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A
HISTORY
CAMBRID GE
MASSACHUSETTS
(1630-1913)
SAMUEL ATKINS ELIOT, A.M., D.D.
TOGETHER WITH BIOGRAPHIES OF
CAMBRIDGE PEOPLE
I^CA/nBRlDGElRlBUNE
HARVARD SQUARE
(36 BOYLSTON STREET)
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
COPYRIGHT 1913
THE CAMBRIDGE TRIBUNE
PREFACE
1136225
"Of the making of books there is no end," and, while histories are issued
less frequently than books of fiction, travel or science, still the publication of a
work of this nature requires little in the way of an introductory notice. Cambridge
is rich in historical material — not only the history of the dim, distant past, but
the history of the present, for it must be borne in mind that the future of tomorrow
quickly becomes the present of today, even more swiftly to fade into the past of
yesterday. Indeed, we are constantly making history, and who knows with what
interest the readers of the next centvuy will peruse the record of this very day
and hour? It has been so long since a history of Cambridge was pubUshed —
nearly forty years, in fact — that it seems proper at this time to bring out a work
which shall present to strangers and information-seekers a true record of the
Cambridge of the past and of the present, while at the same time giving to the
residents of the city and those who are familiar with its traditions and institutions
a volimie which will furnish accurate information and, at the same time, inter-
esting reading. In this volume the emphasis has been placed upon the quality
of the men and women who have made the renown of Cambridge rather than upon
the chronology of its history or the record of the passing day. While neglecting
no important movement of occasion, the present writer has tried primarily to
describe the purposes and accomplishments of the people who composed the
town and to depict the minds and characters of the Cambridge citizens whose
lives, whether famous or obscure, have made the events possible and carried the
hopes of each generation toward fulfilment.
J. Lee Robinson.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I
THE FOUNDATIONS
Introductory — Arrival of Governor John Winthrop and his company in Massachusetts Bay — Settlement at
Charlestown and the organization of the first church — Scarcity of water causes the settlers to disperse — Boston
settled and named — The search for a position less open to attack results in the choice of Newtowne — Thomas
Dudley and other early inhabitants — The Braintree company — The original town — The Rev. Thomas
Shepard and his flock — The founding of Harvard College 9-15
II
THE FOUNDERS
The English Puritans — Thomas Dudley; his family; his military career and connection with the courts; his con-
temporaries — Political and religious unrest in England — Dudley and the Earl of Lincoln — Protestants, op-
pressed in England, meet with reverses on the Continent — The Puritans at a conference at Cambridge, Eng-
land, decide to emigrate to America — The twelve signers — The Massachusetts Bay Company — The Puritan
exodus — Thomas Hooker; his career in England — He arrives at Newtown and becomes pastor — Thomas
Shepard and his troubles in England — Shepard minister of a new church at Newtowne — Qualities of Dudley,
Hooker and Shepard 16-23
III
THE CHURCH
The great aim of the settlers — The first meeting-house — The gathering of February 11, 1636 — Winthrop,
l5udley, Vane and other notable men present — Shepard chosen pastor — How the question of a new form of
church government worked out in New England — Nearly all the first ministers originally ordained clergymen
of the Church of England — The New England churches, at first independent, drawn into close alliance —
The development of Congregationalism and its adoption to the new life of the Western Continent 24-29
IV
THE COLLEGE
The colonists desire to advance education — The General Court votes four hundred pounds towards a college —
Newtowne selected for the site and renamed Cambridge — A committee chosen and the erection of a building
begun — Description of the edifice — John Harvard; his family and education — He comes to America — His
early death — His bequest to Harvard — Gifts from others — The first book in America is printed — President
Dunster — The first Commencement and the first graduates — Board of Overseers established and the Charter
granted 30-37
V
THE COLONY
Massachusetts in 1641^Independence of the colony and its efficient government — The Charter — The first
session of the General Court held at Boston — The attempt to limit the franchise to church members — Wide-
spread misunderstanding of the motives of the founders of Massachusetts — Roger Williams — Anne
Hutchinson — Re-election of Winthrop and return of Vane to England — The Charter saved by Winthrop's
management — The "Body of Liberties" — The New England Confederation 38-45
VI
THE COMMUNITY
The original Newtowne and its subsequent enlargement — The military force — Picture of Cambridge in the latter
half of the seventeenth century — Important houses and estates — The "Printery" — Manners and customs
— Interest in education and influence of the ministers — President Dunster's heresy and that of Benanuel
Bower — A dwelling-house for the minister built at public expense — Dr. Chauncy — Daniel Gookin — Re-
lations with the Indians — John Eliot — Thomas Danforth — The Charter revoked — The royal Province of
Massachusetts " 46-56
VII
THE VILLAGE
Increase in prosperity — -Influence of the CoUege^A new Harvard Hall built in 1682^The College described
by two Dutch travelers — Increase Mather made president ; his personality — New buildings begin to appear —
Record of those who graduated during Mather's presidency — John Leverett president — Benjamin Wads-
worth — Edward Holyoke — Harvard Hall burnt and the present building erected on the old site — St or)'
of the Cambridge Church — William Brattle's pastorate — Nathan Appleton — A new Parsonage built —
George Whitefield and his controversy with the College — The fourth meeting-house built — A new element
comes into Cambridge life with the advent of families of wealth — Christ Church is built for the Episco-
palians — Several distinguished lawyers — The village as it appeared just before the Revolution 57-75
VIII
THE SIEGE
Discontent with the British government — The Stamp Act and the Taxation Act — Committee? of Correspondence
formed — Coercive measures and the appointment of General Gage as military governor — His acts lead to
riotous scenes in Cambridge — The Massachusetts Assembly meets at Salem, adjourns first to Concord, then
to Cambridge, and votes that military preparations be made — The 19th of April, 1775 — The Cambridge Train
band — Combat at Menotomy and North Cambridge — Cambridge men who lost their lives — The days
following the battle of Lexington see Cambridge filled with American fighting men — Flight of the loyalists;
their fate — The besieging force — The battle of Bunker Hill; Colonel Thomas Gardner's death — Washington,
selected as general-in-chief by the Continental Congress, comes to Cambridge and takes command of the
army under the great elm — Famous Revolutionary officers and public men at Cambridge during the siege —
Raw troops drilled and forts built — Slow progress of the siege — Treason of Church — The British evacuate
Boston and American troops take possession .76-89
IX
THE TOWN
Cambridge after the siege — A list of patriot soldiers — General Burgoyne and the troops that surrendered with
him detained at Cambridge — The Constitution of Massachusetts framed in the meeting-house — ^Washington
revisits the town — Visit of Lafayette — Development of the eastern part of the town — The purchasers of the
Tory estates — The West Boston Bridge opened for travel — Effect of the Embargo Act and the War of 1812 on
Cambridge — Dowell's description of the town in 1824 — Andrew Craigie and East Cambridge — Harvard
Square and its environs in the early part of the nineteenth century — The old meeting-house and new churches
— Wadsworth House — The College Yard — The dormitories — Student life — The old Court House — Note-
worthy houses — "Tory Row" — Birthplace of Oliver Wendell Holmes — "Professors' Row" — Margaret Fuller
— Washington AUston — Nathaniel F. Wyeth — President Kirkland — Josiah Quincy — Famous College pro-
fessors — Judge Joseph Story — Theologians — Edward Everett, John Quincy Adams and John S. Popkin —
Three presidents; Sparks, Walker and Felton — Francis Sales — Charles FoUen — Louis Agassiz; his scientific
enthusiasm — The humble beginnings of the Museum of Comparative Zoology — Debt of Cambridge to
Agassiz — What Darwin said of him — Mount Auburn 90-1 16
X
THE CITY
Cambridge receives a City Charter — Needs of the young city — The new city government — Causes of the
growth of Cambridge — Boston merchants and professional men residents — Influence of the University —
Reasons for the number of factories — Characteristic industries — The water- works — Cambridge public schools;
Private schools; Professional schools — Cambridge a great center for the education of ministers — Radcliffe
College — Parks and playgrounds — Churches and charitable institutions — Banking and public service cor-
porations — Frederick H. Rindge and his gifts to the city; Public Library, Manual Training School, High
and Latin Schools, City Hall — The population doubled in thirty years — Cambridge patriotism — Loyalty of
Cambridge people to their city — James Russell Lowell — Richard Henry Dana — Charles Eliot Norton —
Noted men of letters — Longfellow; his life in Cambridge — William Dean Howell's account of his Cam-
bridge neighbors — John Fiske — Henry James and his sons — ^Joseph E. Worcester, the lexicographer, and
William E. Rolfe, the Shakespearean scholar — Other leaders in science and literature — Emerson 117-138
XI
THE OUTLOOK
Prestige of Cambridge — Cambridge compared with other American cities — Problems of public service — Ad-
ministration — Cambridge fortunate in the plan and names of the streets — Necessity for care in the develop-
ment of the newer parts of the city — The main highways and the amount of traffic carried — Schools and
libraries — Police and fire departments — Health statistics — Water supply — Hospitals — Topography of the
city — The Charles River — Parkway development — The approaches to the city from Boston — Question of
new bridges — City planning — Playgrounds — Growing density of population and the problems resulting
therefrom — Civic spirit of Cambridge 140-153
Biographies 156-272
The Widener Library 273-276
Educational 277-281
Financial 282-287
Industrial 288-305
Index 3C6-30S
A HISTORY
OF
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
THE FOUNDATIONS
CAMBRIDGE is an interesting place in
which to hve, because it is hallowed by
so many heroic memories. There is a
good background of inspiring tradition. The
very dust is eloquent of the long procession
of saints and sages, soldiers, scholars and
poets, whose works and words have made the
renown of the place. The names of the Cam-
bridge streets and schools recall its historic
associations and its former inhabitants. Win-
throp, Dudley, Endicott and Eliot Streets
commemorate the founders of the Massa-
chusetts Colony. The names of Washington
and Green, Prescott and Putnam, recall the
times when those patriot soldiers commanded
the revolutionary army here at the siege of
Boston. Hancock, Ellery and Gerry Streets
are named for signers of the Declaration of
Independence who lived in Cambridge or had
close associations with the town. The streets
named for the Cambridge families of the period
before the Revolutionary War, such as Vassall,
Oliver, Inman, Dana, Danforth, Lee, Trow-
bridge, Remington and Brattle, recall the
Tory gentry who made the town the center
of an abundant hospitality, and who main-
tained a genial social life, whose memories
still linger in the beautiful homes they left
behind them. There are streets named for
the college presidents, Dunster, Chauncy,
Wadsworth, Holyoke, Willard, Langdon,
Kirkland, Quincy, Sparks, Everett, Felton
and Walker; and for distinguished college
professors like Ware, Channing, Story, Bond,
Farrar, Francis, Frisbie, Follen, Gumey and
Peabody. Shepard Street is named for the
first pastor of the^First Church. Appleton
Street recalls the name of Nathaniel Appleton,
who was minister of the same church for more
than fifty years. Allston Street takes its
name from the famous Cambridge-bom painter,
Washington Allston, and Lowell Street and
Holmes Place from the two Cambridge-born
poets. Riedesel Avenue reminds us of the
time when the German troops captured at
Saratoga were quartered in Cambridge. The
streets named Craigie, Fayerweather, CooUdge,
Gushing, Wyeth, Brewster, Hastings and
Sidney, tell us of the local worthies who de-
veloped the town. The names of Decatur,
Perry, Lawrence, Erie and Niagara recall the
times of the War of 1812, and the names of
Grant, Andrew, Banks, Ericsson, Sherman
and Sheridan arouse the stirring memories
of the period of the Civil War. The names
of Garfield and Cleveland, of Washburn and
Greenhalge, of Russell, Houghton, Allen and
Bancroft remind us of more recent leaders
in the nation, the Commonwealth and the
city. Waterhouse Street and Wyman Square
are named for distinguished Cambridge physi-
cians, Agassiz and Gray for the great scientists
who made Cambridge famous by their presence
and their work, and Longfellow Park for the
beloved poet who made Cambridge his home.
Then there are the streets that remind us of
the landmarks of the place: Harvard Street,
leading to the College Yard; Divinity Avenue,
to the Divinity School; Garden Street, leading
to the Botanic Garden, which is appropriately
bordered on the south by a street named for
the great botanist, Linnaeus. Arsenal Square
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
one of the autumn days after the}' had estab-
lished themselves at Boston, rowed three or
four miles up the Charles River behind Boston
until they came to a meadow gently sloping
to the riverside, backed by rounded hills and
protected by wide-spreading salt marshes.
This, wrote Winthrop, seemed to all "a fit
place for a fortified town, and we took time
to consider further about it." To quote the
old chronicle written by Edward Johnson
in 1654 and called "The Wonderworking
Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England,"
"They rather made choice to enter further
among the Indians than to hazard the fury
of malignant adversaries who might pursue
them, and therefore chose a place situated
upon Charles River, between Charlestown and
Watertown, where they erected a towne called
Newtowne, and where they gathered the 8th
Church of Christ."
Thomas Dudley, describing these events
in his famous letter to the Countess of Lincoln,
says, "We began again to consult about a fit
place to build a town upon, leaving all thoughts
of a fort, because upon any invasion we were
necessarily to lose our houses when we should
retire thereinto. So after diverse meetings at
Boston, Roxbury and Watertown, on the
twenty-eighth of December (1G30), we grew
to this resolution, to bind all assistants (Mr.
Endicott and Mr. Sharpe excepted, which last
purposeth to return by the next ship to Eng-
land) to build houses at a place a mile east from
Watertown, near Charles River, the next
spring, and to winter there the next year;
that so by our examples, and by removing the
ordnance and munition thither, all who were
able might be drawn thither, and such as shall
come to us hereafter, to their advantage, be
compelled so to do; and so, if God would, a
fortified town might there grow up."
According to this agreement, the Governor,
John Winthrop, the Deputy-Governor, Thomas
Dudley, and all the councillors, except John
Endicott, who had already settled at Salem,
were to build and occupy houses at Newtowne
in the spring of ]()31, but this agreement was
never carried out. Winthrop, Dudley and
Bradstreet built their houses, and the General
Cn-rt of the colon}' met alternately at New-
towne and at Boston until 1638, when it
finally settled in Boston. Winthrop removed
his house to Boston, thereby stirring up a
controversy with Dudley which was never
completely healed, and the other leaders of
the colony settled elsewhere.
The inhabitants of the Newtowne during
the first year of its existence probably did not
number more than ten families, yet there were
enough men to be noted in an order of the Court
on July 26, 1631, requiring military training.
In the "Towne Book" there are recorded the
names of eight heads of families living in what
is now Old Cambridge, in the summer of 1631.
They are "Mr. Thomas Dudley, Esq., Mr.
Symon Bradstreet, Mr. Edmond Lockwood,
Mr. Daniell Patrick, John Poole, William Spen-
cer, John Kirman, Symon Sackett."
Of these eight persons who laid the founda-
tion of the Newtowne, Thomas Dudley was
the leader. He was the first Deputy-Governor
of the Colony, became Governor in 1634, and
was either Governor, Deputy-Governor, or
Assistant, during the remainder of his life.
In 1636 he removed from Cambridge to Ipswich.
Later he removed again to Roxbury, where he
died July 31, 1653. Simon Bradstreet was
an Assistant from 1630 to 1678; Deputy-Gov-
ernor in 1678; Governor from 1679 to 1686,
and from 1689 to 1692. He removed to
Ipswich with Dudley, whose daughter was
his wife; was afterwards in Andover for a
short time; then in Boston until September
18, 1695, when he removed to Salem, and died
there, March 27, 1697. Edmond Lockwood
was evidently a man of substance for he was
appointed by the General Court Constable of
the Newtowne at its organization, and at the
same session was selected as one of the two
deputies of the town to the General Court. He
died before March, 1635. Daniel Patrick had
been a soldier in the guard of the Prince of
Orange and was one of the two captains origi-
nally appointed to command the militia of
the Colony. He served three months in the
Pequot War and performed other military
duties. In 1637 he planned to follow Dudley
and Bradstreet to Ipswich, but seems rather
to have gone to Watertown, where he was a
Selectman in 1638. He afterwards removed
to Connecticut, and was killed in a quarrel
with Dutch traders at Stamford in 1643. The
THE FOUNDATIONS
name of "Captain's Island" at the foot of
Magazine Street preserves his memory. John
Poole probably remained in the Newtowne
only a few months, as he is not named in the
list of proprietors in 1633. He appears after-
wards as a citizen of Lynn and he died at
Reading, April 1, 1667. William Spencer
was one of the "principal gentlemen." He
was associated with Mr. Lockwood in 1632,
as the first deputy of the town and continued
to serve until 1637. He was one of the first
Board of Selectmen in 1635; the lieutenant
of the trainband in 1637, a member of the
Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company
at its organization in 1639, and he died in 1640.
John Kirman removed to Lynn in 1632, and
was a deputy from that place in 1635. Simon
Sackett died before November 3d, 1635, when
administration was granted to his widow,
Isabell Sackett.
In the spring of 1632 the settlement received
a great addition to its population. The
Puritan congregation of Braintree, in Essex,
England, had emigrated in a body, and were
soon followed by their famous minister, Thomas
Hooker, afterwards the founder of Connecticut
and the man who first visioned and did much
to inake possible our American democracy.
The Braintree company first located at Mount
Wollaston but soon removed to the New-
towne, raising the population to some four
hundred souls. House lots were laid out
compactly, and farming and grazing lands
assigned to each household. Rules were
adopted for the well-being of the community.
Town meetings were provided for on the first
Monday of each month and at the first of these
meetings it was ordered, "that no person what-
ever (shall set) up any house in the bounds
of this town (without) leave from the major
part.
"Further, it is agreed, by a joint consent
(that the) town shall not be enlarged until
all (the vacant) places be filled with houses.
"Further, it is agreed, that all the houses
(Vithin) the bounds of the town shall be
covered (with) slate or board, and not with
thatch.
"Further, it is ordered, that all (the houses
shall) range even, and stand just six (feet on
each man's) own ground from the street."
These regulations appear to have been suc-
cessful, for in 1633 a traveller, the author of
"New England's Prospect," described the
village as "one of the neatest and best com-
pacted towns in New England, having many
structures, with many handsome contrived
streets. The inhabitants, most of them, are
rich and well stored with cattle of all sorts."
This is doubtless an extravagant picture and
true only in comparison with some of the
neighboring plantations which were not so
favorably situated. So primitive was the
place that Thomas Dudley, the chief man of
the town, writing home, could say, " I have no
table or any place to write in than by the
fireside on my knee."
The original town was all contained within
the small section between Harvard Square'
and the river, from Holyoke Street on the east
to Brattle Square on the west. By 1635, the
streets, now called Mount Auburn, Winthrop,
South, Holyoke, Dunster and Boylston, had
come into existence within these limits, and
there were some eighty-five dwelling-houses.
The meeting-house, built of rough-hewn boards
with the crevices sealed with mud, stood at
the crossing of the road with the path that led
down to the river, where there was a ladder
for the convenience of a landing. The north-
em frontier street, upon the line of Massa-
chusetts Avenue and Harvard Square, was
called Braintree Street. The road upon the
site of what is now Brattle Square was known
as Creek Lane, and it was continvied in a south-
easterly sweep into Boylston Street bj^ Marsh
Lane, afterwards called Eliot Street. On the
north side of Braintree Street, opposite Dunster,
and thence eastward about as far as Linden
Street, stood a row of houses, and at their
back, where the College Yard now is, was the
forest. Through this forest ran the trail or
path from Charlestown to Watertown, which
coincided pretty closely with the line of Kirk-
land, Mason, Brattle, Elmwood and Mount
Auburn Streets. This was the first path from
the seaboard into the inland country. It
followed the windings of river and marsh. A
palisaded wall, with a ditch, for defense against
Indians and wolves, started at "Windmill
Hill," or the present site of Ash Street, and ran
along the western and northern sides of the
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
present Common. The common grazing-land
covered the site of the Common, and extended
beyond the palisade as far as Linnaean Street.
Eastward from Holyoke(then called Crooked)
Street ran Back Lane, while Braintree Street,
deflecting southeastward, took the name of
Field Lane. These two lanes, meeting near
the present junction of Bow and Arrow Streets,
formed the "highway into the Neck." "The
Neck," was a name for the territory now cov-
ered by Cambridgeport and East Cambridge.
It was largelj' a salt marsh but the arable land
was parceled out among the inhabitants in
severalty. The western part was cut up into
small portions of from one to three acres, but
to the eastward of the site of Hancock Street
it was granted in large tracts of from twenty
to sixty acres. This region of the Neck was
marked off and protected by a fence which
ran — to use modem names — from Holyoke
Place to Gore Hall, and thence to the line
between Cambridge and Somerville at Line
Street near Cambridge Street. "Thus we
find," said John Fiske, "in the beginnings of
Cambridge clear traces of the ancient English
method of forming a town, with its threefold
partition into town mark, arable mark, and
common."
A little later a second arable portion was
inclosed between Garden Street and Vassall
Lane, westward from Wyeth Street to Fresh
Pond meadows; this was known as the "West
Field." Another farming region, a little to
the north of the Palfrey estate on Oxford
Street, was known as "Pine Swamp Field."
Extensive marshes stretched along the bank
of the river from the vicinity of Mount Auburn
to East Cambridge. Along the west side of
Brattle Square ran a small creek, which curved
southwestward through the marshes. This
creek, deepened and widened into a canal,
furnished access to the Town from the river,
and at its mouth a ferry was established in
1635, connecting with a road on the south bank
through Brookline and Roxbur>^ to Boston
Neck. The only other communication with
Boston was by river or over the trail to Charles-
town and thence by ferry to Copp's Hill. No
bridge was built until as late as 1662 when
the "Great Bridge" — now the Boylston Street
Bridge — was completed.
The Braintree company lingered long enough
at Newtowne to get their houses built and their
farms broken, but then determined upon an-
other removal. Some adventurous spirits had
penetrated the wilderness of the interior until
they discovered the charm and fertility of the
valley of the Connecticut, and soon Hooker
and his company were impelled b}- "the strong
bent of their spirits" to remove thither. They
alleged, in petitioning the General Court for
permission to remove, that their cattle were
cramped for room in Newtowne, and that it
behooved the English colonists to keep the
Dutch out of Connecticut ; but the real motive
of the exodus was doubtless ecclesiastical.
Hooker did not find himself altogether in accord
with the Boston teacher, John Cotton. "Two
such eminent stars," says Hubbard, writing
in 1682, "both of the first magnitude, though
of different influence, could not well continue
in one and the same orb." Hooker's subse-
quent conduct of affairs in Connecticut shows
that he did not approve the Massachusetts
policy of restricting the suffrage to church
members. In the spring of 1636, therefore.
Hooker and most of his congregation sold their
possessions, and, driving one hundred and
sixty cattle before them, went on their way
to the planting of Hartford and the founding
of a new Commonwealth.
The rude houses of Hooker's congregation
were bought by a newly-arrived company,
the flock of the Rev. Thomas Shepard. This
firm but gentle leader, who left a deep impress
on the habit of the town, was a youth of
thirty-one, and a graduate, like many of the
Massachusetts leaders, of Emmanuel College at
Cambridge. He came to New England with
a company of earnest followers, actuated, as
he wrote, by desire for "the fruition of God's
ordinances. Though my motives were mixed,
and I looked much to my own quiet, yet the
Lord let me see the glory of liberty in New
England, and made me purpose to live among
God's people as one come from the dead to
His praise." His brave young wife died "in
unspeakable joy" only a fortnight after his
settlement at Newtowne, and was soon followed
by the chief man of his flock and his closest
friend, Roger Harlakenden, another godly
youth of the manly tj'pe of English pioneers.
THE FOUNDATIONS
At once, too. Shepard was plunged into the
stormy debates of the Antinomian Controversy
which nearly caused a permanent division in
the Massachusetts churches. The general
election of 1637, which was held on the Common
at Newtowne, was a tumultuous gathering,
and discussion over the merits of "grace" and
"works" ran high till John Wilson, minister
of the Boston church, climbed up into a big
oak tree, and made a speech which carried
the day for John
Winthrop to the
confusion of the
heretical disciples
of Anne Hutchin-
son. Through
these stormy
waters Shepard
steered his course
so discreetly that
he came into high
favor among all
people as a sound
and vigilant min-
ister, and Cotton
Mather tells us
that "it was \vith
a respect unto
this vigilancy and
the enlightening
and powerful min-
istry' of Mr. Shep-
ard that, when
the foundation of
a college was to
be laid, Cam-
bridge, rather
than any other
place, was pitched
upon to be the
seat of that happy
seminary."
The founding of Harvard College by the
little colony was one of the most heroic, devout
and fruitful events of American history. It
was on the 2Sth day of October, WM\, Sir
Harry Vane — Milton's "Vane, young in years,
but in sage counsel old" — being the Governor,
the General Court of the colony passed the
following memorable vote; "The Court agrees
to give £400 towards a school or college —
whereof £200 shall be paid the next year and
£200 when the work is finished." Never were
the foundations of such a structure laid by a
community of men so poor, and under such
sullen and averted stars. The colony was
nothing but a
handful of set-
tlers barely cling-
ing to the wind-
swept coast ; it
was feeble and
insignificant, in
danger from In-
dians on the one
hand and foreign
foes on the other;
it was in throes
of dissension on
the matter o f
heresy which
th r e a t e n e d to
divide it, yet so
resolved were the
people that "the
Com m onwealth
be furnished with
knowing and un-
derstanding men
and the churches
with an able
ministry," that
they voted the
entire armual in-
come of the col-
ony to establish
a place of learn-
ing. In the fol-
lowing year the original vote was supple-
mented by a further order that the college " is
ordered to be at Newtowne, and that New-
towne shall henceforth be called Cambridge."
II
THE FOUNDERS
WHAT manner of men were these who
founded Cambridge? To say that
they were English Puritans does not
tell the whole story, for to many minds of the
twentieth century Puritanism means little
more than a harsh and narrow theology and
a severe social and domestic discipline. We
too easily forget that "the whole history of
English progress since the Restoration has
been the history of Puritanism. ' ' The Puritans
were the people who carried the principles of
the Protestant Reformation to their natural
and logical applications. Wherever the Puri-
tans went there went the seeds of "a church
without a bishop and a state without a king."
Macaulay said of them that they were "the
most remarkable body of men which the world
has ever produced." Hume wrote that "the
precious spark of liberty had been kindled and
was preserved by the Puritans alone;" and
that "it is to them that the English owe the
whole freedom of their Constitution." Carlyle
called the Puritan movement "the last of all
our Heroisms. . . . Few nobler Heroisms, —
at bottom perhaps, no nobler Heroism ever
transacted itself on this earth."
The three Thomases who had most to do
with the beginnings of Cambridge were typical
Puritans. To follow the careers and describe
the characters of Thomas Dudley, Thomas
Hooker and Thomas Shepard is to reveal the
motives and the potency of the Puritan move-
rhent. We can study these men now impar-
tially and intelligently and the more we know
of them the more cause have we to rejoice in
our inheritances from them.
Thomas Dudley was a man of fifty-four when
he came to America. With him came his wife,
Dorothy Dudley, his son Samuel, a youth of
twenty-two, and his four daughters, Anne,
Patience, Sarah and Mercy. Anne was already
the bride of stout Simon Bradstreet. Dudley
was a native of Northamptonshire. His
mother died when he was very young, and when
he was but fourteen years old his father, Cap-
tain Roger Dudley, was killed fighting on the
Protestant side at the Battle of Ivry. Cotton
Mather records in his history that as soon as
Thomas Dudley "had passed his childhood
he was by those that stood his best friends
preferred to be a page to the Earl of North-
ampton, under whom he had opportunity to
learn courtship and whatever belonged to
civility and good behavior; with that earl he
tarried till he was ripe for higher service. ' ' This
appointment brought him into relations with
one of the great families of the Midlands and
put him in what Ben Jonson, who was two
years older than Dudley, called the " succession
for the noblest way
Of brushing up our youth in letters, arms.
Fair men, discourses civil, exercise
And all the blazon of a gentleman."
