Quincy City (part 3 of 12)

'These houses and houses like these were the homes in Braintree of the landed gentry, during the long time in which there was in the community little property other than land. They were the manor houses of the period. the barn, the corn and wood and cart-sheds, the eider-mill, and all the other buildings belonging to the farm, which lay behind and around them. Nor were those farms merely the costly luxury of gentleman-farmers. On the contrary, the owner of the house drew from the farm around it his chief support. He lived upon its produce, for the more prolific soil of the West had not then beggared New England agriculture. From wood-lot to orchard the fruits of each acre were carefully gathered, and what was not sold was used in rude abundance at home. Yet the primitive simplicity of the life in those early homes can now hardly be realized. They had none house, once the home of Parsons Fiske and Marsh. It was the simplest form of domestic architecture. A huge stack of brick chimney was the central idea It was one The front door opened on a narrow space, with rooms on either side, while directly opposite the door, and some four or five feet away, were the crooked stairs, supported on the chimney. Behind this outer shell was a lean-to, the sloping roof of which, beginning at until spring. The cold of the sitting-rooms was tempered by huge wood fires, which roasted one-half the person while the other half was exposed to cold drafts. The women sat at table in shawls, and the men in overcoats. Water left in the unventilated bedrooms froze solid, and entries, which could not be heated, had the temperature of ice-houses.

Such were what might be called the mansions of the colonial gentry, and such in Braintree they continued to be until long after 1830. troduction of coal and new appliances for heating |

The gradual inthen revolutionized modes of life. The dwellings of the farmers were of another class, excellent specimens of which still remain in Quincy in the old Adams | houses at Penns-hill, and in the so called Hardwick |

In this were the kitchen and wash-room, and here, on all ordinary ogcasions, the family took their meals and the household work was done. Of the front rooms, one was the ordinary sitting-room and the other the best parlor, which, formal, unventilated, and uncomfortable, was entered only upon the Sabbath or great occasions, such as a funeral or a wedding ora birth. About these houses, which stood as a rule facing towards the south and as near as might be to the road, though rarely square with it, were the out-houses, sheds and barns necessary for carrying on farm or household work.

The wearing apparel and household furniture, as revealed through the Braintree inventories, speak also of a modest and almost Spartan simplicity. There seem to have been a few beds, - possibly one of feathers, but generally of wool or of corn-husks, - some bolsters, blankets, and coverlids; but, except in the cases of the more wealthy, there is no mention of Col. Edmund Quincy's two carpets were There was a table, and posbed linen. appraised at one pound.

the case of the rich, a scattering of cushions and covers to chairs, but stools were chiefly in use. Knives and forks are not mentioned until a comparatively recent time, but pewter and earthenware is generally valued at from a few shillings to as many pounds. 'The kitchen sisted of a brass and iron pot or two and some pans. In the house there would be a Bible, and possibly a few other books; an old musket and sword ; a lookingglass now and then. The dress was of home-spun, and worn and reworn until there was nothing left of it. A hat would descend from father to son, and for fifty years make its regular appearance at meeting.

The wearing apparel of a whole family would thus be stored away for generations, fashions never changing; and accordingly it is a noticeable fact that wearing apparel constitutes the first, and generally one of the largest items of the inventories.

furniture. Indian corn-meal was the great standby; | and even as late as the earlier years of the present | century flour was bought by the pound, and used only | in the houses of the gentry. As bread made wholly | of meal soon became dry, rye was mixed with it; and | from long use rye was not uncommonly preferred to - wheat. Fresh meat was rarely seen, but the wellto-do in the autumn of each year were in the cus- | tom of salting down a hog or a quarter of beef, bits of which were boiled in the Indian porridge. Marshall notes in his diary that, in January, 1704, a hog weighing two hundred and sixty pounds enty-four pounds, cost him twelve shillings; and he at the same time mentions that provisions were - then "more plenty and cheap than is frequently | known, beef for six farthings per pound, pork at two | pence the most, the best two and a half pence, Indian

[meal] two shillings per bushel, mault barly at two | shillings." Naturally the constant use of salted meat | created thirst; and this thirst, the necessary conse-_ quence of what it is the custom to call a simple mode | of life, led to that intemperance which was the bane of New England. The use of tea and coffee as bev- | erages was not general until about the middle of the | last century, and prior to that time the people drank water, milk, beer, cider, and rum. use of the last, and its demoralizing consequences, | it will be necessary to speak of presently, and at | length. .Meanwhile it will be noticed that Marshall | in his short price-list mentions "mault barly" as the staple next in importance to corn-meal. A brewery | was one of the earliest Braintree institutions, second only to the mill. The first was established by Henry Adams, the town clerk, shortly after 1640, and was afterwards carried on by his son. Later, cider seems to have supplanted beer as the every-day and all- | day beverage, and the quantity of it drunk by all | classes down to a late period in this century was almost incredible.

In the cellars of the more well-topitchers of it were brought up at every meal, and in To the end of his life a | large tankard of hard cider was John Adams' morning draught before breakfast; and in sending directions from Philadelphia to her agent at Quincy, in 1799, Mrs. Adams takes care to mention that " the President hopes you will not omit to have eight or cellar for his own particular use." | There were no shops, in the modern sense of the | word, in Braintree or in Quincy prior to 1830. At | the village store the more usual and necessary dry and

West India goods, as the signs read, from a paper of pins to a glass of New England rum, could be obtained. For everything else people had to go to Boston, which they did on foot, on horseback, in chairs or carts, and by water. Marshall in his diary speaks of going to Boston as no unusual occurrence. In October, 1705, his father died; in September, 1708, he lost an infant son; and in October, 1710, his mother. In each case he speaks of going to Boston the next day "to get things for the funeral." He was himself a mason and plasterer, but like most men of his time he seems to have turned his hand to anything by which he could earn a few shillings, for he and a coroner. The boot-maker, the cobbler, the mason, and the carpenter were all recognized mechan- The usual wages of skilled labor were from sixty-five cents to a blacksmith, for not only were all the horses and oxen shod at his forge, but he was the general wheelwright, and maker and repairer of farm tools. Everything made of iron soon or late passed through his hands, and his shop, standing on the main street, was a cen- For the rest, the peddler and the fishman were the chief purveyors both of news and of merchandise, and their horns

It has already been stated that at the time the original church was gathered the town numbered about eighty families, representing a population of not far from 500 souls, living mainly within the limits of what afterwards became the North Precinct. When Braintree was incorporated, in 1640, the English emigration had already ceased, and for many years hereafter the coming of new families into the town was systematically discouraged. In 1682 the population was limited to "about ninety or a hundred families at the most." In 1707 there were seventy-two families in the North Precinct, and seventy-one in the rest of the town, or about 800 souls in all. During the next seventy years this population increased threefold, so that in 1776 the three precincts returned 2871 inhabitants. This was a stationary period, so that Quincy in 1800 had increased its proportion of this number only to 1081; which figures were again barely doubled in 1830, when they amounted to 2201. Thus in one hundred and ninety years the population increased only during the next half-century alone it was destined to multiply fivefold. As respects wealth, it appears to have been much the same; though the contrast be-

There are few data upon which to base an estimate of the accumulated wealth of Braintree prior to the division of the town, in 1792. According to the census of 1876 the population of Quincy the year previous | was 9135, and its valuation was in excess of seven | millions of dollars, showing an accumulation of $600 | to each inhabitant, irrespective of sex or age. It does not need to be said that these figures are very far from representing the real facts of the case. The appraisal was simply for purposes of taxation ; a sworn probate appraisal would have shown very different results. In | 1830, with a population of 2200, the valuation was | $813,000, or about $370 per head. The figures of the earlier periods are of no value as a guide. Turning now to the basis of the annual town levy, it is possible to make a comparison of periods. In 1876 the total amount raised by taxation in Quincy was

In 1657 the amount paid to the two ministers was £110, and besides this there were other sums, of which no record remains, disbursed on account of the At the beginning of | year. After the two precincts were divided the salary of Mr. Marsh, of the First Precinct, was £70; but Mr. Hancock's was £110. Then came the period of extreme | currency disturbance, and Mr. Briant was to receive | £62, which in the case of Mr. Wibird was, in 1755, | raised to £100. This was before the division of the town ; but, approximately, it may be said that the total North Precinct levy was in 1656 not far from | £100, and a century later it had not increased to over £150.

