Quincy City (part 5 of 12)

£150 due to the estate of Col. Quincy, which ran | along for sixteen years, from 1775 to 1791. There was another of £84 due to Capt. John Vinton, which was adjusted, in 1786, only after ordinary trouble and expense." Another £84 was in the hands of Deacon Moses French. In 1791 the treasurer was authorized to borrow a sum not exceeding two hundred pounds for the purpose of discharging the town debts. Each of these | settlements was attended with much vexatious litigation. The lenders had first taken the selectmen's security for the repayment of their loans, and afterwards time-notes of the town treasurer. The currency had then depreciated. The collectors had been unable to get the taxes in, and had defaulted. One owed the town a balance of nearly two hundred and fifty pounds. This was in 1785. Again, in | 1791, John Vinton, as one of the bondsmen of Gaius Thayer, then collector, came forward in town-meeting and announced that Thayer was likely to fall short in his payments, and he was then in the hands of an officer on two executions issued by the town treasurer ; and the town thereupon voted that the assessors should '' consult any gentleman learned in the law respecting the aforesaid difficulty." Under these circumstances Braintree seems to have shared to the full in the general discontent, and in May, 1786, after choosing its representative, a committee of nine This committee was further directed to present these instructions to the town "for their approbation previous to their being delivered to the representative." Accordingly, at the adjourned meeting three weeks later the instructions were submitted, and, in the words of the record, '"'were debated upon untill it was dark in the house, and the inhabitants Dispersed without passing any Vote whatever."

Ten days | later a special town-meeting was summoned to further consider the instructions, and a new committee of five was appointed. The town was now clearly bent on action, for it gave its committee thirty minutes only in which to consider the subject. At the end of that time the moderator called the meeting to order, and the committee submitted its report. The | town's representative was thereupon instructed to use his efforts to secure the following results :

Ist. To remove the Court from Boston. 2dly. To Tax all Public Securities. | 3dly. To Tax money on hand and on Interest. 4thly. To Lower the Sallery of place men.

This was in July. In September following, three months before Shay's outbreak, these instructions were more fully matured at another town-meeting. In their final shape they breathed the full communistic spirit of the time, and contrast singularly with the better papers of ten years before. A new set of men had come forward in town affairs who could neither write English nor grasp principles of political action. They accordingly now indulged in the following rhetorical bombast : and inveterate foes. Noas Loyal Subjects and Cytizens inflamed with true Patriotism we feel ourselves chearfully willing to lend our aid at all times in supporting the dignity of Government, but in as much as there are numerous Grievances or intolerable Burthens by some means or other lying on the Good Subjects of this republic. Our Eyes under Heaven are upon the Legislature of this Commonwealth and their names will shine Brighter in the American annals by preserving the invaluable Liberties of their own People than if they ware to

Then followed in ten specifications a statement of the grievances complained of, and the remedies suggested therefor. 'These it is needless to repeat. What the people peculiarly objected to was paying their debts. were collected was consequently peculiarly obnoxious

_ on that order of Gentlemen denominated Lawyers, the completion of whos modern conduct appears to us to tend rather to the distruction than the preservation of this Commonwealth."

Yet in this matter, also, the town-meeting would The discontent, for which some ground did exist, there found expression, and the people felt better for it. The spirit of dissatisfaction at least had its say.

counties and the adjournment of courts confronted by bayonets and hickory clubs. On the 12th of January Governor Bowdoin's appeal to law-abiding citizens was issued, and the Suffolk militia were called In a few hours a company was organized at

Massachusetts

It was Pr roned of eee gehen men tonnes the oft | cers, and upon the roll are fourld all the old Braintree names. On the 22d of the following February these men were disbanded at Northampton, and the expense incurred by the State on their account was £154 9s. 4d.

The vigorous action of the authorities had put down the rioters; but the depth of discontent may be inferred from the popular odium which seems to have Take Brain- In April, 1786, Governor Bowdoin had received there 41 votes, - all that were cast. One year later, having in the mean time actually saved civil government to the State, he received 40 votes, and Gen. suppression, 3, while his opponent, Hancock, had 181. Yet time, in which to let matters adjust themselves, was all that now was needed.

Twelve months later, when John Adams returned from England, after nine years of absence, he spoke of the increase of population as "wonderful." As compared with what he had seen in Europe, he was amazed at the plenty and cheapness of provisions, though the scarcity of money was certainly very great. The industries of the country he found in a much better condition than he expected. Politically the state of affairs was less to his taste, and he wrote that '' the people in a course of annual elections had discarded from their confidence almost all 'the old, staunch, firm patriots who conducted the Revolution, and had called to the helm pilots much more selfish and much less skillful." The Braintree records bear testimony to the correctness of his judgment.

For the next few years no matters of considerable importance would seem to have engaged the attention of the town. The people were hard at work

No such restriction on the power of a town-meeting had ever been attempted before, and it is a matter of surprise that no one recorded his dissent to it now. But under this vote the almshouse was built and the town poor moved into it, the overseer receiving £3 10s. for his services the first year, and his suecessor £6 for the second year.

The need of a reorganization of the schools ae began to make itself felt. In 1790 an attempt was made to divide the town into districts. A committee was appointed to consider the matter, but its report, when it made one, was rejected, and the town decided to go on in the old way. It accordingly appropriated £150 for " schooling" during that year, and ordered

"that there be a Gramer School keept nine months, three in each precienct beginning in the North and so on to the Middle and South, which will include all the time to next march, such a Master to be agreed with as will be willing to Teach english as well as Latten, and also to teach wrighting and Cypering."

The division of Suffolk County was agitated. How best to take care of the poor was a standing subject for debate. One party wished to build a poor-house and provide for them in it.

In 1785 this party carried their point, and the town ordered that an almshouse should be built "in the form of a Barrack, to be thirty-three feet in length and sixteen feet wide." But the other party succeeded in having this vote reconsidered at another meeting, held during the same month.

voted the building but clinched the matter by adding | that this vote should not be reconsidered at any future | meeting unless one hundred and seventy-three mem- : article ''to see if it be the minds of the Town that all Town Officers that may be chosen this year serve Though the tenth and last article in the warrant, this was first taken up, and, 'after a considerable debate," called for. Whereupon, the record says, " the House divided. 98 against paying and 99 for paying; so it

The action of April, 1790, adverse to the division of the town into school districts, seems to have caused Those living there felt that they were numerous enough and sufhgreat discontent in the North Precinct.

ciently prosperous to have a school of their own. They naturally did not like sending their children, during three of the nine months' yearly schooling, two miles away to the Middle Precinct, and, during another three months, four miles away to the South Precinct. Yet the only alternative to so doing, under the arrangement which the town had voted, was to give the children but three months' schooling a year ; Accordingly, the question of political separation, first agitated eighty years before and which had now slept There was an article relating to it in the town warrant for May 10, 1790. After considerable debate, it was then dismissed. In the latter part of that year one hundred and twenty inhabitants of the North Prefor over thirty years, was again discussed.

cinct, and fifteen inhabitants of that portion of Dorchester and Milton lying immediately south of the | Neponset, joined in a petition to the General Court | that the regions in which they lived might be incor- | porated together as a distinct town. The petition © came before the Senate for its action in January, 1791. While it was still pending a Braintree townmeeting was called to consider it.

The struggle between the precincts took place over the choice of moderator, and the record says that "after a long dispute it was finally voted to chuse the moderator by ballot and Maj. Stephen Penniman was chosen by 93 votes out of 152." In other words, the Middle and South precincts were united against the | North, and outnumbered it. A committee of six was then chosen to appear before the Legislature by | counsel to oppose the division of the town, and its | representative was instructed to use his influence to the same end. Nor did the other precincts desist | from their opposition to the inevitable so long as opposition to it could be made. The dislike to any- | thing which looks like political dismemberment seems ingrained. In the case of New England it is diffcult to say which the people most objected to - the | surrender of local independence through consolidation | or the supposed loss of local influence through separation. Action towards either has never failed to awaken a conservative feeling, which saw nothing but political disaster in not keeping things exactly as they then were. This was the experience of Braintree in 1791; and in September of that year another townmeeting was heid which voted to put forth one last effort before the legislative committee in behalf of On the 22d | of February, 1792, one hundred and fifty-two years lacking only three months, after its original incorporation as Braintree, the North Precinct was set off, and ordered to be called by the name of Quincy. The act, also, was signed, as Governor of the State, by John Hancock, who had himself been born, brought up, and married in the territory thus made a town. It has already been explained how the name of Quincy chanced to be selected. At the time the | choice was not wholly satisfactory. Governor Hancock was then at the height of that personal popularity | which he enjoyed in Massachusetts to a degree which no other public man has since equaled, and there were those who did not forget that he was a native of the North Precinct. They wanted the new town to be named after him. Richard Cranch, who, it will | be remembered, had selected the name of Quincy, was | at this time, and in the absence of John Adams, the | overtaken by financial disaster, and was now dead. Born in England in 1726, Mr. Cranch came to Massachusetts before he had yet attained his majority. In 1851 he became interested in the Germantown land speculation, and nine years later he married whose sister, Abigail, two years later, in 1764, became the wife of John Adams. Consequently, Mr. Cranch and John Adams were brothers-in-law, and their wives were granddaughters of Col. John Quincy. Hence, probably, the selection of the name. Mr. Cranch, after representing Braintree repeatedly in the General Court, had been in the State Senate. Subsequently he was a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, as well as Quincy's first postmaster ; but his name is now chiefly remembered through his son and among lawyers, in connection