Attaining his majority, Dudley, by the
goodwill of Lord Compton, obtained a Captain's
commission and led a company to the wars in
France. At the siege of Amiens he fought
under the great King Henry, of Navarre, in
whose service his father had fallen seven years
before. When Amiens surrendered Dudley
came back to England and seems at once to
have found employment as a clerk of the Court
of Common Pleas, sitting at Westminster. His
immediate connection was with Sir Augustus
Nichols who, says Cotton Mather, "being his
kinsman also by the mother's side, took more
special notice of him; and from him, being a
prompt young man, he learned much skill in
the law, and attained to such abilities as ren-
dered him capable of performing a secretary's
place, for he was known to have a very good
pen, to draw up an3^ writing in succinct and
apt expressions." At this time he married
Dorothy Yorke, a daughter of one of his
former neighbors in Northamptonshire and "a
gentlewoman both of good estate and good
extraction." She bore the five children who
accompanied their parents to America, and
THE FOUNDERS
shared all his adventures until her death at
Roxbury in 1643.
The connection of Dudley with the Courts
ceased with the death of Judge Nichols, but
during this relationship Dudley must have
lived right at the center of all the political
and religious agitations of that stirring time.
Those were the days when Shakespeare was
living in London and when his plays were being
produced at the Globe and Blackfriars theatres.
The makers of the King James version of the
Bible were at work in the Jerusalem Chamber
at Westminster and finished their immortal
labors in 1611. Francis Bacon was ruling
in the realm of the intellect and Sir Edward
Coke was laying the foundations of jurispru-
dence. Sir John Eliot and Sir Thomas Went-
worth were just coming into fame as the great
antagonists in Parliament. With all these
Dudley may well have come into personal
relations.
But more than all those were the days when
the passion for freedom and hatred of kingly
and ecclesiastical oppression found utterance
in England. The otherwise glorious reign of
Queen Elizabeth was stained by horrible
cruelty toward all who refused, for conscience
sake, to conform to the dogmas and ceremonies
of the Church of England. The Act of Suprem-
acy and the Act of Uniformity made non-
conformity first treason and then a felony.
The progressive Protestants found Elizabeth
as "bloody" as Mary; and the only alleviation
was that the victims of ecclesiastical tyranny
were hanged instead of burned.
Things were no better under Elizabeth's
successor. James Stuart had been king of
England but ten months when he invited the
leading Puritan clergymen to meet himself
and the bishops in a conference about the gov-
ernment and ritual of the church. In the
course of the discussion he lost his temper and
stormed, as was his wont. The mention of
the word "presbytery" lashed him into fury.
"A Scottish presbyter}^" he cried, "agreeth
as well with a monarchy as God and the Devil.
Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall
meet, and at their pleasure censure me and
'my council, and all our proceedings. . . . Stay
I pray you, for seven years, before you demand
that from me, and if then yovL find me pursy
and fat, and my windpipes stuffed, I will per-
haps hearken to you. . . . Until you find that
I grow lazy, let that alone. ' ' One of the bishops
declared that in this tirade his Majesty spoke
by special inspiration from Heaven! The
Puritans saw that they could expect nothing
from the King. If any doubt remained, it
was dispelled by the vicious threat with which
the king broke up the conference. "I will
make them conform," said he, "or I will harry
them out of the land."
This purpose the King and the bishops
proceeded to carry out with unspeakable
cruelty, and with all the persecutions and the
hangings Dudley, as an officer of the Court,
must have been familiar. He was still pre-
sumably a member of the Church of England;
but more and more his sturdy common sense,
his passion for reality, and his hatred of tyr-
rany, inclined him to association with the per-
secuted non-conformists.
In 1616 he was invited by the Earl of Lincoln
to become the manager of his estates. Now
the Earl was at that time the most conspicuous
layman of the Puritan party and his house at
Sempringham in Lincolnshire was in no small
degree the head center of Puritan consultation
and action. The eastern counties of England,
the region between the Humber and the Thames,
had for two centuries been the hotbed of heresy
and independency. It was in Lincolnshire,
Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, and among the
fens of Ely, Cambridge and Huntington, that
Puritanism was strongest. It was as member
and leading spirit of the Eastern Counties
Association that Oliver Cromwell began his
career; and, in the Civil War, East Anglia
was from first to last the one region in which
the supremacy of Parliament was unquestion-
able and impregnable. While every one of
the forty counties of England was represented
among the settlers of Massachusetts, the eastern
counties contributed far more than all the
rest. An accurate investigator reports that
two-thirds of the American people who can
trace their ancestry to New England might
follow it back to East Anglia ; one-sixth might
follow it to the southwestern counties — -Devon-
shire, Dorset, and Somerset — which so long
were foremost in maritime enterprise, and
one-sixth to all the other parts of England put
18
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
together. It was not by accident that the
oldest counties of Massachusetts were called
Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex, that the Lincoln-
shire Boston gave its name to the chief city
of New England, and that names like Ipswich,
Lynn, Chelmsford, Braintree, Sudbury, Haver-
hill, Hingham and Needham appeared very
early on the map of Massachusetts.
For fourteen years Dudley discharged the
arduous duties of his office as the trusted
"Steward" of the Earl of Lincoln. He
rescued the estates from impending bank-
ruptcy and proved himself a faithful and
efficient man of business. At Sempringham
he met all the Puritan leaders of the time and
with them entered into high debate about all
manner of things involving church and state.
For a while he lived at the Lincolnshire Boston
under the ministry of John Cotton, and again
at Clipsham in Rutland, near the family of
Isaac Johnson, who had married the Lady
Arbella, sister of the Earl of Lincoln.
Meanwhile the stupid tyranny of the Stuart
Kings and the bigotry of their ecclesiastical
agents went on "harrying" the Non-conform-
ists. Charles Stuart succeeded his father in
1623, and his character was such as to emphasize
and increase the evils of his father's reign.
Both father and son had some good intentions
and both were sincere believers in their own
theory of the business of being a King, while
"for wrong-headed obstinacy and bottomless
perfidy, there was nothing to choose between
them." During the first four years of Charles'
reign, the king's purpose to rule as an absolute
monarch and the impossibility of expecting
him to keep his promises became perfectly
apparent. Despite all protest the king per-
sisted in levying illegal taxes and to some extent
was able to collect them. Men who refused
to pay enforced loans were thrown into jail
and the writ of habeas corpus was denied
them. The treatment of the Non-conformists
became even more severe, and fines, imprison-
ment and exile for breaches of the ecclesiastical
decrees became more and more common.
While affairs at home thus went from bad
to worse, the news from abroad was equally
discouraging. In France the surrender of
Rochelle had ended the existence of the Pro-
testants as an armed political party. In
Germany the terrible Thirty Years' War had
just reached the darkest moment for the
Protestants, and as yet there was no sign that
Gustavus Adolphus was to cross the Baltic
and bring the Swedish legions to the rescue
of the cause of liberty. Everywhere in Europe
the champions of freedom were hard pressed,
if not completely overthrown. Well might
the Puritans begin to look across the broad
ocean and to wonder if they might not in the
untamed wildness of the new continent find
an escape from a situation that was fast becom-
ing intolerable. The settlers of Jamestown
in Virginia, for all their mishaps, had at least
shown that the ocean could be overpassed and
the wilderness tamed. The bold Separatists
of Plymouth had pioneered the way to New
England and for eight years had been clinging
to the edge of the shaggy continent. "Learn
wisdom, my countrymen," cried John White,
the Puritan minister of Dorchester, "from the
ruin which has befallen the Protestants at
Rochelle and in the Palatinate; learn to avoid
the plague while it is foreseen, and not to tarry
as they did till it overtook them." The
Puritan party in England was numerous and
powerful, but none could foretell the issue of
the impending conflict. Clearly it was well
to establish a strong and secure retreat in
America. What had been done at Plymouth
by a few people of humble maans might be
done on a much greater scale by an association
of men of larger resources.
Many were the conferences at Sempringham
or at Boston or around the table at Emmanuel
College at Cambridge. It was at a meeting
of these Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire
neighbors at the English Cambridge on the
the 26th of August, 1629, that the agreement
to emigrate to America was finally drawn up
and signed by the twelve gentlemen who there-
by adventured their lives and fortunes in the
effort to plant a colony in the wilderness where
they might embody their ideals of a Christian
Commonwealth. We have sometimes been
led to suppose that Puritanism meant the rule
of narrow-minded Calvinist ministers, but
the twelve signers of this agreement were all
laymen, country gentlemen and men of affairs.
First stands the name of Sir Richard Salton-
stall, one of the most magnanimous and broad-
THE FOUNDERS
minded of the Puritan leaders, the founder of
Watertown, and the ancestor of one of the
most serviceable of Massachusetts families.
Dudley's name stands second. Then comes
the name of William Vassall, the first of that
family to appear in New England. We shall
meet the descendants of William's brother,
Samuel Vassall, later in this history, for they
were the leading family in Cambridge in the
days before the Revolution. Isaac Johnson
and John Humphrey signed the agreement.
Both were men of property and standing,
brothers-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln. John-
son was the largest subscriber to the joint
stock of the company. He and his wife, the
Lady Arbella, were among the first of the
Colonists to die. Of her the New England
historian Hubbard wrote that she came "from
a paradise of plenty and pleasure into a wilder-
ness of wants," and Cotton Mather adds that
" she took New England in her way to heaven."
She died in August, 1630, and her husband
followed her a month later. His grave was
the first made in what was later the King's
Chapel burial ground. Winthrop wrote of
him that "he was a holy man and wise, and
died in sweet peace, leaving some part of his
estate to the Colony." John Hampden was
the executor of his will.
John Winthrop's name stands ninth on the
list. He was at that time in his forty-second
year, grave and modest, tender and true, a
man already famed for the strength and beauty
of his character, the weight of his judgment
and the charity of his disposition. Increase
Nowell was another signer, and was later Select-
man of Charlestown for nineteen years, and
for six years the faithful secretary of the Colony.
Of the other signers William Colbum became
the ruling Elder of the First Church in Boston,
and William Pynchon laid the foundations
of the town of Roxbury and later was the father
of Springfield on the Connecticut. Of the
remaining three, two failed to keep the agree-
ment to emigrate and one returned to England
after a very brief stay in Massachusetts.
The adventurers hastened to ally themselves
with the Massachusetts Bay Company that
had in the previous year secured the grant of
a tract of land including all the territory
between the Merrimac and the Charles Rivers,
and had already despatched John Endicott
and his comrades to America. Of this com-
pany Matthew Cradock, a wealthy Puritan
merchant in London, was governor, and the
records show that Sir Richard Saltonstall,
Mr. Humphrey, Mr. Vassall and Mr. Nowell
had been engaged in the enterprise from its
beginning. Mr. Pynchon's name appears on
the record as early as May 11, 1629, and Isaac
Johnson's name appears in the governing board
in the same month. Two days after the sign-
ing of the Cambridge agreement, these six
presented the articles of the agreement to
the Company, and there was much discussion
over the stipulation that the government of
the Colony should be transferred from the
meeting of the Company in London to the
actual Colonists themselves settled or to be
settled in New England. That was a vital
issue and the decision meant much for the
future destinies of America. The subject
was first proposed at the meeting of the Com-
pany on July 28, 1629, at the house of the
Deputy-Governor, Thomas Goffe, in London,
bj' Mr. Cradock, the then Governor of the
Company, who "read certain propositions
conceived by himself; viz., that for the ad-
vancement of the plantation, the inducing
and encouraging persons of worth and quality
to transplant themselves and families thither,
and for other weighty reasons therein contained,
to transfer the government of the plantation
to those that shall inhabit there, and not to
continue the same in subordination to the
Company here, as it now is."
The proposition was too important to be
the subject of hasty decision, and the Record
states that, " by reason of the many great and
considerable consequences thereupon depend-
ing, it was not now resolved upon." The
members of the Company were requested to
consider it "privately and seriously." This
call for "private and serious" consideration
furnishes abundant proof that the Company
understood how important and how bold a
measure their Governor had proposed to them.
It was no mere measure of emigration or colo-
nization. It was a measure of self-governing
independence.
The General Court met again to consider
this momentous matter on the 28th day of
20
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
August, 1629; but the interval had not been
unimproved by those who desired to have the
question wisely and rightly decided. It had
cost them, we may well believe, many an
anxious hour of deliberation and consultation;
but the act of the signers of the Cambridge
agreement settled the issue. The most sig-
nificant clause of that memorable agreement
stated the condition upon which the signers
agreed so solemnly, "to pass the seas (under
God's protection), to inhabit and continue in
New England." The clause read:
" Provided always, that before the last of
September next, the whole Government, to-
gether with the patent for the said Plantation,
be first, by an order of Court, legally trans-
ferred and established to remain with us and
others which shall inhabit upon the said Plan-
tation."
These men were not proposing to go to New
England as adventurers or traffickers; not
for the profits of a voyage, or the pleasure of a
visit; but "to inhabit and continue" there.
And they were tmwilling to do this while an}-
merely subordinate jurisdiction was to be
exercised there, and while the}- would be obliged
to look -to a Governor and Company in London
for supreme authority. They were resolved,
if they went at all, to carry " the whole Govern-
ment" with them.
The decision of the question is thus entered
upon the Records of the Company :
"Where, by erection of hands, it appeared,
by the general consent of the Company, that
the government and patent should be settled
in New England."
The names of Winthrop and Dudley first
appear on the Company's record as present
at the meeting of October 15, 1629. Five days
later, as the vote establishing the government
in New England required that the officers
should be chosen from those who were to emi-
grate, Winthrop was elected governor in the
place of Mr. Cradock, and John Humphrey
was elected Deputy-Governor. Later Mr.
Humphrey found that he must delay his
departure and Dudley was chosen in his place.
The great Puritan exodus began in the
following spring. Seventeen vessels sailed
from England in April and May, bearing nearly
a thousand souls to the new land. Dudley
had before him twenty-three years of noble
service, and he never again revisited the pleasant
fields, the stately church towers, the ancient
dwellings of England. His personal history
becomes the history of Massachusetts.
In all his varied career as a leader of the
Massachusetts Colony, Dudley showed himself
an efficient man of affairs, a resolute adminis-
trator, a rigid disciplinarian and above all a
man who had a profound sense of the immediate
presence of God in the world and of his own
accountability to him. He was an Old Testa-
ment hero and could iise with perfect sincerity
the phrase with which the prophet Elijah began
his speeches in each crisis of his life, "As the
Lord liveth, before whom I stand." He did
his work from day to daj' as in the sight of God.
It mattered little to him what consequences
followed his actions so long as he had the
approval of his conscience. Dut}^ was the
supreme law, and he tested everything by appeal
to moral sanctions. His piety was austere,
and he was sometimes harsh in his moral
judgments; but his ability, his rectitude, his
indomitable fortitude, made him the trusted
guide of his j-ounger comrades and their stead-
fast reliance in times of perplexity or peril.
His blood flows in the veins of a host of the
most distinguished of the sons and daughters
of New England. The stock has been fruitful
and serviceable to a remarkable degree.
As Thomas Dudley represents the sturdy,
efficient, masterful Puritan layman, Thomas
Hooker may well stand as the type of the fer-
vent, high-minded, liberty-loving Puritan
minister. He was bom. in the little Leicester-
shire village of Marfield in 1586, so he was
just ten years younger than Dudley. He had
a good education and graduated at Emmanuel
College at Cambridge in 160S, taking his
Master's degree three years later. As we have
already seen, Emmanuel College was, in the
thought and language of the conservative
churchman, "neither more nor less than a mere
nursery of Puritans." It thoroughly justified
that title. It trained its students in the love
of freedom, in zeal for the simplicity of public
worship, in hearty support of Protestantism
against all " Popery and Prelacy," and in those
ideas of church organization and discipline
THE FOUNDERS
which the Puritans discovered in their Bibles.
It represented the intensest spirit of non-
conformity and of resistance to the oppressions
of King and Bishop. Its services in training
the founders of New England were pre-eminent.
Of the first Massachusetts ministers the names
of John Cotton, John Harvard, Thomas
Shepard, Samuel Stone, Nathaniel Ward, and
Thomas Hooker, and many another less known
to fame, are borne on the roll of the graduates
of Emmanuel.
From 1620 to 1020 Hooker was minister
at Esher, a village some sixteen miles south-
west of London. It was a modest post of
service, but one which fell in the gift of a
Puritan patron and did not require confirma-
tion by a bishop. Here he married the wife
who later accompanied him to America. In
1626 he became "lecturer" at Chelmsford,
some twenty -nine miles east of London. It
was the growing habit of the Puritan party,
where they could not secure the kind of service
they wanted from the regular parish minister,
to settle a "teacher," or "lecturer," as a kind
of colleague to the parish minister. This was
done usually by voluntary subscription and
proved an efficient method of diffusing the
Puritan principles. At any rate, the system
was bitterly condemned by the Anglican party,
and Bishop Laud was from the first its consci-
entious and active enemy.
Hooker quickly won a high reputation as a
preacher. He was thorough-going in his
Protestantism and believed that it was his
duty to do what he could to reform the Church
of England into what he believed to be the
pattern commended in the New Testament.
He strove for the moral betterment of the
people, and regarded the toleration in the
Anglican church of an ignorant and lazy clergy
as an abomination which was not to be sub-
mitted to. He insisted on a searching, moral
discipline and advocated the need of a learned,
preaching ministry. Hooker's reputation for
intense spiritual earnestness, strenuous in-
dustry, vividness and aptness of public speech,
soon brought upon him the condemnation of
the Bishops. Laud was his immediate ecclesi-
astical superior, and by the j^ear 1629 he had
forced Hooker out of his Chelmsford ministry.
Not content with that he was cited before the
High Commission Court and obliged to flee
to Holland. There he served for two years
as one of the ministers of the Scotch Church at
Delft; and again for a few months with an
exiled congregation at Rotterdam. It was
evident, however, that this Dutch residence
was only a temporary refuge. Hooker obvi-
ously kept in close commtmication with his
former parishioners at Chelmsford, for in 16o2
a considerable body of these people, together
with others from the neighboring towns of
Braintree and Colchester, sailed for New Eng-
land, and we find them described in Governor
Winthrop's Journal sometimes as "the Brain-
tree Company," and sometimes as "Mr.
Hooker's Company." It was evidently an-
ticipated that Hooker would follow them to
America and become their leader.
The following year, then, 1633, Hooker
sailed for New England in company with
Rev. Samuel Stone, who was his colleague
throughout his American career. Rev. John
Cotton, of the Lincolnshire Boston, who was
going over to become the minister of the First
Church of the Massachusetts Boston, and
John Haynes, the leading layman of the Brain-
tree church, who was afterwards to be governor
successively of Massachusetts and of Connecti-
cut, were also passengers in the "Griffin."
The ship's company had plenty of preaching,
for Cotton Mather writes, "They had three
sermons for the most part every day: of Mr.
Cotton in the morning, Mr. Hooker in the
afternoon, Mr. Stone after supper in the
evening."
Hooker found his congregation waiting for
him at Newtown, and on October 11, 1633,
he was settled there as a pastor, with Mr. Stone
as teacher. This congregation was then the
most influential in Massachusetts, not only
in ecclesiastical but also in civil affairs. Hooker
was rivalled among the ministers only by
Cotton, and John Haynes in 1635 succeeded
Dudley as governor. The reasons which led
this congregation to leave the banks of the
Charles and transfer itself to the banks of the
Connecticut have already been described. In
the late spring of 1636 Hooker and his parish-
ioners built their new homes at the place which
was soon to bear the name of Hartford. It
was here, on May 31, 1638, that Hooker in his
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
sermon before the General Court of the little
colony set forth the fundamental political
principles which have ever since governed the
development of American democracy. These
principles were embodied two years later in
the fundamental laws of Connecticut.
He was no less eminent as an expounder of
the principles of congregational government.
As the author of the book entitled, "A Survey
of the Summe of Church Discipline," he first
laid down the principles of congregational
independency. To his thinking, a true church
was a company of Christian people united
to one another in the service of God by a
voluntary covenant, and owning no other
leadership than that of Christ. He held that
such a congregation possesses full and complete
authority to administer its own affairs, choose
and ordain its own officers, and govern its own
members. This democratic conception of
church organization was destined to be vastly
influential in the development not only of New
England but of American political and religious
life. On July 7, 1647, Hooker died at Hartford,
and will always be remembered as the pioneer
advocate of the principle that a self-governing
democracy is the proper basis of a Common-
wealth and as the great expounder of the char-
acteristic polity of the New England churches.
Thomas Shepard represents a third type of
Puritan — a man of gentle spirit, frail body,
but a "gracious, sweet, heavenly -minded and
soul-ravishing minister, in whose soul the Lord
shed abroad his love so abundantly that thou-
sands of souls have cause to bless God for him."
We know the man's most private and inner-
life, for he left behind him an autobiography^
which records the history of his personal and
spiritual experiences as well as his public career.
We know just how he felt, worked, dared and
suffered. He was bom in the little village of
Towcester in Northamptonshire. " In the
yeare," he wrote, "of Christ 1605, upon the
day, & that very houre of the day wherein
the Parlament should have bin blown up by
Popish priests." His mother died when he
was four years old and his father when he was
ten, and his childhood was evidently one of
no little hardship. At fourteen he was ad-
mitted a pensioner at Emmanuel College and
made at the University a fine reputation for
scholarship and high purpose. He received
deacon's orders in the Established Church,
but accepted an appointment as "lecturer"
at Earls-Colne in Essex. Shepard's first
charge was memorable, because it brought
him into connection and close friendship with
the stalwart young Puritan squire, Roger
Harlakenden, who afterwards accompanied
him to America, was the chief layman of the
Church at Cambridge, and whose body was
one of the first laid in the old Cambridge burial
ground.
The young minister was not allowed to do
his work in peace. He was promptly charged
with being "a non-conformable man, when
for the most of that time I was not resolved
either way." After three years, and a little
more, had passed, he was summoned before
Laud, then the Bishop of London. The
Bishop was more angry than was becoming
to his sacred office, and his sentence was more
explicit than paternal: "I charge you that
you neither preach, read, marrj', bury, or
exercise any ministerial functions in any part
of my Diocess; for if you do, and I hear of it,
I'll be upon your back and follow you wherever
you go, in any part of this kingdom, and so
everlastingly disenable you." This far-reach-
ing denunciation was fitted to have some effect
in one direction or the other upon the " prating
coxcomb. ' ' He must either conform or venture
to defj- the ecclesiastical decree. He took
time to consider his course. The Puritan
made haste slowly, it was a trait of his char-
acter, but he did not go backward or side wise.
Shepard spent a few months with the Harla-
kendens, while his spirit burned within him
as he saw more clearly "into the evil of the
English ceremonies, crosse, surplice and kneel-
ing." Then the Bishop "fired me out of this
place," a curiously modem phrase to find in
a Seventeenth Centurj' Journal and equally
apt. He accepted an invitation to Yorkshire
and became chaplain in the family of Sir
Richard Darley, where he was kindly treated —
very kindly, inasmuch as the knight's kins-
woman became his wife. She was the first
Margaret Shepard, who shared all her husband's
hardships onl}- to meet earh^ death soon after
landing in New England.
THE FOUNDERS
But another ecclesiastic drove him from his
pleasant Yorkshire refuge, and he went to
Northumberland, where he thought he might
preach in peace, " being far from any bishops " ;
but again he was silenced. Thus driven from
pillar to post it was but nat-iral that the
thought of removing to New England should
come to him. His reasons are on record in
his "little booke." He saw no call to any
other place in Old England. The Lord seemed
to have departed from England when Mr.
Hooker and Mr. Cotton were gone, and the
hearts of most of the godly were set and bent
that way. He was convinced of the intolerable
evils in the Anglican Church. " I saw no reason
to spend my time privately when I might pos-
sibly exercise my talent publikely in New Eng-
land. My dear wife did much long to see me
settled there in peace and so put me on to it."
He sailed with his wife and child in the year
1 634; They encountered a great storm and with
difficulty got back again to the English shore.
Then his baby died, and the stricken father
dared not be present at the burial, lest he should
be arrested. He wondered if he was resisting
the will of God and feared that he might have
gone too far in separating from the " Assemblies
in England." He spent the winter in Norfolk,
with his expenses defrayed by Roger Harla-
kenden. He could not preach in public, but
he was busy with his pen. In the spring he
went up to London, where he evaded the officers
for a time, and in August he sailed once more
for America, with his wife and a second son,
his brother Samuel Shepard, his friend Roger
Harlakenden, and other comrades. Their
ship Defence was "very rotten and unfit for
such a voyage," and again there were fears
that they might be forced to put back. But
through many storms they were carried safely,
and on the 3d of October, 1635, they reached
Boston harbor, and received a loving welcome
from many friends. On the second day after
their arrival, Shepard and his family came over
to the Newtowne where he found Hooker and
Stone, whom he had known in England, making
their preparations to remove to the Connecti-
cut. The new-comers were received into the
families of Hooker's company and in many
cases made arrangements to buy the houses
of those who were to depart. A new church
was organized with Shepard as its minister,
and for twelve years he "exercised his gifts"
in a way which both enlarged his own reputa-
tion and served the infant Commonwealth.
He was in a position in which his influence was
widely felt. There were strong men in his
congregation who were leaders in Church and
State and through whom his teachings reached
far beyond the walls of his humble meeting-
house. He was a studious man, who prepared
his sermons with infinite care and who left
behind him books which show his learning,
the acuteness of his reason, the fervor of his
imagination, the depth of his sincerity. He
was an active missionary and worked in fellow-
ship with John Eliot for the welfare of the
Indians. He could not preach in the Indian
tongue, but he wrote the tracts which Eliot
translated for the use of the Indian converts.
He made his short life long by fidelity and
indefatigable industry. He died in 1649 at
the early age of 44, leaving behind him a repu-
tation for saintliness unsurpassed by anyone
in the annals of New England. Grace and
mercy, faith and conscience, met in him and
gave power to his words.
"We discover, then, in these Puritan founders
of Cambridge the elements of power which
have always profoundly afEected the life of
humanity. All the great human forces become
the servants of the men who carry in themselves
the passion for righteousness, the love of free-
dom, and a confidence in unseen and eternal
realities. The qualities of these three men,
efficiency, foresight, steadfastness and saint-
liness, uncompromising righteousness and the
sense of communion with and commission from
God, are the permanent foundations of the Puri-
tan Commonwealth. If such men come at the
turning of the tide they stand forever as cardi-
nal figures of history, and whether their per-
sonal genius be great or small, they leave an
undying influence upon the story of their race.
Ill
THE CHURCH
WE can understand the early history
of Massachusetts onty when we
remember that the great aim which
the settlers proposed to themselves was to
found "a civil and ecclesiastical government
modelled, constructed and administered on
the Bible as the common source of all divine
knowledge and authority." In such a system
the religious organization was not an accident
or an appendage. It was the fundamental
institution, and the "meeting-house" was the
central necessity of a Massachusetts town.
We have no complete description of the
first meeting-house in Cambridge, but it stood
in the middle of the village, on the south-
western corner of what are now Dunster and
Mt. Auburn Streets. In comparison with the
mud walls and thatched roof of the Boston
meeting-house, the hewn frame of the Newtowne
house, with roof of slate or boards, though
probably less picturesque, no doubt looked to
our ancestors much more complete and dig-
nified. The interior was as simple and un-
ecclesiastical as the exterior. There was no
altar, no choir, nothing even that in olden
countries would be called a pulpit ; only a desk,
with seats before it for deacons and elders,
and rows of benches beyond, for men on the
one side, and for women on the other. Indeed,
it was not primarily a church at all. It was
a meeting-house: a place, that is, where the
people of the town gathered for all common
purposes, on week-days to arrange their secular
afifairs, on the seventh to worship God. In
the Plymouth Colony, the meeting-house (built
more than ten years before) was also a fort, the
roof being a flat platform, with six little cannon
mounted on it; the worshippers, on Sunday,
assembling by beat of drum, and marching
together to their meeting place.
On Monday morning, February 11, 163(),
this meeting-house was the scene of the gather-
ing of the new church which was to take the
place of Hooker's congregation soon to depart
for Connecticut. "There was," said Dr.