In 1798 the question of a suitable salary for a colleague to Mr. Wibird was much discussed. A com- | mittee gave it ''as their most mature judgment" that it would be best for the town to pay its minis- | ter annually such a sum "as will enable him to main- | tain himself and family comfortably and with such decency as will do honor to the society that supports | them." And the opinion is then expressed that the sum of $500 will afford a minister and his family "a | decent support.' Accordingly, in 1799, Mr. Whitney was settled in the town on a salary of $550. In the following year the entire amount raised for town and parish purposes was $3000. In 1810 it was $3200, and in 1820 it had increased to $4000. reveal most strikingly the stability and evenness of the every day in the week except Sunday, wasting nothing, utilizing everything, schooled from infancy in the severest economy and eternally striving to better its condition, - any community such as this, dwelling in a region not actually ice-bound or a desert, must accumulate from generation to generation. So the Braintree people accumulated. As each generation passed away it left more acres under cultivation, more houses, barns, and farm-buildings, more furniture and household comforts, more cattle, tools, and appliances. Yet this was all. Prior to 1830 there was no personal property in the modern sense of the word. Whatever the people had was in sight. There were no bonds or stocks locked away in safes. A few persons, - and they were very few, - having ready money amassed in trade, may have held some bank or turnpike shares; but the people of country towns had as yet scarcely begun to be educated in this respect, and their whole idea of property was the ownership of land and buildings. Money was made in trade; and the moneyed man was he who, having amassed some ready cash, put it into goods, or loaned it out to others on good security, usually bond and mortgage.

Thus the whole accumulation of the hundred and ninety years from 1640 to 1830 in a community like that of Braintree and Quincy was at home and on the surface. It showed for all it was worth. <Accordingly, when John Adams returned to Braintree in 1788, after a ten years' absence in Europe, he spoke of the increase of population as ' wonderful," and but he added "the scarcity of money is certainly very great." And again John Quincy Adams coming back to Quincy to his father's funeral, after years of but he added "it was a comforting reflection that the new race of men and women had the external marks of a condition much improved upon that of the former age.'' Yet it may well admit of question whether the entire accumulation of that village community in those two centuries, lacking only ten years, tree of only some $7000 a year. community of from 500 to 2000 souls this seems small. gregate it could have been larger. were not over 400 families in the town. valuation of their wealth, well understood to be an underestimate, exceeded $800,000. Supposing it was in reality $1,500,600, the amount above stated, each

Church." In 1633, being then in his thirty-second year, Edmund Quincy came to New England, a companion of John Cotton, landing in Boston on the 4th of September. freeman, and his name is found afterwards not infrequently in the records of Boston. He died in 1637, shortly after the allotment at the Mount had been He and Governor William Coddington were of nearly the same age, and the grant of land to some sort worth $3750. absolutely no one in Quincy was then more than wellto-do, and many families had nothing, living from hand to mouth, it does not seem possible that this average could have been exceeded.

typical of it than could elsewhere be found in New England. In fact, the record of the Quincy family is probably unique even in the larger field of American a half on the same land which the original ancestor in this country bought of the Indian sachem who ruled over the Massachusetts Fields when Standish first landed at Squantum, the Quincys have in every generation maintained the same high public level. Never perhaps rising to the topmost prominence, either official or intellectual, the family record has yet in both respects been exceptionally uniform and sustained. That record is part of the history of the town which took its name from one member of the family.

death. personal friends, and not impossibly it was Edmund Quincy's premature death which alone, in the Antinomian frenzy, prevented his sharing Coddington's troubles, and perhaps his exile. Though he died young, he left his name to a son and the name of his From a descendant of the latter sprang the Sewall family, and in her memory also the

The second Edmund Quincy, born in England in He is the " Unckle Quinsey" of Judge Sewall's diary, whose death is recorded on the 8th of January, 1698, as that of "'a true New England man, and one of our best Friends." It was he who built the house at Braintree, and between the years 1670 and 1692 he repeatedly represented the town in the General Court. A magistrate and the lieutenant-colonel of the Suffolk regiment, he reproduced the type of the English country gentleman in New England; and just as the former had gone up to the Long Parliament ripe for rebellion against Charles I., and half a century later had joined William of Nassau in the overthrow of James II., so Edmund Quincy, when Andros was

Safety which carried on the government of the province until the charter of William and Mary was As their name implies, the Quincys were of Norman |

This Edmund Quincey left two sons, - Daniel, the child of his first wife (Joanna Hoar), sister of the president of the college, and Edmund, whose mother (Elizabeth Gookin) was the widow of John Eliot, Jr. Daniel Quincy was the father of that John Quincy, of Mount Wollaston, in whose honor the town of Quincy subsequently received its name. Of him it will be proper, therefore, to presently speak at length. Edmund, his younger half-brother, inherited the father's house and farm, and presently married Dorothy Flynt, already referred to as the common origin of that remarkable progeny, in which lawyers, statesmen, orators, poets, story-tellers and philosophers seem to vie third Edmund Quincy passed nearly his whole life in the public service. Graduating in 1699, in 1715-14 he represented Braintree in the General Court, and became afterwards a member of the Council.

judges of the Superior Court, and in 1737, at the age of fifty-six, he was selected as the agent of the province to represent it before the English government in the matter of the disputed New Hampshire boundary. following February he was a victim of prevention, for he died from inoculated smallpox. He was buried in the graveyard which held the dust of Milton and Bunyan. The General Court of Massachusetts caused a monument to be there erected to him as lasting evidence that he was "the delight of his own people, but of none more than of the Senate, who, as a testimony of their love and gratitude, have ordered this epitaph to be inscribed." age, he was the confidential agent in London of the patriot party. Dying on shipboard, almost in sight of his native New England coast, Josiah Quincy, Jr., left behind him an infant son, whose long and honorable life, beginning before the Revolution, outlasted the war of the Rebellion. But President Josiah Quincy, of Harvard College, though he lived all his life on the family-place at Quincy, always identified himself with the city of Boston. His history and

Quincy passed his later years at Braintree, dwelling for a time in a house which stood on the " Hancock lot.' This house was burned in May, 1759. In it to spend many evenings, and it was by mere chance that he did not marry one of its daughters. The methods of passing the time there did not always commend themselves to him. whole evening. ment the young gentlemen take every evening in this town. smoking tobacco, and swearing. .

Tn his turn Josiah Quincey was colonel of the Suffolk regiment, and he was also through many years a warm personal friend and correspondent of Dr. Franklin. A man of active, inquiring mind, his only experience in public life was in 1755, the year of Braddock's defeat, when he served as a commissioner of the province in arranging joint military operations with the sister province of Pennsylvania. He left three sons, the youngest of whom, named after himself and known in history as Josiah Quincy, Jr., rose rapidly to distinction, and had he not died at the early age of thirty-one, could hardly have failed to be one of the prominent political characters

Recurring to the other seventeenth-century branch of the family, Daniel Quincy, the son of the second Edmund and father of John, on the 9th of November, 1682, married Anna Shepard, the granddaughter of the Rev. Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge. The following quaint and striking account of her wedding is contained in the pages of Sewall :

"Cousin Daniel Quinsey Marries Mrs. Anna Shepard Before John Hull, esq. Sam/'] Nowell, esq. and many Persons present, almost Captain Brattle's great Hall full; Captain B. and Mrs. Mr. Willard began with prayer. Mr. Thomas Shepard concluded; as he was Praying, Cousin Savage, A good space after, when had eaten Cake and drunk Wine and Beer plentifully, we were called into the Hall again to Sing. In Singing Time Mrs. Brattle goes out, being ill; Most of the Company goe away, thinking it a qualm or some Fit; But she grows worse, speaks not a word, and so dyes away in her chair, I holding her feet (for she had slipt down). At length out of the Kitching we carry the chair, and Her in it, into the Wedding Hall; and after a while lay the Corps of the dead Aunt in the Bride-Bed: So that now the strangeness and horror of the thing filled the (just now) joyous House with Hjulation: The Bridegroom and Bride lye at Mr. Airs, son-in-law to the deceased, going away

There were two children born of this marriage, a daughter, Ann, in 1685, and a son, John, in 1689. The year following Daniel Quincy died. He seems always to have lived in Boston, where he followed the trade of goldsmith, and in Boston his son was born; but circumstances seemed to draw the Quincys to- Braintree. When William Coddington left Massachusetts he gradually disposed of his property there, and in 1639 the greater part of his allotment into Mrs. Shepard's hands. In 1677, five years before Anna Shepard married Daniel Quincy, her father, Thomas Shepard, had died, but her mother, William Tyng's daughter and the owner of Mount Wollaston, lived until August, 1709. Mrs. Daniel Quincy, it has already been seen, married the Rev. Moses Fiske in 1701, and died in July, 1708 ; accordingly, Mrs. Shepard surviving her daughter, left the farm at Mount graduated from Harvard College one year before. Coming into possession of the property at this early age, young John Quincy, in 1715, married Elizabeth Norton, daughter of the Rev. John Norton, third pastor of the Hingham Church, and on Tuesday, October 4th, of that year, Judge Sewall records that he gave him "a Psalm-book covered with Turky-Leather for his Mistress." his house at Mount Wollaston, and went to Braintree to live, being then major of the Suffolk regiment.