Mr. Cranch was the justice of the peace designated by name in the act incorporating the new town to It was held on the 8th of March, 1792, and the usual officers were chosen. Maj. Ebenezer Miller was put at the head of the board of selectmen, showing that his former Church and Tory proclivities were not remembered against him. At the meeting in May for the choice of a representative not to take up the article in the warrant relating This settled the question; and the name of Quincy, thus preserved, has since been multito that matter.

ensued shows few points of general interest. a period of peace. made good the losses of the war, and they were intent on bettering their condition. Year after year the town offices were filled, the regular appropriations made, new roads laid out, and local questions discussed. One generation went off the stage; another in 1815 at a cost of $1973.18; and when in the same year the town hall and school-house was burnt down, it was presently rebuilt at a cost of $2100. Through long years the question of where the new building should stand - whether " adjoining the burying-ground," or "adjoining Mr. Quincy's sheds," or "north of Mr. Burrell's house," or " opposite the engine-house'" - was earnestly discussed. Finally it was It was then only In it lay and died in the North Precinct. It stood by the side of the Plymouth road, an open and uncared for common, in which the swine ran at large and cattle grazed. Nor was there in this apparent desecration anything offensive to New England eyes. The gravestones were rooted up by hogs and trodden down by cows; the children played among them: but it had been so from the beginning, and that it should be so now On points such as these the fathers were the reverse of refined, and another generation had to grow up with a nicer sense At last, in 1809, a number of the inhabitants bought up the rights of passage, herbage, and pasturage on the bit

But incidentally the records of eighty and ninety years ago are apt to be suggestive. They reveal conditions which seem to have a middle-age flavor. For instance, in 1792 it was voted " to have Hospitals in town for the purpose or benefit of those who chuse to have the smallpox." And again, in 1809, at a special town-meeting, the subject of vaccination was discussed, and, after prolonged debate, the majority decided against it. Piracy, or, as it was more delicately called, privateering, had strong attractions then for the more adventurous spirits. The United States was at peace with the world, but England and France were at war; accordingly, on August 12, 1793, just as the French reign of terror began, Benjamin Beale, Richard Cranch, and Moses Black were made a standing committee " to see that there be not any privateers fitted out from this place by any of the Citizens of the United States or others against any of the beligerent powers, in order that a strict neutrality be kept

The separation of the precincts had thus once more united town and parish, and the political and religious organization fell naturally back to just what it was a whole century before. The town again regulated every detail of church management. In 1810 the selectmen were " authorized to appoint a sexton and to mark out his duty ;" and two years later it was made a part of the sexton's duty " to ring the bell at twelve o'clock at noon and nine o'clock at night." The bell, by the way, gave the town a great deal of trouble, and was long a matter for town-meeting debate and investigation. In 1810 the old bell was discarded, and a new one ordered of Col. Paul Revere. The result was not satisfactory, and in August a town-meeting was warned to consider the matter. A committee of three was then appointed "for the purpose of examining the new bell to see if they can find out where the fault is in it respecting the sound." Another and larger bell was then ordered; but when it was cast its weight became a matter of grave alarm, and yet an-

The church singing was also matter of grave discussion. The introduction of '" the bass viol" in 1804 had only led to new demands from the choir, and in 1821 the question was agitated whether it would not be well to have the selectmen hire a " professed Master of Sacred Musick." A committee was appointed to consider the subject, at the head of which was T. B. Adams, son of John Adams, then a man of fifty and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. Presently this committee made a report, in which occurs the following quaint and suggestive passage :

"The Association [of singers] is voluntary and not exclusive of any who belong to the Town, and no one has authority to select and discriminate between the qualified, or such as by instruction might become so, and such as have neither capacity This is admitted to be an embarrassment and an obstacle to the advancement of the Singing Society in improvement, which they all feel, without being able to apply the needful remedy; and as that portion of the services and solemnities of the Sanctuary which depends on their performance is considered by many not merely an act of devotion which may be done indifferently or any how so that the Psalm be sung, but as a very delightful exercise, calculated to impose solemnity, and to excite or inspire sentiments becomto learn or voice to execute in a choir of singers.

ing the temple of worship, they are peculiarly desirous that an opportunity be given of calling to their aid the talent and abilities which are liberally possessed by the youth of both sexes in our Congregation."

This presentation of the case seems to have been decisive. The town accepted the report, and voted two hundred dollars for the purpose in question, the same to be expended by a special committee composed | of the selectmen and '" Capt. Josiah Bass, Thomas B. Adams, Esq., and Edward Miller, Esq." Edward | Miller was the son of Maj. Ebenezer Miller, and the family had for the time being, under pressure of the

The salary of the minister also engaged the atten- | tion of the town hardly less during this period than it had a century and a half before, in the days of Parson Tompson. Mr. Whitney had always received five hundred dollars a year, to which the town | by annual vote had been in the custom of adding a _ In 1808 | Mr. Whitney asked to have his salary increased to eight hundred dollars, but the request was not complied with. In April, 1811, he addressed another letter to his parishioners on the subject, which is in- | teresting in several ways. It will be remembered that | in 1657 a committee appointed to inquire concerning the maintenance of ministers in the towns near Boston had reported that in Dorchester Mr. Mather was allowed one hundred pounds per annum; in Dedham, each fifty-five pounds. There were then eighty famihes in Braintree. In 1811, one hundred and fifty-four | years later, Quincy numbered about two hundred and fifty families. Mr. Whitney then wrote to them as follows :

"Taking the two parishes in Dorchester, one in Dedham, the Town of Milton, two parishes in Hingham, and the offer they have made in Braintree, the average amount of the sallaries they give is nine hundred and twenty-seven dollars per annum. | ... The sum [ propose is eight hundred and sixty dollars | paid punctually at the end of every quarter; or eight hundred and eighty dollars at the close of the year. It will be recol- | lected that the proposition I made to the town three years | since was only eight hundred dollars. In exceeding that sum } at the present time I have been influenced by two considerations. One is, as has been already observed, the information I have received from some of my brethren, whose salary is nine or ten hundred dollars per annum, that they can but barely live on their annual income. The other is that you may have an opportunity of exceeding Braintree in the salary you give your | minister; for I think no inhabitant of Quincy would deem it | respectable to be surpassed in this respect by that town."

Whitney's letter was referred reported in most affectionate language that the pastor's request was wholly | reasonable, and that his " sallary was inadequate to great embarrassment, under which we at present suffer, and the threatening prospect of still greater,' a postponement of the question was recommended. A vote of three hundred dollars additional salary for the current year was then passed.

The 'threatening prospect'' in public affairs here alluded to was the impending war with Great Britain of 1812-14. Quincy was a Federalist town. John Adams, true to his old patriotic and Revolutionary instincts, was an earnest supporter of the Madison administration, which his son, John Quincy, was then representing at St. Petersburg; but his townsmen were on the other side. Warm passages used to occur. Nearly seventy years afterwards a Quincy boy of that time gave the following entertaining account of one such passage. Jt is merely necessary to premise that the gentleman referred to in it was a near neighbor of Mr. Adams', and in his time the most useful citizen of (Quincy. Of him more will be said presently :

"T remember very well at a social dinner-party in time of the war, when the political element ran perhaps as high as ever it did, that I had the honor as well as pleasure to stand behind the President's chair as waiter. Directly on his left was seated Thomas Greenleaf, a violent Federalist, who was bearing down The President bore it as long as he could, when he raised his left hand and, instead of bringing it down on Mr. Greenleaf's head, which he might perhaps have done with as much propriety, he brought it down upon the table near him with a force that made the plates and glasses rattle, and exclaimed in a voice that could not be misunderstood, 'Tom Greenleaf, hold your tongue! you The scene which followed reminds me of that passage which says, annual election from 1812 to 1815, Governor Strong His smallest majority was in 1812, when he had one hunpolled nearly three votes to his opponent's one.

marching once to South Boston and once to Cohasset. An absurdly large town bounty, in addition to the State pay, was voted to those called into service in June, 1814; but one short experience sufficed, and in December this vote was ''so far repealed as not to Yet at this time the uneasiness autumn a flotilla ascended the Connecticut, destroying more than ascore of vessels. Edmund Quincy, in his life of his father, has vividly reproduced the sensations in those days of the dwellers on Quincy Bay :

"A general sense of personal insecurity prevailed all along the sea-board. . . . In these apprehensions the family at Quincy For the estate bounds on the ocean, and the fears of boat attacks and foraging parties which had haunted the roof thirty years before returned again to dishad good reason to share.

helieved that a sharp lookout was kept up in the direction of the light-house. 'The first naval spectacle discerned from that post of observation, however, was a memorable and an auspicious one. It was the entrance of the 'Constitution' into the harbor, on the 29th of August, 1812, after the capture of the ' Guerriere.' . . . Toward evening the frigate (recognized as the next morning a fleet of armed ships appeared off Point Alderton. As they rapidly approached, the 'Constitution' was observed to raise her anchor and sails, and go boldly forth to meet the apparent enemy; but, as the frigate passed the leader of the fleet, a friendly recognition was exchanged, instead of the expected broadside.

escape from the assaults of their enemies; though it may have been after some more real and nearer danger. But the cireumstance made a deep impression on my young mind by the delightful variety it gave to the usual monotony of Sunday.