Newell, in his Anniversary discourse two
hundred and ten years later, "a Sabbath-like
quiet and gravity in the looks and movements
of the people. There were signs of preparation
for some special solemnity. The signal for a
public gathering was heard; and, as the in-
habitants issued from their dwellings and
passed with sedate step through the streets,
others of less familiar countenance, who had
spent the Sabbath with them that they might
be here in season, or who had just arrived from
the neighbourhood, were seen mingling with
them as they went. Gathering from all
quarters came the fathers of the infant church
and commonwealth of Massachusetts, to sanc-
tion by their presence the solemn act which
was about to be performed. From Boston,
from Charlestown, from Roxbury, from Dor-
chester, from Watertown, and the towns which
were within convenient travelling distance,
the ' messengers ' of the invited churches, and
others, drawn hither by curiosity and religious
interest, were seen wending their way, as the)'
then best could, over new-wrought roads, or
across the open fields and over the ice-bridged
rivers and streams, to the humble Puritan
sanctuary. In the midst of the newly-risen
dwellings which had sprung up as by magic
under the diligent hands of the Christian ad-
venturers who first planted the town, on the
rising ground jttst above the marshes, and in
the principal street, leading down to the river, —
which bore, as its still bears, the name of their
king, — stood the House of Prayer. A plain,
roughlj'-finished edifice it was but as precious
in the sight of God as the marble and gilded
cathedral.
"The little church was' soon filled to over-
flowing. The day, perhaps, was one of the
mild and bright daj-s which February often
mingles with its snows and storms; and even
if it were not, our hardy sires who had left
their pleasant homes in Old England for the
THE CHURCH
' stem and rockbound coast ' of the New, who
had deliberately exchanged their dear native
soil for the uncertainties and discomforts of
a colony in a heathen and savage land, who
had traversed the wide, weltering sea for the
privilege of worshipping God in purity and
freedom, — men who made their religion the
sun and centre of their being, — were not to be
daunted by a little cold or a little damp in the
preformance of its duties; and though our
modem safeguards against snow and wet were
imknown to their pilgrim feet, though neither
stove nor furnace — those innovations of modern
church-comfort — softened the chilly air, or
dissolved the curling breaths that rose thickly
upward in the sanctuary, they never thought of
complaining, much less of staying at home. . . .
"And first among the forms which stand out
on the historic picture, as it presents itself
to the eye of a Massachusetts memory, is that
of John Winthrop, now in the meridian of life,
the father of our commonwealth, the first
governor of the colony, and always among its
ruling and guiding spirits, — 'the Nehemiah,'
as Mather calls him, ' of our American Jeru-
salem,' — the able, discreet, faithful, noble-
spirited, open-handed servant of the rising
state, for which he freely spent his time, his
property, and his strength, — a man of many
and great virtues, both in public and in private
life, and whose errors were the errors of his
age, — of well-balanced mind, sound judgment,
great courtesy and self command, — prudent
in counsel, energetic in action, mild and con-
siderate in the exercise of authority, so as
even to be charged by his more rigid associates
with over-lenity, patient of personal injuries,
and overcoming evil with good, firm and in-
trepid in his adherence to right, meek and
magnanimous in his acknowledgment of wrong,
and pursuing through the little and great trials
of his lot the even tenor of his way, — frugal,
abstinent, laborious, self-denying, wisely and
manfully accommodating himself to his new
situation, avoiding in himself and discouraging
in others all show and expensiveness in dress
and style of living, foregoing for example's sake
many of the elegancies and comforts to which
he had been accustomed, but at the same time
dispensing promptly and bountifully to the
wants of the needy, and impoverishing himself
in the public service, — the true gentleman, the
kind-hearted and benevolent neighbour, the
loving husband and father, the humble and
devout Christian.
"Next we discern the sterner countenance
of Thomas Dudley, another of the trusty and
devoted servants of the colony, whose name is
so often associated with Winthrop's; the first
deputy-governor, and afterwards from time
to time governor, the principal founder of our
town, and the zealous champion of its interests,
whose house stood close by the church, — and
his heart, too; — a man of great integrity and
independence, of strict honor and truth in his
dealings, hardy in body and in mind, able in
business, well qualified in most respects for
public office, which he retained till his death,
but at the same time of an irritable tempera-
ment and strong passions, somewhat close, it
was thought, in money matters, with a soldier's
roughness of speech, severe and unbending in
the administration of the laws, and zealously
intolerant in his religious sentiments.
"John Haynes, too, is there; that 'heavenly
man,' as Roger Williams calls him, the gov-
ernor for the present year, another of the early
settlers of Cambridge under the ministry of
Hooker, and afterwards with him one of the
fathers of Connecticut, where he enjoyed an
unbounded and uninterrupted esteem and
popularity at the head of affairs in that colony ;
his wealth, as well as his wisdom and upright-
ness, giving him an influence which he con-
tinued to possess and to deserve through life.
"Not far from him, in the seats allotted to the
most honored of the assembly, I see one, lately
arrived from England, whom the veering popu-
lar favor is about to place — though but for a
single term — in the chief magistracy occupied
successively by Winthrop, Dudley and Haynes,
men of more than twice his age ; — a young man
of twenty-four, of noble birth and more noble
spirit, of rich genius and accomplishments,
of persuasive eloquence, in after life at least,
as Hume testifies, of consummate abiUty and
address, remarkable even in that age so famed
for its active talents, — of patrician family,
but of republican and Puritan principles, — a
most pure and devout Christian, a far-sighted
and profound thinker, an ardent lover and
consistent defender of civil and religious liberty
26
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
in its widest extent, a zealous seeker and
champion of truth, one of the earliest ex-
pounders, not to say discoverers, of the funda-
mental principles of a constitutional republic, —
whose high and eventful career, commencing
amid controversy and tempest in the New
World, and passing through scenes of intense
and varied excitement in the Old, is to termi-
nate in a martyr's calm and heroic death upon
the scaffold, — a death worth more to mankind
than a thousand common lives, — a death
which made all England's heart thrill, which
drew admiration even from his enemies, and
forced from one of the bystanders, a zealous
loyalist, the applauding and expressive ex-
clamation, 'He dies like a prince!' I see
him in the midst of the magistrates and elders,
with that composed thoughtfulness of aspect,
and grave majesty of demeanor, which gave
to his blooming manhood the weight and
authority of age; — his reserve and quietness
of manner, like the snows over a still volcano,
covering from a stranger's eye the intense
enthusiasm and energy which glowed in the
deep soul beneath; — his peculiar and striking
countenance having that in it which at once
commanded attention, and, as Clarendon says
of it, 'made men think there was something
in him extraordinary,' as there indeed was.
We do well to remember the name, the charac-
ter and the fortunes of Sir Henry Vane. . . .
"Near him is his chosen preacher and friend,
John Cotton; the ecclesiastical patriarch of
the Massachusetts colony, silenced by Laud
for the unpardonable sin of Puritanism and
neglecting to kneel at the sacrament, but now
rejoicing in his banishment from country and
home as the opening, in Providence, of an
enlarged sphere of active usefulness and influ-
ence in which his learning and popular talents,
his piety and zeal, the weight of his character,
and the mildness of his spirit, placed him at
the head of the clergy.
"By his side sits his colleague in the ministry,
John Wilson, the first pastor of the Boston
church, of which Cotton was the teacher, — of
whom it was said by the celebrated Dr. Ames,
'that if he might have his option of the best
condition this side of heaven, it would be that
of teacher in a congregational church of which
Mr. Wilson was pastor'; and of whose preach-
ing our own Shepard, when he first heard him,
exclaimed: 'Methinks I hear an apostle when
I hear this man. . . .'
"Among his brethren who appear in the scene
as it rises before us out of the mist of time, we
may discern James and Symmes, of Charles-
town, and Phillips, of Watertown, the fellow-
passenger of Winthrop in the Arbella, of whom
the governor writes, at his death, as 'a godly
man, specially gifted, and very peaceful in
his place, much lamented of his own people
and others.' And in another seat is the future
pastor of Concord, one of the strictest of the
Puritans, Peter Bulkley, a gentleman by birth
and education, a scholar of no mean attain-
ments, with a well-furnished library (of which
he gave a considerable part to the College in
this place) and a large estate, of which he made
most bountiful and judicious use in the ad-
vancement of private and public good.
"Another glance shows us Richard Mather, of
Dorchester, an eminent divine and controver-
sialist, and the progenitor of the many distin-
guished ministers of that name. His neighbour,
the pastor of Roxbury, that zealous opponent of
the new lights of his time, Thomas Weld, now
chiefly remembered as the author of " The Rise,
Reign and Ruin of the Antinomians," has
accompanied him on the way, and has taken
his place among the delegates of the invited
churches. And there, too, is his beloved
colleague, the self-sacrificing and tender-
hearted Eliot; the apostle to the Indians, and
their devoted and unflinching friend, the first
and most efficient Protestant missionary to
these wild men of the soil, who, a few years
after this, with the aid of Gookin, one of the
distinguished inhabitants of this place, com-
menced his labors among the savages, and made
his first conversions at Nonantum, then lying
within the limits of Cambridge. His efforts
and sacrifices were rewarded, indeed, with but
a temporary and inadequate success; but his
loving and saintly spirit enjoyed its reward,
as it still toiled on in patience and hope.
' ' Hugh Peters, too (a name not to be forgotten) ,
who, with Vane and others, had arrived in New
England the preceding autumn, and was now
in Boston or the neighbourhood (for he was not
settled at Salem till December, 103(1), was in all
probability at the gathering of our Cambridge
THE CHURCH
27
church. He, too, was one of the remarkable
men of a remarkable period; and afterwards
became a conspicuous actor in the revolutionary
scenes in England. He was the chaplain and
counsellor of Cromwell; distinguished by a
quaint and homely, but original, vigorous,
Latimer-like eloquence, "j which made him one
of the most popular and effective preachers
of his time; an ardent, resolute, active and
enterprising man, lion-hearted and trumpet-
tongued, entering with characteristic enthu-
siasm and energy into the political as well as
religious controversies of the day, ready to
fight or pray, as his services might be wanted,
and finally, like Vane, dying upon the scaffold,
and, like Vane, meeting his fate with an un-
shaken fortitude and heroism. While he was
in this country, his ministry at Salem, and his
spirited public services of various kinds, made
him a rich blessing to the town and the state
in which he lived. Of quick mind and versa-
tile talents, ready to act upon all occasions
and in all matters, temporal as well as spiritual,
the influence of his counsels and wise sugges-
tions, of his labors and successful example,
left a deep and enduring impression upon the
character of his Salem flock.
"But time would fail me to speak fully of the
honored and useful men, both among the laity
and the clergy, who, we have good reason to be-
lieve, stood sponsors at the christening of our
ancient church. I can only mention the names
of such men as Richard Bellingham, and Simon
Bradstreet, one of the first settlers of Cam-
bridge, both of them afterwards chosen several
times to the chief magistracy, in Massachu-
setts, — William Coddington, a wealthy Boston
merchant, of high character, a friend and sup-
porter of Mrs. Hutchinson, and afterwards
among the founders of Rhode Island, and its
governor at his death, — William Pynchon,
the father of Roxbury, and then of Spring-
field, — Increase Nowell, of Charlestown, for
many years secretary of the colony, — who, with
others of less note, filled the seats of the sanc-
tuary.
"In front of all were the pastor and the teacher
of the first flock here gathered, Thomas Hooker
and Samuel Stone, who were soon to be the
spiritual fathers of another colony at Hartford.
Hooker was also one of the admired and
renowned preachers of his time, and became
to Connecticut what Cotton was to Massa-
chusetts, its ecclesiastical patriarch and oracle
— 'the light of the western churches.'
" 'His colleague. Stone,' as his contemporary,
Morton, testifies, 'was another star of the
first magnitude in New England,' — 'a learned,
solid and judicious divine,' celebrated not
only for his ability as a disputant, but for his
wit, pleasantry and good humor."
In front of the pulpit facing the congre-
gation, sat Thomas Shepard, and with him
the deacons of the newly-organized church.
Governor Winthrop's journal records the pro-
ceedings as follows: "This day, there met a
great assembly, where the proceeding was as
followeth: Mr. Shepherd and two others (who
were after to be chosen to office), sate together
in the elder's seat. Then the elder of them
began with prayer. After this Mr. Shepherd
prayed with deep confession of sin, &c., and exer-
cised out of Eph. v., — that he might make it to
himself a holy, &c.; and also opened the cause
of their meeting, &c. Then the elder desired
to know of the churches assembled, what
number were needful to make a church, and
how they ought to proceed in this action.
Whereupon, some of the ancient ministers,
conferring shortly together, gave answer:
That the Scripture did not set down any certain
rule for the number. Three (they thought)
were too few, because of Matt. XVIII an appeal
was allowed from three; but that seven might
be a fit number. And, for their proceeding,
they advised, that such as were to join should
make confession of their faith, and declare
what work of grace the Lord had wrought in
them; which accordingly they did, Mr. Shep-
herd first, then four others, then the elder, and
one who was to be deacon (who had also prayed) ,
and another member. Then the covenant
was read, and they all gave a solemn assent
to it. Then the elder desired of the churches
that, if they did approve them to be a church,
they would give them the right hand of fellow-
ship. Whereupon, Mr. Cotton (upon short
speech with some others near him) , in the name
of their churches, gave his hand to the elder
with a short speech of their assent, and desired
the peace of the Lord Jesus to be with them.
Then Mr. Shepherd made an exhortation to the
28
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
rest of his body, about the nature of their
covenant, and to stand firm to it, and com-
mended them to the Lord in a most heavenly
prayer. Then the elder told the assembly,
that they were intended to choose Mr. Shepherd
for their pastor (by the name of the brother
who had exercised), and desired the churches,
that, if they had anything to except against
him, they would impart it to them before the
day of ordination. Then he gave the church
thanks for their assistance, and so left them to
the Lord."
It was indeed a long way which these people
had come from the stately ritual of the English
prayer book to these simple and unpremedi-
tated rites. The contrast between the elaborate
ceremony of an Anglican induction into priestly
orders and this plain, self-reliant procedure
was as great as that between the lofty tower
and splendid nave of St. Botolph's Church
in the Lincolnshire Boston, of which John
Cotton had been the rector, and the frame
meeting-house in which he now gave "the
fellowship of the churches" to the newly
organized society.
It is most interesting to see how this ques-
tion of a new form of church government and
worship worked itself out in New England. It
was done with very little friction, by perfectly
natural and unconscious steps. The natural
thing to do was to turn directly to the Bible
and to shape the new organization and form
of worship by the apostolic models. Already
in Holland, as some of their own number knew,
this had been long practiced. Already in
Plymouth it had taken root in New England
soil. Almost without discussion or dispute
they adopted entirely new methods of pro-
cedure, though in England they had barely
tolerated their Separatist neighbors, yet in
America they rapidly became Separatists them-
selves. Not a vestige of the supremacy of
king or bishop remained when they reared
their churches in the wilderness.
When the Massachusetts Company left
England the leaders still acknowledged their
allegiance to the Anglican Church. There are
few more touching and persuasive documents
of history than the farewell address of the exiles
on the Arbella to the Church of England. It
is entitled:
"The Humble Request of His Majes-
tie's loyall Subjects, the Govemour
and the Company late gone for New
England; To the rest of their Breth-
ren, in and of the Church of England.
For the obtaining of their Prayers, and
the removall of suspitions, and mis-
constructions of their Intentions."
and in it we read that they did not leave the
Church of England "as loathing that milk
wherewith we were nourished there; but,
blessing God for the parentage and education,
as members of the same body, shall always
rejoice in her good, and unfeignedl}^ grieve for
any sorrow that shall ever betide her, and while
we have breath, sincerely desire and endeavor
the continuance and abundance of her welfare,
with the enlargement of her bounds in the
kingdom of Christ Jesus."
"If there be any," goes on the Humble
Request, "who through want of clear intelli-
gence of our course, or tenderness of affection
towards us, cannot conceive so well of our
way as we could desire, we would entreat such
not to despise us, nor to desert us in their
prayers and affections, but to consider rather
that they are so much the more bound to
express the bowels of their compassion towards
us, remembering always that both nature and
grace doth ever bind us to relieve and rescue,
with our utmost and speediest power, such
as are dear unto us, when we conceive them to
be running uncomfortable hazards."
Nearly all the first ministers of the Massa-
chusetts Colony were ordained clergymen
of the Church of England. Thomas Shepard
made his first open renunciation of Episcopacy
in entering upon his Newtowne pastorate.
John Cotton served for twenty years under the
Bishop of Lincoln as vicar in St. Botolph's
Church at Boston, and before leaving his flock
"Conferred with the chief of the people and
offered them to bear witness (still) to the truth
he had preached and practised amongst them
.... if they conceived it any confirmation of
their faith and practice." Hooker's ministry
in the Church of England was shorter; but
when it was found that the Bishop of London
threatened to suspend him, a petition was pre-
sented from forty-seven "conformable minis-
ters" asking that he be retained. Nothing,
THE CHURCH
however, could be more remote from the prac-
tice of the Church of England than the habits
which these ministers adopted in America.
The reaction was complete. There was no
liturgy, no surplice, no stately ritual, no
priestly offices. The minister became simply
one of the congregation set apart by his fellow-
worshippers to study, preach and conduct
the public worship. Whatsoever the poverty
of their outward surroundings, however lack-
ing in grace, in beauty, in esthetic appeal,
these brave and uncompromising folk had at
least won the freedom to conduct their secular
and religious affairs after their own fashion.
They had founded a Commonwealth and or-
ganized a church modelled and administered
according to their interpretation of the Bible.
In accordance with these principles they had
built them a civil and religious temple, "Jesus
Christ himself being the chief cornerstone."
At first the New England churches acted
as purely independent bodies. Then the
common sense of loneliness and of danger drew
them into close alliance. In all exigencies
they learned more and more eagerly to seek
each other's sympathy and counsel. The
identification of church with state, whereby
the members of the several churches found
themselves constantly acting together in both
the civil and the religious affairs of all the com-
munities, accustomed them to concerted
action. And so it happened that, in spite of
occasional protests from individual towns,
jealous of their rights, there grew up by mutual
consent a certain affiliation of the churches,
and mutual concern in each other's welfare,
which, however familiar to us today, was then
something new in the world.
This is not the place to trace the development
of this new polity. It is interesting for us,
however, to remember that the first announce-
ment to the world of this new order of religious
government, and, indeed, the first recognition
on the part of the churches themselves of the
fact that they had committed themselves to
a common polity, was directly associated with
the church in Cambridge and its first pastor.
The hour comes when every new movement,
just becoming conscious of its own identity
and its own purpose, takes to itself a name of
its own. That moment came, as we shall see
later, when the synod of Cambridge, assembling
again in the little meeting-house on Dunster
Street, declared that the New England churches
were not Independent, but Congregational.
"So sprung up," said one of Shepard's stic-
cessors, "a new Christian order, — an order in
which the individual churches, while preserving
their individuality and claiming each congre-
gation as the source of all ecclesiastical power,
yet consented to invest the assembled churches
with certain authority over the several parts.
It had been evolved, as we have seen, out of
the practical exigencies of the situation. It
had no justification in any previous traditions
of church policy. It was very illogical, and
showed in the statements and arguings of its
own platform an uneasy consciousness that
it was striving to combine things inherently
incompatible. The churches were independent,
yet they were not; each parish claimed the
absolute right of controlling its own affairs,
yet delegated part of its authority to councils
or synods. With every new generation and
at every new juncture down to the present day,
Congregationalism has been forced to state its
principles anew, and decide afresh just how
much authority resides in the council and how
much in the congregation. With the unity
and aggressive power of an established church
it has certainly never shown itself able to
compete.
"Yet, logical or illogical, it was, as we have
seen, very spontaneous, and it has proved itself
singularly adapted to its work. In the new
life of the Western Continent during those early
centuries, if not throughout the nation's entire
life, it was exactly what was needed. What
it lost, as compared with Episcopacy or Pres-
byterianism, in sheer working power, it gained
in elasticity and freedom. It has proved strong
enough to hold together its scattered forces
through the simple sentiment of brotherhood;
it has proved supple and free enough to adapt
itself to the growth of democratic institutions
and the spread of new religious thought."
IV
THE COLLEGE
UPON the main gate of Harvard College is
written today an inscription taken from
one of the eariiest chronicles, entitled
"New England's First Fruits," and published
in 1643.
"After God had carried us safe to New Eng-
land and we had builded our houses, provided
necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient
places for God's worship and settled the Civil
Government, one of the next things we longed
for and looked after was to advance learning
and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to
leave an illiterate ministry to the churches
when our present ministers shall lie in dust."
It was on the 28th day of October, 1636,
Sir Harry Vane being the Governor, that the
General Court of the colony passed the
memorable vote: "The Court agrees to give
£400 towards a school or college — whereof
£200 shall be paid the next year and £200
when the work is finished." This is the sig-
nificant act that marks the distinction between
the Puritan colony and all pioneer settlements
based on material foundations. For a like
spirit under like circumstances history will be
searched in vain.
"This act," said James Russell Lowell, "is
second in real import to none that has happened
in the Western hemisphere. The material
growth of the colonies would have brought
about their political separation from the mother
country' in the fulness of time, but the founding
of the first college here saved New England
from becoming a mere geographical expression.
It did more, it insured our intellectual inde-
pendence of the Old World. That independ-
ence has been long in coming, but the chief
names of those who have hastened its coming
are written on the roll of Harvard College."
On November 15th, 1637, the General Court
took the next step by voting that "the CoUedg
is ordered to bee at Newetowne," a place, as
Winthrop wrote, "most pleasant and accom-
odate" and "then under the orthodox and
soul-flourishing ministry of Mr. Thomas Shep-
herd." Newtowne was then renamed Cam-
bridge and twelve of the leading citizens of
the Colony were commissioned to see that the
votes establishing the College were carried out.
This Committee consisted of six magistrates
and six ministers. The magistrates were John
Winthrop, who was again Governor; Thomas
Dudley, the Deputy-Governor; Richard Belling-
ham, who was Governor a few years afterwards ;
John Humphrey of Lynn, one of the original
adventurers and an assistant; Roger Harla-
kenden of Cambridge, Shepard's friend and
protector; and Israel Stoughton of Dorchester,
who was an assistant for eight years and the
father of the future Governor Stoughton. The
six ministers were John Cotton and John Wilson
of the Boston Church, Thomas Shepard
of Cambridge, Thomas Weld of Roxbury,
Hugh Peters, then settled at Salem, and John
Davenport, who had just arrived in Boston,
and who went on within a few months to the
planting of New Haven. We do well to re-
member these men. Humphrey and Peters
tarried but a short time in New England, the
brave young Harlakenden died before the
College got started, and though Davenport
returned to Boston in his old age, his fame is
chiefly association with New Haven. The
other eight bore names that have ever since
been closely and honorably associated with
Harvard College. All of the eight sent their
own sons to the College and the descendants
of these men have been enrolled among its
scholars, teachers and administrators ever
since. The names of Weld and Stoughton
are borne by two of the buildings in the College
Yard. There are more than forty Welds and
Wilsons in the list of Harvard graduates, more
than a score of Cottons and Winthrops and
almost as many Dudleys and Shepards.
This efficient Committee got to work at once,
and in 1638 work began under the guidance
of one Nathaniel Eaton. At first the word
THE COLLEGE
school was a more appropriate description
than College, and Eaton was never known by
any other title than schoolmaster. His stay
was short. He was soon accused of the
" cruell and barbaros beating of Mr. Nathaniel
Briscoe and for other neglecting and misusing
of his scholars," and accordingly on September
29, 1639, he was dismissed and later fined and
obliged to pay Mr. Briscoe, who was his assist-
ant teacher, £30, in satisfaction of the wrong
done him. Governor Winthrop in his History
of New England told the story at great length,
and evidently the affair created no little com-
motion in the community. Later Eaton went
to Virginia, whence he returned to England,
and at the Restoration conformed to the Church
of England and had a living at Biddeford until
he died in a prison where he was confined for
debt.
Meanwhile, the Committee had gone for-
ward with the erection of a building to house
the scholars. It was a slow and difficult task,
for all the timber had to be hewn by hand,
and the shingles split with a saw. It stood
at what is now the southern extremity of the
College Yard, and, indeed, probably projected
into what is now Massachusetts Avenue,
opposite Holyoke House. It fronted to the
south toward Massachusetts Avenue, then
called Braintree Street. At the western end
of the ground floor was a hall and a kitchen,
and the same wing contained "the buttery and
a study for the Senior Fellows." The eastern
end of this floor was divided into chambers,
within which were partitioned off small rooms
called studies, each about six feet square.
Each student had one of these studies allotted
to him, but the chambers were shared in com-
mon. On the floor above was a good-sized
room for a library, and more chambers and
studies. There were but two chimneys, and
evidently most of the chambers were entirely
without heat. In the accounts of the Com-
mittee the bill of glazing is so small that it is
obvious that very little glass was available.
Probably oiled paper served as a substitute.
Lime was very difficult to obtain, and the in-
terior, like the interior of the little Meeting
House, was daubed with clay as a substitute
for plaster. There is some reason to suppose
that certain chambers and studies were finished
according to the wishes or the means of the
students who first occupied them. Hence,
while some were calked with clay, others were
apparently ceiled with cedar and one or two
were apparently lathed and plastered. There
are charges for both clapboards and shingles
in the accounts. It is, therefore, probable
that the exterior walls were clapboarded and
the roof shingled. It was, obviously, a primi-
tive structure, yet the author of " New Eng-
land's First Fruits," said of it, — "the edifice
is very fair and comely within and without,
having in it a spacious hall where they will
meet at commons, lectures and exercises, and
a large library with some books in it, the gifts
of divers of our friends. Their chambers and
studies also fitted for and possessed by the
students and all other rooms and offices neces-
sary and convenient with all needful offices
thereto belonging." Johnson, in his book
called "Wonder-working Providence," later
stated that the College was "a fair building,
thought by some to be too gorgeous for a
wilderness and yet too mean in others' appre-
hension for a College." There was at the top
of the building a turret or cupola, for we have
record of the fact that a bell given to the College
was placed in the turret. No provision was
made for lighting the place, and there early
appear in the records charges against students
for the "public candle." It is evident also
that most of the students used the hall or
dining-room as a living-room. There a fire
was m.aintained at the expense of the students
and there by the Hght of the "public candle"
they must have studied during the winter
evenings.
Rules and regulations hedged in the students
at every turn. They were not permitted to use
the English language, except in the public
exercises where it was particularly prescribed.
Their conversation was presumably in Latin.
They were not allowed to buy, sell, or exchange
anything to the value of a six pence without the
permission of their parents or tutor. They
were not allowed to attend public meetings
of any sort, and many were the misdemeanors
which were punishable either by fine or by
whipping. In the early days there was so
little money in the colony that the wampum
of the Indians was made by law a legal tender
32
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
for debts. Under these circumstances the
College steward received in payment for tuition
such articles as the homes of the students could
furnish. Accounts were liquidated with live-
stock, grain, groceries, and solids and fluids
of various descriptions. The building of the
house and the opening of the school strained
to the uttermost the limited resources of the
colony. Indeed the enterprise could hardly
have been carried to success at all had it not
been for the memorable gift of a young Puritan
minister, a graduate of Emmanuel, who was
another of the dauntless Puritan saints who
"took New England on their way to Heaven."
"As we were thinking and consulting," wrote
John Winthrop, " how to affect this great work,
it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr.
John Harvard, a godly gentleman and a lover
of learning, then living among us, to bequeath
the one-half of his estate, in all about £700,
toward the erection of the College, and all his
library." It was this gift which really made
the enterprise possible, and it was in acknowl-
edgment of it that the General Court voted,
in 1638, "that the College at Cambridge be
called Harvard College.
There is no more interesting story of genea-
logical research and discovery than that which
describes the successful effort of Mr. Henry
F. Waters, in 1885, to trace the history of John
Harvard. By patient industry and skill, Mr.
Waters was enabled to reconstruct the geneal-
ogy which had been completely obliterated by
the flight of time. John Harvard had become
almost a mythical figure, but now we know
more about him than we do of most of the
early settlers of New England. His family
story runs back to a fine old Elizabethean
house, still standing in the High Street at
Stratford-on-Avon, and now restored and
known as the Harvard House. This house was
built in 1596 by Thomas and Alice Rogers of
Stratford, and therein they reared a thriving
family. Thomas Rogers was the leading
citizen of the little Warwickshire town, an
alderman, and later baliff or maj-or. By trade
he was a marketman, or provision dealer in a
general way, and he evidently prospered in
their world's goods. Near by lived one John
Shakespeare, who also had sons and daughters
in goodly number and who was also an alder-
man. The children of these two houses were
close neighbors. They went together to the
famous grammar school and they went to the
same church. The children were paired,
William Shakespeare with Charles Rogers,
Richard Shakespeare with Richard Rogers,
Edmund Shakespeare with Edward Rogers.
