entries from which the above "minutes" were made up, 1732 to 182 1, in ninety-four memorandum books.

Record of names of the inhabitants of the town in 1695, *" o"*^ volume. Records of strangers not inhabitants of the town ; also of bonds furnished by sundry persons as sureties that certain other persons therein named shall not become a charge to the town, 1679-1700, in one volume.

Permits to build with timber in the year 1707. Account books of the town and records of the committee on finance, 1739 to 1821. Records of committee on rebuilding after the great fire of 1 760. Subscriptions for sufferers by the great fire of 1 794. Lists of i>ersons who arrived by sea during the years 1 763-69. Memorandum book of selectmen for the year 1 772.

List of donations to the town of Boston from all parts of the country, north and south, at the time of the enforcement of the Boston Port Bill in 1774. Records of the donation committee of the town in 1774. Lists of persons aided in the several wards by gifts of food or money, in eighteen memorandum books, for the years 1774-75. Cash-book of donation committee for 1774-75.

The shoemakers* book, 1774. Spinning and knitting-book, 1774. Brickmakers* book, 1774. Wood-account book, 1774. "Departing money" receipt-book, 1774. Petty ledger of donation committee, 1774.

Then, of the records of adjacent towns, now a part of the metropolis by annexation, there are the following ; and for the enumeration I am indebted to John T. Priest, Esq., the Assistant City Clerk : -

CharUstawn. - Town Records, 1 629-1 84 7, in fourteen volumes. Selectmen's Records, 1843-47, in one volume ; previous to 1843 these records were kept in the Town Records. Mayor and Aldermen's Records, 1 84 7-73, in ten volumes. Common Council Records, 1847-73, in seven volumes. [These and other recorcb and papers have been rearranged by Mr. Henry H. Edes, acting under orders of the city of Charlestown, 1869 and 1870. See Third Report of the Record Commissiofurs^ 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 swty-nine in number, and the papers yet to be arranged, few of which are earlier than 1720, will fill {\^y 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, 1783-1846, in four volumes; previous 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].

Dorchester, - Town Records, Jan. 16, 163 J- 1869, in twelve volumes. [Tliese are the oldest original records in the office ; a portion of the first volume will constitute the Fourth Report of the Record Commissioners^ Selectmen's Records, 1855-69, in two volumes ; previous to 1855 ^^^^e records were kept in the Town Records.

Brighton, - Town Records, 1807-73, in five volumes; the first volume contains the records of the " Third Precinct of Cambridge on the South side of Charles River," begiiming in 1772. Selectmen's Records, 1807-73, in four volumes.

Boston. - Births, Marriages, and Deaths (County Records), 1630-60, in 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 sixteen volumes. Marriages, 1651-1879, in twenty-seven volumes, with a gap from 1663 to 1689 ; marriages out of the city, but recorded here, in one volume. Deaths,

Roxhury. - Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 163 2- 1849, ^^ three volumes: Births, 1843-68, in four volumes. Marriages, 163 2- 1868, in four volumes ; marriages out of the city but recorded here, in one volume. Deaths, 1633-1868, in three volumes.

Intentions of Marriages: Boston, 1 707-1879, in thirty-five volumes; Charlestown, 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, 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 tlie editor's knowledge, except a sketch of streets and estates, indorsed "William Appleton, 1866," a copy of which is in the Historical Society's Collection. 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 published 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 corroborative statements which have also been of assistance were found in Snow, Drake, and Shurtleff.*

* The mrKlcm map used as a iKickground i» a reduced section of a large one recently published by the Boston Map Company ; but it has been found necessary to modify a little the "original shore-line," as indicated by its compilers, George F. Loring and Irwin C. Cromack, surveyors and draughtsmen in the City Sur- vcyor's ofBcc. The stones of the last previous authentic map of Jloston 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 reduction 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 offence (branding 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, refiised 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 fi-om 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 firom 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 license, 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 building-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 By John Greenleaf Whittier

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.

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 stem, With a look of mingled sorrow and wrath : ** Woe 's me ! " he murmured, " at every turn The pestilent Quakers are in my path I 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.

Troublers of Israel such as these ? Shall I spare ? Shall I pity them ? - God forbid 1 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 I "

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 sortT*

The Governor cried, " if I hang not all I 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.

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."

To his subjects' sorrow and sin's increase. What he here enjoineth John Endicott His loyal servant questioneth not You are free I - God grant the spirit you own May take you from us to parts unknown."

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

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 brethren died. Like those who waited the Cross beside.

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 King'S Missive. Xxxi

" Men of Boston I 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.

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 I "

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.

The Memorial History Of Boston

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.