"My father, too, opposed as he was to the war, yielded to no one in determination to defend the soil of Massachusetts should it be invaded by an enemy. He assisted in the formation of a fine troop of volunteer cavalry, called the Boston Hussars, consisting chiefly, if not entirely, of Federal gentlemen, of which . . He used to be concerned lest the enemy might land between Quincy and Boston, and thus cut him off from his command."

It was at this time that the town appointed a committee to confer with similar committees of the towns of Hingham and Weymouth, to devise "some measures for the safety and protection of this and those But the enemy did not come, and the actual contribution of Quincy to the burden of the war of 1812 was practically limited to the sum paid in bounties and a spe- One coasting returning from a long cruise. "A few daysafterwards, Hull, who had just taken the * Guerriere,' came with Decatur to breakfast at Quincy. . .. This | breakfast is one of the earliest of my own recollections. a very little child, but I remember perfectly well sitting on Decatur's knee, playing with his dirk, and looking up at his handsome face, the beauty of which struck even my childish eyes, and which [I still seem to see looking at me from out the far past... . There was a current belief that the British, should they propose making an attack on Boston, would land on my father's estate or thereabouts, and so take the town in flank. . . . The opinion was sufliciently prevalent with the au- from the Penobscot to Quincey, was boarded off Gloucester from an ambitious privateer out of that port, and, after some " ferocious conduct" on the part of the captors, was carried into Marblehead. | What individuals from among the youth of Quincy may have served on the Niagara frontier or fought in the naval battles of Hull, Decatur and Bainbridge nowhere appears. The official record of the town in this war is unpleasantly meagre. : The sum raised by taxation for town expenses in ter, which was selected as the first point of defence should such an invasion be attempted. This circumstance materially increased the uneasiness inseparable from the exposed situation of the family at Quiney. As I have already related, every ship that enters or leaves the harbor can be seen from the windows of the house. Andas the triumphant entry of Hull in the 'Concerned from that post of observation, so was the departure of Lawrence in the 'Chesapeake' on his fatal quest of the 'Shannon,' - doomed to ' give up the ship,' but only with his life; and prowled about the mouth of the harbor, so that it was no idle fear which suggested the probability of 1 midnight visit from a party of foragers or pillagers to that solitary shore.

"One Sunday there was an alarm that the enemy had landed at Scituate, a dozen miles away. The news was announced in the meeting-house during Divine service. The congregation was dismissed at once, and the village was all astir with excitement. teer companies marched to meet the enemy. to say that they did not find him. .

the church. The growth of the appropriation was very slow. In 1792 it had been £350, or $1160, of which £75 had been on account of the schools. Of these there was now one, - the grammar school at the centre, while the germs only of outlying district schools were to be found. By 1800 the annual appropriations had increased to $2100, and thence to In 1820 they were $4000. Four years later the town was separated from the parish, and accordingly the appropriation for that year fell to $2800. In 1829 it was $3500. Perhaps a fourfold increase in forty years.

they were the schools and the poor. These have both It has been seen that the cost of maintaining the town poor then was out of all proportion to what it has been since. In 1812, for instance, $1000 was raised for that purpose, while only $785 was raised for the schools and $800 for the church. In 1813 the poor cost $1665, or as much as both the schools ($800) and the church and in 1819 the schools cost $1000, while the church cost $850, and the poor had been reduced to $770. In 1824 their cost had been still further reduced to | appear in the estimates at all, for it was still, as in 1766, paid in kind, or, as the vote of April, 1825, read, For each Day's work one Dollar, for each yoke of oxen one dollar per Day, for each Horse and | Cart one dollar per Day, for each plow fifty cents per | Day, and for each ox-Cart twenty-five cents per day." | devote his whole time to the school." The school committee was further allowed $5 for "ink and brooms," which were all the " incidentals" then recognized, and $60 for fuel. The district schools were allowed from

$30.14, and $25.68. For the repair of highways $600 was deemed sufficient. or nearly a fourth part of the whole, was appropriated to the support of the poor.

which now counted a population of 2200 souls, and which was at last rapidly growing in wealth, for its assessed valuation in 1830 exceeded $800,000. The burden of taxation, when compared either with population or wealth, was scarcely a sixth part of what for the education of each child in the public schools, which half a century later was sixteen dollars a year, was then but three. apy comparison of the schools or the roads of 1830 with those of 1880, it may confidently be asserted the people were the children of the soil. They still followed the old, simple vocations. They were either the tillers of the soil, or the citizens and tradespeople who did the work and supplied the wants of those who tilled the soil.

They were a single religious so- Kach knew the others ; they were almost members of the same family. The political family had not become too numerous. It numbered about 1300 in 1810, and about As respects worldly condition those composing it were not far separated. No one was rich, and most of those who took any part in town affairs were well to do. There was no alien element ; that is, no one lived in the town and had interests outside of it. The town partook also of the spirit of that era of good feeling which followed on the war of 1812. The old Federal party was then absorbed in the party which supported the administration of Monroe, until at last during the six years 1825-30 the opposition in Quincy never threw more than nine votes on election day, and in 1828-29 it was limited to a single vote. The largest vote the town ever threw before 1831 was 217 in 1824, when Governor Eustis was chosen. It then gave a heavy majority to the defeated Federalist candidate ; a parting salute, as it were, fired over the grave of Then followed the Presidential election of 1825, and every vote cast (140) was for the Adams electoral ticket. Nor did the Jackson Dethat political party.

of the town itself, and partly to the influence of one man. In 1810 the population of Quincy was still thoroughly homogeneous ; and it had not ceased to be next four years, for in November, 1828, the electoral ticket defeated in the country at large had 140 votes in Quincy out of a total of 143, and in the following April, Governor Lincoln had 142 votes to one solitary ballot cast for Marcus Morton.

These circumstances were all favorable to a good administration of affairs. The people were well to do; but they looked closely to their taxes, and they had a traditional horror of waste. Corruption in

The scale of town expenses was so limited that no item was-too The sum of five dollars unnecessarily spent, or spent for an unaccustomed purpublic office was practically unknown. small to escape notice.

pose, might lead to a town-meeting discussion. Prior to 1810 all business had been done in a loose, unsystematic way. The annual appropriations were made by viva voce vote; the treasurer received the money which the constable collected ; and the selectmen drew ter, and those who acted for the town's poor. No reports or estimates were made; no papers were placed Everything was done on a general understanding. A cruder, less organized system could not under the circumstances. As the town increased some one was needed to organize such a degree of system as the new condition demanded. That some one appeared in Thomas Greenleaf.

Mr. Greenleaf was Boston born, and graduated at Harvard in 1790 ; he came to Quincy to live in 1803, and remained there until his death in 1854. He speedily began to take an active interest in town affairs, and he showed how useful in a local way a man of character, fair parts, and good business capacity can always be. He belonged to the class of colonial country gentry ; and, indeed, he and his neighbor, George W. Beale, both dying at much the same time, were the last representatives of that class in Quincy. Mr. Greenleaf was a man of property, and, it has already been seen, a strong Federalist. In 1808, and for thirteen consecutive years thereafter, he was chosen to represent the town in the General Court. He then became a superseded him. business, and he did it admirably. Everything was systematized. The change began about 1812. The charge of the town poor had then grown to be a scandal. Mr. Greenleaf took hold of the matter, and caused an almshouse to be built. He was chairman of the building committee. The sum of $2000 was appropriated for the purpose, and when the building was completed Mr. Greenleaf reported, with a pride which he did not attempt to conceal, that though no twenty per cent., - yet, notwithstanding this, the new | almshouse was completed, and every bill paid, with | tree farm-house had died in 1818; and the son who

$84.48 of the appropriation still unexpended. Under his close business management the cost of maintaining the poor was then reduced by more than one-half, and his reports on the subject are as interesting to-day in presence of that still unsolved problem of pauperism as they were seventy years ago.