Their fathers were trustees of the grammar
school and the children played together on the
village green. One of the Rogers children was
named Katherine, and in April, 1605, this
Katherine Rogers, going out from the timbered
house on the High Street to Holy Trinity
Church, was married to Robert Harvard, a
young market-man living in the Borrough of
Southwark in London. It has been suggested
that Robert Harvard and Katherine Rogers
were brought together by no less a person than
William Shakespeare, for Shakespeare had
left Stratford and gone to London, and was
living in Southwark. He had known the
Rogers children intimately, and it is not un-
likely that in London he met Robert Harvard.
A more probable suggestion is that as Thomas
Rogers, the father, was in the same business
as Robert Harvard, the two young people
came together on the occasion of some business
visit of the young provision dealer to Strat-
ford. At any rate, they set up their home in
Southwark, and there John Harvard was bom
in November, 1607. Their house was in the
shadow of St. Saviour's Church, which is now
Southwark Cathedral. The Bankside Theatre
where Shakespeare plaj^ed was not far away,
and it is a fair guess that Shakespeare some-
times rocked John Harvard's cradle or took
the child on his knee to tell him stories. When
the boy was eighteen years old the black plague
descended upon London, and his father, two
brothers and two sisters died of it within five
weeks. Katherine Harvard was left a widow
with her two boys John and Thomas. She
married for a second time John Elletson, a
well-to-do cooper in London and took steps
at once to send her boy John to Emmanuel
College at Cambridge, where he entered in
1627, being recorded on the books of the
College as coming from "Middlesex," which
indicates that the Elletsons had moved from
Southwark into London. It is interesting to
remember that the English Cambridge was
THE COLLEGE
the center of the Puritan movement, and that
it was there, during John Harvard's time, that
Winthrop and Dudley and Sir Richard Salton-
stall, and the other leaders of the Massachu-
setts Colony, met and arranged for their enter-
prise. It is interesting too to recall that John
Milton and John Harvard were at the Uni-
versity together. Both were youths of London
Puritan famihes, living not far apart, of nearly
the same station in life, and of about equal
means. It is a safe guess that the two young
men were friends.
Harvard spent nearly eight years at Cam-
bridge. He took his Bachelor's Degree in
1632, and his Master's Degree in 1635. The
next year he married the sister of one of his
college mates, a girl named Ann Sadler. While
he had been at college his step-father had died
and his mother had again married, this time
to an old friend of the family, Richard Year-
wood, a Puritan member of Parliament and a
comrade with Hampden, Pym and Sir John
Eliot. In 1637 John Harvard's mother died
and shortly afterwards his brother Thomas,
so that all the modest wealth of the family
came to John, and at the same time the ties
that bound him to the motherland were mostly
broken. It is no surprise, therefore, that we
discover that in the year 1637 he sold his real
estate in Southwark, including the Queen's
Head Inn, which is still standing, to a ship
captain, presumably as passage money for
himself, his wife, and his belongings, to New
England. In the fall of 1637 we find him
admitted a freeman in Charlestown in Massa-
chusetts and later he joined the church in that
place and was apparently associated as a col-
league with the minister, Zachariah Symmes.
He bought considerable land, some of it in
Charlestown, some of it across the Mystic
river, and some of it " adjoining the Newtowne
line" and he evidently built a house which
stood until it was destroyed when Charlestown
was burned at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
There is no certain record of his ever visiting
the place with which his name is forever asso-
ciated, yet we know that within a few weeks
of his arrival a Synod was held at Newtowne
and it is altogether probable that he attended
that meeting, coming over from Charlestown
either on foot or on horseback. His whole
life in New England extended over only a little
more than a year, for he died of consumption
on the 14th day of September, 163S. His
widow married the Rev. Thomas Allen, whose
name appears in the records of the College
as having paid over the timely legacy to the
Committee. The bequest of John Harvard
amounted to not quite four hundred pounds.
The books which he also bequeathed give us
some insight into the reading of a Puritan
"lover of learning" He had brought with
him across the sea more than two hundred
and sixty volumes, among them not only
Chrysostom and Calvin, Duns Scotus, and
Luther, but Homer and Plutarch, Terence
and Horace, Chapman's Homer, Bacon's
Essays and Advancement of Learning, and
Camden's Remains. Was ever gift so mul-
tiplied as the bequest of this obscure young
scholar? By this act of public-spirited and
well-directed munificence, this youth of thirty-
one made for himself an imperishable name and
enrolled himself among the foremost bene-
factors of the American Commonwealth.
Besides the liberality of the General Court
for the foundation of the College and the legacy
of John Harvard, gifts and benefits from indi-
viduals were not wanting, but it was "willing
poverty" rather than wealth which gave.
Among the gifts of the early days we read that
the Rev. W. Allen sent two cows. Cotton
cloth worth nine shillings was given by Richard
Dana, the ancestor of another Richard Dana,
who, nearly two hundred 3'ears later, when a
student at Harvard, went for two years before
the mast, and on his return gave the world a
deHghtful book. The Rev. Mr. Latham, of
Lancaster County, England, sent five pounds.
Sir Richard Saltonstall, a man of large means,
gave generously and his descendants, for gen-
eration after generation, have shown their
love for Harvard by a continued bounty.
Theophilus Gale, Fellow of Magdalen College,
Oxford, "a learned and industrious divine,
as appears by his "Court of the Gentiles,"
and his "Vanity of Pagan Philosophy," be-
queathed his library to the College. From
the New England towns and villages, and even
from distant settlements, contributions flowed
in. Little Scarborough, awa}' to the north
in Maine, sent two pounds nine shillings and
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
six pence, while from the far-distant South,
the people of Eleutheria in the Bahamas, "out
of their poverty," sent one hundred and twenty-
four pounds. Smaller gifts came in, such as a
pewter flagon worth ten shillings, a bell, a
fruit-dish, a sugar-spoon, a silver tipped jug,
one great salt, and one small trencher salt.
One event in connection with the founding
of the College
was of equal
importance to
the town and to
the Colony. In
a letter dated
at Salem, Octo-
ber 10th, 1638,
Hugh Peters
wrote, "We have
a printerer here
and think to go
to work with
some special
things." This
was a hand press
with which, in
the summer of
1638, Jose
Glover and his
wife started from
England. Glover
died on the voy-
age, but with
him had started
Stephen D a y e,
his wife and two
children, and his
stepson William
Boardman, an-
cestor of four
successive stew-
ards of Harvard
College. In Jan-
uary, 163 9,
Stephen Daye
brought the press to Cambridge and set it up
there. The first "special thing" printed was
the "Freeman's Oath," then an almanac made
for New England by "Mr. William Peirce
Mariner," the founder of the family which has
produced the most distinguished of American
mathematicians. These two were pamphlets,
and the first little book printed in America
was a metrical version of the Book of Psalms
for use in the worship of the New England
congregation. The press became "an append-
age to Harvard College," and its establishment
at Cambridge founded there a business for
which the town has been and still is famous.
The great estaljlishments of the Riverside
Press, the Uni-
versity Press,
and the Athe-
naeum Press still
make Cambridge
the center of
printing in
America, and
send the charac-
teristic Cam-
bridge product
all over the
world.
The arrival
and installation
in 1640 of Henry
Dunster to be
the first Presi-
dent was an
event of large
s i g nific a n c e.
Dunster was
born at Bur}%
in Lancashire,
on November
26th, 1609, so
he was only
thirty-one when
he became Presi-
dent. He took
his Bachelor's
Degree at Cam-
bridge, England,
in 1630, and his
Master's Degree
in 1634. He
was thus a contemporary at the University with
John Har\^ard and John Milton. After leaving
the University he appears to have engaged in
teaching, though Cotton Mather speaks of his
having "exercised his ministry" in England.
He came to New England in the summer of
1640, and almost immediately upon his arrival
STATUE OF JOHN HARV.iRD
THE COLLEGE
35
he was invited to take charge of the Kttle
college which had barely escaped infanticide
at the hands of Eaton. He was at first the
sole teacher, and he also acted as Treasurer
and General Manager. It appears that Dunster
gave instruction not only in Greek and Latin,
but also in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac. At
morning prayers his students were required
to translate from the Hebrew scripture into
Greek, and at evening prayers to retranslate
the English text of the New Testament into
Greek. As already noted Latin was the only
language authorized on the college premises.
Dunster also "exercised his gift" of preaching,
both in Cambridge and in the neighboring
churches, so that it is obvious that his varied
qualities and resources were given plenty of
exercise. He was untiring in industry and
faithful to every duty. Though his salary
was very small and irregularly paid, he gave
to the college not only his learning and his
skilled labor, but also practically all of his
hmited estate, including one hundred acres of
land in Shawsheen, which he had purchased
on his arrival as an investment for the little
fund he had brought with him. This liber-
ality quickened that of his fellow citizens, but
it was always the hardest kind of a struggle
to maintain the institution. " I was and am
willing," wrote Dunster to Winthrop in 164.3,
"considering the profit of the country to de-
scend to the lowest step. If there can be
nothing comfortable allowed me, I will sit
down appeased, desiring not more than what
may supply me and mine with food and
raiment to the furtherance of our labors for
the good of the Church and the Common-
wealth." It was Dunster, who thus joined
with Harvard in laying the foundation, both
educationally and materially, of the college.
In the autumn of 1642 Governor Winthrop
had the satisfaction of writing in his Journal:
"Nine bachelors commenced at Cambridge;
they were young men of good hope and per-
formed their acts so as gave good proof of their
proficiency in the tongues and arts. The
General Court had settled a government or
superintendency over the College, viz., all the
magistrates and elders over the six nearest
churches and the president, or the greatest
part of these. Most of them were now present
1136225
at the first Commencement, and dined at the
College with the scholars ordinary commons,
which was done of purpose for the students'
encouragement, and it gave good content to
all."
A copy of the first Commencement pro-
gramme, written in sonorous Latin, and dated
September 26th, 1642, is still in existence.
The titles of the theses in language, in rhetoric,
in philosophy, justify Governor Winthrop's
testimony to the proficiency of the young
scholars. The names of the nine first gradu-
ates are significant not only of the loyalty
of the leaders of the Colony, but also of the
purpose for which their little College was
founded. At the head of the list stands the
name of Benjamin Woodbridge, the son of a
prominent Puritan minister in England, who
had already studied for several terms at Ox-
ford. His brother. Rev. John Woodbridge,
had come to Boston in 16.34, had married
Mercy, daughter of Thomas Dudley, and was
settled as minister at Andover, Mass. Ben-
jamin Woodbridge returned to England and
was minister at Newbury for nearly forty
years; enjoying "a mighty reputation as a
scholar, a preacher, and a Christian." Though
silenced by the Act of Uniformity, in 1662, he
evidently continued to preach until his death
in 1684.
George Downing, whose name stands next,
was a nephew of Governor Winthrop, the son
of his sister Lucy. He came over with his
parents in 1638 and the family settled at Salem
under the ministry of Hugh Peters. Downing
had a strange and romantic career. At first
he was employed as a tutor at the College at a
salary of £4 "to read to the junior pupils as
the President shall see fit." Then he went to
England by the way of the West Indies and
next appears in the Parliamentary army, where
he rose so fast that when not more than twenty-
five years old he became a member of Crom-
well's own staff and wrote the dispatch to
Parliament announcing the victory at Worces-
ter. He was Cromwell's agent sent to the Duke
of Savoy to remonstrate against the persecution
of the Waldenses in Piedmont, and was also a
special ambassador to France. He became
a member of Parliament and later minister
to Holland. He changed sides at the Restora-
36
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
tion and served Charles II as zealously as he
had served the Commonwealth. His name
appears often in Pepy's Diary, and he is de-
scribed as "keen, bold, subtle, active and
observant, but imperious and unscrupulous,
actually preferring menace to persuasion,
reckless of the means employed or the risks
incurred in the pursuit of a proposed object."
He was later Secretary of the Commissioners of
the Treasury, and Downing Street, in London,
where the Prime Minister lives, was named
for him. He married Frances Howard, and
so became allied with one of the noblest
families of the English peerage. He died
in 1648, leaving a reputation of a man of extra-
ordinary' force
but of doubtful
character and
merit.
John BuJMey,
the third gradu-
ate, was the son
of Rev. Peter
Bulkley, who
had come to
New England
in 1635 and was
the first min-
ister at Con-
cord, Mass. Th<
younger Bulk-
ley served for
a year or two
with his class-
mate Downing
as a tutor to
the College and then he, too, went to England
and settled in the ministry at Fordham in the
county of Essex. He was ejected by the Act
of Uniformit}- in 1662 and he died in London
in 1689. This John Bulkley was one of the
earliest benefactors of the College, for in 1635
he gave to the College a piece of land "situate
and near adjoining to the College, and ordered
the same to be for the use of the Fellows that
should from time to time belong to and be
resident at the said Society. The said Garden
being commonly called and known by the
name of the Fellows Orchard." This was a
piece of ground lying to the east of the College
building and stretching from what is now
■-^ -=■
From the oldest known
the college as it ap}
Massachusetts Hail,
Massachusetts Avenue nearly to the present
Library building.
The next name on the list of the Class of
1642 is that of William Hubbard, who later
was settled in the ministry at Ipswich, Mass.
He is remembered as the author of "A Narra-
tive of the Trouble with the Indians," pub-
lished in 1677, and of a "History of New
England," finished in 1680. Hubbard kept
up his connection with the College all his life,
and we find him presiding at the Commence-
ments of 1684 and of 1688. He is recorded
as "the most eminent minister in the county
of Essex, equal to any in the province for
learning and candor and superior to all of his
contemporaries
- r- ^ as a writer."
He died in
- .^^s'jsssy*?-. 1704, aged 83.
The next is
Samuel Belling-
h a m , son of
Richard Bell-
ingham, a mem-
ber of the Com-
mittee in charge
of the College
and the future
Go\-crnor. This
man also re-
tumcd to Eng-
land and later
studied medicine
at Leyden. He
appears to have
lived in or near
London and ne\-er to ha\-c retmned to New
England.
Then comes the name of John Wilson, the son
of the Rev. John Wilson of the First Church in
Boston. He became for a time an assistant to
Rev. Richard Mather of Dorchester, and in Kiol
was settled at Medfield, where he was minister
for forty years, until his death in 1691.
Henry Saltonstall was the son of Sir Richard
Saltonstall, one of the founders of the Colony.
He returned to England and became a Fellow
at Oxford.
Tobias Barnard apparently returned to
England soon after he graduated, and dis-
appeared from sight; but the last of the nine
-4 1
:j^m.
'' ^ ^//-J'to^ f/ i'//(,(n'^//aj/i. (^a/n6ru/M6/i,ul(;/i; G/u/^/id.
print of Harvard College, engraved in
lilding
THE COLLEGE
graduates, Nathaniel Brewster, had an honor-
able career. He was a Puritan minister in
England and later in Ireland, where he received
the Degree
of Bachelor
of Theology
from the
University
of Dublin.
Ejected by
the Act of
Uniformity
he returned
to New Eng-
1 a n d and
later settled
as minister
at Brook-
haven, on
Long Island,
where his
three sons
lived. He
continued
his work
there until
his death
in 1690 at
the age of
70.
With the
completion
of the build-
ing, the set-
tlement of
the first
President
and the
graduation
of thr first
class, the
founding of
the College
may be said
to have been Soi.i.n i:-' .Mommkni
completed.
By an act of
the General Court on the 8th of September,
'1642, the Board of Overseers was established.
and in 1650 the Charter was granted under
which the College is still administered. By
this Charter the College was made a corpora-
tion, con-
sisting of the
President,
five Fellows
and a Treas-
urer, to be
called by
the name of
the Presi-
dent and
Fellows of
Harvard
College .
This Char-
ter created
Henry Drm-
ster. Presi-
dent ; vSam-
uel Mather,
Samuel
Danforth,
Jonathan
Mitchell,
Comfort
Starr, and
Samuel
Eaton, the
five Fellows,
and Henry
Belknap,
Treasurer.
The Charter
liears the
signature
of "Thomas
Dudley,
Governor."
It must
have given
Governor
Dudley pro-
c A Mill; I DUE Common. found satis-
faction to
sign the
paper which thus gave permanent distinction
to the town which he had done so much to plant.
V
THE COLONY
THE year 1041 is the year in which the
adoption of the Great Remonstrance
showed that the Long Parliament of
England -understood its duty and could do it.
"If the vote had been lost," said Cromwell,
" I would have sold all I had and never have
seen England more." That meant that he
would have emigrated to Massachusetts. He
would have arrived just in time for the first
Commencement of Harvard College, just as
the General Court was striking the name of
King Charles I out of the oath of allegiance,
and just as four of the New England colonies
were planning their confederation. He would
have found Massachusetts a well ordered, self-
controlled community of more than twenty
thousand people, with all the necessary insti-
tutions of government, education and religion
in operation. He would have found churches,
schools and college, rudely housed indeed, but
with all the essential elements of efficiency
provided, a code of law adopted by the will
of the people and resolutely administered, a
representative system of government working
smoothly and successfully, and a people prac-
ticing all the industries required for their
separate maintenance. He would have found,
in short, the completed foundations of what is
now the most prosperous democracy in the
world.
Here, on a clear field, unoccupied by any
organized society, with no pre-existent institu-
tions to cumber the ground, the experiment
of planting and constructing a civil and ecclesi-
astical government was being successfully
worked out. No external power had been
suffered to interfere, and no Old World pre-
cedents allowed to claim authority. No noble
proprietor, nor commercial corporation, dictated
the procedure. The whole plan of action was
formulated without suggestions or influence
from any outside quarter, by the people on the
spot. They were a chosen people, intelligent,
thoughtful, brave and devout. They were
well acquainted with the ancient "and feudal
forms of government but they applied none
of them here. Having a new country to dwell
in, they resolved to establish nothing but what
their own experience should prove to be neces-
sary or desirable. In this respect the New
England colonies differed from most of the
other American plantations. General Ogle-
thorpe planned the social and political system
of Georgia, John Locke drafted a contrivance
of government for the Carolinas, Lord Balti-
more superintended Maryland, William Penn
planted and ruled Pennsylvania, and other
proprietors and patrons controlled their several
settlements. But the founders of Massachu-
setts tried every step for themselves, they held
fast only to what thej- themselves discovered
to be appropriate and efficient. By the con-
sent and initiation of the people all the essential
features of a stable commonwealth were
stamped into the fabric of society in the first
twenty years of the ColonJ^
This is no insignificant fact in the history
of liberty. One hundred and forty-six years
before the Declaration of Independence of the
United States, Massachusetts was an inde-
pendent government and continued so for
more than half a century. It was more inde-
pendent in this colonial period than it ever has
been since. After the abolition of the first
charter in 1684, Massachusetts became a royal
province. Its governors were appointed by
the king and the royal assent was needed to
give validity to its laws. Since the adoption
of the Constitution of the United States, Massa-
chusetts has been in man}- respects and to a
considerable extent subjects to the law adopted
by Congress for the general welfare of the
nation. During the first fifty-four years,
however, the people of Massachusetts were as
free to rule themselves as if they had lived on
another planet. They chose all their own
administrators, asked the approval of no
authority for their laws, suffered no appeal to
THE COLONY
any higher tribunal, and bowed to no rulers
save those of their own free choice.
It is further significant that a more efficient
government for the preservation of order and
the promotion of the common welfare has never
existed anywhere. Nothing can surpass the
spirit, courage, ability and success with which
the people of Massachusetts withstood and
repelled all the demands or possible encroach-
ments from the mother country. Local
offences were rebuked and disorder suppressed
b}' decisive measures. No rank nor station,
no popular affection, no respect for particular
persons, however eminent, could obstruct the
course of an even-handed justice. The General
Court in the exercise of its sovereignty treated
all men alike, those of its own body as well as
those without. The most distinguished men
of the community were brought to the bar,
when they offended, as promptly as the mean-
est. John Winthrop himself suffered the
rebuke of his colleagues. Thomas Dudley was
admonished. Sir Richard Saltonstall was
fined. John Endicott was disqualified tem-
porarily from holding office and committed
for contempt of the court. The severities of
the penal code adopted by the General Court
have often been condemned by the historical
writers of a more humane age, but it should
be remembered that this code was far in ad-
vance of the habits of the most enlightened
countries in the seventeenth century. More
than one hundred years passed before England
adopted a code so just and mild as the New
England " Body of Liberties." If the Puritans
based their penal laws upon the Old Testament,
that was itself a standard far in advance of
the common usage of their day. In fact they
did not always follow the details of the Hebrew
law. It was a gratification to them when they
found confirmation of their principles in the
Scriptures, and the}' often availed themselves
of that support. Nevertheless, it is true that
in their secular administration they sought,
first, to put into practice the principles that
can stand the test of all time. Rightly, as a
well qualified critic has affirmed, "Our an-
cestors, instead of deducing all their laws from
'the Books of Moses, established, at the outset,
a code of fundamental principles, which, taken
as a whole, for wisdom, equity, adaptation
to the wants of their community, and a liber-
ality of sentiment superior to the age in which
it was written, may fearlessly challenge com-
parison with any similar production, from
Magna Charta itself to the latest Bill of Rights
that has been put forth in Europe or America."
The geographical boundaries of the Colony
and the frame-work of its government were
outlined in the Charter granted to the Massa-
chusetts Company by Charles the First. The
liberal terms of this Charter plainly indicate
that the King was not loath to have such
turbulent subjects betake themselves across
the Atlantic. He was quite ready to expedite
their departure and to speed an enterprise
which would take such sturdy opponents of
his policies comfortably out of the way.
The Charter provided that the officers of
the company should be a governor, a deputy-
governor, and eighteen assistants, to be chosen
annually. To the governor and assistants was
given power and authority to choose "as many
freemen as they shall think fit; to elect and
constitute such officers as they shall deem
requisite for the ordering, managing and de-
spatching the affairs of the governor and
company," and, in General Court assembled,
" to make laws and ordinances for the good and
welfare of the said Company and ordering of
the said lands and plantation, and the people
inhabiting and to inhabit the same, as to them
from lime to time shall be thought meet; so
that such laws and ordinances be not contrary
or repugnant to the laws and statutes of this
our realm of England," and further, "from
time to time to make, ordain and establish
all manner of wholesome and reasonable orders,
laws, statutes and ordinances, directions and
instructions, not contrary to the laws of this
our realm of England, for the settling of the
forms and ceremonies of government and magis-
tracy there," and to name the officers they
shall appoint, define their duties and prescribe
the administering of oaths to them.
The Charter gave to the members of the
Company the express and absolute right to
admit new associates. The persons thus
admitted became full partners and equal
members of the Company and were called
Freemen. Had the original members been
actuated by selfish motives and retained their
40
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
rights as a close corporation, the fortunes of
the plantation and their own fame would have
been brief and ignoble. They were, however,
so generous and enlightened as to almost at
once transfer their authority to the people
of the Colony itself.
The steps by which the Massachusetts plan-
tation became a self-governing and inde-
pendent colony are very interesting to follow.
They are closely associated with the historj'
of Cambridge, for not only were Cambridge
citizens among the foremost to promote the
successive advances, but many of the important
decisions were made upon Cambridge soil or
had direct relation to Cambridge events.
The first session of the General Court for
elections in the Colony was held at Boston,
May IS, 1631. At this session, one hundred
and sixteen persons took the oath and were
admitted as Freemen. The further purpose
of the Court to place all final power in the
hands of the people themselves was indicated
at the same meeting by a vote which gave
authority to the Freemen to nominate candi-
dates for assistants. It was ordered that
"once in every 3'ear, at least, a General Court
shall be holden, at which court it shall be
lawful for the commons to propound any person
or persons whom the}- shall desire to be chosen
assistants, and if it be doubtful whether it be
the greater part of the commons or not, it
shall be put to the poll. The like course to
be holden when the}^ the said commons, shall
see cause for any defect or misbehavior, to
remove any one or more of the assistants."
The next vital question about political
matters was raised over an issue in which
Cambridge was closely involved. As early
as February, 1632, a warrant was sent out by
the Court of Assistants to levy a tax of £()0
for the expense of building the stockade at
Mewtowne. The minister and people of Water-
town protested against the payment of their
assessment and urged "that it was not safe
to pay monies after that sort, for fear of bring-
ing themselves and posterity into bondage."
They insisted that the Court of Assistants had
no right to levy taxes without authority from
the people.
The Assistants at once summoned the people
by a warrant to a session of the Court and there
pointed out that no rights of the Freemen had
been disregarded, that the Assistants could be
elected only b}^ the Freemen, who had the right
to remove them and elect others in their places,
and that at every General Court the Freemen
had the right to consider and propound any-
thing regarding the government, and to declare
their grievances freely. This explanation for
the time satisfied the Watertown people, and
they made a retraction of their plea, and were
enjoined to read it in the assembly the next
Lord's day.
Nevertheless, this question of the right of
the Assistants to assess taxes upon the towns
without the consent of the people, although
temporarily disposed of, was a live issue and
brought about the first significant alteration
in the plan of government. At the session
of the Court which was held in the succeeding
May an order was passed, apparently by general
consent, "that there should be two of every
plantation appointed to confer with the Court
about raising of a public stock," and the ap-
pointments were made at the session. The
purpose of this order was to have a representa-
tion from the Freemen to advise with the
Assistants in the la^'ing of taxes. It was a
step towards the organization of two branches
of the General Court.
In accordance with this vote two persons
were appointed from Watertown, Roxbury,
Boston, Saugus, Newtowne, Charlestown,
Salem and Dorchester, the eight towns which
had been organized.
The next advance in the political methods
of the little Colony was the adoption of a
representative system. It was ordered, "That
four General Courts be kept ever}' year; that
the whole body of the Freemen should be
present only at the Court of Election of Magis-
trates, and that, at the other three, every town
should send their deputies, who should assist
in making laws and disposing lands." These
deputies began to sit as a separate house in
1644 and the framework of the government
was then complete.
The most distinctive decision and the one
which has not stood the test of time and experi-
ence, was the attempt to limit the franchise
to church members, in the effort to secure a
scrupulously moral and intelligent electorate.
THE COLONY
As early as 1631 the General Court passed the
following order: "To the end that the body of
the commons may be preserved of honest and
good men, it was likewise ordered and agreed
that for time to come no man shall be admitted
to the freedom of this body politic, but such
as are members of the churches within the
limits of the same."
This vote has often been derided or used to
illustrate the fundamental narrowness of the
Massachusetts men. Whatever we may think
of its wisdom and expediency todaj' it was
absolutely in accord with the clearly defined
purposes of the Company.
The excellent and revered John White, of
the English Dorchester, the original promoter
of the Massachusetts Colony, in his "Planters'
Plea," written in 1680, had well defined the
necessary limitations of the enlistment for
the enterprise. "The persons chosen out for
this employment," he wrote, "ought to be
willing, constant, industrious, obedient, frugal,
lovers of the common good, or, at least, such
as may be easily wrought to this temper; con-
sidering that works of this nature try the
undertakers with man)' difficulties, and easily
discourage minds of base and weak temper."
With equal force and frankness, he described
the persons who were not suitable:
"Men nourished up in idleness, unconstant
and affecting novelties, unwilling, stubborn,
inclined to faction, covetous, luxurious, prodi-
gal and generally men habituated to any gross
evil, are no fit members of a colony."
There has always been a widespread mis-
understanding of the motives and purposes
of the founders of Massachusetts. It is not
uncommonly supposed that they carhe hither,
to use the words of the most distinguished
historian of New England, "to place a colony
which should be a refuge for civil and religious
freedom." Such a purpose, however, finds no
expression in the words of the planters of
Massachusetts themselves. Indeed, it may
be justly said that they never achieved or
desired any knowledge of what religious free-
dom, as we understand it, means. It is alto-
gether probable that if it had been defined
to them they would have rejected it with ab-
horrence. What they really sought is best set
forth in the little treatise which John Winthrop
wrote in the cabin of the Arbella in the course
of the voyage. There we read that "the work
we have in hand" is "to seek out a place of
cohabitation and consortship under a due form
of government both civil and ecclesiastical."