Environs

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 continent. 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 colonists. 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 : -

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 Cordilleras 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 subjected. 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-carvings 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 irregular 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 shorelife, 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 several slight, irregular movements of the shore, - local risings and sinkings, 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 glacial periods been worn down to their foundations, so that there is little in the way of their original reliefs to be traced. They ar,e principally marked in the attitudes of that part of their rocks that have escaped erosion. The Sharon and 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 l^ay 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 similarly 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 Allcghanies 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, Somervillc, Brookline, and many other adjacent towns, they are extensively exposed. They consist principally of clay-slates and conglomerates, - 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 evidently laid down in the sea at points near the shore ; and they are proba- bly 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 limited 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 quarried. 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 Cambridge 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 argentiferous 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 Massachusetts 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 we 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 are 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 postglacial 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- town, Chelsea, Everett, Revere, a large part of Maiden, Brighton, Brookline, 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 tlie 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 ////, 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 bouIder-cIay 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 Boston - 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 reasserted bouldcr-clay make up by 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 cultivation 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 thousand acres within seven or eight miles of the town that could have been quickly brought under the plough, and which was very extensively cultivated 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 vallej^s were filled by these river-like streams, which seem never to have attained as far seaward as the peninsula of Boston. This second advance of the ice seems to have been very temporary in its action, not having 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 Neponset rivers there are some thousands of acres of lands which have 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 water plants, coats the sandy bottoms or undcr-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 gathered, 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 gains 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 harbor. 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.

Of the ancient life of this district there is hardly a trace. The two great and conspicuous formations in the basin - the flags and conglomerates 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 considerable 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 inhabited 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 fossilbearing strata. At Mansfield, on the south, which is just outside of this synclinal, and within the limits 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 extremely rich in fossil plants. At Gloucester there is a small deposit of beds, containing shells of mollusks 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 wasting 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 harbor 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.

By Joel A. Allen

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 populated 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 published 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 lim'd Mooses, with the tripping Deare, Quill darting Porcupines and Rackcoones be, Casteird 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 affirme that they have seene a Lyon at Cape Anne, which is not above six leagus from Boston : 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, PlimoiUh men have traded for VOL. I. - 2.

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 concolor of naturalists), which formerly ranged from near the northern boundary 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 Massachusetts 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 Nahant,** 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 kecpes 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 Charlesriver, 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 " Jaccal " 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-argefitatns) , which during the last hundred years has 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 Massachusetts within historic times, although it occupied the country not far to the westward. There are, however, distinct references to the occurrence of the moose {Alces malchis) at Lynn and elsewhere northward and westward within forty miles of Boston. It was sometimes referred to under the name " elk," as in the following, from Morton's New English Canaan} published 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 Massachnsetts bay, but forty miles to the Northeast there be great store of them."

The common deer {Cariacus virginianus) 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 exception 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 extinct, 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 it is well knowne that it equalizeth Groinland for Whales and Grampuses." It is a matter of history that a profitable 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 otiier species long since disappeared from southern New England. All the larger species, and many of the shore-birds, have greatly decreased, as have likewise most of the smaller forest-birds. The few that haunt cultivated 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 intervals as stragglers from the remote interior, are swans and cranes. Respecting 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 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 inhabitants, 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 powthered beefe, and is a goodly bird in a dishe, and no discommodity." ^ The crane was probably the brown crane {Grus canadensis), while the swans embraced both of the American species.

The wild Turkey is well known to have been formerly abundant. Wood speaks of there sometimes being " forty, three-score, and an hundred of aflocke," while Morton alludes to a " thousand " seen in one day. According to Josselyn, 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 Tnrkie 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 cupido) likewise soon disappeared. The few which still remain on Martha's Vineyard are believed to be a remnant 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 seventeenth century, but probably did not survive to a much later date. The earliest reference to it as a bird of our coast is contained in Archer's Relatioft of Captaine Gosnols Voyage to the North part of Virginia^ made in 1602, in which "Pengwins" are mentioned as found on the New England 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 Waymonth, in the Arch-augill, "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 Whitbourne's Relation of Nexvfoundlandy 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 into 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 sustentation 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 WobbUy 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." »

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." ^ the whole Atlantic slope than was the wild pigeon. The early historians of the region here in question speak of flocks containing '* millions of millions," 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; 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 Tydcs 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 flounders. 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 northward; 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 numbers 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 1000. at a place where Lobsters come in with the tyde, to eate, and save dried for store, abiding in tliat 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 great 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

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 comparatively 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 whjle 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.

By Asa Gray, Ll.D.

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 vegetation of Massachusetts in the days which immediately preceded the advent of the glacial period, when the ancestors of the present jtrees, shrubs, and herbs of New England, which had long flourished within the Arctic Circle, were beginning to move southward before the slowly advancing refrigeration. But, as the refrigeration at the north increased, a warm-temperate vegetation, which may have resembled that of 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 advancing ice-sheet, under and by which our soil has been completely remodelled. After this ice-sheet had melted and receded, and the new soil had become fit for land vegetation, - that is, at a time geologically recent, - the vegetation of Boston and its environs must have closely resembled 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 Washington 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 ameliorated, 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.

of oak, the maples, ashes, with their various arboreal and frutescent associates, 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 Hne 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 impossible, to reforest them.

The Indian tribes found here by the whites had not perceptibly modified 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, - however 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.