Having reduced the care of the poor to a system, Mr. Greenleaf turned his attention to other matters. Insensibly, but steadily, the method of conducting the town business in all its branches was brought into were in writing, and entered into every detail. They were all spread on the record. Another adjournment was then had, and in May the appropriations were voted. Kverything was thus made public and of record ; and everything was open to criticism and debate. As a system, under the conditions then existing, it did not admit of improvement. The so-called democratic system which later succeeded it was a degradation of government.

but it was speedily paid off out of the surplus which a better management saved from the regular appropriations for the care of the poor. town hall and school-house was burned down. The amount appropriated for a new building was $2400. Mr. Greenleaf was chairman of the building committee; and again be in due time reported, with overflowing pride, that the work was done, all the bills paid, whether included in the original estimate or an unexpended balance of $362.61 remained in the hands of the treasurer. In doing this work a new town debt had been incurred; but good financial there was in Quincy a condition of general good feeling and prosperity such as the town had not before It showed itself in various ways. John The wife who had watched the smoke of Bunker's Hill from the heights on the Plymouth road beyond the old Brainknown.

then stood, alittle boy, by her side was at the head of the national cabinet and soon to be chosen President. The meeting-house of 1732 still stood on the training-field; but it was old and out of repair. The townspeople began to talk of a new church edifice order. In March the annual town-meeting took place. Over this Mr. Greenleaf presided as modera- | tor. The full list of town officers was then chosen, and the various articles in the warrant were referred to special committees. 'The meeting then adjourned. In April another meeting was held, and the committees on the almshouse, the schools, the town lands the place of his nativity, and the habitual affection he bore to the inhabitants with whom he had so happily lived for more than eighty-six years," - thus moved, he deeded to the people of the town a tract of quarry-land, from which the material for the building they wished might in part be derived. A special town-meeting was called in July to take to wait on the ex-President and express to him the gratitude with which his townsmen received his gift. They were instructed to say that, highly as the inhabitants of Quincy estimated the advantages that would result from the gift itself, they valued it more as coming from one who by his patriotism had shed honor on his native place, and " to whom, under the smiles of Providence, we are so largely indebted for our independence and prosperity as a nation." So gratified was the old man by this cordial expression of kind feeling that he at once added to his former gift not only a deed of further lands, but the whole of his private library, consisting of some three thousand volumes. Again the town met and spread upon gratitude and veneration. Immediate steps were taken towards building the new church, but not until April, 1826, were arrangeappointed. Thomas Greenleaf wasits chairman. But

He was | over ninety, and his life thus covered one-half of the | whole settlement of the town, lacking only two years. | The old order of things, like the old church which was symbolical of it, was about to passaway. A new was fast coming to the front, and it was fit and proper | that the transition should be strongly marked. It was _ strongly marked. On the 4th of July, 1826, the | town celebrated with special rejoicings the fiftieth anniversary of independence. It was celebrated, as its | sturdiest supporter had fifty years before predicted it would be, as "'a day of deliverance, with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations." On that fair, glad day - in the midst of peace and prosperity and political kind feeling, with the sound of joyous bells and booming guns ringing in his ears, with his own toast of '* Independence forever" still lingering on the lips of his townsmen - the spirit of the old patriot passed away. But he had lived to see with his own eyes | that "ravishing light and glory" the distant rays of | which had reached him in 1776, and he had found | that the end was indeed " more than worth all the means." |

Warned of the approaching event, President John Quincy Adams had left Washington on the morning - of the 4th of July, and at Baltimore he received word | of his father's death. He reached Quincy on the | morning of the 13th, the funeral having taken place on the 7th, in the presence of a great concourse of | rang he went to the old North Precinct meeting-house, and a few hours later he thus recorded his feelings : ""T have at no time felt more deeply affected by [my father's death] than on entering the meeting-house and taking in his pew the seat which he used to occupy, having directly before me the pew at the left of the pulpit which was his father's, and

| where the earliest devotions of my childhood were performed. | The memory of my father and mother, of their tender and affectionate care, of the times of peril in which we then lived, and of the hopes and fears which left their impressions upon my mind, came over me, till involuntary tears started from my eyes. I looked around the house with inquiring thoughts. Where were those I was then wont to meet in this house? The aged of that time, the pastor by whom I had been baptized, the deacons who sat before the communion table, have all long since departed. Those then in the meridian of life have all followed them. Five or six persons, then children like myself, under the period of youth, were all that I could discern, with gray the beginning of the present century, nor, even when it did set in, did it gain any great volume until after It was accordingly remarked by Palfrey in his '' History of New England" that probably there was no county in England where in 1825 the strain of English blood was so free from all foreign admixture as it was among the people of Cape Cod. Up to the year 1800 the same thing might have been said of Quincy. The original settlers bore all of them English names. There were scarcely any exceptions to this rule, and such exceptions as there were - some eight or ten in two hundred and forty - indicated a French and possibly a Norman origin. Such were Decrow, Durant, Despard, and Deza; Lamont and Lagaree; Marquand and Quincy.. All A few Scotchmen, the prisoners of Dunbar, may have been landed in Boston in 1651, and been sent out to the iron-works; but, if such was the case, they did not leave a single " Mac" behind them in Braintree. In 1752 there was a small infusion of German blood, - 'poor, suffering Palatines.'"' But these people mostly went away ten years later to join more prosperous communities of their own race at the eastward, and the Hardwicks (Hardwig), Brieslers (Briesner), and a few more only remained to perpetuate the German face under Anglicized names. 'There were a certain number of negroes in the town, - sixty-six, according to the census of 1765, - the descendants of slaves owned by the Quincys, Vassals, Apthorps, and Borlands; and in 1800 the vacant space made by by vote "appropriated for the use of the black people to sit in." In a few years more they had wholly disappeared. When, in 1792, the North Precinct of Braintree was set off as Quincy, the names appended to the petition were all English names, - names, nearly every one of which have appeared in the town-book for a century, - Cleverly, Newcomb, Brackett, Adams, Crane, Vesey, Spear, Savill, Bicknell, Quincy, Marsh, Beale, Glover, Crosby, Baxter, Sanders, Field, Faxon, Hayden, Bass, Tirrell, and Nightingale. They were Johns, Samuels, Benjamins, Fredericks, Daniels, and Ebenezers. wives were Marys, Anns, Elizas, with here and there a Mehitabel, a Patience, and an Abigail. Old, familiar English patronymics all. An Irishman or an Irish name was as strange and as much a matter of wonderment as a Frenchman or a German, and more than an African or Indian. No mass was ever celebrated in Old Braintree; and it may well be questioned whether from the day when Sir Christopher

- a community made up of those who tilled the soil, and those who supplied the tillers' wants. than a century and a half before an iron foundry had been established in '' the Woods," now West Quincy was called, but it had soon colas what is

But these were premature attempts at the introduction of strange industries. It was not so with ship-building. The dwellers along Quincy Bay, in common with all other sea-board Yankees, took naturally and kindly to the water, and from an early day the ship-yards throve at Braintree. In 1696 the '" Unity" was launched at what is now Quincy Neck, and later the Haydens, Southers, and Josselyns were noted shipwrights. Their yards were at Bent's (now Quincy) Point, and there, in September, 1789, was launched the '' Massachusetts," pierced for thirtysix guns, and intended for the Canton trade. This was supposed to be the largest ship, up to that time, built in the State. Her company for her first and only voyage from Quincy numbered seventy hands all told, forty-two of whom were seamen ; but her voyage was not a success, and she was sold in China to go under the Danish flag. But none the less, the Bent's Point yards in 1825 were prospering, and they continued to prosper down to the days of Deacon George Thomas, who built clippers the names of which were Indeed, from force of habit apparently, Deacon Thomas went

The stone deposits of the town had, up to 1825, not been developed at all; but from that year the On behalf of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, Gridley Bryant, of Scituate, then bought a quarry in West Quincy, the stone of which had already been examined and approved by Solomon Willard, and which has since been known as the The fame of Quincy granite Not that the existence and durable character of the stone had not long

Brook marked where the experiment had failed. Even the tradition of it had died away, and as late as 1710 the region thereabout was the haunt of deer and the bear. Again, shortly after 1750, the poor refugees who settled at Germantown had sought to gain a living by making glass. But such glass as they made was of the coarsest description, for which even

King's Chapel was built of this material between 1749 and 1752, and later the famous old Hancock mansion on Beacon Hill. At that time they had so little conception of the extent of this syenite formation, that in Braintree much alarm was felt lest the use of the stone for buildings in other towns would For years the subject was discussed at each town-meeting, and new measures bidding the removal of any more stones at all from the commons until otherwise ordered. If the drain | went on unchecked there would not be encugh stone in Braintree for the township's own use! The | difficulty seems to have been that, with the tools then in use, they were unable to work into the rock. The King's Chapel stone, it is said, was broken into a degree of shape by letting large iron balls fall upon the heated blocks. At last, upon one memorable Sunday in 1803, there appeared at Newcomb's Tavern, in the centre of the North Precinct, three men, who called for a dinner with which to properly celebrate a feat they had just successfully performed. The fear of the tithingman had not re- | strained them, and they had split a large stone by the use of iron wedges. Their names were Josiah | Bemis, George Stearns, and Michael Wild. It was indeed a notable event, for the crust of the syenite hills was broken.