It is a mistake to flatter the founders of Massa-
chusetts by ascribing to them purposes which
to us today seem peculiarly worthy and high-
minded, but which they never cherished.
They do not need such defense or vindication.
On the other hand it is an equal error to censure
them upon the assumption that they came to
America fleeing from religious persecution and
then in turn became persecutors themselves.
Both critics and defenders fail in justice because
they assume a purpose which never existed.
Not a single sentence can be quoted from any
of their writings which justifies the contention
that they sought or desired religious freedom
for all men. It was entirely in accord with
their ftmdamental motives that they restricted
the rights of citizenship to those who accepted
their religious covenants; that they punished
the intruders whose ways and opinions offended
them, and that they banished the people who
raised strife or dissent.
It should also be remembered that the
charter of the Company gave to the General
Court "full and absolute power and authority
to correct, punish, pardon and rule," all the
people within the bounds of their jurisdiction,
and that they had further power to repel and
resist all interlopers or persons who were not
in sympathy with their habits of thought and
life. No power short of this would have secured
the enlistment of the kind of people who made
up the Massachusetts Company. They re-
quired the right of self-administration, the
right of admitting those whom they pleased
to be their associates, and the power to expel
all who might threaten or annoy them in the
progress of their great experiment of establish-
ing "a due form of government both civil and
ecclesiastical." Their enterprise was no hap-
hazard adventure. It was undertaken with
serious earnestness, with resolute purpose, and
upon a far-seeing and comprehensive plan
which was steadfastly adhered to through good
report and ill. Through much toil and suffer-
ing they established a "body politic," all of
whose usages and institutions were adapted
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
to the fulttlment of their ideal, — not our ideal,
— of a Christian Commonwealth.
Two serious misgivings only were known to
them, — that they themselves by fault or in-
firmity might fail of fidelity to their ideal, or
that it should be brought into peril through
the waywardness of those who by love of
novelty or hope of gain might creep in among
them. Against the first danger they sought
security under their solemn religious covenants
and by continuous exhortation to patience,
courage and devotion to the standards of
thought and conduct which they discovered
in the Bible. Against the second peril they
protected themselves by exercising their
authority to thwart and drive out from amongst
them those who were unsympathetic or of less
earnest purpose than themselves. They gladly
welcomed newcomers who were of spirit and
purpose like their own, but they were keen
and rigid in their scrtitinj- of those whose sin-
cerity or whose moral character or whose ad-
hesion to Puritan principles were doubtful.
They especially distrusted the people who
believed themselves favored with private and
personal revelations in matters of theology.
The}^ were beset by all sorts of crude and whim-
sical fanatics, men and women, who had come
to the new world expecting to find an unsettled
state of afTairs in which they would have free
range for their eccentricities. These persons
were, as a rule, blameless in character and they
would probably pass unnoticed in the atmos-
phere and the thronging population of Massa-
chusetts today. In the early days, however,
they were a source of grave concern and the
General Court disposed of them in a manner
which, if it was severe and high-handed, was
at the same time perfectly legal and actuated
by a complete assurance that justice and right
were alike being served. The magistrates did
not feel themselves bound to give any reasons
for warning off or expelling factious people
save that they deemed them "unmeet to
inhabit here." They insisted on their charter
right to judge and act for themselves.
The first conspicuous subject of what is de-
nounced as the intolerance of the Massachusetts
Puritans was Roger Williams. Williams came
to Massachusetts in the first year of the Colony,
an ardent, restless, self-willed young prophet
of "soul-liberty." He was not a member of
the Company and never became a Freeman.
He was a rigid Separatist and John Quincy
Adams characterized him accurately when he
said of him that he was "a conscientiously con-
tentious man." The opinions and the public
speech of Williams in the days of his youthful
zeal and self-confidence were an affront to the
most cherished Puritan principles. Though
a man of uncommon ability and sincere piety
he was belligerent, aggressive and obstinate.
At one time, indeed, he htimbly confessed that
he was in error and submitted to the judgment
of the Court. That is, however, the only
instance known to us in all his life of his yielding
his own judgment, and in that instance he soon
repented of his penitence and engaged again
in acrimonious dispute. Finally, in 1635, by
the judgment of the Court sitting at Cambridge
he was required to "depart from the juris-
diction" and went on his way to the settle-
ment of Providence. It is well to remember
that as he grew older he mellowed. He was
taught patience by having to deal in his own
colony with just such rankling opponents as
he had himself been in Massachusetts. He
grew also to appreciate the personal kind-
nesses which he received from his former
comrades, even those who in the exercise
of their authority had had to deal with
him as a dangerous and mischievous offender.
Williams never felt any malice toward those
who had "enlarged" him and he wrote in the
terms of deepest respect for "that ever-honored
Governor, Mr. Winthrop," who, he said,
"advised him for many high and heavenly
and public ends," to steer his course to Narra-
gansett Bay.
The next occasion of discord had still more
intimate connection with Cambridge, for the
courts and synods that decided the case
were held on the common or in the Cambridge
meeting-house. Anne Hutchinson, with her
husband, William Hutchinson, "a gentleman
of good estate and reputation" had reached
Boston in September, 1G34. They had been
followers of John Cotton in the Lincolnshire
Boston and wished to continue to enjoy his
preaching. The first mention of Mrs. Hutchin-
son in John Winthrop's journal bears the date
October 21, Kiod. He there describes her as
THE COLONY
43
"a member of the church of Boston, a woman
of ready wit and bold spirit," who was promul-
gating certain dangerous heresies. Her brother-
in-law, a minister named Wheelwright, was
her supporter, and it appeared that the Gov-
ernor, young Henry Vane, at least two of the
assistants and the majority of the Boston
church shared her opinions. What those
opinions were it is a little difficult to ascertain,
or at least it is difficult in these days to under-
stand why the declaration of them could have
caused such a tumult. Apparently Mrs.
Hutchinson maintained that good conduct was
not a satisfactory evidence of piety, and the
best evidence of spiritual attainment was the
inner assurance. In the theological language
her heresy consisted in insisting that "the
person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified
person," and that "no sanctification can help
to evidence to us our justification." In Octo-
ber, 1636, it was proposed that Mr. Wheel-
wright be invited to serve the Boston Church
as its teacher to the practical exclusion of Mr.
Wilson who had been prompt to disavow Mrs.
Hutchinson's heresies, while his colleague,
Mr. Cotton, was understood to be somewhat
sympathetic with them. The tact of Win-
throp secured a call for Mr. Wheelwright to
the charge of a new church at Mount Wollaston,
but the controversy went on and the excitement
increased. The matter got into politics and
at the General Court in March, 1636-37, con-
tentions ran so high, that, although it had been
so recently declared that " Boston is the fittest
place for publique meetings of any place in the
Bay," it was determined that the Court of
Elections should not be held there. It was
thereupon held in Newtowne, soon to be
Cambridge, where, after scenes of tumult,
Winthrop was again chosen Governor and
Dudley Deputy-governor, while Vane, after
a single year's service, was not even included
among the Assistants. It was during this
election that the first "Stump Speech" was
made in this part of the world and by no less
a person than the Rev. John Wilson. Mr.
Wilson having " got up on the bough of a tree,"
made a speech which was said to have turned
the scale against the " Antinomians," as Mrs.
Hutchinson's party was called.
This election was evidently regarded as a
most critical occasion. The fate of the Colony
hung in the balance. Judge Sewall wrote
years afterwards, " My father has told me many
a time that he and others went on foot, forty
miles from Newbury to Cambridge, on purpose
to be made freemen and help to strengthen
Governor Winthrop's party." Two months
after his defeat young Vane embarked for
England and never returned to America. It
should, however, be remembered to his credit,
that in spite of his mortification, he afterwards,
when he held important positions in Parliament
and the government, was ever a wise and stead-
fast friend of New England.
Meanwhile, the political issues disposed of,
the theological questions were debated by a
synod or conference that sat for three weeks
at Cambridge. Mrs. Hutchinson was interro-
gated and defended her opinions with remark-
able ability and skill, but she was finally ex-
communicated and forced to leave the Colony.
Wheelwright was banished. Six years after-
wards he sotight pardon for "the vehement
and censorious spirit which he had shown,"
and his sentence was recalled. The victorj-
of those who believed in preserving inviolate
the orthodoxy of the colonists was complete.
The proceedings of the courts and synods
in this case are not commended or approved by
the more liberal judgment of later generations
but it is certain that the Massachusetts rulers
had no conception that the methods which
they emploj'ed and which are now justly seen
to have been harsh and arbitrary were in the
least blameworth)^ Their acts are candidly
entered upon the records and never apologized
for. It is not necessary now to palliate the
severities or even to assent to the wisdom or
expediency of the measures employed. It is
not necessary to vindicate the Puritans or to
approve of their theories or to endorse all
their acts, but justice requires us to look not
only at the actions but also at the motives of
those who, in the exercise of their rightful
authority, did what they believed to be their
duty.
In 1638 the colony was called on to confront
a peremptory demand from the Lords Com-
missioners in England for the surrender of the
charter, coupled with the threat of sending
over a General Governor from England. But,
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
happily, diplomatic delays were interposed
and the direct issue was "avoided and pro-
tracted" by the discreet management of
Governor Winthrop, until the King and his
ministers became too much engrossed with
their own condition at home to think more
about their colonies. The charter was saved
for another half century.
The year 1641 was rendered memorable by
the adoption of a code of laws, a hundred in
number, and known as " the Body of Liberties."
It had been prepared by Nathaniel Ward,
pastor of the Ipswich Church, who had been
bred to the law in his youth. This code is
purely a Puritan product but its spirit is
nevertheless curiously modem. The law of
England at that time enumerated some thirty
crimes and misdemeanors that were punishable
by death. The New England law reduced this
number to twelve. The spirit of the code is
disclosed in the opening paragraph where we
read, "No man's life shall be taken away;
no man's honor or good name shall be stained;
no man's person shall be arrested, restrained,
punished, dismembered, nor in any ways
damaged; no man shall be deprived of his
wife or children; no man's goods or estate shall
be taken away nor in any way endangered
under cover of law, unless it be by virtue or
equity of some expressed law of the country
warranting the same, established by the Gen-
eral Court and squarely published, or, in case
of a defect of the law in any particular case,
by the word of God."
This code was very carefully debated and
altered by the General Court, then sent into
all the towns for consideration, revised and
amended by the General Court, and then
adopted.
As the Body of Liberties set forth the civic
and legal principles of the Massachusetts
people, so the "Cambridge Platform" set forth
the principles of church organization. The
first synod or general counsel of the churches
was held at Cambridge in connection with the
antinomian controversy. This assembly was
called by the General Court and the traveling
expenses of the ministers and delegates who
came from a distance were paid from the
colonial treasury. The synod began at Cam-
bridge, on August 30, 1G37, and was held in the
meeting-house. It was composed of "all the
teaching elders through the country and some
new come out of England not called to any
place here." There were about twenty-five
ministers thus gathered and with them sat
the Massachusetts magistrates who took part
in the debates but not in the voting. There
were also a number of deputies from the lay
members of the churches who both spoke and
voted. The synod was thus distinctly repre-
sentative of the churches and it emphasized
the growing sense of community and respon-
sibility. The result of this synod was to up-
hold the action of the Court in the case of Mrs.
Hutchinson and her friends. It was in session
for nearly a month and the results were so
satisfactory that Governor Winthrop proposed
that such synods should be annually held, but
this suggestion was disapproved.
A second convention was held at Cambridge
in September, 1643, with John Cotton and
Thomas Hooker for its moderators, and this
gathering approved Winthrop's suggestion
and urged that a new General Council be called
to give to the churches "one uniform order of
discipline." It took some time to carry out
this decision, but on May 15, 1646, the General
Court invited the churches of the four federated
colonies to send their ministers and delegates
to meet at Cambridge on the first of September
"there to discuss, dispute and clear up, by the
word of God, such questions of church govern-
ment and discipline as they shall think needful
and meet." It was this synod which adopted
the Cambridge Platform as an ecclesiastical
constitution in seventeen chapters. The draft
of this celebrated document was made by the
Rev. Richard Mather of Dorchester, and it was
furnished with a preface by John Cotton.
The Platform was duly published and after
some time approved by the General Court,
and it continued the recognized standard of
theology and government in the New England
churches throughout the colonial period.
A still greater event of 1641, and one of the
most significant events in the early history of
the country, was the final formation of that
New England Confederation or Union, by
written articles of agreement, which is the
original example and pattern of whatever
unions or confederations have since been pro-
THE COLONY
posed or established on the American conti-
nent. This agreement was adopted by the
four Colonies, — Massachusetts and Plymouth,
Connecticut and New Haven, — the four which
were afterwards consolidated into two. It
was formed by those who were "desirous of
union and studious of peace," and it embodied
principles, and recognized rights, and estab-
lished precedents which have entered largely
into the composition of all articles of confedera-
tion or instruments of union. It had been
proposed as early as 16.37, and Governor
Winthrop had labored unceasingly to accom-
plish it for six years. He was recognized as
its principal promoter by Thomas Hooker
in a remarkable letter, thanking him for the
"speciall prudence" with which he had labored
"to settled a foundation of safety and pros-
perity in succeeding ages," and for laying, with
his faithful assistants, "the first stone of the
foundation of this combynation of peace."
The little congress of commissioners was held
and organized in Boston on the 7th (17th) of
September, 1643, and Winthrop was elected
the first president. The same day of the same
month, nearly a hundred and fifty years later,
was to mark the adoption of the Constitution
of the United States, in which it is not difficult
to discern some provisions which may have
owed their origin to the Articles of the New
England Confederation.
VI
THE COMMUNITY
THE characteristic feature of New
England from the beginning was the
fact that its inhabitants dwelt together
in towns. This peculiarity was fruitful in its
political and social consequences. It differen-
tiated the social structure of the New England
colonies from their neighbors to the south,
where, as in Virginia, the large land owners
lived apart from one another on considerable
estates. One obvious cause of this difference
was the character of the soil and its products,
but another and more potent reason was the
ecclesiastical system of the New England
people. The town was an organization for
united worship as well as for the conduct of
secular affairs. The inhabitants placed their
houses as near as possible to the meeting-house.
To the meeting-house all the people went twice
on Sunday, and it was the center of the whole
community life. In addition to their house-
lots, most of the people, as we have seen in
the account of the settling of Cambridge,
secured grants of wood lots and pasture lands
and a considerable section of each town was
set aside for commons. Each town was a little
commonwealth, having its officers chosen by
popular vote and its own deliberative assembly,
where public measures of local interest were
discussed and determined. In these village
parliaments the democratic idea in its original
form was realized. The executive authorities
of each town were the constable, the selectmen
or townsmen, the town clerk and various
minor officers.
The boundaries of the original Newtowne
were very limited. Its territory was, however,
soon enlarged by a large grant of land south
of the river, and at the General Court held in
March, 1630, it was agreed that the bounds
of the town should extend eight miles into
the country northward from the meeting-
house, thus including half of the present town
of Lexington. In 1641, 1642 and 1644, the
town received additional grants, consisting
mainly of the territory then called Shawshin.
which carried the northern boundary nearly
to the Merrimac. At this period of its greatest
size the town thus extended in a curiously
irregular line, more than thirty miles in length,
from a point several miles to the south of the
Charles, almost to the Merrimac, and included
the greater part, if not the whole, of Brighton,
Newton, Cambridge, Arlington, Lexington,
Bedford, Billerica and portions of Belmont
and Winchester. It should be remembered
that the land near Mount Auburn at this time
belonged to Watertown, and that where East
Cambridge and Cambridgeport now are, was
then an uninhabited region of marsh, meadow
and tangled forest growth. On May 29, 1655,
with the consent of Cambridge, the Shawshin
grant became the township of Billerica. On
August 27, 1679, Cambridge Village, as it was
called, was organized as a separate town, which
later received the name of Newton, and on
March 20, 1713, "Cambridge Farms" was
set off and organized as Lexington. Little
Cambridge and Menotomy (Brighton and
Arlington) remained a part of the town for
nearly another century.
The records of the town and of the selectmen
of Cambridge from 1630 to 1703 have been
carefully collected and printed, and graphic-
ally illustrate the diligence of the local admin-
istrators. The chief business in the early
years was the allotment of land to the inhabi-
tants, and as the land was taken up the records
abound in votes about the care of the sheep
and cattle, the cutting of timber on the com-
mon, the adjustment of disputes about bound-
aries, the surveying of lots and farms, and the
ordering of the highways. The great events
of the village history find due mention, the
building of the new meeting-house in 1649,
and of the parsonage in 1669, the successive
settlement of the ministers of the town, and
the building of the "Great Bridge," in 1660-
1664. This latter undertaking was no small
THE COMMUNITY
47
enterprise. A causeway had to be constructed
across the marsh at the foot of what is now
Boylston Street, and a bridge built which
would stand the crush of the ice as it moved
■up and down the river with the tides. The
cost of the undertaking fell heavily on the
settlement, but citizens of neighboring towns
helped with private subscriptions, and the
General Court later required the other towns
of Middlesex County that used the bridge as
much as Cambridge to contribute to the cost
of maintenance.
The Cambridge settlers, like all the New
England people, were remarkably homogene-
ous in race and in spirit. They were of pure
English stock. Their traditions, their religi-
ous convictions, their ideas about forms of
government and the administration of justice
were practically identical. There were very
few social distinctions. Some of the pioneers
had been in England substantial country
gentlemen and others had been merchants of
considerable means, but in New England there
were no large landed estates and there was no law
of entail. The magistrates, who were generally
chosen from the most respected families, and
on account of their own worth, were held in
a certain honor. The military offices in the
several towns were also posts of honor and the
regular days for military drill were occasions
of importance. It was also the custom to
allot the seats of the congregation in the
meeting-house with regard to the dignity of its
members, an order of precedence which was
carefully determined. Nevertheless, as in all
pioneer communities, all the people labored,
debated and worshipped together. Trial bj'
jury was early established in the Massachu-
setts Colony. There were town courts and
county courts, and above them the Court of
Assistants, and the General Court, to which
appeal might be carried in important cases.
The decision of the magistrates was final.
There was never any recognition of the control
of the common law of England, and any effort
to take appeals to an English court or king
was sure to fail.
The military force of the Massachusetts
Colony was a militia in which all the men
between the ages of sixteen and sixty were
enrolled. They were required to furnish their
own arms, which consisted of pikes, muskets
and swords. The muskets had matchlocks
or flintlocks, and to each one there was "a pair
of bandoleers, or pouches, for powder and
bullets," and a stick called a rest, for use in
taking aim. The pikes were ten feet in length,
besides the spear at the end. For defensive
armor corselets were worn, and coats quilted
with cotton.
The unit of the militia was the train-band
of each to^vn, consisting usually of from fifty to
two hundred men. The commissioned officers of
each train-band were a captain, a lieutenant
and an ensign. Company trainings took place,
at first, every Saturday; and later once a
month. They were begun and closed with
prayer. The only martial music was that of
the drum. In 1644 Massachusetts had twenty-
six train-bands, and "a very gallant horse
troop." The companies were gathered into
regiments, which generally represented a
county. There was, thus, a Suffolk, a Middle-
sex and an Essex regiment. Over the whole
force of the Colony was a major-general, sub-
ordinate only to the governor.
Cambridge citizens had a very active part
in all these military matters. Thomas Dudley
was the first major-general, John Haynes was
the colonel of the Middlesex regiment, and
Roger Harlakenden the lieutenant-colonel.
The Cambridge train-band was commanded
by George Cooke, afterwards one of Cromwell's
colonels, and its ensign was Samuel Shepard
who also later served as a major in the Parlia-
mentary army. Joseph Cooke succeeded his
brother as captain, but was soon relieved by
Daniel Gookin, who retained the office for forty
years, rising meanwhile to the command of
all the Middlesex militia, and in 16S1 to be
major-general.
Houses of public entertainment were natur-
ally established early in the Massachusetts
towns, but great caution was taken in the
licensing of "grave and responsible citizens."
On September 8, 1636, Thomas Chesholm,
deacon of the First Church, got a license to
"keep a house of entertainment at Newtown,"
and four years later he was licensed "to draw
wine at Cambridge." His tavern stood on
Dunster Street, just back of the meeting-
house, and he apparently kept it until his
48
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
death in 1071. Meanwhile, another deacon
of the church, Nathaniel Sparhawk, was
"permitted to draw wine and strong water
in Cambridge." His house was on the easterly
side of Boylston Street, one-half way between
Harvard Square and Mt. Auburn Street. In
1652 we find the first record of the famous
Blue Anchor Tavern. In that year "the
townsmen granted liberty to Andrew Belcher
to sell beer and provide entertainment for
strangers," and two years later the County
Court granted him a license "to keep a house
of public entertainment at Cambridge." Mr.
Belcher was a highly-respected man. His
son, Andrew Belcher, Jr., became a member
of the Provincial Council, and his grandson,
Jonathan Belcher, became governor of Massa-
chusetts. The sign of the Blue Anchor was
displayed on the northeast comer of Boylston
and Mt. Auburn Streets, and the Belcher
family continued to be innholders until 1705.
The building continued to be a tavern up to
1737, when the sign of the Blue Anchor was
transferred across the street and there con-
tinued for nearly a centurs'.
It is not difficult to reconstruct a rough
picture of the Cambridge of the last half of
the seventeenth century. The original log-
houses were gradually replaced b}' substantial
two-story dwellings. These houses were closely
grouped together in the settled part of the town,
and eastward and northward stretched the
cultivated lands, diversified by the marshes
and gently sloping hills. Most of the houses
were reasonably commodious. The lower
floor, as a rule, contained a hall, a living-room
and a kitchen, and the upper story, four
chambers. The furniture was mostly home-
made, for it was almost impossible to import
in the small sailing vessels of the time, any
considerable amount of household furniture
from England. Furniture, with the exception
of beds and mattresses, is seldom mentioned
as an asset in the wills of the period, showing
that it must have been of small value. A good
many families had silver heirlooms, which
were transmitted from generation to genera-
tion. Of musical instruments there is no trace
whatever.
The chief house of the town was still that
originally built by Governor Dudley, the house
that Winthrop censured because its interior
panelling and general finish were "too fine for
the wilderness." It stood at what is now the
comer of Dunster and South Streets, on the
first rise of land above the salt marshes that
bordered the river. When Dudley removed to
Ipswich his Cambridge estate was purchased
by Roger Harlakenden who was the chief
layman of Cambridge until his untimely death
in 1638, at the age of twenty-seven. He was
selectman, an assistant, and lieutenant-
colonel of the Middlesex regiment. His
children went back to England with their
stepfather in 16-1:9. Harlakenden's widow
married Herbert Pelham, who came to
Cambridge a widower in 1638. He was an
English countrj^ gentleman of good family
and substantial means who at once took a
place of leadership in the community and
Colony. He took up his residence in the
Dudley-Harlakenden house, and soon became
the largest landed proprietor in Cambridge.
He cleared and developed large farms south
of the river, on the Harlakenden property in
Lexington and Bedford, and on the rising
ground, long known as Pelham's Island, in
what is now the most thickly-settled part of
Cambridgeport. He was successively select-
man, assistant and commissioner of the United
Colonies, and he was the first treasurer of
Harvard College. In 1()49 he returned to
England with his family, became a member of
Parliament, and there rendered frequent and
important services to Massachusetts and the
sister colonies. Mr. Pelham not only owned
the Dudley homestead, but also the house
originally built by Simon Bradstreet, which
stood on the east side of Boylston Street, near
Harvard Square.
The next most important houses in the
village were those originally built by Governor
Haynes and by Thomas Hooker. These were
occupied after their departure respectively by
President Dunster of the College, and by the
minister, Thomas Shepard, who married
Hooker's daughter. The Haynes-Dunster
house stood on the west side of the market-
place, which is now Winthrop Square, and the
Hooker-Shepard house stood next the college
building about where Boylston Hall now
stands in the College Yard.
THE COMMUNITY
49
Joseph Cooke, who ran the ferry at the foot
of Dunster Street, had an estate of some five
acres on the eastern side of Holyoke Street
below Mt. Auburn Street, and was a large
land owner in other parts of the town. He
was for many years selectman, town clerk for
five years and representative for six years.
He returned to England in 1658, but his
descendants are numerous in the community.
It is noticeable that Mr. Cooke and his brother,
George Cooke, who came over with Thomas
Shepard and Roger Harlakenden in 1635, were,
in the list of the ship's company, called "ser-
vants to Mr. Harlakenden," but this was
evidently a disguise to get them safely out
of England. Both the brothers were among
the foremost of the Cambridge settlers, and
were evidently men of comparative wealth.
George Cooke besides being selectman, deputy,
speaker of the house and commissioner of the
United Colonies, was conspicuous in military
affairs. He was the first captain of the
Cambridge train-band, and later captain of
the artillery. He lived at the other end of
the village from his brother Joseph, his estate
extending along the northern side of what is
now Eliot Street. In 1645, George Cooke
returned to England, became a colonel in
Cromwell's army, and was killed in battle in
Ireland, in 1652.
Another serviceable citizen was Edward
Gofle, who also came over with Shepard and
Harlakenden and broke out of the wilderness
a large farm at the extreme eastern edge of
the village. His land stretched from Shepard's
house, next the college building, eastward to
Dana Hill, and he built his dwelling about at
the comer of Quincy and Harvard Streets.
He was a magistrate, a representative, for
sixteen years a selectman, and he apparently
paid a larger tax than any Cambridge man
except Mr. Pelham. His descendants were
prominent in town affairs until the revolution.
Among the other Cambridge families of the
earliest generation, two are deserving of special
remembrance. Edmund Angier was one of
the earliest settlers, and built, in 1636, a dwell-
ing opposite the meeting-house, or on the
northwest comer of Dunster and Mt. Auburn
Streets. He soon began to keep what we
should now call a general or variety store, on
the comer diagonally across from the home-
stead. Dunster Street, with the ferry at its
foot, was thus the main street of the village.
When the visitor landed at the ferry and
climbed the sloping bank of the river he came
first to the mansion of Mr. Pelham, the only
citizen whose name always had "Esquire"
written after it. Then on the left, he came to
Deacon Chesholm's inn, and then to the
meeting-house, with Angler's store facing it
across Dunster Street, and Angler's house
across Mt. Auburn Street, or as it was then
called. Spring Street. There were three dwell-
ings on the eastern side between the Angier
house and the "Printery," at the corner of
Dunster Street and Harvard Square. Turn-
ing there a little to the right, the visitor would
come to the college building and the house
of Rev. Thomas Shepard.
The mention of the "Printery" recalls the
chief Cambridge industry of the earlier days
and its fortunes. Stephen Day, his son
Matthew Day, and his wife's son by a former
marriage, William Boardman, came over
together and set up the press on the Dunster
Street comer. The younger Day did the
printing, and after his death, in 1649, Samuel
Green came to run the press and had charge
of it for nearly fifty years. He lived in a house
across Dunster Street from the press, and
about where Holyoke House now stands.
Meanwhile William Boardman inherited the
estate where the press was located, and later
added to it the lot adjoining it on the west, so
that he owned the whole frontage of Harvard
Square between Dunster and Boylston Streets.
Mr. Boardman was early made steward of
Harvard College and retained that office till
his death in 1685. He was succeeded succes-
sively by his sons Andrew and Aaron, and by
his grandson and great grandson, who bore
the name of Andrew, making four generations
of one family who thus served the College for
a period covering a whole century. The second
Andrew kept a store on Harvard Square, was
for thirty-one years town clerk, for forty-six
years town treasurer, and for eighteen years
selectman. The third Andrew did not long
retain the stewardship of the College, but he
succeeded his father as town clerk, an office
he held for thirty-nine years, and as town treas-
50
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
urer, where he served twenty-three years. He
was for twenty-two years the town's repre-
sentative in the General Court, and for seven-
teen years a judge of the Court of Common
Pleas.
If it is not difficult to reconstruct in imagina-
tion the outward appearance of Cambridge
in the colonial period, neither is it hard to
imagine the daily habit of the people. It
was a life of steady hard work and of no little
variety of employment. In the first place
all the people worked at breaking and culti-
vating the land. The soil was not rich, but
it was productive. The settler found that his
patch of land would produce Indian com
year after year in undiminished quantities.