of every town-meeting. In the parish also he was the leading man. Not only, after the usage of the period, was he noted for "a strict observance of the Lord's day, and a constant attendance upon the public ordinances of religion,' but he presided at the parish meetings, and it was he who served as investi- John Adams describes him as 'a man of letters, taste, and sense," the town in the General Court, and he continued to represent it at intervals through forty years, his last term of service being in 1757. From 1719 to 1741 his service was consecutive, and from 1729 to 1739 he was Speaker of the House. Paul Dudley was then chosen to the place, but Governor Shirley negatived him, and John Quincy was rechosen. In 1742 he became a member of the Council, and again in 1746, continuing in it until 1754. He then became again a delegate for three years. He was now sixtyeight years old, and seems to have retired from active life to pass the remainder of his days at Mount Wollaston. We there get a glimpse of him through the memoranda of John Adams, who, on Christmasday, 1765, says he " drank tea at grandfather Quincy's. | The old gentleman inquisitive about the hearing before the Governor and Council ; about the Governor's | of the Suffolk regiment, but in 1742 he lost that position through the intrigues of Joseph Gooch. John Adams has left a lively description of this affair, in which at the time he felt a boy's keen interest ; for _his own father was in the regiment, and was offered a captain's commission by Gooch, - an offer which " he trate, for years and years the name of John Quincy > - or Col. John Quincy, Esq., as the form of those days | went - appears in the Braintree records as moderator ' filled almost every public office to which a native-born but it is a curious fact of one so prominent that not a letter or paper of his, or even a book known to have belonged to him, now remains in the posses- After his death and through a period of forty years his estate, and everything belonging to him, fell into complete neglect. Yet if, as chairman of the committee, John Quincy wrote the report on the charges against Mr. Briant, that docusion of his descendants.

ment alone, in its pure, simple language and broad, liberal tone, is evidence enough that John Adams' tribute to him was not undeserved. it may serve as a sample of the whole, for it breathes the true spirit which inspires every large-minded searcher for truth; and it was a large-minded man who wrote it. Referring to the charge that Mr. Briant had at his ordination made a profession of faith, the committee in its report denies the fact; but then does not fear to add that, even "if he had made any such profession, it could not destroy his right of private judgment, nor be obligatory upon him any further than it continued to appear to him agreeable to reason and Scripture." And, again, it had been charged that Mr. Briant had recommended a certain book doctrinally unsound '"'to the prayerful perusal of one or The committee replied and we cannot but commend our pastor for the pains he takes to promote a free and impartial examination into all articles of our holy religion, so that all may judge, even of themselves, what is right." A country parish in which such sentiments as these were offcially set forth in the year 1753 was well advanced on the path which led to revolution, both political and religious.

Among those of his own day John Quincy " was as much esteemed and respected as any man in the province." Enjoying what was then looked upon as an ample fortune, '' he devoted his time, his faculties, and his influence to the service of his country," studiously avoiding "an ensnaring dependency on any man, and whatever should tend to lay him under any disadvantage in the discharge of his duty." He tance' from his wards. Finally, in all positions he approved himself "a true friend to the interest and prosperity of the province ; a zealous advocate for and vigorous defender of its liberties and privileges." This detailed sketch of John Quincy is a necessary feature in the history of Old Braintree. He represented, perhaps more com- pletely than any other member even of the remark- | then the practice, the child was baptized, its grandable family to which he belonged, a political and social element in New England life which has since disappeared. He belonged to the class which in England produced John Hampden, - the educated country gentlemen, the owners of the broad acres on which they dwelt. going up to Parliament year after year, they were the loyal, ingrained representatives of the communi- Of these men He represented ties of which they were a_ part. Washington wasa Virginia offshoot. them in their highest phase of development under Southern surroundings, - plain, true, straightforward, inal town of Braintree was subdivided, the Rev. Anthony Wibird '"' was requested to give a name to the place. But he refusing, a similar request was made to the Hon. Richard Cranch, who recommended its being called Quincy, in honor of Col. John Quincy." Nor was this the only form in which the name was perpetuated. Col. Quincy had two children, a son named Norton in honor of his mother's family, and a daughter, who became in time the wife of William Smith, of Weymouth. Among the children of this couple was one who, in October, 1764, married John In July, 1767, as old John Quincy lay dying at Mount Wollaston, this granddaughter of his gave birth to a son, and when, the next day, as was mother, who was present at its birth, requested that it might be called after her father. Long afterwards the child thus named wrote of this incident: 'It It was the name of one passing from earth to immortality.

as in the Stoke-Pogis churchyard, there were doubtless many men who contained within themselves the possibilities of a Hampden, a Milton, or a Cromwell. That John Quincy did, cannot be asserted ; for of him now nothing remains except a name and a few dates.

them in colonial days. stances he might have proved, it would be idle to surmise. Born and dying a colonist in a small provincial community thickly crusted over with theology,

Yet in one respect John Quincy was singularly fortunate. Though not a line of his writing remains, though his public services are forgotten, though his

In the year 1791, Miss Hannah Adams, the historian, in writing to John Adams, made reference to the "humble obscurity" of their common origin. Her correspondent, in reply, while acknowledging the kinship, went on to energetically remark that, could he 'ever suppose that family pride were any way excusable, [he] should think a descent from a line of virtuous, independent New England farmers for a hundred and sixty years was a better foundation for it than a descent through royal or noble scoundrels ever since the flood." independent New England farmers" here described were to the full as important a social and political They represented the free yeomanry of England under the new conditions, just as the gentry represented the landholders. But it has already been noticed that the New England farmer, as a rule, did not pay rent. He was the owner of the land on which he lived and a freeholder, - the equal of any one. This holding of He ceased to be the cultivator of another's ground, and himself had a stake in the country. Accordingly, he became an influence second to none other in the was mean. ence to extort everything he got from a niggard soil, he watched public expenditure with a cold, saving eye, and in town-meeting could be safely counted upon to raise his voice against anything which was likely to impose a burden on his farm. Subsequent history showed this clearly. Questions of taxation appealed to him at once, and a freedom from all imposts not voted by himself most nearly embodied his idea of independence. In the sphere of his narrow village life, far removed from great cities, he saw

So far as means and mode of life were concerned, these were not very different from himself; they, as well as he, led simple lives. All mingled in the streets, at church and in town-meeting, with an equality which was not the less mutually respectful because it was real.

to which he might not aspire for hisown child. There was no privileged class, no suggestion of caste, or rank, or nobility. If the small farmer chose by dint of severe economy to send his son to college, that son would be a minister and might marry into the gentry. Accordingly, the farmer was very apt to send one son at least to college.

As Edmund and John Quincy were in Braintree typical of the gentry, so Deacons Samuel Bass and John Adams were typical of the farmer class. Through the whole colonial period the deacon was held in high respect; on the Sabbath he sat on his own bench before the pulpit, and on the week-day he and the magistrate and the officers of the militia were the nion service of the first church yet bears his name and title inscribed upon it as one of its givers. Active also in civil life, Deacon Bass represented the town in no less than twelve General Courts between 1641 and 1664. In 1645 he was on the committee to see that the town-marsh should " be improved to the Elders' use," and for several years he was one of three, empowered by the court to 'end small cases in In 1653 he received fifteen votes out of a total of forty-one for the position of ruling elder in the church, and two years later he was one of the commission appointed by the General Court to build a cart-bridge over the Nepouset. Thus - " His virtues walk'd their narrow round, Nor made a pause, nor left a void; And sure the eternal Master found His single talent well employ'd."'