The men did not yet know how | to work the rock, nor had they the necessary tools and | appliances. | dressed for use as door-steps, foundations, and gable | walls. There were two problems still unsolved: one related to handling and dressing the rock, the other | to its carriage. Both of these problems Willard and | Bryant solved. Neither of these two remarkable men were Quincy born. Willard came of Maine stock transplanted to Petersham, in Worcester County ; and Bryant was of that Scituate family which seventyfive years before had furnished Braintree its activeminded minister. While Willard laid open the quarry and devised the drills, the derricks, and the shops, Bryant was building a railway.

This famous structure was an event not only in the | history of Quincy, but in that of the United States, | and in every school history it is mentioned as the | most noticeable incident in the administration of the | younger Adams. In Braintree a feebler effort in a | similar direction had already been made, but without success; for in 1824, Joshua Torry, an enterprising | citizen of the town, had planned a canal from the neighboring tidal basin nearly to the centre of the | town. A committee reported strongly in its favor, and work was even begun upon it; but it proved too | expensive an enterprise for that time, and had to be | abandoned. Still the idea bore fruit; for the next spring another and more feasible project was devised | of converting the old Town River, as it was called, into a canal up to the point where John Adams, as surveyor of highways, had, in 1760, built across it | his historical bridge. It was an attempt at slack-water navigation. <A charter fora joint-stock company was secured, and the people went into the project with spirit. In 1826 the work was finished at an outlay of ten thousand dollars. The scheme did not prove a success. The canal, it is true, was used ; but the business afforded no profit, and years afterwards the affairs

The Granite Railway was both a more famous and a more successful scheme. Its projector, Gridley Bryant, has given his account of how he came to

"JT had, previous to [the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker Hill Monument] purchased a stone-quarry (the funds being furnished by Dr. John C. Warren) for the express purpose of This quarry was in Quincy, nearly four miles from water-carriage. This suggested to me the idea of a railroad (the Manchester and Liverpool Railroad being in contemplation at this time, but was

Lawrence, Isaac P. Davis, and David Moody, all of Boston, in reference to it. These gentlemen thought the project visionary and chimerical; but, being anxious to aid the Bunker Hill Monument, consented that I might see what could be done. I awaited the meeting of our Legislature in the winter of 1825-26, and after every delay and obstruction that could be thrown in the way, I finally obtained a charter, although there was great opposition in the House. The questions were asked, ' What do we know about railroads? Who ever heard of such a thing? Is it right to take people's land for a project that no one knows anything about ? We have corporations enough already !' Such and similar objections were made, and various restrictions were imposed ; but it finally passed by a small majority only. Unfavorable as the charter was, it was admitted that it was obtained by my exertions; but it was owing to the munificence and public spirit of Colonel T. H. Perkins that we were in- None of the first-named gentlemen ever paid any assessments, and the whole stock finally fell into the hands of Colonel Perkins. . . routes from the quarry purchased (called the Bunker Hill Quarry) to the nearest tide-water, and finally the present lodebted for the whole enterprise.

I commenced the work on the first day of April, 1826, and on the seventh day of October foliuwing the first train of cars passed over the whole length of the road."

At the time Bryant's work excited an almost unequaled interest throughout the country. It was, in fact, a pioneer American undertaking, the originator of which had closely studied that English railway literature which was then coming into existence. Although Stephenson had already, in a rude way, introduced locomotive steam-power on the Stockton and Darlington road, Bryant made no attempt at anything of that sort. Indeed, had he done so he would have ruined his enterprise. His views were confined to horse-power, and he built an improved tramway rather and the movable truck having six years later (in 1834) been patented by other parties, became the subject of a litigation which occupied the courts for five years and cost, it is said, some $250,000. Though

The Granite Railway, including its branches, was four miles in length, and cost fifty thousand dollars. It began at the quarry end with an inclined plane, by means of which eighty-four feet vertical fall was here gradual descent. The road then dropped gently down to tide-water level by grades of sixty-six, thirteen, and twenty-six feet to the mile. As the traffic was all in the direction of these grades, single horses could unloaded cars back. The road was constructed of stone sleepers, or ties, eight feet apart, upon which were laid longitudinal wooden rails, protected by strap-iron plates three inches wide and one-fourth of an inch thick. The wooden rails were subsequently replaced by stone. At last, it having then been for a time in disuse, its franchise

This was formally opened for trafic on Oct. 9, 1871, forty-five years and two days after the original opening in 1826. 'There is a certain historical fitness in the fact that, through the incorporation of the Granite Railway into the Old Colony Railroad, the line which connects Plymouth with Boston has become the original railroad line in America.

After 1825 the granite business of Quincy developed rapidly. Three years later the old 1732 meetinghouse in Quincy gave place to that more modern structure which is still the central building in the town, the large monolith columns of which mark the advance which the Quincy stone-cutters had then already made. In the same year the Tremont House in Boston was built ; the present United States Court-

House, then the Masonic Temple, followed in 1831, and the Court Street Court-House four years later ; then came the Boston Custom-House, begun in 1837 and completed in 1849, with its thirty monolith columns, each forty-two tons in weight. As they were finished these were carried to Bosten over the Plym- the weight ; and as the carts made specially to carry _them, drawn by a long train of oxen and _ horses, _ passed slowly through the town, they were for years objects of deep popular interest and local pride.

It is needless to go on enumerating the buildings thereafter constructed of Quincy granite. For years it was regarded as the best known material for construction, and it was chiseled into the most delicate shapes. A new school of taste then grew up which saw that the stone was not only hard and cold, as well as durable, but that it was wont to outlive its useful- The great Boston fire of 1872 showed also that, growing brittle when exposed to heat, it would shatter under streams of water.

At the present time nearly three-quarters of the Quincy granite dressed is used in cemeteries ; and there is something about it, whether it be harduess or durability or its coldness of color, which seems to make it specially appropriate for these modern cities of the dead.

Meanwhile, the quarry business speedily revolu- _tionized the town. Its influence was everywhere | felt, - in habits, and modes of life and thought, and One by one the old traditions gave way. Business was no longer done as formerly. Firms

| grew up possessing large means and employing many laborers, and a steady tide both of wealth and popula- 'tion set in. As compared with the figures of similar growth which has gone on during the same time at the great commercial centres of the country, the figures representing the growth of the Quincy granite business are not large. Boston and St. Louis, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco have accustomed the minds and eyes of modern Americans to industrial strides of a wholly different scale. These cities | deal in workmen by the thousand and in products by statistics of a prosperous trade. oranite. large fortunes have been made, no crowded communities have grown up. On the eastern slope of the ' Blue Hill range, where in 1825 the Milton and

Quincey then. The creaking of the derrick, the blows of the sledge, and the click of the hammer are everywhere heard from the week-day morning to its night ; and from year's end to year's end the blocks of split and chiseled syenite pass out in a steady stream. Yet in the great aggregates of modern life it all represents but the labor of a few hundred men, and the wellearned return on the not large capital of a dozen enterprising firms.'

But stone working was not the only new industry which about 1830 began to make its influence felt in Quincy. For more than a century and a quarter there had then been one tannery in the town, and at The earlier tanneries The vats were oblong boxes sunk in the ground close to the edge of the town brook at the point where it crossed the main street. They were without either covers or outlets. which old, worn-out horses circled round while the bark was crushed at the rate of half a cord or so a day by alternate wooden and stone wheels, moving in primitive as the methods; for while green hides sold for three pence and dry hides for sixpence, the manufactured article brought but twelve pence. Then and long afterwards the dress, especially of the working classes, was largely composed of leather, out of which as a material leggings and breeches, coats and shirts, were made, as well as shoes and gloves. Working in leather was therefore one of the common vocations in all New England towns.

Consequently, as markets and means of communication developed, it was natural that the Quincy people They did so as matter of course, and as early as 1795 the business had taken root.