A patch of three acres worked chiefly with
the hoe and manured with the small fish that
abounded in the streams and creeks, would
yield enough for the yearly maintenance of a
famil}'. The Indian com was both hardy and
nutritioiis and the planters soon reconciled
themselves to it as a substitute for wheat, to
which the soil and temperature were less pro-
pitious. The native grasses were coarse, but
it took only a few seasons to cover the open
lands with a growth of hay from imported
seed. Barley, rye, oats and pease were suc-
cessfully cultivated, and most of the garden
fmits and vegetables common in the mother
country. Squashes, pumpkins and beans were
indigenous to the soil. The apple, the pear,
the cherr>', the plum, and the quince were
found to take kindly to their new home.
Poiiltry and swine could be fed at little cost,
and so multiplied in great abundance, and as
pasturage was extended and improved, goats
in the first place, and then sheep, horses and
cattle became numerous. Between 1635 and
1640 cattle breeding was the most lucrative
form of trade in Massachusetts, with the single
exception of fishing. The increase of tillage
caused a regular demand for oxen, and there
was a brisk export trade in cattle with the
West Indies. Sheep did not do so well, and
the General Court, in 1654, found it necessary
to forbid the exportation of sheep and the
killing of lambs. There was abundant pastur-
age, and horse-breeding was profitable. It
is impossible to discover just when wheel
carriages began to be used, but the condition
of the roads was so rough that during the first
quarter century it is probable that all communi-
cation was either by boat or on horseback.
The townspeople, as in most pioneer com-
munities, were obliged to practice all trades.
A citizen of Cambridge lived mainly upon the
product of his land, but his house and most of
his belongings were the work of his own hand.
He was farmer, carpenter, blacksmith, shoe-
maker and trader, all in one. Cambridge was
too far from the sea to have any large part in
the chief industry of the Colony, — fishing, —
but the bank of the river was a convenient
place for ship-building, and several small
vessels, "shallops" and "ketches," were early
constructed and launched at the mouth of the
creek.
There was very little currency in the Colony,
and an early enactment of the General Court
provided that com should be legal tender.
Taxes were received in com, rated at six shil-
lings a bushel. A certain amount of trade
with the Indians gave a fictitious value to
wampum and this was legal tender in Massa-
chusetts for many ^-ears, up to the value of
ten pounds. In 1652, Massachusetts estab-
lished a mint of its own and coined silver in
shilling, six pence and three pence pieces.
Manufactures of necessarj^ articles were
early undertaken with some success. The
spinning and knitting of thread and yam by
the women at their homes was followed by the
weaving of woolen and cotton fabrics, intro-
duced by a few families who came from York-
shire and built up a town at Rowley, adjoining
Ipswich. The great demand for salt was
promptly and profitably met, so easy was the
process of obtaining it from sea-water. From
the beginning of the settlements there was
ample employment and good pay for the brick-
maker, the mason, the carpenter, the tanner,
the currier, the cordwainer, the sawyer and
the smith.
The woods were a source of wealth. Boards,
clapboards, shingles and staves and hoops for
barrels, cost nothing but labor, and com-
manded a ready sale. The pine forests yielded
turpentine, pitch and tar. Furs obtained
from the Indians by barter for provisions and
for articles of European manufacture, were
yet another resource for the export trade.
THE COMMUNITY
In matters of dress the statute book shows
that the magistrates tried to make the outward
man conform to the serious purpose of the
community. Seeking first the kingdom of
God, they took to heart the injunction not
to have much concern for the body what it
should put on. They passed laws forbidding
extremes of fashion and undue luxury in dress.
They remonstrated against the superfluities
which tended "to little use or benefit, but to
the nourishment of pride and exhausting of
men's estate and also of evil example to others."
The dress of the majority of the people must
needs have been plain, for the supply of home-
spun woollen cloth and "linen fustian dimities"
was not abundant, and we read that use was
commonly made of " cordovan, deer, seal and
moose skins."
The necessity for keeping the flocks of sheep
for wool, and of preserving cattle for draught
and for milk, restricted the use of meat,
and there is no record of a butcher's shop in
Cambridge until well along in the century.
Game and fish at first supplied, to a consider-
able extent, the want of animal food, and later
chickens and pigs multiplied. In the earliest
time, wheaten bread was not so uncommon
as it afterwards became; but various prepara-
tions of Indian com soon came into use.
Brown bread, a mixture of two parts of the
meal of this grain with one part of rye, long
continued to be the bread of the great body
of the people. Hasty pudding, consisting of
the boiled meal of this grain or of rye, and
eaten with molasses and milk, was a common
article of diet. Succotash, composed of beans
boiled with Indian com in milk, was a dish
adopted from the Indians, as were other prepa-
rations of com, named samp and hominy.
Indian com meal, boiled or baked, and sweet-
ened with molasses, as soon as molasses began
to come from the West Indies, was Indian
pudding in its primitive condition. The dish
called baked beans commemorates the time
when it was worth while to make the most of
the commonest vegetable, by flavoring it with
the flesh of the commonest animal. For
considerabl)^ more than a century the people
of Cambridge, ignorant of tea and coffee, lived
chiefly on boiled Indian meal and milk, or on
porridge or broth, made of pease or beans, and
seasoned by being boiled with salted beef or
pork. The regular dinner on Saturdays (not
on Friday, which would have been Popish)
was salt codfish. Beer, which was brewed
in the household, was accounted scarcely less
than a necessary of life, and the orchards soon
yielded an ample provision of cider.
The interest of the New England people in
education was a marked characteristic from
the earliest days. Schools were at once set
up in all the considerable towns, and in 1647,
the law of Massachusetts required that a school
should be supported in every town having
fifty householders, and that a grammar school
should be established where a boy could be
fitted for Harvard College in every place where
the householders numbered one hundred. At
Cambridge the school was kept by Mr. Elijah
Corlet. Our first notice of it is contained in
the tract already quoted, "New England's
First Emits," printed in England in 1643.
There we read after the description of the
College, that there is "by the side of the Colledge
a faire Grammar Schoole, for the training up
of j^oung scholars, and fitting of them for
Academical Learning, that still as they are
judged ripe, they may be received into the
Colledge. Master Corlet is the Mr. who has
very well approved himselfe for his abilities,
dexterity and painfulnesse in teaching." The
school-house stood on a lot opposite the college
building, and on the westerly side of Holyoke
Street. It was apparently built not by the
town, but by the public spirit of President
Dunster and Mr. Edward Goffe. This house
lasted until 1669, when it was taken down
and the foundation stones used for the cellar
of the parsonage. The new school-house on
the same lot served for thirty years more.
Mr. Corlet, in spite of many difficulties and
privations, persevered in his work for more
than half a century until his death in 1678.
We have seen that the ministers exercised
extraordinary influence in the Massachusetts
communities. They were the leaders not only
in the religious life of the community, but
often in secular affairs as well. Many of them
possessed some medical knowledge, and as
there were but few trained physicians in the
colonies, this was employed for the common
good. There were practically no professional
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
lawyers in Massachusetts, and the ministers
were often consulted by the magistrates about
the framing of the laws and the adjustment
of disputes. They came also naturally to
practically control the organization and man-
agement of the schools of ever\- grade. Yet
the deference paid to them was self-respecting.
The laymen understood their rights, and their
constant participation in the proceedings of
the town and church accustomed them to the
exercise of an independent judgment. No
charge is more baseless than that which repre-
sents early New England as "priest-ridden."
On the contrary, a jealous public sentiment
expressly excluded the ministers from political
office, and kept the ultimate control both of
the churches and of the state in the hands of
the General Court. It was the General Court,
and not the ministers, that banished Roger
Williams and Anne Hutchinson. It was the
General Court, a body of laymen, that called
the Cambridge Synod that gave definite written
form to the church polity of New England.
The Cambridge ministers continued to be
prominent in the Colony. Mr. Shepard died
in August, 1649, when he was but forty-three
years old. Almost a year passed between his
death and the settlement of his successor.
In the meantime, the town decided to build a
new meeting-house. The old one had stood for
less than twenty years, but it must have been
hurriedly and poorly constructed, for already
it was falling into decay ; besides, it had never
been quite large enough for the congregation.
Accordingly, five of the leading citizens, in-
cluding Edward Goffe and Thomas Danforth,
were appointed in March, 1650, a committee
to build a new house, and alocation was selected
on what was known as the Watch House Hill,
which was a slight elevation on what is now
the southwest comer of the college yard, where
Dane Hall stands. The next year Jonathan
Mitchell was ordained the second minister
of the church. He was a graduate of the
college in the class of 1647, and was, therefore,
well known to the members of the community.
He had begun his preaching at Hartford, and
was invited to settle there as Hooker's suc-
cessor, but upon receiving the invitation from
Cambridge he declined the call to Hartford
and was ordained at Cambridge, August 21st,
1 6.50. For eighteen years he served the congre -
gation and by the testimony of his contem-
poraries was distinguished for learning and
eloquence. Cotton Mather describes him as
"the matchless Mitchell." Shortly after his
coming to Cambridge he married Mrs. Shepard,
the young widow of his predecessor, and went
to live in the house which had sheltered both
Hooker and Shepard.
The deplorable episode of President Dunster's
heresy fell within the ministry of Mr. Mitchell.
There is abundant testimony that President
Dunster was faithful and judicious in the dis-
charge of all his duties. He was held in high
favor in the communit}'. His scholarship
was of the best and his neighbors treated him
with marked reverence. His theological opin-
ions appear, however, to have undergone a
gradual change. He came to feel that the
practice of the baptism of children was not
in accordance with the Scriptures. Accord-
ingly he failed to present for baptism a child
bom to him in 1653. The debates which arose
over this stand have no interest for us today,
but one cannot but admire the unflinching
way in which Dunster stood by his opinions.
A conference between Dunster and nine of the
leading ministers produced no result and a
resolution of the General Court advising the
overseers of the College not to employ any who
have "manifested themselves unsound in
faith" led to Dunster's resignation, which,
after being once rejected, was finall}- accepted
on October 25, 1654. Dunster continued to
occupy the President's house until the next
spring and then removed to Scituate where
he died four years later. He was buried in the
Cambridge graveyard.
It required rare firmness and courage on the
part of Mr. Mitchell when it became necessary
for him as minister of the church to admonish
his chief parishioner and the greatly-respected
president of the college jfrom which he had
recently graduated. It is also greatly to Mr.
Mitchell's credit that he did this without losing
President Dunster's friendship. Dunster made
Mitchell one of the executors of his estate.
It is a curious coincidence, if the suggestion of
Dr. Palfrey, supported b}- Dr. Paige, the his-
torian of Cambridge, is correct, and that the
monument erected in honor of Dunster in
THE COMMUNITY
the graveyard really covers the grave of
Mitchell.
The next heretic in the Cambridge church
was more troublesome than the gentle Dunster.
The court record shows that on the 19th of
June, 165(5, Benanuel Bower was admonished
for absenting himself from the ordinance of
baptism. This Bower, or Bowers, had married
a cousin of President Dunster, and evidently
shared Dunster's belief about infant baptism.
He lived on the Menotomy Road, and later
moved into what is now Somerville, but his
relations continued with the Cambridge church
and community. He became a Quaker and
was called to account almost every year and
subjected to fine and imprisonment for the
absenting of himself and family from public
worship, and for maintaining the obnoxious
principles of the Quaker fraternity. In spite
of persecution he remained stalwart in his
independency and repeatedly petitioned the
County Court and the General Court for relief.
He gave vent to his indignation at his treat-
ment not only by repeated remonstrances,
but also in doggerel verses, and it was his
practice as soon as he was released from im-
prisonment to interrupt the public worship
of the Cambridge church and insist upon being
permitted to describe his grievances. He was
certainly a vigorous independent, and continued
to be such until his death in 1698. His wife
seems to have been tolerated during her old
age, for there is a record of the court, dated
December 26, 1693, which declares that Mrs.
Bowers "being a Quaker took no oath." It
is also suggestive of growing tolerance in the
community that the three witnesses to Mr.
Bowers' will were three Orthodox ministers.
Shortly after Mr. Mitchell's death in 1668,
the town decided that the time had come to
build a house for the minister at public ex-
pense. The selectmen and deacons and three
others were, therefore, appointed a committee
to build "a convenient house for the entertain-
ment of the minister that the Lord may please
to send us to make up the breach that an
afflicting Providence hath made in this office."
This new house, which was for many years
tlje parsonage of the church, stood next to the
house which the former ministers had occupied,
that is, on the northerly side of Massachusetts
Avenue, a little east of where Boylston Hall
now stands.
For three years the pulpit had no regular
occupant, but was supplied for the most part
by the distinguished clergyman who had suc-
ceeded Dunster in the presidency of the college.
Charles Chauncy was inaugurated on November
29, 1654, and remained in office for seventeen
years. He was a scholar of much renown. He
had been successively professor of Hebrew and
professor of Greek at the English Cambridge,
and was profoundly learned in both classical
and oriental languages. He had suffered much
persecution in England, and, finally, deprived
of his living, emigrated to Plymouth in the
spring of 1638. Here he was heartily welcomed
and employed as the associate minister of the
Plymouth church. After three years there,
he became minister of the church at Scituate
and was there re-ordained to the ministry,
indicating that his original Episcopal ordina-
tion was, in his judgment, invalid. During
his stay at Scituate the Revolution in England
had been completed and the people of the
English parish which he had formerly served,
holding him in affectionate remembrance,
invited him to return and minister to them.
He was just on the point of embarking when
he was invited to accept the presidency of
Harvard College.
In his service at Cambridge he fully sustained
the reputation which led to his choice. He
continued to be an indefatigable student. He
is spoken of as having " conveyed all the liberal
arts" to his pupils, and we have no record of
any associate teacher. He "moderated their
disputations and other exercises" in person,
wittily, as Cotton Mather says. He gave his
instruction, for the most part, in Latin. The
Hebrew Scriptures were still read in the hall
every morning, and the Greek in the evening,
followed by a learned exposition by the presi-
dent, who on Sunday mornings extended it
to nearly twice the normal length of a modern
sermon. He was greatly prized as a preacher,
and justly so; for, as Mather tells us, "he was
an exceeding plain preacher." The discipline
and management of the College went on very
much as in Dunster's time. Nor does there
seem to have been any abatement of interest
in the College on the part of the community,
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
or any decline of the president's popularity
and influence with his decUning years. The
last class that graduated under him was the
largest since the foundation; and though it
numbered but eleven, those eleven probably
bore a greater ratio to the population of the
Colony than all the graduates of our colleges
for the present year will bear to the population
of the State.
Dr. Chauncy was succeeded in the presidency
by Leonard Hoar, the first graduate of the
College to assume this office. He had a brief
and troubled experience, and was succeeded
in 1675, by Urian Oakes, who was already the
minister of the Cambridge church in succession
to Mitchell. The pastorate of the church and
the presidency of the college were thus united
in one man. Mr. Oakes, after graduating at
Harvard, had returned to England and was
settled there, and the Cambridge church sent
repeated invitations to him and waited three
years for his coming. It is an^ evidence both
of the importance of securing just the right
minister and also of the comparative wealth
of the community that the church was able
to offer to Mr. Oakes a larger salary than most
ministers of the time received, and to pay the
entire cost of the transportation of his family
from England. Like his predecessors, Mr.
Oakes died when he was still comparatively
a young man, his service terminating in 1681.
The next year, Nathaniel Gookin became the
minister and served for ten years. In 1680
the town reported one hundred and twenty-one
families living within its boundaries, and a
total of one hundred and sixty-nine citizens.
This probably meant a total population of
between six hundred and eight hundred.
The two leading laymen of Cambridge during
the last half of the seventeenth century were
Thomas Danforth and Daniel Gookin. Daniel
Gookin apparently came to Cambridge about
1647, and lived at first on the easterly side of
Holyoke Street between Harvard and Mt.
Auburn Streets. Later he built the mansion,
afterwards familiar as the Winthrop estate,
on the southerly side of Arrow Street, which is
still standing. He was at once prominent in
the military service and was elected captain
of the Cambridge train-band as early as 1652.
In 1676 he became major of the Middlesex
regiment and was very active throughout the
troubles of King Philip's War. In IGSl, he
was appointed major-general of all the military
affairs of the Colony, and was the last who held
that office under the old charter. For twelve
years he was a selectman of Cambridge,
repeatedly a representative in the General
Court, and for thirty-three years an assistant.
He was twice employed upon public service
in England and was trusted by Oliver Cromwell
as a confidential agent. It was upon his return
from his last visit to England that he had for
his fellow-passengers the two regicides, Goffe
and Whalley, and they accompanied him to
Cambridge. General Gookin stood side by
side with Judge Danforth in the fight for the
Massachusetts charter, and he is also to be
remembered not only as the military com-
mander who fought the hostile Indians in
King Philip's War, but also as the dauntless
friend of the so-called "praying Indians."
He was John Eliot's chief helper, and for
many years general superintendent of Indian
affairs.
The whole history of the relation of the
Cambridge people with the Indians is a
creditable one. There were very few Indians
in the neighborhood when the first settlers
arrived. These were under the general control
of the widow of the Chief Nanepashemet.
She was known as the Squaw-sachem. The
Cambridge and Watertown territory was
purchased of this Squaw-sachem and Cambridge
further agreed "to give the Squaw-sachem a
coate every winter while she liveth." It was
within the bounds of Cambridge that John
Eliot began his famous mission among the
Indians. He labored long and hard to acquire
a competent knowledge of the Indian dialects,
and began his difficult labors among them on
October 28, 164:6, when he gathered some
wandering Indians at the wigwam of Waban
on the Nonantum hillside south of the
river, in what is now the city of Newton.
Thomas Shepard, the Cambridge minister,
was one of Eliot's most active assistants in
his missionary labors. In Shepard's tract
entitled "The Clear Sunlight of the Gospel
breaking forth upon the Indians in New Eng-
land," which was printed in London in 1648,
he said, "as soon as ever the fierceness of the
THE COMMUNITY
winter was past, March 3, 1647, I went out
to Nonantum to the Indian lecture where Mr.
Wilson, Mr. Allen of Dedham, Mr. Dunster,
besides many others were present." Eliot's
great work, "The Translation of the Bible
into the Indian Tongue," was the most im-
portant book issued from the Cambridge
"Printery."
Provision was early made by the president
and fellows of Harvard College for the educa-
tion of the Indian youth. A modest building,
known as the Indian College, was built to the
north of the original college building, and
several students were enrolled. Only one
Indian name is, however, carried on the list
of graduates of the College. In the list of the
class of 1665, we read the name of "Caleb
Cheeshahteaumuck, Indus."
In King Philip's War, the converted Indians,
who had been gathered by Eliot into a village
at Natick and other places, naturally fell under
suspicion. They were removed to a safer
residence on' one of the islands m Boston
Harbor. General Gookin fell for a time into
disfavor in the Colony because of his earnest
and disinterested efforts to protect these un-
fortunate Indians. He even failed of election
in 1676 as one of the Assistants, but next year
the tide of feeling changed in his favor and he
was re-instated in his former honors.
Gookin 's connection with the coming of the
regicides to Cambridge is part of a romantic
story. Edmund Whalley had been a distin-
guished soldier in Cromwell's army, one of
the major-generals, and a member of Parlia-
ment. William Goffe was his son-in-law, also
a member of Parliament, and a major-general
of the Parliamentary army. Both of them
were members of the court which condemned
Charles I to death. When Charles II entered
London in May, 1660, these two men fled from
the vengeance which they knew was in store
for them if they remained in England. They
crossed the Atlantic with Daniel Gookin, and
came with him to his house in Cambridge.
They were proscribed fugitives, but they were
welcomed to Cambridge with open and hearty
hospitality. The high rank which they had
sustained in the Puritan party in England,
together with the dignity of their own manners,
secured for them general respect. They went
abroad freely, and were made welcome in the
Cambridge meeting-house, as well as in the
homes of the people. They remained in
Cambridge until the 21st of February, 1661,
when they privately went on their way to
New Haven where they were kindly received.
The pursuit of them later grew hot, and they
went into retirement and concealment in the
minister's house at Hadley. This friendly
minister was John Russell, a Cambridge man
and a Harvard graduate. In spite of the
hospitable reception which the regicides in
New England received, it should be remembered
that all the New England colonies carefully
abstained from any public approval or dis-
approval of events in the home country. The
New Englanders doubtless approved the execu-
tion of Charles I, but they never gave formal
expression to that approval. When the Puri-
tan Parliament came into power in England,
Massachusetts never formally admitted its
authority, and even when Oliver Cromwell
became protector, Massachusetts still remained
silent. When Charles II was restored, no
proclamation of that event was made in Boston
for more than a year. These facts indicate
the settled policy of the founders of New
England to lay the foundations of what was
practically an independent state.
Thomas Danforth was the most useful and
prominent citizen of Cambridge in the second
generation. He was the son of Nicholas Dan-
forth who came to Cambridge as early as 1635
and built a house about where Massachusetts
Avenue now runs. Beck Hall and the Bap-
tist church now stand on the land that was
part of the Danforth farm. This Nicholas
Danforth was evidently a good citizen, for he
was immediately elected a selectman and
served for two years as a deputy of the General
Court, and died in 1638. His son Thomas
inherited the homestead, but sold it in 1642,
and bought a house originally built by Rev.
John Phillips, on the north side of Kirkland
Street, near Oxford Street. His estate ulti-
mately covered the whole territory, from the
Somerville and Charlestown line to where the
college library now stands. It included, that
is, all the northeasterly part of the college
yard and the land bordering on Oxford Street
for its entire length. This property was after-
56
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MAS.SACHUSETTS
wards well known as the Foxcroft estate. Mr.
Danforth throughout his long life was a most
energetic citizen of the town and of the Colony.
He was for twenty-seven years a selectman of
Cambridge, twenty-four years town clerk,
twenty years
a magistrate
and assistant,
and for nine
years deputy-
governor of the
Colony. Except
for the prolonged
life of the ven-
erable governor,
Simon Brad-
street, he would
certainly) have
been governor.
Later Mr. Dan-
forth was a mem-
ber of the Pro-
vincial Council
and judge of the
Supreme Court.
He was one of
the members of
the governing
board of the
United Colonies
from 1662 to
1678, and he was
for nineteen
years the treas-
urer at Har-
vard College.
This extraordi-
nary record of
public service
indicates the
confidence of the community and attests the
wisdom and integrity with which he despatched
these varied public functions. He was prob-
ably the most active citizen of Massachusetts
during the last half of the century, and he was
March
HONOURABLE SAMUEL SEWALL
Chief Justice of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Born in
28. 1652. Came to New England in 1661. Member of the Council under tht
Provincial charter. 1692-1725. One of the Assistants under the Colonial charter
and ex officio a Judge of the Supreme Court. Appointed Judge of Superior Court
in 1692. and Chief Justice in 1718. Chosen in 1699 one of the Commissioners ol
the Society in England for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England. Some-
time Resident Fellow, afterwards one of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College
the leader of the patriot party which strove to
retain the original charter of Massachusetts.
The attacks upon the Massachusetts charter
had been not infrequent from the earliest days.
After the restoration of the Stuarts, there was
constant efTort
to deprive the
New England
Colonies of their
liberties. In
1678 the Crown
lawyers gave a
legal opinion
that the Charter
of Massachu-
setts had been
justly forfeited
by the of?ences
committed b y
the colonial
government
under it. The
authorities of
the colonies,
under the leader-
ship of Thomas
Danforth, of
Cambridge, and
Increase Mather,
of Boston, did
everything in
their power, by
petition and re-
monstrance, to
ward off the
catastrophe, but
in 1684 the
Charter was
finally declared
to be null and
void, and soon after, a royal governor arrived to
take over the control of what was no longer the
Colony, but now the royal Province of Massachu-
setts Bay. With the loss of the Charter ends the
colonial period of New England history.
VII
THE VILLAGE
AFTER the withdrawal of the Massa-
chusetts charter a change came over
the Ufe of the community. The new
generation lacked something of the heroic
impulses of the founders. The proportion
of educated men and of natural leaders was
not so high as in the first generation. Life
was easier than in the colonial period, but it
was more material. The village of Cambridge
grew more comfortable to live in, and the
houses were better built and better furnished.
The prosperity of the community steadily
increased, but the physical changes were few;
the population remained nearly stationary
for more than a hundred years, and plain
living and steady toil were still the lot of the
inhabitants. More and more the woods were
cut off and the pasture land was broken by the
plow, but the wildness of the region outside
of the village itself may be judged by the fact
that the town records show rewards paid for
the killing of wild animals within the limits of
the town almost down to the Revolution. In
the one year 1690 there is a record of fifty-two
wolves killed in Cambridge and six years later
rewards were paid for the killing of seventy-
two wolves. A bear was shot in what is now
East Cambridge, as late as 1754.
The story of the first half of the eighteenth
century, though it abounds in political and
industrial interest, is still in its central elements
a continued chapter of religious history. Its
hopes and heroisms were still those of the
religious life; its controversies and dissensions
were still those of the theologians. Life was
still measured in terms of moral rectitude and
the subtle temptations of luxury and ease
were far in the distance. The College and
the Meeting-house remained the centers of
Cambridge interest. Harvard College was
founded for the specific purpose of training
ministers, or, as the first appeal declared, "that
the Commonwealth may be furnished with
knowing and understanding men, and the
churches with an able ministry." In the first
list of college regulations — called, as now seems
curious, "the liberties" of the College, — the
first rules are these: "Every scholar shall con-
sider the main end of his life and study to
know God and Jesus Christ. Every one shall
so exercise himself in reading the Scriptures
twice a day, that they be ready to give an
account of their proficiency. And all sophis-
ters and bachelors shall publicly repeat sermons
in the hall whenever they are called forth."
The institution was founded by men in whom
the sense of God was the controlling impulse,
and to whom his glory was the end of education,
and when the families of the Colony brought
out of their poverty their offerings to the Col-
lege, — the one of five shillings, and the other of
a few sheep, and the other the fourth part of a
bushel of com, or "something equivalent
thereto," — it was not as an offering to culture,
but as an offering to religion.
For more than two hundred years, in its
disciphne and courses of study, the College
followed mainly the lines traced by its founders.
Its influence did more than any other, perhaps
more than all others, to make New England
what it is. During the one hundred and forty
years preceding the War of Independence it
supplied the schools of the greater part of New
England with teachers. What was even more
important, it sent to every parish in Massa-
chusetts one man, — the minister, — with a
certain amount of scholarship, a belief in
culture, and a considerable collection of books,
by no means wholly theological. "Simple
and godly men were they," said Mr. Lowell
in his oration at the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of the College, "receiving much,
sometimes all, of their scanty salary in kind,
and eking it out by the drudgery of a cross-
grained farm where the soil seems all back-
bone. They contrived to save enough to send
their sons in turn through college, to portion
their daughters, — decently trained in English
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
literature of the more serious kind, and perfect
in the duties of household and dairy, — and
make modest provision for their widows, if they
should leave any. With all this, they gave
their two sermons every Sunday of the year,
and of a measure that would seem ruinously
liberal to these less stalwart days, when scarce
ten parsons together could lift the stones of
Diomed which they hurled at Satan with the
easy precision of lifelong practice. Their one
great holiday was the College Commencement,
which they punctually attended. They shared
the many toils and the rare festivals, the joys
and the sorrows of their townsmen as bone of
their bone and flesh of their flesh, for all were
of one blood and of one faith. They dwelt on
the same brotherly level with them as men, yet
apart from and above them by their sacred
office. Preaching the most terrible doctrines,
as most of them did, they were humane and
cheerful men, and when they came down from
the pulpit seemed to have been merely twisting
their 'cast-iron logic' of despair, as Coleridge
said of Donne, 'into true-love-knots.' Men
of authority, wise in counsel, independent
(for their settlement was a life-tenure), they
were living lessons of piety, industry, frugality,
temperance, and, with the magistrates, were
a recognized aristocracy. Surely, never was
an aristocracy so simple, so harmless, so ex-
emplary, and so fit to rule."
The original college building having fallen
to pieces, a new Harvard Hall was built in
1682 on the site which is now occupied by the
bmlding of the same name. That was the
first year of the brief presidency of John Rogers.