In 1657 a son of Deacon Bass, John by name, married Ruth Alden, the daughter of John and Priscilla Alden, of Plymouth and " Mayflower' fame. By her he had a daughter, Hannah, born in June, 1667. This Hannah Bass presently married Joseph Adams, of Braintree, and on the 8th of February, 1692, she gave birth to John Adams, afterwards in This John Adams, therefore, was the great-grandson of the original Deacon Bass, and one of the hundred and sixty-two descendants born to him before his death. John Adams was in his turn a typical New England

Thacher, of Barnstable, was an excellent man; he was a very holy man; I used to love to hear him pray; he was a counselor and a deacon. I[ have heard him say that of all his titles, that of a deacon he thought the most honorable." Braintree's first deacon, Samuel Bass, has already been referred to as the progenitor of a numerous offspring, for at the time of his death he had seen one hundred and sixty-two descendants. Born in 1601, he came over to New England in 1632, and first settled at Roxbury; from whence, in 1640, he removed to Braintree, there purchasing lands which for over two centuries remained in the hands of his descendants. He was received into the communion of the church in July, 1640, and chosen dea-

John, he had sent to college. The life of the elder John Adams well illustrates what has been called "the sturdy, unostentatious demeanor of those who filled the minor places of usefulness" in early New For nearly forty years his name regularly appears in the records of the town. He passed then by occupation a " cordwainer," or maker of shoes, In 172+ he was tythingman, and in 1727 constable, or collector of In 1734 he was an ensign in the militia, and also selectman; and a little later, having become lieutenant, he volunteered to take care of the town powder, providing a chest for it in his own house, which he thus converted into a magazine. Between 1740 and 1749, being still Lieut. Adams, he is nine times selectman. It was in one of the earlier of these years that his military life came to an end as the result

Quincy. Lieut. John Adams, it will be remembered, refused '' with disdain" the offer of a captaincy from Gooch. But in May, 1747, he had taken his place among the deacons on the bench before the pulpit, and in 1752 he reappears in the records among the Adams, and chosen through four successive years, and again in 1758; fourteen years in all, did he fill the office, 'almost all the business of the town being managed

"Five pounds for John Belcher's widow's maintenance; thirty shillings to Thomas Revell for keeping William Dimblebee." But the unfortunate Dimblebee had already gone to his rest, and this payment was for service performed, as a little further on seven then only in connection with a way through his land. Three years later he died in a season of epidemic. Long after, in referring to him, his son wrote that he could not adequately express the exalted opinions he had " of his wisdom and virtue," and that he was 'a man of strict piety and great integrity ; much esteemed and beloved wherever he was known, which was not far, his sphere of life being not extensive." nities, was composed of laboring people; and, while in Braintree the richest were poor, there is ample evidence that the poorest did not live in abundance. On the contrary, besides the ordinary laborer who simply

Before this entry of 1694 there is one other which throws a gleam of ghastly light on a subject which of It has been the fashion to assert that for certain reasons, traceable to local peculiarities of life or thought, insanity is in New England on the increase, and the census tables have been confidently appealed to in support of this theory. Those advocating the theory have seemed to forget that social statistics are of recent invention, and that the charitable systems of some communities are To compare the now carefully gathers the demented together, and tenderly cares for them in hospitals, with the showing of that same community before its demented were cared for at all, is sufficiently absurd: yet even this is far less absurd than it is to compare the record of such a community with that of some other community which still leaves its insane tied in attics and cellars, or wandering in the streets; and then to argue that the first community, because it cares for the insane and numbers them, is afflicted with an epidemic of insanity from which the last community, because it neither cares for or numbers them, is exempt. It is a mistake to suppose that our age has been fruitful of new social or physical evils. There is a world of truth in Macaulay's remark, was set off, in 1792, one of the first things the selectmen did was to warn fourteen adults, seven of whom had families, to 'depart the limits of the town." Throughout the records of the whole colonial period, which the expense of maintaining the poor bears to all other public charges is most noticeable. It was far heavier than it now is, and it showed a continual tendency to disproportionate growth. And yet the charity of those days was cold. Indeed, anything colder could not well be conceived. in the poor and the unfortunate a right to live; and physical ills which so shock us now are, with scarcely an exception, old; ' that which is new is the intelligence which discerns and the humanity which remedies them."

"Tt was voted that Samuel Speer should build a little house, seven foot long and five foot wide, and set it by his house to secure his sisters, good wife Witty being distracted, and provide for her, and the town by vote agreed to see him well payed and satisfied which shall be thought reasonable." dition that he should "take up therewith and give the Town no Farther Trouble." The year following Abigail cost the town thirty-eight shillings; and at last, in 1707, it was bargained with one '" Samuel Bullard, of Dedham or Dorchester,' that he should take the unfortunate creature and keep her for eighteen pence a week ; and if he cured her he should have ten pounds, but if he failed to cure ber, only twenty shillings. The records contain no further trace of Abigail Neal. But at the same time "' Eben- structed to treat with Josiah Owen ''and give him Twenty pounds money provided he gives bond under his hand to cleare the Town forever of said girle." Mary Owen was no more to be so disposed of than Abigail Neal, and in 1706 forty shillings a year was voted Josiah Owen for her care.

vision made for the insane, - eighteen pence a week for care, or twenty pounds provided bond was given "to clear the town forever of said girl." der. In old Braintree there was no almshouse until shortly before the division of the town. One was finally built in the Middle Precinct in 1786, and Capt. Jonathan Thayer was chosen its first overseer, being allowed £3 12s. for a year's services as such.

It was also a fruitful source of jobbery. John Adams describes how the moment a selectman was elected he was importuned for " the privilege of sup- He then had to visit them; and, if he found they had a legal residence in another town, return them to it. The amount spent for their care was not large, but it was enormous compared with what was spent for other town purposes. In 1770, for instance, it was £90 in a total town expenditure of £245.

This also Nor did Quincy then adopted the practice of putting the care of its poor up at public auction, to be knocked down to those who would undertake it at the lowest price. In 1813 this price averaged " $1.42 each per week, exclusive of sickness and funeral charges." was voted that 'the medical care of the poor be let out by the selectmen to the physician who will undertake that charge at the lowest price." Naturally this its increase. Accordingly, during the six years between 1808 and 1813, both inclusive, out of $18,200 levied by taxation to meet necessary town and parish expenses, $6205, or more than one-third of the whole, went to the support of the poor. They cost more than the church or the schools. The matter was then vigorously taken hold of, and reformed. Nevertheless, the evidence all points to the conclusion that, in proportion to the total of all expenses, the cost of maintaining the poor prior to 1820 was several times what it now is in any well-regulated town. In Quincy it amounted to nearly one-half of the town expenses, those of the parish being deducted. It Undoubtedly had much to do with this excess ; but, making all due allowance for this, it is difficult to avoid the inference that there is proportionally much less extreme poverty in the modern than there was in the colonial Pauperism has distinctly decreased. This is not generally supposed to have been the case; should it prove to be so, a partial explanation, at least, of the fact will probably be found in the This subject Meanwhile it is only necessary here to say that if rum, gin, and cider were now sold as publicly and used as freely in Quincy as they were there sold and used sixty years ago, the increase of pauperism and vice could doubtless be studied clearly enough in the tax-rate and the returns of the almshouse.

In Braintree and Quincy, as in all the other Massachusetts towns, these social problems, of which paumore temperate habits of the people. will have presently to be considered by itself.

perism was one, were, until a comparatively recent date, disposed of in what is commonly known as the plain, practical, business-like way. Unfortunately the problems were complex ; so the plain, practical way of disposing of them proved not to be the right way. Insanity and pauperism could not be hustled out of sight by atown-meeting vote; nor could they be disposed of beyond the current year to those who would undertake the job of dealing with them at the lowest Though excellent for certain purposes, it had g was not adapted to every purpose, and least of all could it work to results through what is now known as a As a means for dealing with complex social problems it is, therefore, not a success. It can no more do that, than it could make discoveries in chemistry or astronomy. But poverty, intemperance, ignorance and vice are found everywhere. The town government is found only in New England ; and it is the object of a work like the present to deal

When John Adams was minister of the federated States at the English Court, a certain Maj. Langbourne, of Virginia, one day dined with him, and in the course of their table-talk noticed, rightfully enough, the difference of character between Virginia and New England.

in Virginia. He desired it; and I recommended to him townmeetings, training-days, town schools and ministers, giving him a short explanation of each article. The meeting-house and school-house and training-field are the scenes where New England men are formed. The virtues and talents of the people are there formed; their temperance, patience, fortitude, prudence, and justice, as well as their sagacity, knowledge, judgment, taste, skill, ingenuity, dexterity, and industry."