For a time it seemed not improbable that Quincy might vie with Brockton, Lynn, or Marlborough as a great centre of this industry ; but the war of the Rebellion dealt a heavy blow to its trade, and the rapid development elsewhere of machine-made work left the old-fashioned Quincy methods far behind. Accordingly, after 1860 the business as a whole did not grow in Quincy as it grew elsewhere. Nevertheless, the presence in the town of this industry, together with that of stone-cutting, greatly dozen pair. Not until 1822 was the Southern trade opened. By 1830 the Curtises had built up a large and profitable business, and the census of seven years later showed that in 1837 no less than forty-six thousand pair of boots and shoes were manufactured in the town. In 1856 the Curtises alone made fortyeight thousand pair of boots, giving employment to

1 By the State census of 1875 there appeared to be thirtyseven establishments in Quincy in the granite business in all its branches. They represented a capital of $588,200, a yearly influenced its character. The population underwent A new race, of different blood and religion, had come in. The native New Englander seemed to pass out of the fields into the shops, and men of foreign blood took his place. In 1830 the Congregational meeting-house, though then called "the Stone Temple," and the Episcopal Church were still the only buiidings in the town in which religious Mass had once or twice been observed in dwelling-houses. In 1831 a Universalist society was organized, and in 1832 they built a church, In 1834 another church was built by an Evangelical Congregational society ; and a third by the Methodist The Roman Catholics were still without a building. There were now many of that faith in Quincy, but they were emigrants and they were poor; the narrow but traditional prejudice against them and their faith, also, was strong and hard to be outgrown. About the year 1839 an occasional Mass was celebrated in the small West Quincy school-house; but those were the years when, under the combined Native American and anti-Catholic feeling, Massachusetts was in a dangerous mood. The Mount Benedict Monastery in Charlestown had not very long before been destroyed by a mob; and now in West Quincy those of the district who held other religious views expelled the Catholics from the school-house. Fortunately, better counsels and a kinder feeling prevailed, and after a short time the services were renewed there; nor were they again disturbed. In the autumn of 1842 St. Mary's Church in West Quincy was consecrated, and eleven years later, in 1853, St. John's Church was finished, standing almost on the spot where the Episcopal Church, removed twenty-one years before, had stood for a century. Another Catholic chapel was erected in the North District of the town in 1874. In 1842 there were about one hundred Catholics in Quincey; in 1884 there were more worshipers in the three Catholic churches than in all the other eight churches of the town combined.

1830 was considerable, that of schools was still more so. Inthe matter of education the state of things had, indeed, then become such that it was obvious a change of system must be made. The old centre grammar school could no longer be made to suffice. Its condition and methods have already been de- ters - called in the reports 'men's schools," to distinguish them from the old dames' schools for children the South District, the other at Bent's Point, or the Oldfields District. This measure had failed to bring the wished-for relief. The increase of scholars from the other districts was such that the centre school taught by one master, who was paid five hundred dollars a year, aided by one female assistant, who was Under these circumstances the committee of 1827 suggested, not 'for immediate adoption, but for deliberate considpaid one hundred and twenty dollars.

That, it stated, would "afford an immediate and effectual relief for many years." two years of ' deliberate consideration,' the town, in 1829, voted to build three new school-houses, one at the North, or Farms District, one at the East, or Oldfields District, and one at the South, or Penn's Hill and Woods District ; the last, being a combined arrangement, was to be of stone and cost as much as the other two together. In the spring of 1830 the new buildings were finished, and the committee reported that, including the land on which they stood, and $523 and $422.02 for the others of wood. This failed to satisfy the town. A pernicious idea had gained footing that it was desirable "to bring the schools of all ages under one teacher was adopted. Accordingly, the next year, after a sharp struggle, in which the town divided by a vote of eighty-four

That this should have been so was in some respects unfortunate, but it was probably necessary. It was a mistake naturally incident to government through town-meeting. Town-meetings are not inspired. Having fortunately no infinite wisdom to guide and dwarf them, they go stolidly on, working their way in perfectly human and commonplace fashion through almost infinite waste and failure to a certain degree ot Accordingly, the policy as respects its schools fixed on by Quincy in the town-meeting of March 8, 1831, From an educational point of view it was altogether wrong. The school was near the child's home, but at the school the child learned the least possible. The erading of scholars was out of the question, and insuccess. The process is slow and expensive.

A more wasteful system could hardly have From the money point of view it did the annual appropriaages. been devised. not cost much, for in 1827 tion was $3 for each scholar, and the neighborhood system only increased it in 1831 to $3.67. In 1840 it had fallen to $2.89, and it was only $3.81 in 1850. Not until 1868 did the annual cost per scholar increase to over $10. The town had then grown up to the neighborhood system, for its population was about 7000, and there were 1534 children in the schools. They had for years been more or less graded, and a somewhat better instruction was possible.

exercise known as parsing, or the mechanical application of certain rules of grammar to words and sentences. scholars, nor did the knowing how to parse in any way affect the scholar's mode of speaking or writing his mother-tongue. It was the same with arithmetic. It was taught by rule. This was that old-fashioned g, so called, which is still commonly supposed to have been simple, but, in some unexplained way, peculiarly thorough. Accordingly there are not a few who lose no opportunity to refer to it with respectful In point of fact, in no true sense of the By force of the child did indeed have certain rules and formulas so impressed on the memory that they never afterwards faded from it; but so did the horse, thejdog, and the parrot. One and the same method of instruction was _ _ applied to all, human and brute. It was purely a_ matter of memorizing and imitation ; the observing any thought was given to them, - would develop - themselves. Since the days of the '' Learned School- | master,' Benjamin Tompson, school methods in Quincy had become more elaborate and far more expensive; the child learned more, such as it was, because it went to school more hours, and there were more teachers and better text-books. But, so far as intelligence of method and system was concerned, assert that such system was notoriously defective at the precise point where the investigation took place. In the case of the Quincy schools it was nothing of the sort. They were quite as good as the average of Massachusetts town schools. clearly as the result of careful inquiries made by | agents of the State Board of Education in 1879. | It was then found that in a very large proportion of immemorially in use. They were quaintly primitive. Children were still taught to spell orally and in classes, and the writing was limited to what was done that they had never been taught even the mechanical part of a written exercise, while certain of the | teachers actually would not permit their schools to be subjected to so unheard-of a test. were taught to parse, and say the multiplication table. Out of schools who used in composition the adverb "too," no less than eight hundred and fifty-nine spelt the word incorrectly. The three words '" whose," "which," and '" scholar" were given out for written spelling, and while there were fifty-eight different

They included the schools of twenty-four towns, returning five thousand scholars. The tests, of the simplest and most ordinary description, were confined to showing the results actually obtained in reading, writing, and ciphering. There was no escape from the conclusions reached, for the fac-similes of the examination papers spoke for themselves.'

They referred in their reports to the condition of "immobility' which seemed to prevail. There were now twenty-seven schools in the town, in which thirty-two teachers were at work on twelve hundred scholars. The annual cost of teaching each scholar exceeded fourteen dollars. Since 1830 the number of those taught had thus increased much less than three-fold, while the cost of teaching them had increased over

Under these circumstances it was obgoing on. 'The cost of the article purchased had been immensely increased, without any corresponding im- It was perfectly true the Boys were no longer forced as a punishment to clasp hands across the top of an over-heated stove until holes burned in their clothes ; nor were they made to whip each other, while the master stood over them and himself whipped that one who seemed to slacken in his blows.' Scenes like these, worthy of Dotheboys Hall, were reminiscences of the past. But there was no reason to suppose that the children when they left school read more fluently, or wrote more legibly, or computed with more facility than had their fathers and mothers before them. Under these circumstances the committee came to the conclusion that if the town was not spending an undue amount on its schools, yet certainly not more than fifty per cent. of what it did spend was spent effectively. The whole thing needed to be reformed; but the members of the committee did not feel themselves qualified to reform it. They therefore stated the case to the town, and asked for authority to employ a specialist as a superintendent.

In the spring of 1875 the desired authority was given. The result was that reform in school methods which, known as the "Quincy system," within the the superintendent then employed, F. W. Parker. Mr. Parker was by birth a New Hampshire man, who had taught school in Ohio before the war of the Rebellion, and during it served in the army, attaining the rank of colonel. He had then gone to Germany in order to study the most improved educational methods. Returning to America, he fell in with James H. Slade, then one of the Quincey school committee, and was by him suggested as superintendent. The choice was a most fortunate one. There were many qualifications of a superintendent which Mr. Parker did not possess. He lacked business method. He could not always accommodate himself to cireumstances in dealing with men. He was apt to try to do the right

There was to be something in the schools besides The child was no longer to be taught on the same princimemorizing and the application of formulas. ples that dogs and parrots were taught. The reasoning and observing faculties were to be appealed to. The object always to be kept in view was a practical things to memory or to repeat rules out of a grammar ; they would not be disciplined in the ancient way, but they would be accustomed to observe and think for themselves, and at least to read and write English with ease and decently.' methods was not new, and that what was new was not good. The assertion that the results produced by the old system were not satisfactory was angrily denounced as a slur on the well-earned fame of Massachusetts, said, they ought not to be published to the world, for they gave comfort to the enemies of common schools.

set forth at the time in a paper entitled "'The New Departure in the Common Schools of Quincy,' which was printed in pamphlet form, and passed rapidly through six editions, exciting much public discussion.