The experience of Mr. Rogers is a good illus-
tration of the necessary frugality of the
teachers and students of Harvard in the
seventeenth century. It appears that young
Rogers, remaining at the College as a resident
graduate, had driven from the farm of his
father — the minister of Ipswich — a cow, to
serve by barter for the payment of his charges.
The bursar's record debits him with two shil-
lings for the pasturage of this cow before her
appraisal for sale. It must have been a
question whether the young man or the College
should be at the expense of getting the animal
into condition for the hungry students. Those
years of severe training and meager nourish-
ment must have been alike for mind and body
of a highly educational character. It is no
wonder that such of the Indian pupils as did
not take to the woods died of consumption, or
that the New England boys who weathered
these experiences left their mark as men.
The record of a visit made to the College
in July, 1680, by two wandering Dutchmen
from Friesland gives another curious sidelight
upon conditions. Jasper Dankers and Peter
Sluyter, who were making a tour of the Ameri-
can colonies, made the following record in
their diary for the date
"July 9th (1680), Tuesday.— We started
out to go to Cambridge, lying to the N.E. of
Boston, in order to see their college and
printing-office. We left abt. six o'k in the
morning, and were set across the river at
Charlestown. . . . We reached Cambridge
abt. 8 o'k. It is not a large village, and the
houses stand very much apart. The college
building is the most conspicuous among them.
We went to it expecting to see something
curious, as it is the only college or would-be
academy of the Protestants in all America;
but we found ourselves mistaken. In ap-
proaching the house, we neither heard nor
saw anything mentionable ; but going to the
other side of the building we heard noise enough
in an upper room to lead my comrade to sup-
pose they were engaged in disputation. We
entered and went upstairs, where a person
met us and requested us to walk in, which
we did. We found there eight or ten young
fellows sitting around smoking tobacco, with
the smoke of which the room was so full that
you could hardly see; and the whole house
smelt so strong of it, that when I was going
upstairs I said, 'This is certainly a tavern.'
We excused ourselves that we could speak
English only a little, but understood Dutch
or French, which they did not. However,
we spake as well as we could. We inquired
how many professors there were, and they
replied, not one; that there was no money to
support one. We asked how many students
there were. They said at first thirty, and
then came down to twenty. I afterwards
understood there are probably not ten. They
could hardly speak a word of Latin, so that my
comrade could not converse with them. They
THE VILLAGE
took us to the library, where there was nothing
particular. We looked it over a little. They
presented us with a glass of wine. This is all
we ascertained there. The minister of the
place goes there morning and evening to make
prayer, and has charge over them. The
students have tutors or masters. Our visit
was soon over."
A new era for the College began in 1685
with the presidency of Increase Mather, a
leader of very definite convictions and remark-
able personal influence. He was the first of
the presidents of the College who was born
in America, and he was a striking illustration
of the peculiar characteristics of the New
England Puritans. He combined uprightness
with shrewdness, wide learning with practical
administrative ability, and spiritual intensity
with business sense. For a generation his
was the leading influence in church and state,
and his biography is the history of the province
during his time. He did not come to live in
Cambridge, but continued as minister of the
North Church in Boston. In 1688 he accepted
a mission to England as one of the agents of
Massachusetts which took him away from both
church and college for several years. His
masterful leadership was felt, however, in all
the concerns of the College, while the specific
work of instruction and government was carried
on by the two tutors, John Leverett and
William Brattle. The former of these later
became president of the College and the latter
was for twenty years minister of the Cambridge
church. Mather was a student whose habit
it was to spend sixteen hours a day in his
library. As a preacher he was clear, attractive,
practical and forcible, — sometimes rising to
"such a Tonitruous Cogency that the Heavens
would be struck with an Awe, like what would
be produced on the Fall of Thunderbolts;"
as an administrator so popular, that even in
his old age "the Churches would not permit
an Ordination to be carried on without him,
so long as he was able to Travel in a Coach
unto them." With all his multifarious labors as
pastor, president and agent of the Province, he
found time to publish books and pamphlets to
the nimiber of one hundred and sixty; and, at
the end of all, he was honored "with a greater
Funeral than had ever been seen for any Divine
in these (and some Travelers at it said, in any
other) parts of the World."
New buildings began to appear. In 1700
Governor William Stoughton built a residence
for students. This stood at right angles with
Harvard Hall at its eastern end, and a small
regular quadrangle was formed when the
Province in 1720 built Massachusetts Hall
facing Harvard. Of these three buildings
Massachusetts still stands, the oldest building
in the College Yard. Harvard Hall was burnt
in 1764, and its successor is the present build-
ing which bears the founder's name. The first
Stoughton Hall was taken down in 1780, and
later the present Stoughton Hall was built
and preserves the name and memory of the
original donor. A house for the occupancy
of the President, the present Wadsworth House,
was built at the rear of the meeting-house in
1726, and the gift of Madame Holden of London,
and her children provided in 1744 for the chapel
which now bears her name.
While the resources of the College were thus
slowly upbuilt by the liberality of friends both
in America and in England, yet the narrowness
of its concerns may be illustrated by the follow-
ing extract from the Records of the Corpora-
tion: "April 8, 1695. Voted, that six leather
chairs be provided for the use of the Hbrary
and six more before the Commencement, in
case the treasury will allow of it." Another
extract from the Records gives a curious side-
light upon college manners; "June 22, 1693.
The Corporation having been informed that
the custom taken up in the college, not used
in any other universities, for the commencers
to have plum cake is dishonorable to the
college, not grateful to wise men, and charge-
able to the parents of the commencers, do
therefore put an end to that custom, and do
hereby order that no commencer or other
scholar shall have any such cakes in their
studies or chambers and that if any scholar,
shall offend therein the cake shall be taken from
him and he shall, moreover, pay to the College
twenty shillings for each such offense." It
is hard to see why plum cake was so dangerous
and disreputable, but the Records show that
Commencement Day was increasingly becom-
ing a time of public disorder. By the middle
of the eighteenth century it had become neces-
60
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
sary for the Corporation at Commencement
time to procure the attendance of justices of
the peace, a poHce guard by day and a watch
by night for several days together.
The usefulness of the College in Mather's
presidency is indicated by the record of the
graduates of that period. One hundred and
thirteen young
men left the
College to be-
come the minis-
ters of the New-
England churches.
Seven became
judges of the
Supreme Court
of Massachusetts;
three, judges of
the Supreme
Court of Con-
necticut, and two,
of the Supreme
Court of New
Hampshire. Two
governors and
two lieutenant-
governors of
provinces, one
president of Yale
and one president
of Harvard arc
also among the
graduates of this
time.
In 1701 the
College came
under the charge
of Rev. Samuel
Willard, who ex-
ercised the func-
tion of president
under the title of
vice-president.
This was an-
other way of getting around the requirement
that the president should live in Cambridge.
Dr. Willard was minister of the Old South
Church in Boston and continued in his pas-
torate while in charge of the College. He
was succeeded in 1707 by John Leverett, who
had been connected with the College as student.
HARVARD H
tutor and member of the corporation for niany
years.
In the valuable diary of Judge Sewall is
found the following picturesque account of
Leverett's inaugviration :
"Midweek, Jany. 14, 170>^. Went to Cam-
bridge in Mr. Brigg's Coach, with Col. Town-
send, Mr. Brom-
field, and Mr.
Stoddard. Mr.
Em. Hutchinson
went in his own
Charet, taking
Mr. Wadsworth
with him. Capt.
Belcher carried
Mr. Secretary in
his Calash. Mr.
Pemberton carried
his Bror in his
Slay over the Ice;
Mr. Mico carried
Mr. Treasurer
Brattle. Mr. Col-
man there: Majr
Genl Winthrop,
Col. EHsha Hutch-
inson, Mr. Foster,
Mr. Sergeant, Dr.
Mather, Mr. Cot-
ton Mather, Mr.
Bridge, Mr. Allen
not there. The
d ay was \' c r y
pleasant; Col.
Philips, Mr. Rus-
scl in his black
cap, Col. Lynde
met us fro m
Charlestown; Mr.
Bradstrect, An-
gler, there, Mr.
Woodbridgc of
Meadford, Mr.
Neh. Hobart. In the Library the Go\-cnour
found a Meeting of the Overseers of the College
according to the old Charter of 1650, and re-
duced the Number [of the Corporation] to seven;
viz. Mr. Leverett, President, Mr. Neh. Hobart,
Mr. Wm. Brattle, Mr. Ebenczcr Pemberton,
Mr. Henry Flint, ]\Ir. Jonathan Remington,
THE VILLAGE
Fellows; Mr. Tho. Brattle, Treasurer. The
Govr prepar'd a Latin Speech for Installment
of the President. Then took the President
by the hand and led him down into the Hall;
The Books of the College Records, Charter
Seal and Keys were laid upon a Table running
parallel with that next the Entry. The Govr
sat with his back against a Noble Fire; Mr.
Russel on his Left Hand inermost, I on his
Right Hand; President sat on the other side
of the Table over against him. Mr. Neh.
Hobart was called, and made an excellent
Prayer; Then Joseph Sewall made a Latin
Oration. Then the Govr read his Speech,
and (as he told me) mov'd the Books in token
of their delivery. Then President made a
short Latin Speech,
imparting the diffi-
culties discourag-
ing, and yet that
he did Accept;
Govr spake further,
assuring him of the
Assistance of the
Overseers. Then
Mr. jgdward Hol-
yoke made a Latin
Oration, standing
where Joseph did
at a Desk on the
Table next th c-
Entry at the inside
of it, facing the
Govr. Mr. Dan-
forth of Dorchester
pray'd. Mr. Paul Dudley read part of the 132
ps. in Tate and Bradey's version, Windsor Tune,
clos'd with the Hymn to the Trinity. Had a
very good Diner upon 3 or 4 Tables: Mr. Wads-
worth crav'd a Blessing, Mr. Angier return'd
Thanks. Got home very well. Laus Deo."
President Leverett was a man of science
and a man of affairs. He had studied both
law and theology. He had been Speaker of
the House of Representatives, a member of
the Council, a judge of probate, and finally
a justice of the Supreme Court. He was one
of the first persons in America to be chosen a
member of the Royal Society in England.
We have no means of judging directly of his
attainments for he left no written works behind
i^^
E
^
P
^^
Eii^rJ
||U
1- ^'SffRHl^H
BiLI
^E
0lBH
?---
_^— -^
him, but we may justly estimate by the respect
and affection which he inspired among his
contemporaries. Mr. Pierce said of him;
" He had a great and generous soul. His
attainments were profound and extensive.
He was well acquainted with the learned
languages, with the arts and sciences, with
history, philosophy, law, divinity and politics.
He possessed all the attractions which are
conferred by the Graces, being from the sphere
in which he always moved a gentlemen as well
as a scholar and a man of business." Under
President Leverett the number of undergradu-
ates rapidly increased, and in the twenty-two
years of his presidency more young men were
graduated at the College than in all the years
before. Not quite
half of these gradu-
ates became min-
isters.
The chief event
of this period was
the establishment
of two professor-
ships, one in divin-
ity and the other
in mathematics.
These were the gift
of Thomas HoUis,
a London merchant
who partly for the
love of civil and
religious liberty
and partly through
his acquaintance
in London with Increase Mather, made the
College the chief recipient of his bounty.
Hollis's gifts began in 1719. His children
inherited his interest and continued his bene-
factions. It is a curious fact that HoUis was
a Baptist, yet he was of so liberal a spirit as
to found a theological professorship without
any sectarian bias. Besides his own large
donations HoUis frequently obtained for the
College the assistance of his friends and family.
In May, 1724, President Leverett suddenly
died. It was an important and difficult matter
to find a successor. It is not strange that
Cotton Mather desired and expected the office
and it is not surprising that he was passed-
over in the choice. Rev. Joseph Sewall was
ADSWORTH HOUsE
62
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
elected; chosen for his piety, Mr. Mather
wrote. The Old South Church was unwilling
to give him up, and he declined the office.
The Rev. Benjamin Colman, of the Brattle
Street Church, was then chosen, and the friends
of the College sought to secure from the General
Court a fitting salary for the president, and
one which could be depended upon. The
effort failed, and Mr. Colman declined the office.
Several months passed before another election
was made, when the Rev. Benjamin Wads-
worth, of the First Church, was chosen. He
declared his reluctance to accept the office,
and his preference to remain with his church.
His church finally consented that he should
accept the call to the new position, if he judged
it to be his duty. He consented to be made
the president of the College, and the General
Court granted him one hundred and fifty
pounds "to enable him to enter upon and
manage the great affair of that presidency,
and a committee was appointed to look out
a suitable house for the reception of the Presi-
dent," and to inquire into the financial con-
dition of the College.
Wadsworth in his diary describes his in-
auguration, which occurred on Commence-
ment Day morning (July 7, 1725) in the
meeting-house, as follows :
"The Walk or Procession from ye college
to ye meeting House was as had been usual,
viz. The Bachelours of Art went first, two in
a rank; and then ye Masters, all bare-headed;
then I followed, walking single as President;
next the Corporation and Tutors two in a rank,
then the Honble Lieutenant Govemour Dum-
mer & Council, next to them ye rest of ye
Gentlemen. When in ye meeting House, I
entered a Pew with ye Lieutenant Govemour
and several of ye Council. The Revnd Mr.
Benja. Colman went into ye Pulpit and began
with prayer. Then ye Lieutenant Govemour
Installed me in ye Presidents office (ye college
Keys, Seal, Records lying on a Table in ye
Pew) He said to me:
" 'Revd Sir
" 'You being duly elected & approved to be
ye President of Harvard College, I do accord-
ingly in ye name of ye overseers, invest you
with ye Government thereof, in ye same
extent as any [of] your Precessors Presidents
of Harvard College have been heretofore vested ;
and delivered to you ye Keys, with these Books
& Papers as Badges of your Authority, con-
fiding that you will govern the Societies with
Loyalty to our Sovereign Lord King George
and obedient to his laws, and according to ye
Statutes & Rules of ye said College.'
" Hereupon, before I left the Pew I answered
memoriter in English. I then entered the
pulpit and having pronounced (without any
Reading, or notes) my oration in Latin; I
then called for ye Salutatory oration. Sir
Brown made it. That being ended ye Batche-
lours disputed on one question, and I then
gave them their degrees at ye end of ye fore-
noon, exercises: wch being finished, we re-
turned to College as was usual."
Dr. Wadswort hserved for twelve years, and
then came Edward Holyoke, the minister of
Marblehead. Dr. Holyoke had graduated
in 1705, and had been tutor, librarian, and
fellow in the college. His theological convic-
tions were apparently more tolerant or at
least less aggressive than those of some of his
predecessors. To the inquiry' of Governor
Belcher, Mr. Holj'oke's neighbor, the Rev.
John Barnard, answered: "I think Mr. Hol-
yoke as orthodox a Calvinist as any man;
though I look upon him as too much of a
gentleman, and of too catholic a temper, to
cram his principles down another man's
throat." "Then I believe he must be the
man," repUed the Governor. He was inaugu-
rated September 28, 1737. The General Court
agreed to pay to the Society which had thus
given up its pastor one hundred and forty
pounds, "to encourage and facilitate the settle-
ment of a minister there." With Holyoke
served a group of remarkable men. His own
term of service covered thirty-two years.
Edward Wigglesworth, the first HoUis pro-
fessor of divinity, served for forty-four 3-ears,
a learned, sagacious and gentle scholar, whose
literary taste was of the highest order and whose
theolog}' was for his day extraordinarily
liberal. John Winthrop was for forty-one
years the Hollis professor of mathematics,
and sustained the highest reputation for scien-
tific attainment. He was also distinguished
as a faithful public servant and maintained
his family tradition of leadership in the com-
THE VILLAGE
munity. With these gentlemen, as tutor,
Henry Flynt served for fifty-five years. It
is noticeable that all four of these teachers
acted together for seventeen years, and three
of them for twenty-seven years. It was during
this period that the men who afterwards
reflected the greatest distinction upon the
College were educated there. Samuel Adams,
John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin,
Jonathan Trumbull, Timothy Pickering,
Joseph Warren, Artemas Ward, James Otis,
Josiah Quincy and William Eustis were not
inconspicuous in the patriot councils of their
generation, and all of them were graduates
of the institution which General Gage after-
wards denounced as "the nest of sedition."
Here the patriot leaders were nurtured; here
they read of freedom and chivalry; here, in
their impressible youth, they breathed to-
gether the spirit of liberty which characterized
the place and the time.
The burning of Harvard Hall in the winter
of 1764, with the consequent loss of the library
and all the scientific apparatus, was an event
of signal importance alike for the College and
the community. We are fortunate in having
a graphic contemporaneous account of this
event. The following letter, referring to the
completion and dedication of Hollis Hall and
to the disastrous fire, was written by Margaret
Holyoke, the daughter of President Holyoke.
She was the wife of John Mascarene who had
been for some time in England on business.
"Cambridge, Jan. 30th, 1764.
"To Mr. John Mascarene, London:
"My Dearest, No. 74, my last to you, was by
Bioll, and Keating, the latter of which I can't
yet learn whether it sailed or not, in those
letters I answered all yours by Hatch, Hooper,
Jarvis, and Dixey, and enclosed agreeable
to your Desire Arms, Invoice, Inventory,
memorandums, Patterns, measures, &c. &c.,
all of which I hope will get safe to hand, for
I think I would not have the pester of such
another collection for a good deal. . . .
"And now my Dear I shall begin with your
matter of fact writing. First then our Friends
ate all well, our new College is Finished, and
a Beautiful Btiilding. The thirteenth of this
month the General Court were invited to dine
at College, at which time it was called Hollis
Hall, in gratitude to the late and present worthy
gentleman of that name. Since that time
the Small Pox has been in Boston in 20 familys
which has drove a third almost of the people
out of Boston, and the General Court ad-
journed to the College, the Council to the
Library, and the house to the Hall where they
have met for the dispatch of Public Business
till last Wednesday, for on Tuesday night
about 12 o'clock, in the severest snow storm
I ever remember I heard the cry of Fire, one
moment brought me to the window, when (I)
saw the old Harvard College on fire, and it
was with the utmost difficulty they savd the
other Buildings. Stoughton was on fire an
Hour, Massachusetts catchd in three places,
and Hollis Hall is burnt much, at the South-
west comer. There was nothing savd in old
College, except a bed or two. The whole
Library, except some Books lent out and Mr.
Hollis's last donation, were demolished, the
whole apparatus. Mr. Hancock who lodged
out, on account of the storm lost everything
except the cloths he had on, this is a most
terrible accident, this Library in which were
so many valuable Books, ancient manuscripts,
the Labour of the Learned, and the work of
ages, in a few hours turned to ashes. Our
College is now poorer than any on the Conti-
nent — we are all real mourners on this occasion
and I doubt not your attachment to alma
mater, will make you feel sorrowful upon this
conflagration. As to Father he had very near
lost his life on the occasion, the snow was in
drifts in many places four and five feet high,
papa went thro it all with nothing more upon
him than he sits in the house, the President's
house was in great danger the wind was strong
at N west the latter part of the time, and in
short if Stoughton had gone all the houses in
town to the Eastward of the College would
have gone. I think I never saw so great a
strife of elements before, it is supposed the
Fire began in the Beam under the hearth of
the Library, the Gov'r & a great number of
the court assisted in extinguishing the Fire,
it being vacation and no person in the college,
the Fire was past stopping in Harvard before it
was perceived. I hope the K — g will give
something to repair the loss as he has never
64
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
done anything for this College yet, and my
Dear (tho I wotild not dictate to you) I believe
if you was to try among your acquaintances
for some donations by way of Books, or mathe-
matical instruments, it will be very acceptable.
Mr. Winthrop thinks that 3 Hd pd sterl'g
would buy a compleat apparatus, and there
are Books which are of no great act in a private
gentleman's Library-, which are ornamental
and useful to an ancient and Public one. Cahill
is generous, and loves show. Suppose you
was to ask him — if he gives anything worth
while, he will have the Public thanks of the
College, and his name will be enrolled among
the worthy Benefactors to this Seminary, and
will live when the Buildings themselves are
crumbled into Dust, but I need say no more,
I know you will want no stimulus in this affair,
our Country men at the Coffee house I doubt
not if properly applied to, would subscribe
something Hansome. Any wealthy lady that
is minded to make her Fame immortal cant
have a more favorable opportunity, thus my
Dear, I have given you as good an account as
I can of this terrible afair which would have
been nothing hardly if the Library and appa-
ratus had been saved. If I can get a paper
wherein the account is ile sent it to you — and
now partly to soften your grief and alleviate
your sorrow, lie tell you the proceeding of our
worthy Court the next Day. The First vote
that past was for rebuilding the College at the
expence of the province Imediately, and two
thousand lawful voted to begin with, and a
sum to Mr. Hancock to repair his loss which
with what of money Plate &c they have fotmd
in the Ruins, I hope will make his loss light,
£10 lawful apiece to those scholars who lost
their Furniture, and £40 lawful to the Buttler,
all which is thot very handsome. 2 days
after this they chose the Lieut Govr agent for
this province to the Court of Great Britain,
and it is said that he and his son Tom, and
Couz Rogers, embarks in the spring, and I
prophesy Forster will be made Judge Probate,
if so Libera nos Domine. I had forgot when
I told of the chrisning Hollis Hall that young
Joe Taylor, the Capt Stone, a junior sophister,
delivered a very handsome English oration
before the whole Legislative Body, in Holden
Chappel. Now to come home again my
Brother lost their little Polly the eldest child
about three weeks ago, and good Deacon
Whipple departed this life last week, — and
Johnny Appleton has got the Small Pox at
Salem. But we hear he has it very lightly,
it is not yet determined whether the Small
Pox will spread, they take the utmost care to
prevent it — Mr. Flucker and wife are at papas
till it is over and there is a number of others
in town on the same account so that our little
Cambridge looks quite alive, tho at this dead
season of the year, and vacation into the
Bargain. . . .
"I was much disappointed of making a visit
to Boston. I intended to have spent a fort-
night of this vacation with Mrs. Newall, who
is continually urging me to come there. I
thot to go to Capt. Handfields, and enquire
about Adlam, who I think has not behavd
like a man of Honor, tho he wers a Sword —
Mr. Whitefield is on his journey here, from
whom some Persons expect much — I have
begd last Monday's paper of Mr. Flucker, which
I shall enclose as this ship goes directly for
London. You will find an inventory as near
as they could remember, of the library and
apparatus, to the end that those who are minded
to give may know what — the College Bell is also
gone. The vacation is lengthened out to I
don't know what time. I am surprized you
mention nothing of the national Ferment,
which by an article in this paper, seems to be
very great. I hope my Dear by this time your
afTair is Finished, and to your satisfaction,
if not, I firmly believe it never will, without
you give up part to get the rest. Procrasti-
nation if the thief of time, year after year it
steals, and leaves of life but little to enjoy.
Alas how great a part of our short span since
love and honor joined our Souls and Hands
have wee been separated. Time, and distance,
those foes to love upon earth, still keep between
us and prevent our meetting, make haste old
time and shake your heavy sands and bring
the happy hour that makes us truly blest.
Thou Ocean gently waft him over in safety
to his native land and after all the toil and
vexation of attending the great may he sit
down in quiet and enjoy his Family and
Friends. Here rest his little bark nor e'er
by Poverty or dire Misfortune be thrown out
THE VILLAGE
to sea again may he exhibit a bright example
of every virtue, and be a pleasure to his Fri ends,
and diffuse happiness as far as his Influence
extends. . . .
"I believe you are tired so I shall conclude,
with love from all friends, and my regards to
Mr. James Fireside, and am with the truest
afTection and esteem ever yours,
M. Mascarene."
As this letter shows, the disaster proved a
blessing in disguise. The loss roused the
generous zeal of the friends of the College. The
General Court restored the building — erecting
the present Harvard Hall on the old site, and
numerous benefactors endeavored to make
good the loss of books and instruments. After
Dr. Holyoke's death Rev. Samuel Locke of
Sherbom had a brief and troubled presidency,
and was succeeded in 1744 by Dr. Samuel
Langdon of Portsmouth, N.H., who had been
but six months in office when the storm of
revolutionary war broke upon the community.
The story of the Cambridge Church runs
parallel to that of the College, and the threads
are often interwoven. The fifth minister of
the Church was William Brattle, who was born
in Boston in 1662, and graduated at Harvard
in 1680. He served as tutor and Fellow of
the College for many years and supplied the
pulpit of the church occasionally after Mr.
Gookin's death. From the time of his pas-
torate a regular church record was made, whic h
has been preserved in good condition. At the
beginning of this record, Mr. Brattle says he
"succeeded the Rev. Nathaniel Gookin, and
was ordained a minister of Jesus Christ and
a pastor to the flock at Cambridge, Nov. 25,
1696, per the Rev. Mr. Inc. Mather. The
Rev. Mr. Morton, Mr. Allin, and Mr. Willard
laid on hands. The Rev. Mr. Sam. Willard
gave the right hand of fellowship. . . . Deo
sit ghria. Amen."
The connection of Mr. Brattle with the church
for more than twenty years was peaceful and
prosperous. He continued to teach in the
College. After the death of his brother,
Thomas Brattle, he acted as Treasurer of the
College for about two years. His scholarship
was recognized by his election to the Roj^al
Society, — an honor conferred on very few
Americans. After "a languishing distemper
which he bore with great patience and resig-
nation," he "died with peace and an extra-
ordinary serenity of mind," Febuary 15, 1716-
17, in the fifty-fifth year of his age. Mr.
Brattle's son, William Brattle, Jr., was a con-
spicuous leader in Cambridge for fifty years.
He graduated at the College in 1722 and,
married the daughter of Governor Gordon
Saltonstall. He built the house at the eastern
end of Brattle Street which, with its gardens
running down to the river at the back, made
the handsomest estate in the town. General
Brattle was selectman for twenty-one years,
representative for ten years, councillor for
seventeen years, and major-general of the
Provincial militia. In his old age he adhered
to the Tory party, and died in exile in 1776.
It was during Mr. Brattle's pastorate that
the meeting-house which had stood somewhat
more than fifty years, became dilapidated and
the town voted on July 12, 1703, that it was
" necessary at this time to proceed to the build-
ing of a new meeting-house, and in order there-
unto, there was then chosen Capt. Andrew
Belcher, Esq., Thomas Brattle, Esq., John
Leverett, Esq., Col. Francis Foxcroft, Esq.,
Deacon Walter Hastings, Capt. Thomas Oliver,
and Mr. William Russell, a committee to advise
and consider of the model and charge of build-
ing said meeting-house, and to make report
of the same to said inhabitants." On Decem-
ber 6, 1705, it was further "voted that the sum
of two hundred and eighty pounds be levied
on said inhabitants, toward the building of a
new meeting-house amongst them." On the
28th of September, 1703, the College granted
sixty pounds "out of the College Treasury
towards the building a new meeting-house;"
and, August 6, 1706, "voted that Mr. Leverett
with the Treasurer take care for the building
of a pew for the President's family in the
meeting-house now a building, and about the
students' seats in the said meeting-house;
the charge of the pew to be defrayed out of the
College Treasury." This third house stood
on or very near the spot occupied by the second,
and seems to have been opened for public
worship on October 13, 1706.
In most New England country towns we
66
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
expect to find a graveyard situated near the
meeting-house; but in Cambridge there was
no such connection. The enclosure at the
comer of Massachusetts Avenue and Garden
Street, if not the first burial ground, was cer-
tainly used very nearly for that purpose. In
the Town Records of January 4, 1635-6, we
read that it was "ordered that the burying-
place shall be paled in." This continued to
be the only public place of burial in Cambridge
for many years; and in spite of the fence it
seems not to have been very carefully guarded.
As late as the year 1702 the graveyard was
leased as a pasture for sheep, as appears from
the following record;
"At a meeting of the selectmen, 10th March,
1700-1, Lieut. Aaron Boardman requesting
that he might have the improvement of the
Burying-yard (to keep sheep in), the selectmen
did consent that he should have the improve-
ment of said yard (for the use above mentioned)
for one year next ensuing, provided he would
cut the gate of said yard asunder, and hang the
same with suitable hooks and hinges, also fix a
stub-post in the ground, and a rail from post to
post cross the gates, for them to shut against ;
all to be done in good workmanlike order;
which the said Boardman promised to do."