In saying this Mr. Adams spoke from actual ob- He, and his ancestors before him, had for a century and a half been a part of that which he described. He thoroughly understood New England. But there was one institution he did not mention, which, for good and ill, was hardly less influential an element in early New England life and action than the Eben Thayer tavern, where a sort of open-house was kept on all election and other public days, and in 1766, John Adams records that a certain candidate on the ticket with himself was defeated because 'the north end people, his friends, after putting in their votes the first time, withdrew for refreshment." Accordingly, it is small matter of surprise that the record contains formal votes forbidding those attending the meetings from standing on the seats.

| matter of common usage, prevailed at those townmeetings was well illustrated by an incident which occurred in 1758. It was the duty of the annually elected town constable to collect all taxes. The office, therefore, was avoided; for not only did it entail much work, but there was a dangerous liability attached to it. Under the law as it then stood the constable had to account for all taxes included in the levy which he had failed to collect, as well as for those he actually received. Nor without reason, therefore, was it argued in the town-meeting of 1766 that the first twenty years after 1640 formal or stated meetings of all the freemen do not seem to have been held, or, if they were, no record of them was made; but from time to time a few of the more prominent church members met at the dwelling-place of one of their number and passed certain votes, some of which were recorded in a book. Not until 1673 was provision made for holding general meetings at specified For over sixty years these were then held in the old stone church, but in 1736 it was voted to hold half of them in the North Precinct and the other The lastnamed edifice, therefore, served not only as a townseasons.

hall, but for a time at least as a magazine, for in 1746 the selectmen were instructed to build a " Closite on the Beams of the Middle Precinct meeting-house (if it be allowed of) as a suitable place to keep the powder." There was nothing sacred about the early New England church building. That the meeting-house and the furniture in it underwent hard treatment at secular meetings scarcely needs to be said. Not only were those gatherings frequent, but the deliberations

So much was the office avoided that as early as 1709, the church bell being cracked, one Daniel Legaree offered to mend it " on condition of his being free from being chosen constable ;"' and the town formally accepted the offer, providing further that "if anything should happen whereby [the bell] should be melted or broken, that [Legaree] will return the same weight of the same metal that he receives." At the March town-meeting of 1761, John Adams says, '' when I had no suspicion, I heard my name pronounced in a nomination of surveyors of highways. I was very wroth, because I knew no better, but said nothing. My friend Dr. Savil came to me and told me that he had nominated me to prevent . 'For,' said

This was quite true; nor could John Adams He had probably thought that, as a college graduate and student of law, he would be exempted from the common rule. If he did think so, he should have known better. There were no exemptions allowed; and, indeed, it was one of the rough town-meeting jokes to elect men constables who had never served, and make them pay the fine. young man of twenty-five, was elected; and the those fines were looked upon as a considerable source of revenue to the town. Col. John Quincy's only son, Norton, graduated in 1736, and two years later, mind, always accompanies advancing years associated with high public office. thought the choice of his son as town constable an act derogatory to him; so he went into the meeting, might be excused from serving constable." Among those to whom he addressed his request there could not have been many who remembered a time when. he had not, as a matter of course, presided at townmeetings. They were not wanting in deference to years and standing; and, if they would defer to any one, they would surely defer to him. But, clearly, they thought that Col. Quiney was now demanding for himself and his an exemption from public service which amounted to little less than a denial of equality. Such an assumption of superiority was inconsistent And so, the record proceeds, "after reasons offered,' the request to be excused was " passed in the negative," and the town treasurer was directed "to call on said Norton Quincy for his fine.' Apparently the old man felt this slight, as he regarded it, deeply, for his name does not again appear in the town records, though it was nine years yet before he died. But young Norton Quincy accepted the rebuke in the true spirit. He paid his fine; and the next year when the town again chose him constable, he quietly accepted the office and performed its duties. Later he was chosen selectman, serving as such for many

Once, when in Amsterdam, John Adams defined the New England man as a " meeting-going animal ;" and again he derived his experience from Braintree, where, as he long subsequently wrote, it was notorious that he had himself " been a church-going mal for seventy-six years, from the cradle." menter, precinct clerk, was paid twenty shillings " for taking pains in beating dogs and keeping them out of the meeting-house on Sabbath days." But the Braintree church-going differed in no wise from the ordinary New England church-going, of which sufficient has been written and said.! For generations all those dwelling in the town as regularly as the Sabbath day came gathered towards the plain, wooden structure, standing on the training-ground. Until the year 1827 the old horse block, for the convenience of the pillion-riding good-wife, stood close to the main entrance. In the galleries sat the boys. Before the altar were the deacons. And here doubtless in the early days not unfrequently in midwinter was it so cold that "the Sacramental Bread was frozen pretty hard, and rattled sadly as broken into the plates."

President Quincy. She came to Quincy as asummer home in 1798, living in the house which Col. Josiah Quincy had built in 1770, and which still stands at the end of the long avenue of elms which her husband set out in 1790. She was wont to describe the Quincy of 1800 as being still a retired village, in which few changes had taken place since the Revolution.

"There were only two churches, both ancient wooden edifices, - the Episcopal and the Congregational. The pews in the centre of the latter, having been made out of long, open seats by successive votes of the town, were of different sizes, and had no regularity of arrangement, and several were entered by narrow passages, winding between those in their neighborhood. when the congregation stood during the prayer, and, at its conclusion, thrown down with a momentum which, on her first attendance, alarmed Mrs. Quincy, who feared the church was The deacons were ranged under the pulpit, and beside its door the sexton was seated, while, from an aperture aloft in the wall, the bell-ringer looked in from the tower to mark tke The voices of the choir in the front gallery were assisted by a discordant assemblage of stringed and wind instruments. In 1806, when the increased population of the town required a larger edifice, the meeting-house was divided into two parts; the pulpit, and the pews in its vicinity, were moved to a convenient distance, and a new piece was

In mentioning the muster-field among the great formative influences of New England, it may well be questioned whether John Adams did not give to

Braintree records few traces of it as an active educational force. Whatever else they were, the New Englanders were not a military race. On the ocean they were at home, and the hardy mariners who, as Burke expressed it, pursued their gigantic game

Keayne in 1636, and which he had "cried divers times, and divers came to see it, but none made claim to it.'" Mrs. Sherman then appeared on the assumed, New England proper has never yet produced any considerable military genius. Church and Peperill, Putnam, Allen, Knox, Stark and Lincoln are names of only local note, while during the war of the Rebellion the great leaders from the New England stock were born and bred far in the interior of the continent. Not one New England soldier achieved a consciousness that the situation was one of their own making, and they proposed to see the thing through. But to disband a New England army has never proved a difficult or delicate task. Once the work in hand was done, the camp quietly and joyously dissolved of itself. An army of Yankee mercenaries sounds like a contradiction in terms. though the Suffolk regiment existed as a military organization through a century of colonial life, and the Braintree companies were always a part of it, there is no reason to suppose that it was ever an effective force. Commissions in it were eagerly sought, and were intrigued for, and the titles of captain, lieutenant, and ensign are continually met with in the records ; but, except in time of military excitement, the training-days were few and far apart, and partook apparently more of the character of a rough country jollification than of war. Certainly, when Washington took command of the provincial army at Cambridge, neither its discipline nor its equipment bespoke a martial race. It was little more than a mob of intelligent men, organized by localities, and, as sportsmen, accustomed from youth up to the handling of guns.

The first commander of the Braintree company was Capt. Robert Keayne, whose name is more familiarly connected with a great litigation carried on between him and * one Sherman's wife," springing out of listed the sympathies of the whole community on one side and the other, resulting finally in the separation of the Massachuseets Legislature into two bodies, and the introduction of the Senate asa feature in American polity. Capt. Keayne was presently succeeded in the command of the Braintree company by William Tyne, the Boston merchant who bought Mount Wollaston of Coddington. Capt. Tyng represented Braintree in the General Court, and died in 1654 the richest man in the province. To him succeeded Capt. Richard Brackett, who was deacon and town clerk as well, holding his military commission until he reached the ripe He resigned in 1684; and to trace his successors thereafter is matter of hardly local interest, even though shortly after 1700 the town had so increased that it had two companies, one

The training-field may have been overestimated as a factor in the making of New England, but to overestimate the influence of the school in that making would be difficult. in the earlier period, and above it in the more recent. Prior to 1830 it was below it. the Braintree records which indicate that a public

Latin school was established in the town at a very early period, though the exact date cannot be ascertained. It was probably designed to prepare youths author, extempore and decline perfectly the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongue." Yet this Latin school could hardly have been a public school in the modern sense of the term, and was probably only Teacher Flynt's side of his wife Margery's institution for "instructing young gentlewomen." If this was so, he in it fitted for Harvard not only his own son Henry, but also Benjamin Tompson, the son of his colleague, afterwards the first regular schoolmaster of the town. The school-house, which must have been a structure of the humblest possible description, stood at the side of the main street and Nor does it seem to have been built until the year 1680, so that for forty years prior to that time all the teaching the children got must have been at home, or in the house At last, in 1679, the town agreed with Benjamin Tompson that