The educational journals referred to the arguments of Mr. Parker's friends as "monumental displays of ignorance,' and it required the unanswerable facts of the Norfolk County investigation to satisfy them that the earlier condition of affairs in the Quincy schools was both correctly stated and not exceptional. All this noisy discussion did but spread far and wide the fame of Mr. Parker's efforts, and strangers soon began to come to Quincy to see what the thing amounted to. 'hen they came to study it. Finally, the town schools became an educational curiosity for the display to the world of the new system. Visitors trooped to Quincy by hundreds, and at times It became, indeed, a serious hindrance to instruction, and had to be reguthey crowded the school-rooms.

For five years Mr. Parker held the position of superintendent. In the spring of 1880 he was chosen one of the school supervisors of Boston, and subsequently he became the head of the Cook County Normal School of Lllinois. But he did not leave Quincy until the reforms he had instituted there had become He was succeeded by one of the grammar-school teachers whom he had himself educated in his system. 'The schools of Quincy were then full of life and promise, and the educational advantages of the town were considerable. A high school had been established in 1852, and the Adams Academy had been opened in 1872. The last was the institution endowed by John Adams half a century before. During the intermediate time funds had been slowly accumulating, and the academy

Nor were the means of acquiring a higher education in Quincy now limited to its schools and academies. The way to self-culture had been thrown wide open to every one who wished to tread it, for a free access to books was no longer the exclusive privilege of the rich or the educated. In 1871 the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars was voted towards the accessible. But, so far as the bulk of shaban were concerned, they neither had any books within | their reach, nor did they know how to use them. The purpose of John Adams in giving his library to the town had wholly failed of accomplishment. When he did it he had his own youth in mind. He had been brought up in the Braintree of former days, larger education. break out his own way to success, and his wish in old age was to remove the obstacles which had impeded him from the path of future generations of his townsmen. Out of narrow means he accordingly endowed an lection of a lifetime. His motives were generous, but he could not foresee the changes of the future. The books were, many of them, most rare and valuable ; they wanted more easily elsewhere. For popular use the collection was almost ludicrously inappropriate. The scholar and the public man would feel at home in it, but to the average frequenter of the modern public library it was much what a rare edition of Shakespeare or of Milton is to one as yet untaught to of a librarian, and the arrangement of the books so that all who wished so to do might consult them. The collection then remained uncared for, and accessible to every one for nearly thirty years. time it suffered irreparable injury. Not only were many volumes taken from it and never returned, but it was freely robbed of the autographs which gave a

Such was the situation in 1871 when the move in behalf of a modern public library was made. The two thousand five hundred dollars from private sub-

Dimmock's management made a The Second Congregational society had some years before outgrown that first church building of theirs which stood close to the site of the original stone meeting-house of 1666, and To it are somewhat characteristic of New England. came in a wholly unexpected way. annual reports the Library trustees had called attention to the fact that of the several modern divisions of the original town, Holbrook, Randolph, and Braintree each had buildings for their libraries given to them as memorials, and a hope was expressed that sooner or later " private munificence may supply a public need," and Quincy would enjoy the same good This was in February, 1879, and there was then no reason to look for such a gift either immediately, or, indeed, from any particular quarter. No one had intimated a disposition to do anything of the kind.

and, after introducing himself, opened the conversation by asking if Quiney would like to have a public library building. turned to his visitor and asked if any one thought of The other replied that he was not authorized to say who he represented, further than that it was the family of one Quincy born, but now dead, who many years before had Nothing further was then said, nor was anything more heard of the

_ of the Library and its catalogue were sent to the represcription necessary to secure the town endowment was | soon raised, and in the autumn of 1871 there was opened in Quincy one of those institutions, undreamed - nearly forty-five thousand volumes were borrowed. Accordingly, it at once assumed a foremost place among the educational influences of the town. For over two years a room was provided for it in the Adams following winter he again came to the office of the chairman of the trustees. He now said that the family in question lived in New York, but that they disliked to have the matter discussed, or to be mentioned in connection with it, until their minds were fully made up as to what they proposed to do. In reply Mr. Otis, the gentleman who appeared for them, was assured that the matter should not be mentioned, but the chairman, Mr. Adams, said that business often called him to New York, and he would be glad to memorial building in Quincy. He then explained the connection of his father's family with Quincy, and the desire his widow and children had, though they had never lived in the town, to there erect some lasting memorial to him. The result of the interview was that Mr. Adams the next day carried back to Quincy the formal offer of a memorial library hall, which a fortnight later was acted upon and accepted at the annual town-meeting.

Steps were at once taken to secure as a site for the proposed building that lot of ground which Mr. Crane had pointed out as in his opinion best adapted for it. matured, and the corner-stone of the new edifice was laid on the 22d of February, 1881. dedicated on the 30th of May, 1882.

North Precinct meeting-house until he became a man. He had then in the year 1827 gone away, as so many A stone-cutter by trade, he settled in New York City, and there married and had children. A plain, straightforward, energetic man, he gradually amassed a forothers went then and later, seeking his fortune.

There is a degree of individuality in the business history of Quincy since the year 1830, and consequently a certain interest attaches to it, owing to the fact that it centred mainly in that granite which underlaid the soil. The town dealt in its native stone. The religious development had also a certain character of its own. It was liberal. Indeed, the utter absence of Calvinism, or strong orthodoxy, in the tenets of those inhabiting the North Precinct and Quincy is so marked, and so unusual for a Massachusetts community, that it cannot escape notice. When the Unitarian movement took place under Channing's lead, it has already been seen that it excited no surprise among those who recalled the teachings of Lemuel Briant. On the contrary, the tendency in Quincy then was towards Universalism. Thomas Crane, for instance, feeling a strong religious craving which the teachings of Mr. Whitney did not satisfy, found what he needed, not in the Braintree church, where Dr. Storrs still held up the rigid belief of the fathers, but in the broader Christianity of '" Father" Hosea Ballou. The young stone-cutter would walk twenty miles . No successful. Dealing all his life in the granite which underlaid Quincy, his success had been due to the possession of those qualities which made New England. He was honest, he was religious, he was energetic and enterprising and patient. His life was wholly unassuming, and when he died few in Quincy remembered that such an one had ever lived there. His name is now and will long be a household word in the place where he passed his youth, and from which he went forth ; nor could a better example of native strength and homely virtues be held up before its children for

The schools were much like the schools elsewhere, and the sudden development of the "Quincy system'' came from without, and was largely a matter of chance. None the less, it was something that such a movement was possible. It showed a mental receptiveness, a faculty of accepting new ideas and responding to them, which was in keeping with the whole religious and political record of the community which John Wheelwright had first taught. The soil was kindly to the reformer, and his labors brought takably in town-meeting, and stamp itself on the records ; then the other would by degrees assert itself, and the ancient order of things would, to a certain The old political habits and traditions could not be destroyed; and yet the rapid periods of time seem to obliterate them. Absorption and education went on continually; the new affected the old, and the old gradually influenced the new. Indeed, the process which upon the large scale was working itself out all over the continent, might in Here was one of the individual units of which the other was the aggregate.

and Madison, including the war of 1812, it has been seen that Quincy politically was a strong Federalist town. Down even to the year 1824 it stood firmly out. In 1823, Dr. Eustis was elected Governor over Harrison Gray Otis, the candidate of the old Federalists ; but Quincy none the less gave Mr. Otis a majority of sixty-six in a total vote of two hundred and four. Nor did it change under defeat, for the next year it gave sixty-three majority against Governor Eustis, though his election in the State was a foregone conclusion. Then came the Presidential campaign of 1825, and the Federal party disappeared forever. In Quincy all were Adams men, and they so remained until long after the election of Gen. Jackson. Then the Jackson democracy began to make its presence felt. Its growth at first was very slow. In November, 1830, ex-President J. Q. Adams was brought forward as a candidate for Congress in the Plymouth district to succeed Mr. Richardson, of Hingham, who declined re-election. In Quincy Mr. Adams received seventy-six votes to ten cast for the Jackson candidate. At the next State election Marcus Morton, the Democratic candidate for Governor, had fourteen votes, while Governor Lincoln received two hundred A new The old agricultural interest was no longer the only interest. In 1837 more than five hundred hands were employed in the quarries.