"the rent of the town's land, made up to thirty | pounds." 'Tompson had graduated at Harvard eight | years before, and was seeking to make his way as a_ That calling afforded him a scanty sup- - Yet | agreement between the town and Tompson was that every child should carry in to him half a cord of wood, besides the quarter money, every year. From a subsequent vote, in 1700, it would seem that this for by the schoolmaster to the selectmen as part of his salary. In 1701 the fee for tuition was fixed at "five shillings a year, and proportionably for any part of it." master, or guardian of a school child should, on that |

But in 1715, Mr. Tompson had ceased from teach- He died at Roxbury in 1714, leaving " behind | him an uneasy world, eight children, and twentying. eight grandchildren ;" and on his tombstone he is referred to as "ye Renowned Poet of N. Engl." In Braintree he had served as town clerk, as well as physician and school-teacher; and, after being en-_ gaged with it in a long controversy, which in 1700 he compromised on payment of five pounds, he seems to The building in which he taught is said to have measured some twenty feet by sixteen, and that which elsewhere replaced it in 1715 was of the same dimensions. The old | school-house was then sold "for three pounds paid into the treasury." The new building sufficed for the | needs of the North Precinct until as late as 1763. The history of the Braintree schools, no less than that of the church, shows in a striking way how the chrysalis stage of development lasted to the year 1830. During all that long period the same identical system | was pursued, the difference being only in degree. The precinct grew and became a town, and the town | increased in population ; but not until 1830 was the strain from within sufficiently strong to rend the integument. About the year 1720 the practice of exacting payment for each child taught was abandoned, and the whole expense became a charge on the town. The master was then paid thirty-four pounds a year, | and the town was noted for the excellence of its | school in which boys were fitted for Harvard, no less than forty-seven having gone there from the First Precinct before the year 1740. In 1792 this school | certainly had not improved on its earlier record, and the sum of seventy-five pounds was appropriated for | its support. In 1793 a new school-house was built |

'Con the training-field" and opposite the church, the cost of which was estimated at ninety pounds. The school-room was twenty-eight feet long by twenty wide. In 1815 this building was burned, and in 1817 another was constructed, to serve both as townhall and school-house, which cost a little over $2000, and measured fifty-five feet by thirty. Up to 1800 all children whose parents desired them to be taught In a town the size of Quincy their so doing implied a daily walk measured in many cases by miles. For the smaller children this was generally found to be too severe, and provision was made for local or '"' dame" schools, for which specific sums varying from $+ to $40 were annu- Yet in the year 1820 the whole amount voted for the support of the centre school, " inally appropriated.

cluding ink and fuel," as well as the pay of both a male It is now, therefore, small matter for surprise that a committee then reported the school-room so crowded that the scholars, 204 in number, " were obliged to wait one for the other for seats, notwithstanding the master gave up his desk, and used every other means in his power to accom- Still the town had not yet reached the stage of differentiation.

' committee went on to submit a plan for certain alterations, at an estimated cost of $200, by which 250 scholars were to be brought together in one room and under one master, "' with an assistant when necessary." Then in 1825 the master was censured for not attending more faithfully to his duties ; whereupon he replied that he was not paid enough ($450 per annum) to support him, but if the town would increase his salary to $500 he would devote all his time to the school. This increased the appropriation to $745, leaving $245 with which to pay the female assistant and defray all other At last, in 1829, the condition of affairs had become intolerable, and provision was made

Of the old town school of Braintree, and the system of instruction pursued in it, it is needless to speak at length. Both have often been described. They were wholly primitive. No print, or black-board, or map, or motto adorned the grimy, blackened walls within children of both sexes and of everyage. They sat in twos and threes on benches behind rude rows of desks cut and hacked and mutilated by the jackknives of successive generations. 'The larger scholars, among the rear, the sexes on opposite sides, while the smallest of the little children occupied low benches close to the teacher's chair. Great logs of wood blazed in the fireplace, or later in stoves one of which was at each end of the room, and before these they read and ciphered and wrote. The period was one neither of refinement or sentiment, and both at home and in the school the rod was freely used. The children were neither taught much nor were they well taught; for through its time. things to talk of the good old times, and of the thoroughness of its simple methods; but examination only that the times have changed. Brutality, ignorance, and coarseness have not yet vanished from the world, nor are they soon likely to vanish from it: but it is safe to say that if the Braintree village school of 1790 should for a single fortnight be brought back to the ing, called at the shortest possible legal notice, had been held; and this meeting would probably culminate in a riot, in the course of which school-houses as well as school would be summarily abated as a disgrace and a nuisance.

But if in the matter of schools constant effort has in the lapse of time worked a vast improvement in Quincy, the improvement as respects the tavern has been yet more marked. None the less during the colonial period the tavern, and the tavern-going habits of the people also, were a marked feature in New England life, and exerted a powerful political and educational influence. In the days before railroads, mails, and newspapers the tavern was the common gathering-place of the town, where the news was circulated and the events of the day discussed. The modern caucus is a substitute for it. Here the politics of the village were arranged, and here the questions at issue between the colonies and the mother- From his early life John He declared that

"Within the course of the year before the meeting of Congress, in 1774, on a journey to some of our circuit courts in Massachusetts, I stopped one night at a tavern in Shrewsbury, about forty miles from Boston, and as I was cold and wet, I sat down at a good fire in the bar-room to dry my great coat and saddle bags till a fire could be made in my chamber. There presently came in, one after another, half a dozen, or half a score, substantial yeomen of the neighborhood, who, sitting down to the fire after lighting their pipes, began a lively con- As I believed I was unknown to all One said, 'The Another answered, 'No wonder the people of Boston are distracted. Oppression will A third said, 'What would you say if a fellow should come to your house and tell you he was come to take a list of your cattle, that Parliament might tax you for them at so much a head 7

And how should you feel if he was to go and break open your barn, to take down your oxen, cows, horses, and sheep?' ' What should I say?" replied the first; *'T would knock him in the head.' 'Well,' said a fourth, ake . re? . » a ake aw: y . ; , serves to make those living in the present thankful | Rowe's wharf, they can take away your barn and my house,

After much more reasoning in this style, a fifth, who had as yet been silent, broke out, ' Well, it is high time for us to rebel; we must rebel some time or other, and we had better rebel now than wasted ; here diseases, vicious habits, bastards, and legislators were frequently begotten." potency as a political educator and influence he was a living witness. thus described one of these colonial tavern debates :

"Tf you ride over this whole province you will find that taverns are generally too numerous. In most country towns in this country you will find almost every other house If you call, you will find dirt enough, very miserable accommodations of provision Yet, if you sit the evening, you will find the house full of people drinking drams, flip, toddy, carousing, swearing; but especially plotting with the landlord, to get him at the next town-meeting an election

Later in life Mr. Adams was wont often to say that it was in silently listening to these tavern talks among farmers as he rode the circuits that he first came to realize that American independence was both inevitable and close at hand. But the school, though effective, was dangerous. The intemperance of the colonial period is a thing now difficult to realize ; and it seems to have pervaded all classes from the clergy to the pauper. Cider was the beverage of the soil; but the people of New England had inherited a love of strong drink direct from their Saxon ancestry, and cider failed to satisfy it. They craved something more potent. Their West India trade soon

"Tt isan unhappy thing that later years a kind of strong Drink called Rum has been common amongst us, which the poorer sort of People, both in Town and Country, can make themselves drunk with. They that are poor and wicked too, can for a penny or two pence make themselves drunk. I wish to the Lord some Remedy may be thought of for the prevention of this evil."

A beast associating with the worst beasts in the neighborhood, running to all the shops and private houses, swilling brandy, If the ancients drank wine and rum as our people drink rum and cider,

Not until after 1830 did the great temperance movement make its influence felt, and for a century and a half, therefore, it is not too much to say that rum was the bane of New England. Braintree seems to have been scourged by it, even more than most of her sister towns. . At the very time the town was incorporated, at the May General Court of 1640, Martin Sanders, who a year before had been '' alowed to keepe a house of intertainment"' at the Mount, and whose name was one of the eight subscribed to the church covenant there, was '' alowed to draw wine at Braintree." and the North Precinct records state that " after considerable debate at the meeting, concerning the raising of the new meeting-house, the question was put whether the committee should purchase Bread, Cheese, Sugar, Rum, Sider and Beer at the cost of the precinct, and it passed in the affirmative." Tutor Flynt made his journey to Portsmouth. He was seventy-eight years old, an instructor in the college, and he had for his companion an undergraduate of twenty. At every public house at which they he was revived by 'two or three bowls of lemon punch, made pretty sweet," which, as they '" were pretty well charged with good old spirit," 'very pleasant and sociable.' In 1758, Samuel Quincy and John Adams were admitted to the province bar. After the oath had been administered on motion of Gridley and Pratt, the leading lawyers of their day, the two young men " shook hands with the bar, and received their congratulations, and invited them over to Stone's to drink some punch, where the most of us resorted, and had a very cheerful chat." It is not easy to imagine leading counsel of to-day drink- ing with students in a tap-room. Again, in 1778 Count d'Estaing came to Boston with the French fleet. Mrs. Adams visited it and could not sufficiently express her admiration of the bearing of officers and men, which she said ought to make Americans *' blush What delighted her most was, that "' not one officer has been

So bad had the condition of affairs grown about the year 1750 that John Adams declared that several towns within his knowledge had "at least a dozen Suffolk County he asserted

'neighborhood with necessary liquors in quantities and at the cheapest rates." frequented as they were by a "tippling, nasty, vicious crew,' had become "the nurseries of our legislators,' for there were many who could "be in-

Aroused to the necessity of doing something to restrain this growing evil, the young village lawyer had an article looking to some reduction of the number of licensed houses inserted in the warrant for the May town-meeting of 1761. A full debate was had upon it and a vote passed, which is chiefly curious now as indicating what that condition of affairs was

" Voted, That, although Licensed Houses, so far as they are couveniently situated, well accommodated, and under due Regulation for the Relief and Entertainment of Travellers and Strangers, may be a useful Institution, yet there is Reason to apprehend that the present prevailing Depravity of Manners, and the shameful neglect of Religious and Civil Duties, so highly offensive in the sight of God, and injurious to the peace and Welfare of Society, are ina great measure owing to ile unnecessary increase of Licensed Houses.

" Voted, That for the future, there be no Persons in this Town Licensed for retailing spirituous Liquors, and that there be three persons only approbated by the Selectmen as Innholders, suitably situated, one in each Precinct.

"* Voted, That the Persons who are approbated as Innholders for the coming year, oblidge themselves by written Instruments, under their Hands and Seals, to retail spirituous Liquors to the Town Inhabitants, as they shall have occasion therefor, at the same price by the Gallon or smaller Quantity, as the same are usually sold, by Retail, in the Town of Boston, and upon the performance of the above condition there be no Person or Persons approbated by the Selectmen as Retailers." troubles then shortly ensued, and John Adams was called away to larger fields of usefulness. Long afterwards, referring to this experience, he wrote : enthusiasm, against ardent spirits, the multiplication of taverns, retailers, and dram-shops and tippling-houses. Grieved to the heart to see the number of idlers, thieves, sots, and consumptive patients made for the use of physicians, in those infamous seminaries, I applied to the Court of Sessions, procured a committee of inspection and inquiry, reduced the number of But I only acquired the reputation of The number licensed houses, ete. a hypocrite and an ambitious demagogue by it. of licensed houses was soon reinstated, drams, grog, and sotting were not diminished, and remain to this day as deplorable as

When John Adams made his futile attempt at temperance reform, and for seventy years thereafter, the town in which he lived was as respects intemperance no better and no worse than her sister towns. In every store in which West India goods were sold, and there were no others, behind the counter stood the casks of Jamaica and New England rum, of gin and brandy. Their contents were sold by the gallon, the bottle, or the glass.

and when during the Revolution Mrs. Adams sent | _ townspeople and of their families with a Massachua list of current prices to her husband she always included rum, looking upon it as just as important a farm Three shillings a gallon, or ninepence a quart was a high price; and John Adams wrote back to her from Philadelphia, "' Whisky is used here instead of rum, and I don't see but it is just as good." stories high, they faced the road, and before them was the hitching-rail ; while stables and covered standingsheds stretched away on either side or to the rear. A piazza or gallery ran along the front, on which sat in summer those who most frequented the house ; while in winter they gathered around the bar-room fires. The village topers were as much recognized characters as the minister and the magistrate. They remained so in Quincy down to the beginning of the railroad period. he children all knew them, nor as they reeled through the streets did they attract more than a passing glance. Prematurely old, they drank themselves into their graves, and another generation of the same sort succeeded them.

At a later period great numbers of the more energetic youth of the town went out to California and the West, a portion of the New England migration. It was astonishing and Jamentable to note the destruetion then wrought by this inherited vice. Failure was the rule; and in the majority of cases the failure In this matter it is easy to charge exaggeration, and neither the gravestone nor the registry bear witness to the facts. Those who remember the old condition of affairs also are fast passing away. Yet any man of middle life who has talked of his setts man or woman born near the close of the last century, has been exceptionally placed if he has not heard the same old tale of lamentation. As the name of one after another is recalled, the words " He drank himself to death" seem so often repeated, that ealled '"stone-wall." Even as late as 1838 it was voted in Quincy town-meeting that 'the paupers be allowed a temperate use of ardent spirits when they work on the road or farm." bought from the retailers, and they thus constituted one | Consequently, a Donnybrook fair was in Yankee indistinct class of licensed sellers. The inn-holders were less the other proposition is true. In New England law-abiding habits of the people during the colonial period modified to some extent the evils of intemperance. The New Englander was neither an Irishman nor an Indian; and so he did not in his cups become fighting drunk like the first, or sodden drunk like the last. The habits and traditions and inground training of a race assert themselves even through liquor.

ebriety as unknown a feature as a Mohawk war-dance. When they were sober the people were not quarrelsome or lawless or shiftless; and consequently when sachusetts were either more law-abiding, or more selfrestrained than the latter, is a proposition which accords neither with tradition nor with the reason of things. The habits of those days were simpler than those of the present ; they were also essentially grosser. The community was small; and it hardly needs to be said that where the eyes of all are upon each, the general scrutiny is a safeguard to morals. It is in cities, not in villages, that laxity is to be looked for. Of course, it hardly needs to be said that in old Braintree and early Quincy the thought of robbery or violence scarcely entered into the heads of the people. They did not require bolts to their doors nor bars to now and again, especially in the relations between the sexes, we get glimpses of incidents in the dim past which are as dark as they are suggestive. are connected with Quincy, - incidents which for long haunted, and have given to old and once honored names a weird-like, uncanny sound. The illegitimate child was more commonly met with in the last than in the present century, and bastardy cases furnished a class of business with which country lawyers seem to has since become. People did not live so long. This is opposed to the common belief, because exceptional cases of old age in each family are always remembered, while the average death is ignored. Some century, will cause a whole race to be reputed longlived, though haif those belonging to it died before forty. As might have been expected, the drinking habits of the last century generated a class of diseases of their own, besides delirium tremens. Men broke down in middle life, dying of kidney and bladder troubles, or living with running sores which could not be closed. It is singular to find how common it was for fathers to die at an age between forty and fifty. Rheumatism was more prevalent then than now. <A closer and more scientific observation has given new names to old ills, tracing them back to their sources; but, referring to the frequent cases of part of his life, the last and shrewdest medical practitioner in Quincy of the old, country-doctor school was wont to remark that he had known the new disease for fifty years, but they "used to call it dropsy, and the patients died." the smallpox periodical, but in 1735 the diphtheria

Indeed, in this latter year more than a hundred and twenty died of it in the neighboring town of Weymouth out of a population of only twelve hundred. In 1761 an epidemic raged among the old people of Braintree, carrying off seventeen in one neighborhood. In 1775, during the excitement of the siege of Boston, a chronic dysentery prevailed to such an extent that three, four, and even five children were lost in single families, and Mrs. John Adams, writing from amid the general distress, could only say, '' The dread upon the minds of the people of catching the distemper is almost as great as if it were the smallpox."

Notwithstanding such facts as these, it ever has been, and probably always will be, the custom to look back upon the past as a simpler, a purer, and a better time than the present; it seems more Arcadian and natural, sterner and stronger, less selfish and more heroic. As respects New England and Massachusetts, this idea is especially prevalent among those of the later generations, and, indeed, has been almost The crowing laxity of morals, the decay of public spirit, the vulgarity of manners and the general tendency of the age to deteriorate, have from the very beginning of New England been matters of common observation. Each generation has observed these symptoms with alarm ; and each generation has in turn held up its fathers and mothers before its children as models, the classic severity and homely, simple virtues of which they might well imitate, but could scarcely hope to equal. Those fathers and those mothers were not for days like these.