More yet were These last were a sturdy, rough, floating population, with no knowledge of town traditions, and a strong general disposition to vote the Democratic ticket. They did not live in Quincy, but came down from the North in the their coming stage-coach after stage-coach from Boston would be loaded down with them and their baggage. In March they voted for Isaae Hill, or his Democratic nominee, in New Hampshire, and in November they voted for Marcus Morton in Quincy. They were a foreign voting element; but there was also a new domestic voting element which had now to be taken into account. The shoemaking population had greatly increased. This was of a wholly different type from the stone-working population. The day of great shoe-factories and machine-made work was yet distant. The men and women who made shoes as a vigor of stone-cutting. The shoemaker worked day in and day out in the little ill-ventilated cobbler's room attached to the dwelling, which in winter was heated by a stove and smelt of burnt leather. He stuck to his last ; and, in doing so, he talked a great deal of politics and political issues, thoroughly canvassing all men in public life from President Jackson down to Mr. Greenleaf, the traditional moderator at town-meeting. 'The shoemaker was, as a rule, not a Federalist ; but he did not vote the Democratic ticket in the same way the quarryman voted it. His was not that rough and somewhat turbulent independence. Intellectually he was of a finer, keener type; physically he did not sustain the comparison well. He was apt to be round-shouldered and hollow-chested, thin and long-limbed. He lacked the muscle of the stone-cutter. In politics he was inclined to admire what he called "smartness" rather than grasp, and though he would not vote for a convicted knave, he felt a good deal of inner kindness for the successful rascal, and an absolute contempt for the well-intentioned dolt. nation, and could be depended upon by the wire-

Such were the political elements which between 1830 and 1840 began to mingle and contend for mastery in the Quincy town-meeting. First were the old colonial, native stock, living by agriculture, slow, conservative, and generally disposed to show much defer- Next came the quarry-men, composed of noisy, muscular, hard-living Then the foreign-born Catholics who instinctively sided against ence to the opinions of the gentry. native Americans, with small reverence. all settled political traditions. Lustly, the shoemakers, mainly Americans, but disinclined to the old ways and the old leaders, and disposed to manage things by intrigue and combination without much regard to precedent.

The spirit of democracy was afloat in the land, and the movement which had carried Jackson into the Presidency on the larger theatre, on the smaller was destined soon to drive Thomas Greenleaf out of the management of town affairs. The growth year by year of the vote cast for Marcus Morton marks the advance of the tide. In 1829 he received one ballot only, and in 1832 he had but twenty. In 1835 he had got up to forty-two, and the next year to one hundred and forty-eight. Two years later the revolution in public opinion was complete, and Marcus Morton polled two hundred and sixty votes to one hundred and seventy-two for Governor Everett. The size of the vote showed also the rapid increase of the population under the new business development. In 1830 only one hundred and thirty-six ballots were cast in the election for Governor; in 1840 the number had inereased more than five-fold, aggregating

In the town, as in the nation, the process of absorption and amalgamation were now to be gone through with. rapid. it soon stop. the farm-hands - had been mainly Americans.

found employment in shops and mechanical pursuits or became shoemakers. The more adventurous and enterprising went to the cities, or sought their fortunes in the West. complete change in the character of the town.

_ the worse is reflected in the reports of the school comthings was doubtless slow, conservative, traditional, | but it was economical, simple, and_ business-like. |

The new order of things was in all respects the reverse of this. on their enterprise, their lack of reverence for tradition, their confidence in themselves; but they were noisy, unmethodical, in reality incompetent, and altogether too often intemperate.

method of doing business was simply loose. town debt was an illustration. amounting to only a few thousand dollars, when, in 1837, Congress passed an act for the distribution of the surplus national revenue. Under the operation of this act no less a sum than $5148 fell to the share of Quincy, and was regularly appropriated to the payment of the town debt. to extinguish it; yet the very next year the debt was larger than ever.

There was an article in the warrant of each of those years to see if the town would instruct the selectmen not to license places for the sale 'of Rum, Brandy, Gin, or other Spirituous liquors."

There was a sharp struggle, and the proposition was rejected by a majority of two only in a total vote of 158. At the election of that year 138 votes were thrown for Governor Everett to 42 for Marcus Morton. The next year Morton's vote increased to 148, and the proposal not to license was defeated by 32 majority; nor was it again renewed. The growth of sentiment, on the contrary, was distinctly in the other direction, Three years later, in 1839, Morton received 326 votes to 231 cast for Everett ; the Jackson Democracy were in full ascendancy. And now the seventeenth article in the warrant for the annual meeting was "to know if to the Paupers when they work on the road or farm," and by a vote of 86 to 76 it was so ordered. The same year the mysterious disappearance of the contents of a cask of rum stored at the almshouse was made the subject of a jocose paragraph in a formal report made to the town by one of its committees.

The schools also felt this influence. A change for mittee. This committee dates from 1827, when the law passed the year before took effect, and from that time to the present the annual reports are consecu- The first was signed by Mr. Greenleaf, as chairman, and was a well-expressed, sensible paper. The following is an extract from a report made some ten years later :

"The school in the Centre District has been less satisfactory. The Committee think well of the literary qualifications of the Master, and were satisfied with the course of instruction pursued in the School and believe that a large portion of the Scholars have made improvement, but the behaviour of a part selves not for their good behaviour, but for their bad behaviour, for which conduct they received the unqualified censure and disapprobation of the Committee."

But the slow phase of transition through which Quincy was now passing is marked more distinctly on the record in the support it accorded to John Quincy It is hardly

Adams than in any other one thing. peculiar to Quincy. It was a popular movement which originated in the West, and spread all over the country. Andrew Jackson was its political exponent. His methods were its methods. 'The nation was its field, therefore ; but its spirit and peculiarities can be forced to succumb to it. He was now to meet it in his own town. Unlike his father, Mr. Adams had never been closely identified with his birthplace. Indeed, from the time he sailed to Europe, in November, 1779, to the time when, in 1829, he came home a defeated President, - a period of half a century, - he was an almost complete stranger in Quincy. Yet he had a strong hold on the old native population. They saw in him one of themselves. Accordingly, in 1825 the town gave the Adams electoral ticket a unanimous vote, and in the campaign of four years later his victorious opponent received only three ballots in Quincy. Between 1830 and 1836, Mr. Adams considerably ahead of the Presidential ticket, receiving 345 votes to 312 cast for Isaac Hull Wright, his Democratic opponent. The election of 1846 was the last in which Mr. Adams was concerned. That was a year of Whig triumph, and even in Quincy the eratifying one. It spoke of earlier times. He received 232 votes to 213 cast for five different oppowas four times elected to Congress from the Plymouth | party for Governor, and in Quincy he had 149 votes to 97 for the two other candidates. change began, and two years later Morton, for Governor, had 98 majority over Everett in a vote of 432. Notwithstanding this, Mr. Adams still held the town, dates. Two years later, in the Harrison campaign, Quincey was closely contested. Mr. Adams, owing to his anti-slavery course in Congress, was peculiarly obnoxious to the Democrats. The Harrison ticket had a majority of five votes in the town out of a total of ahead of John Davis. Mr. Adams, though receiving more votes than Governor Davis, yet fell three behind his own opponent, William M. Jackson, who had 349 votes. In 1842 there was a general collapse of the Whig party. John Tyler was President, and the Democracy were altogether in the ascendant. In Quincy Morton had a majority of 29, and Mr. Adams was again beaten, Ezra Wilkinson receiving 289 votes, or four more than he Philosophizing over this result in his diary, he remarked that ' the people are a wayward master.' In 1844 took place the exciting struggle which preceded the Mexican war, and Polk was elected over Clay. two opponents, and as the election drew near he looked forward " with scarcely doubting anticipation" to his own defeat. In Quincy the vote was close, but the

Like the others, this last vote in Quincy was significant. To a certain degree only was it personal. The town was entering upon a new and distinct phase of transition which already began to show itself in the In November, 1845, the Old Colony railroad was opened to travel, and from that time election returns. Quincy became a suburb of Boston. Not, of course, that the change made itself felt at once. The people went on in their accustomed ways; but none the less, from the beginning of 1846 the country village (for it still was a country village then) and the city were in quick and easy connection. 'The rest was a mere question of time; and, indeed, it was twenty-five years before the transition was complete. The successful organization of a suburban land company in the northern part of the town in 1870 marked the event. Boston had again, just two hundred and forty-five years later, had enlargement at Mount Wollaston, and Quincy became a species of sleeping apartment conveniently near to the great city counting-room.

In 1875 the population was returned at 9155, or a little more than fourfold what it was (2201) in 1830, and the order of change from the agricultural village to the suburban town can be briefly recapit- Upon the original yeoman and farm-hand basis the quarry-men had first: came in from outside ; while at the same time the young townsmen had gone out of the fields into the shop, abandoning the Then and he slept. This last class to a very great degree absorbed the descendants of the original settlers, and the whole mass gradually resolved itself into the modern town community. from Parson Tompson and teacher Flynt and Judge Quincy and Deacon Bass to the modern stone-cutter, clerk, and merchant was noticeable. Nor as an historical study were the characters of the several periods over. A new political question had forced its way to the front, and slavery was the impending issue. Quincy was never a pro-slavery town. The quarrymen and the Irish voted the Democratic ticket ; but the old native element had always sympathized with