Yet a careful study of the past reveals nothing more substantial than filial piety upon which to base this grateful fiction. The earlier times in New England were not pleasant times in which to live; the earlier generations were not pleasant generations to live with. One accustomed to the variety, luxury, and refinement of modern life, if carried suddenly back into the admired existence of the past would, the moment his surprise and amusement had passed away, experience an acute and lasting attack of homesickness and disgust. The sense of loneliness incident to utter separation from the great outside world, the absence of those comforts of life which long habit has converted into its necessities, the stern conventionalities and narrow modes of thought, the coarse, hard, monotonous existence of the old country town would, to one accustomed to the world of to-day, not only and those to him wholly unreadable, Sunday the sole | holiday, and the church, the tavern, and the village | store the only places of resort. Last week's politics | at home and last month's abroad, the weather, the crops, | the births, the deaths, and the Sunday sermon would | be the subjects of droning talk. Braintree had been settled more than a century anda half, and the town of | Quincy had for three years been set off from it before a post-office was established in the North Precinct. | That it was established here even then was probably | due to the fact that John Adams was Vice-President. The

Before 1830 not a single copy of a daily books the case was not much better. A library, in | the sense in which the word is now used, was a thing | unknown. Harvard College possessed one, it is true, | and by 1830 the Boston Athenzeum had reached a | certain degree of growth; but in Quincy, only after 1800 was there even a poor collection of ordinary | standard books of the day, which, owned by a social | club, were allowed sluggishly to circulate among its After 1788, John Adams had a valuable | private collection, which he subsequently left to the town; but the works in it were little adapted for general reading, and the restrictions put upon its use

Before 1830 the people of the town, as a whole, never | having been accustomed to books and reading, did | not really know what a library was or how to use it. |

Two generations of newspapers, railroads, and bookstores were needed to convert the New Englanders of | the interior into a really reading race. |

Going back to the earlier period, the Bible, and | that alone, seems to have been found everywhere; | while in the houses of the gentry might be seen | copies of Shakespeare and Milton, a few volumes of | the classics, the "Spectator" and the " Tatler," the | philosophical works of Locke and of Bolingbroke, a number of sermons and theological works now wholly forgotten, and, if the owner was a lawyer, a doctor or | a minister, a few professional books. As a young | man, on a Sunday, John Adams, in the old house at | the foot of Penn's Hill, read Baxter's "* Enquiry into | the Nature of the Human Soul," and, for amusement, | " Ovid's ' Art of Love' to Mrs. Savil."

The sensations of John Adams when he came back to this vegetating existence after having for thirty | years been part of great events have already been

Yet he at least knew what he went back to, and expected nothing else. It would be otherwise with a visitor bred to modern usages. In his ease an illusion would be dispelled. If his experience chanced to fall on a Sabbath, he would pass a day of veritable torture. Were the period during the last century, in order to escape the tedium of the dwelling, if for no other reason, he would be forced to spend weary hours in a building scarcely as weather-proof and far less comfortable than a modern barn, in which the only suggestion of warmth was in that promise of an hereafter which was wont to emanate from the orthodox pulpit. The remaining hours of the dreary day he would pass seated in a wooden, straightbacked chair, roasting one-half of his person before a fire of blazing wood, while the other half shivered under the weight of an overcoat. In his bedroom he would find no water for washing; for if exposed which ranks closest to godliness, then, judged by nineteenth century standards, it is well that those who lived in the eighteenth century had a sufficiency of the latter quality to make good what they lacked of the former. bath-room in the town of Quincy, and it is very questionable whether there was any utensil then made an outgrowth, by any means in family requisition each In 1650 it is recorded that those dwelling in certain portions of the British Isles did

When the temperature of a bedroom ranges far , below the freezing-point, there is small inducement for the person who has slept therein to waste any So when Monday morning came, the visitor of the good old days would huddle on his clothes and go down, blue and shivering with cold, to the sitting- and breakfastroom, in which he would find a table spread with a sufficiency of food, neither well cooked nor well served. The salted meat and heavy bread made of Indian might be offered him. All day he would look in vain for a newspaper, or a letter, or even a distant echo from the outside world.. Weary with the they hauled and split wood, husked corn, or tended the stock. Then he would find his way through the village. On the bare and dreary road he would meet only an occasional chaise or traveler on horseback, from the half-warmed school-house in which they huddled together on the long, hard benches, shivering for hours. into it in search of warmth and comfort, he would understand at a glance why the New Englander was intemperate. There, gathered around the great fire in the bar-room, would be a half-dozen or more rough, sinewy Yankees smoking their pipes, drinking scenes of drunkenness might occur, but here was an escape from tedium, and a natural craving for society and excitement was gratified. It was the one form of sociability open to the average New Englander through the lon

With the tavern the circle would be complete, unless the stranger also stopped at the village store. There again he would find the occupationless lounger seated on the stools or leaning against the counter ; and there also rum would be on sale, drawn by the glass or by the bottle from the barrels on tap at the rear of the room. now be exhausted. It would only remain to return to the point of commencement, and, seated in the wooden chair, resume " Baxter on the Soul" or the "Tatler," or " Paradise Lost," before the great wood fire. tion across the little stage.

And so it went on as generation followed generachange either expected or desired. To use Burke's supremely happy phrase, it was the existence of a

Chapter X Xix The North Precinct Annals

As generally understood, the political record of an old New England town is the narrative of the connectiou of that town with the great current of external events. Yet, when so treated, it cannot but lose in great degree both its individuality and its significance. The events of large historical moment which have occurred within the limits of any town are necessarily In most cases they are already familiar, and to go over them in a purely local connection is but to repeat a story which has been sufficiently told. This is not the function of the town historian. His function is to develop, in so far as he can, whatever of individuality there may have been in a particular unit of a Having a general family resemblance, just as the individuals composing a community resemble each other generally, each of the Massachusetts towns in the early days had also characteristics and peculiarities of itsown. In making a portrait of the individual, the attempt of the artist should be to impress on his canvas the traits peculiar to that individual, - not those which he had in common with all his neighbors. So in dealing with the New England town, its historian should cut loose as far as pos-

For them there was no prophet, no chief, no lord, no bishop, no king. As such, they were neither guided nor protected from above. They stood on their own legs, such as they were; and there was no one to hold them up. Accordingly, each town as an organized political body worked out its problems in its own way. Neither were those problems simple. On the contrary, it has already been seen that in the course of the first hundred and ninety years of muncipal life Braintree and Quincy had to deal in a practical way with almost every one of those questions which are wont to perplex statesmen. Religious heresies, land-titles, internal improvements and means of communication ; education, temperance, pauperism, and the care of the insane ; public lands, currency, taxation, and municipal debt, - all these presented themselves, and the people assembled in town-meeting had to, and did, in some fashion work out a solution of them. wholly unaided, did they fail to do so. There was fortunately no inspiration in New England, nor did any saviours of society appear. It is needless to say that the solutions worked out were often rough, and superficial, and wrong. None the less they were the best of which those people were capable, and so best for them. They were working out their destiny in their own way, and paying for their experience as they is to be sought. The political philosopher can there study the slow development of a system as it grew from the germ up. The details are trivial, monotonous, and not easy to clothe with interest. Yet the volumes which contain them are the most precious of archives. the hardly legible letters of the ill-spelled words are written in ink grown pale with age, but they are all we have left to tell us of the first stages of a politi- the towne's affairs; and a heavy money penalty is imposed on every sale of lands to any except '" such Next, though an interval of more than two months intervenes between it and the last order, is a regulation which foreshadows influence of the new world. imagine that when the idea of full human self-government, first slowly hammered into practical shape in the New England towns, and as yet far from perfected, shall have permeated the civilized world and assumed final shape, then these town records will be

But it has already been mentioned that in the earliest colonial period town-meetings in the modern sense of the word were not regularly held, and no record was made of the action taken by the selectmen,

Yet there is a singular fitness in the opening heading. It is in these words, "The Schoole and. nen follows the memorandu conveyance Land." Then foll th morandum ofa conve e nally allotted at " the Mount" to William Coddington passed into the hands of the town as common lands, and was by it devoted to be the support of a school. The first recorded act of Braintree, therefore, was to make a provision for common-school teaching ; nor is the fact already alluded to unworthy of second mention, that the land thus set apart has even to the present time paidan annual rent for the purposes to which it was then dedicated. 'he second entry, made in the following year, is for the encouragement and protection of home enterprise. A monopoly in grinding corn is secured to Richard Wright so long as the mill he had built remains in the hands of him and his will not serve the plantation, and that he or they will not build another in convenient time." this mill, and the stones which went into its foundation walls, are still pointed out.