The funeral customs were as simple as the
graveyard. When a Cambridge man came
to be buried he went to his grave with the same
simple solemnity which had marked his life.
He had sought in his thought and habit an
uncompromising reality and he wanted nothing
else at death. Lechford's account of the
funeral customs fits in brevity and dignity the
occasion which it describes: "At burials
nothing is read, nor any funeral sermon made;
but all the neighborhood, or a good company
of them, come together by tolling of the bell,
and carry the dead solemnly to his grave and
there stand by him while he is buried."
One hundred years after the burial-place
was ordered to be " paled in," the town directed
it to be enclosed by a substantial stone wall
in place of the pales and wooden fence; and
it will be seen that the College, having a com-
mon interest in the spot, contributed one
sixth part of the expense of the work. This is
shown from their record of the President and
Fellows, under the date of October 20, 1735:
"Whereas, there is a good stone wall erected
and erecting round the burj'ing-place in
Cambridge, which will come to about £150;
and whereas, there has been a considerable
regard had to the College in building so good
and handsome a wall in the front; and the
College has used, and expects to make use of
the burying-place as Providence gives occasion
■for it; therefore, voted, that as soon as the
said stone wall shall be completed, the treasurer
pay the sum of twenty-five pounds to Samuel
Danforth, William Brattle, and Andrew Board-
man, Esq., a committee for the town to take
care of the said fence."
In this graveyard lie the early presidents
of the College, Dunster, Chauncy, Oakes,
Leverett, Wadsworth, Holyoke, Willard and
Webber; the ministers, Shepard, Mitchell,
Gookin, Brattle and Appleton; the early
settlers, Roger Harlakenden, Stephen Day,
Elijah Corlett; and the later generations,
Danforths, Gookins, Boardmans, Belchers,
Lees, Danas and many more.
Immediately after the death of Mr. Brattle
a meeting of the church was held to consider
the calling of a new minister, and its proceedings
were minutely recorded by President Leverett,
in his Diary, which is in the College Library.
As this meeting resulted in the settlement of a
pastor who served the church for nearly sixty-
seven years, almost as long as the combined
ministry of his five predecessors, this record
is worthy of preservation; "Friday, April the
19th, 1717. At a meeting of the Church of
Christ in Cambridge. 1. The President being
desired by the deacons and brethren opened
the meeting with prayer. 2. The deacons
proposed that a moderator might be chosen
for the ordering and directing the meeting.
3. Voted, that the President be moderator
of this meeting. He submitted to the vote of
the brethren of the Church, and, opening the
design and intention of the meeting, earnestly
desired that every body would freely discover
their minds and declare what measures they
thought proper, and what steps they would
take in order to a settlement of the ministry
in this place. After a due time of silence Mr.
Justice Remington expressed himself, that the
nomination of some suitable persons seemed
to be the first step to be taken. Some others
THE VILLAGE
67
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
spake to the same effect. No opposition being
expressed, a vote was called and it was voted.
4. Voted, that the brethren express their
minds as to nomination in writing, and the
three persons that shall have the most votes
shall be the persons nominated, out of which
an election shall be made of one, in order to
be settled in the pastoral office in this church.
Pursuant to this vote, the brethren were
desired by the moderators to write and bring
in their votes, which they did; and upon the
view, numbering and declaring the vote, Mr.
Henry Flint, Mr. Jabez Fitch, and Mr. Nathaniel
Appleton were the three persons agreed to be
nominated, out of which the brethren should
proceed to an election. Accordingly the
moderator desired the brethren of the Church
to bring in their votes for the choice of a person
to settle in the ministry in this place, viz. one
of three before nominated persons. Pursuant
hereto the church brought in their votes in
writing. 5. Upon sorting and numbering
the votes, Mr. Nathaniel Appleton was by the
church elected to the work of the ministrj^, in
order to the taking upon him the pastoral
office as God shall open the way thereunto.
This was by a great majority; the votes for
Mr. Appleton being ;38, and the votes for Mr.
Flint but 8. The moderator declared to the
church their election of Mr. Appleton as afore-
said. 6. It was proposed that those that had
not voted for Mr. Appleton in writing might
have the opportunity to manifest their satis-
faction with the vote that had passed, that
the brethren would manifest that they chose
him as aforesaid by lifting up their hands,
which was complied with, and it is said that
there were but two that had acted in the
foregoing votes that did not hold up their
hands."
After appointing a committee to ask the
concurrence of the town with the church in
their choice, "the moderator concluded the
meeting with returning thanks to God for the
peaceable and comfortable management of
the affairs of the church. Laus Deo." The
town concurred, and Mr. Appleton was or-
dained October 9, 1717. Dr. Increase Mather
preached and gave the charge; Dr. Cotton
Mather gave the right hand of Fellowship ; and
they, together with Rev. Messrs. John Rogers,
of Ipswich, and Samuel Angier, of Watertown, '
imposed hands. [
The Parsonage built in 1(170 had now become
dilapidated, and the town voted, August 1, ,
1718, "that the sum of two hundred and fifty i
pounds be granted for the building a new i
Parsonage-house, provided the sum of one ]
hundred and thirty pounds of the said money |
be procured by the sale of town, propriety',
or ministry lands in said town, as may be
thought most proper to be disposed of for said
use." The records do not distinctly indicate
whether the Parsonage was wholly or only
partly rebuilt, but apparently only the front
was changed, for Dr. Holmes, writing in 1800,
says, "All the ministers, since Mr. Mitchell,
have resided at the Parsonage. The front
part of the present house was built in 1720."
The chief event of Dr. Appleton's long
pastorate before the stirring days of the Revo-
lution was the excitement caused by the
religious revival which followed the coming of
the Rev. George Whitefield. The extraordi-
nary preaching gifts of this young exhorter
produced a remarkable effect upon the minds
and hearts of the outwardly decorous but in-
wardly emotional New Englanders. At the
beginning the excitement was deemed inspira-
tion; and it was not until the first fever had
passed off, that it was discovered that the
revival was not always followed by hallow-
ing influences. There was no suspicion, how-
ever, in the beginning, of the want of genuine-
ness in any of the numerous conversions; and
the Overseers of the College even passed a
vote, "earnestly recommending it to the
President, Tutors, Professors, and Instructors,
by personal application to the students under
impressions of a religious nature, and by all
other means, to encourage and promote this
good work." No wonder that Whitefield,
who was only twenty-six years old at the time
of his first visit, should have come to think
himself a divine instrument, and should have
sincerely believed that he spake as he was
moved by the Holy Ghost. His denuncia-
tions of the colleges and the churches were
altogether more violent than the facts war-
ranted. "As to the Universities," he said,
" I believe it may be said that their light has
become darkness — darkness that may be felt,
THE VILLAGE
69
and is complained of by the most godly min-
isters." "Tutors neglect to pray with and
examine the hearts of their pupils. DiscipHne
IS at too low an ebb." "Tillotson and Clarke
are read, instead of Shepard and Stoddard,
and such like evangelical writers."
The faculty of the College joined in a protest
against Whitefield's reckless statements, deny-
ing their truth, and exposing their want of
evidence, and their "uncharitable," "censo-
rious," and "slanderous" character. White-
field replied, and Dr. Wigglesworth, the Hollis
Professor of Divinity, responded to his pam-
phlet by another, in which he wrote with a
degree of severity to which his gentle nature
could have been roused only by extreme prov-
ocation.
President Holyoke also entered the lists in
defence of the College, and added an appendix
to Dr. Wigglesworth' s pamphlet, which closed
a controversy that exhibited the ability with
which the affairs of the College were managed.
If there were really any design of " discouraging
benefactors, injuring the seminary in estate
as well as name, and preventing pious parents
from sending their children to us for education, ' '
the attempt failed in the most satisfactory
manner.
Dr. Appleton and the people of the Cam-
bridge Church shared the feelings of their
neighbors. In the Boston Evening Post, of
January 7, 1745, we read the following record
of a gathering held at "Cambridge, Jan. 1,
1744-5. At a meeting of the Association of
this and the neighboring towns, present, the
Reverend Messieurs John Hancock of Lex-
ington, WilHam Williams of Weston, John
Cotton of Newton, Nath. Appleton of Cam-
bridge, Warham Williams of Waltham, Seth
Storer of Watertown, Eben. Turell of Medford,
Nicholas Bowes of Bedford, Samuel Cook of
Cambridge. The Rev. Mr. Appleton having
applied to his brethren of said association for
our advice, relating to a request which hath
been made to him by a number of his church
and congregation, that he would invite the
Rev. Mr. George White field to preach in
Cambridge; after supplications to God and
mature consideration of the case proposed,
and the several pleas made in favor of said
request, and the state of the town, as also the
many weighty objections which lie against
the said Mr. Whitefield, with respect to his
principles, expressions, and conduct, which
are not yet answered, nor has any Christian
satisfaction been given by him for them; con-
sidering also how much the order, peace and
edification of the churches of this land are
endangered, together with the unhappy, divided
state of many of them; It was unanimously
voted, that it was not advisable, under the
present situation of things, that the Rev. Mr.
Appleton should invite the Rev. Mr. White-
field to preach in Cambridge. And they
accordingly declared, each of them for them-
selves respectively, that they would not invite
the said gentleman into their pulpits. The
above advice was signed by each member of
the association."
Another article relative to the same subject
appeared in the Boston Weekly News Letter,
of June 27, 1745: "Whereas it is reported in
the Gazette or Journal of this week, that the
Rev. Mr. Whitefield preached last Saturday
at Cambridge, to prevent misapprehension
and some ill consequences which may arise
from thence, you are desired to give your
readers notice that he preached on the Common
and not in the Pulpit; and that he did it, not
only without the consent, but contrary to the
mind, of the Rev. Mr. Appleton the minister
of the place."
It should be added that Whitefield himself
came to a better understanding as he grew
older. At the time of his later visit he said ;
"I certainly did drop some unguarded expres-
sions in the heat of less experienced youth,
and was too precipitate in hearkening to and
pubUshing private information." He assured
the faculty of the College of his "sorrow that
he had published private informations ... to
the world." Twenty years later, after the
College library had been burned, he gave to
the College his "Journal and a collection of
books; and also by his influence he procured
a large number of valuable books from several
parts of Great Britain."
In 1753 the Parish resolved to again build
a new meeting-house, and this purpose was
encouraged by the President and Fellows of
the College who voted to pay "one seventh
part of the charge of said house," provided
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
the students should have the use of the whole
front gallery, and "at least the third or fourth
pew as to the choice" be set apart for "the
President for the time being and his family."
The erection of the house was delayed about
three years. It was raised on November 17,
1756, and public worship was first held in it
on July 24, 1757. In this building all the
College commencements and inaugurations,
during more than seventy years, were cele-
brated; and no building in Massachusetts
could compare with it in the number of dis-
tinguished men who at different times were
assembled within its walls. The first and
second Provincial Congresses, under the presi-
dencies of Joseph Warren and John Hancock,
met there. Washington worshiped there
during the siege of Boston. In 1779, the dele-
gates from the towns of Massachusetts there
met and framed the Constitution of the Com-
monwealth, which the people of that state
ratified in 1780. There Lafayette, on his
triumphal visit to the United States, in 1824,
was eloquently welcomed.
This fourth meeting-house, which housed
the congregation until 1833, was the center
of the village. It stood on the site of the two
former houses, very nearly where Dane Hall
now stands, opposite the head of Dunster
Street. At the western end a substantial
tower, springing from the ground and pro-
jecting from the main building, was surmounted
by a belfry and a graceful spire capped with
the customary gilt weathercock. The prin-
cipal entrance was on the south, facing the
pulpit. The house was nearly square and
galleries ran around three sides. The eastern
gallery was allotted to the students and teachers
of the College; the west gallery was free; that
on the south was occupied by the choir. The
ground floor was divided into square pews,
having seats which could be raised on hinges
to afTord standing-room dtiring prayer. When
the prayer ended they were let down with a
slam which marked with portentous emphasis
that stage in the services. Organ there was
none ; the music was supplied by a redoubtable
bass-viol, supplemented by some wind instru-
ments and a volunteer choir.
The list of the subscribers for the building
of this meeting-house sets forth the names of
all the chief inhabitants of Cambridge in 1755.
The largest subscriber was Lieutenant-Gov-
ernor Phips who gave 40 pds. President
Holyoke, Professor John Winthrop, General
William Brattle, Judge Edmund Trowbridge,
Colonel Henry Vassall, and Deacon Jonathan
Hastings gave 20 pds. or more. Andrew
Boardman, Francis Foxcroft, Ebenezer Bradish,
Samuel Danforth, Richard Gardner, Ebenezer
Stedman, Professor Edward Wigglesworth,
Dr. Appleton, and Richard Dana were among
the larger givers; and there also appear on the
list the representatives of such reliable Cam-
bridge family stocks as Wyeth, Warland, Hicks,
Whittemore, Read, Prentice, Tufts, Thatcher,
Angler, Kidder, Morse, Richardson and Spar-
hawk.
The seating plan of the meeting-house still
exists. It was the custom to assign the seats
in order of dignity. The best pews were those
at the right and left of the door against the
wall facing the pulpit. These were assigned
to Lieutenant-Governor Phips, General
Brattle, President Holyoke, Colonel Vassall,
Professor Winthrop, Deacon Sparhawk and
the minister's family. The other wall pews
were occupied by the Wigglesworths, Board-
mans, Danas, Hastings, Trowbridges, Gardners,
Bradishes and Foxcrofts.
Some of the names connected with the build-
ing of this meeting-house indicate that a new
element had come into the Hfe of Cambridge
with the advent of a number of families of
wealth and social standing who elected to
make their homes in the village. The first
of these was the family of Spencer Phips, who
was colonel of the militia, a councillor, and
from 1732 to 1757 Lieutenant-Governor. He
was the son of Dr. David Bennett of Rowley,
and was at an early age adopted by Sir William
Phips, the bluff, illiterate Governor of the
Province, whose wife was the sister of Mrs.
Bennett. Young Bennett took the name of
Phips, graduated at Harvard in 1703, and in-
herited the Governor's ample estate. In 170(3
he bought a tract of three hundred acres cover-
ing almost all of what is now East Cambridge
and developed there a large farm. In 1714
he bought the fine place at the eastern end of
Cambridge village which had been General
Gookin's homestead and more lately had been
THE VILLAGE
the residence of Dr. James Oliver. The house
is still standing at Arrow and Bow Streets,
names which not only describe the position
of the streets toward each other, but also recall
the fact that the gate to Governor Phips's
estate was guarded by the wooden figures
of two Indians which were a source of wonder
and sometimes of terror to the village children.
Spencer Phips died in 1757, and the estate came
to his son, David Phips, who was colonel of
the militia and for ten years High Sheriff of
Middlesex. The four daughters of Spencer
properties on Brattle Street which continue
to be'known by the Vassall name, but which are
more closely identified with the brother and
the son, Henry Vassall and John Vassall the
younger, than with the original purchaser
who died in 1747. Mary Phips in 175-1 married
Richard Lechmere, and the next year the
youngest daughter, Rebecca Phips, married
Joseph Lee. The Lechmeres acquired the
estate which is now the Brewster place at
the comer of Brattle and Sparks Streets, and
the Lees established themselves just beyond
MEETING-HOUSE IN COLLEGE YARD
HARVARD SQUARE IN 1830
Phips married men of high standing and
abtmdant means, and all of them continued
to live in Cambridge. Sarah, the eldest,
married, in 1731, Andrew Boardman, who was,
as we have seen, for twenty-two years the
representative of the town in the General
Court, and for seventeen years a judge of the
Court of Common Pleas. They lived in the
B_oardman homestead on the south side of
Harvard Square. Elizabeth married Colonel
John Vassall, in 1734, and they bought the
in the fine old mansion which is still standing.
Henry Vassall was the brother of the elder
John Vassall and bought of him the mansion
still standing on the south side of Brattle Street
near Ash Street. He married the daughter
of Colonel Isaac Royall, who, like the father
of the two Vassalls, made a fortune in the West
Indies, and then came to live in New Eng-
land, and to educate his children there. John
Vassall, the younger, built the stately house
on the north side of Brattle Street, which.
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
with the exception of Mount Vernon, is the
most famous dwelUng house in America, for
it was Washington's headquarters and after-
wards the home of Henry Wadsworth Long-
fellow.
These families were, for the most part,
members of the Church of England, and to
provide for them a spiritual home, an Episcopal
church was organized in 1759, and Christ
Church built. The plans were furnished by
Peter Harrison of Newport, R.I., the architect
of the Redwood Library of that city, and of
King's Chapel in Boston; and, despite the
material used, it was deemed "a model of
beauty of proportion." It was opened for
worship on October 15th, 1761, and for thirteen
or fourteen years its straight-back, square
pews were occupied by the loyal wealth and
aristocracy of Cambridge. The rector ex-
pounded the doctrines of Church and State
to his flock from a cumbrous wineglass pulpit,
which then stood in front of the chancel and
at the head of the middle aisle; and the ward-
ens sat at the other end of the church, their
rods of office warning unruly attendants to
beware of constituted authority; while an
excellent London organ, built by Snetzler,
gave forth chant and anthem from the loft
overhead.
The first rector of Christ Church was the
Rev. East Apthorp, a missionary of the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel, an earnest
and scholarly man, who came to Cambridge
in 1761, with an evident purpose of making it
his permanent home, for he built himself the
large mansion which is still standing between
Linden and Plympton Streets. The good
rector was suspected of aspiring to be the
Bishop of New England, and his mansion was
called in derision the Bishop's Palace. In
1764, he gave up his post and returned to
England, where he had a prosperous career-
He was succeeded by the Rev. Winwood Ser-
jeant.
Among the Cambridge families of the Christ
Church congregation were the Lechmeres, the
Lees, the Olivers, the Ruggleses, the Phipses,
the Sewalls, the Borlands, the Inmans and the
Vassalls. Mr. Robert Temple and his accom-
plished wife and lovely daughters drove over
every Sunday from Ten Hills Farm in Medford.
From Medford also came Colonel Isaac Royall,
whose daughter had married Henry Vassall.
Many of these families, as has been seen, were
connected by relationship and marriage. Mrs.
Lee, Mrs. Lechmere and Mrs. John Vassall the
elder, were sisters of Colonel David Phips, and
daughters of Lieutenant-Governor Spencer
Phips. The "pretty, little, dapper man.
Colonel Oliver," as Reverend Mr. Serjeant
used to call in sport the sometime lieutenant-
governor, married a sister of Colonel John
Vassall the younger, and Colonel Vassall
married the sister of Colonel Oliver. Mrs.
Ruggles and Mrs. Borland were the sisters of
Henry and John Vassall. These families were
on very intimate terms with one another and
scarcely a day passed that did not bring them
together for social pleasures. All of them were
loyalists and the sad fate that overtook them
in the Revolutionary upheaval must be de-
scribed later.
Another new element came into Cambridge
with the advent of several distinguished
lawyers. The first generation had got along
without lawyers, and the local courts held by
the magistrates had sufficed for the ends of
justice. In the more complicated life of the
seventeenth century the provincial and county
courts became more important, and a genera-
tion of distinguished lawyers laid the founda-
tions of the pre-eminence of the Massachusetts
bar. Three of these men were the sons of old
Cambridge families.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century
Jonathan Remington kept the Blue Anchor
Tavern, and served as selectman of Cambridge,
and as town clerk. He was a man of property
and much engaged in public affairs, and his
son, Jonathan Remington, Jr., became the
first legal authority of his time. He graduated
at Harvard in 1696 and then served as a tutor.
He began the practice of law in Cambridge in
1710, was a selectman for several years, for
twelve years a representative in the General
Court, for eleven years a counsellor, and then
until his death a judge of the Supreme Court.
His daughter, Martha Remington, in 1737
married Edmund Trowbridge, a Cambridge
boy and the grandson of Colonel Edward Goffe.
Judge Trowbridge in turn became attorney-
THE VILLAGE
73
general of the Province and a justice of the
Supreme Court. His sister, Lydia Trowbridge,
married in 1737 Richard Dana, who was also
a counsellor and barrister at law, and the
father of Francis Dana, the most distinguished
citizen of Cambridge in the period just after
the Revolution. The Danas established them-
selves on what is now known as Dana Hill
and built a homestead on the northwest corner
of Massachusetts Avenue and Dana Street.
Francis Dana was a delegate to the Continental
Congress, a presidential elector in 1789, Am-
bassador to Russia, and finally Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.
A brief description of the village as it ap-
peared just before the Revolution will serve
to show how its boundaries had been enlarged.
The center was at Harvard Square, which
was really the southern end of the Common
which stretched, a dusty, treeless waste, to
the north, and was crossed by the Menotomy
Road (now Massachusetts Avenue) and by
other cart tracks, which ultimately became
Garden, Mason and Waterhouse Streets and
Concord Avenue. On the east side of the
Square stood the meeting-house, on the south
side were the Boardman house and various
smaller houses, on the west was the little court
house which had been built out of the timbers
taken out of the old meeting-house destroyed
in 1756, and northward, where the Common
began to widen, were the graveyard and Christ
Church. South of the Square the original
village retained its rectangular plan and was
the most thickly settled part of the town.
The highway to Boston (now Boylston Street)
ran down to the causeway and the Great
Bridge, and Ebenezer Bradish's Tavern stood
by the old market-place ready to entertain
the wayfarer. Across the market-place (now
Winthrop Square) was the jail, which was
cared for by Ebenezer Bradish's brother, Isaac
Bradish, who was also the blacksmith with a
smithy next the jail on Winthrop Street. Just
to the east of the Boston Road, on what is
now Mt. Auburn Street, was the tavern of
Captain Ebenezer Stedman, and to the west,
across what is now Brattle Square, were the
house and the extensive grounds of General
Brattle.
Going eastward from the meeting-house
along what is now Massachusetts Avenue,
one came first, on the left, to the President's
house, which is still standing and known as
Wadsworth House. Next to it stood Professor
Wiggles worth's house, which was the old
original Hooker-Shepard house made over at
the time of President Leverett's inauguration
in 1707. The Wigglesworths were successively
the Hollis Professors of Divinity, and the proof
of their scholarship could be seen in a hole
worn through the floor by their feet under the
desk of the room used, by father and son, as
a study. Next to this interesting house stood
the old parsonage, the residence successively
of Dr. Urian Oakes, of Rev. Nathaniel Gookin,
Rev. William Brattle and Dr. Nathaniel Apple-
ton. This venerable house underwent occa-
sional repairs which materially altered its
appearance and freshened its life. It was
finally removed in 1843 and the Wigglesworth
house was taken down a year later. On the
right-hand side of the road opposite the parson-
age stood the "Bishop's Palace," which faced
south. After Mr. Apthorp's departure it had
been bought by Mr. John Borland, who had
married a sister of Henry Vassall. The Bor-
lands had added a third story to the mansion,
it is said, for the accommodation of their
slaves, but as they had twelve children it is
more probable that they needed the extra
rooms for their large family. Beyond was the
estate of Colonel David Phips, where he and his
wife and seven children entertained with
princely hospitality.
Continuing eastward, over what was then
known as Butler's Hill, one passed Mr. Dana's
house, set in the midst of orchards and culti-
vated grounds, and then came to Mr. Ralph
Inman's estate, which was the last house in
the direction of Boston and stood just back
of where the City Hall now is. Mr. Inman was
another of the Tory aristocrats of the town,
and a member of Christ Church. Mrs. Inman
was a remarkable woman. She was a staunch
Scotch woman, and had the energy of character
common to that people. She had crossed
the ocean many times in company with her
brother, Mr. James Murray, and she had been
three times married. When she was Elizabeth
Murray she carried on a business in a shop at
74
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
ELMWOOD— LOWELL'S HOUSE
CRAIGIE— LOXCFELLOWS HOUSE
THE VILLAGE
the comer of Queen Street and Comhill in
Boston, and made for herself a comfortable
fortune. Her first husband, Mr. Smith, also
left her his whole estate, so that she had all the
luxuries of wealth. Her education and social
advantages united to make her a most de-
lightful companion, and one whose presence
was eagerly sought. In spite of her Tory con-
nections she remained in Cambridge during
the Revolutionary troubles, and owing to her
acquaintance with General Putnam, Major
Mifflin and other American officers, was secured
from molestation. On the day of the battle of
Bunker Hill, General Putnam deputed his son
to remain in Cambridge to guard Mrs. Imnan
— a proof of the high regard he entertained
for her.
RICIIARDSO
Hollis Hall, and then, across the Charlestown
road, which is now Kirkland Street, came to a
gambrel-roofed house which shielded itself be-
hind a row of Lombardy poplars. This was the
house of Jonathan Hastings, the college steward,
and was famous later as the headquarters of the
Committee of Safety, and of General Ward, and
still later, as the birthplace of Oliver Wendell
Holmes. Northeast of the Hastings house lived
Mr. Moses Richardson, one of the Cambridge
men who were killed in the Lexington battle, and
northeastward stretched the acres of the Fox-
croft estate. Along the Menotomy road were
several houses, from that of Captain Walton of
the militia company, to the Frost house on what
is now Linnaean Street, which practically marked
the northern end of the village.
At the western end of the town there were
several houses along Garden Street, and the
handsome houses of "Tory Row" had all come
into being. Beyond the Brattle estate, on
either side of the road to Watertown, now
Brattle Street, were the estates of Mrs. Henry
Vassal on the left and John Vassal on the right.
Next, was the residence which Richard Lech-
mere had just sold to Judge Jonathan Sewall,
the Attorney-General of the Province. The
Phips farm, which is now East Cambridge,
had passed into the hands of Mr. Lechmere
on his marriage with Miss Phips, and later
became known as Lechmere 's Point. The
boundaries of the Lechmere-Sewall estate ex-
tended to Judge Joseph Lee's, a house still
standing almost unchanged. Judge Lee had
bought it in 1758 of the widow of Cornelius
Waldo. The frame of the house was brought
from Eng-
land, not be-
cause Mas-
sachusetts
had no trees,
but because
it was feared
that capable
w o r k m e n
could not be
found to put
together a
house that
^" H'J^'SE would suit
the fastidious taste of its owner. Next above
was the Fayerweather house, which was built
in 1745 by Captain George Ruggles, another
wealthy West Indian planter, who had married
another of the sisters of Henry Vassall. Later
he became embarrassed, and in 1774 the prop-
erty came to Thomas Fayerweather, whose
wife was the daughter of the College treasurer,
Thomas Hubbard. The last house was the
mansion of Thomas Oliver, who built it about
1760, and which is famous as Elmwood, the
residence later of Elbridge Gerry, vice-president
of the United States; of Rev. Charles Lowell of
the West Church in Boston; and the birthplace
and home of James Russell Lowell. All of these
seven houses of the "Tory Row," with the ex-
ception of the Lechmere-Sewall house, are still
standing along Brattle Street, and make it not
only one of the most beautiful, but also one of
the most historic streets in America.
VIII
THE SIEGE
THE time had now come when Massa-
chusetts was to cease to be either colony
or province and to become a sovereign
commonwealth. It was not a sudden change.
The traditions and training of the New England
people had long been preparing them for self-
governing independency. They were of the
same stock as the Englishmen who defied the
royal power at Naseby and Marston Moor,
who sent Charles Stuart to the block and drove
his son James across the narrow seas. They
were the sons of men and women who had
bought at a great price the right to be free,
and they were ready to complete the purchase.
In their churches these descendants of the
Puritans had been taught the' authority of
conscience, the sovereignty of dutj^ the de-
mands of justice and right. They had been
trained to choose their own rulers in church
and state, and the spirit of liberty had become
a force which could not be resisted.
Long before the outbreak of the Revolution
there was great and widespread discontent
in America over the ways in which American
affairs were managed by the British govern-
ment and its representatives. From his suc-
cession, in 1760, King George the Third, with
all the intensity of a narrow mind, had striven
to impose his personal will upon his ministers.
The emphasis upon the prerogative of a dull
and arbitrary king was reflected in all the
departments of the government, but it par-
ticularly influenced the colonial policies. When
America began to resist, the king's tempera-
mental obstinacy was aroused and the stmggle
with the colonies thus became a part of the
struggle between popular and autocratic prin-
ciples of government in England itself. Three
lines of policy were adopted by the Grenville
ministry which grew to be the direct causes of
the American Revolution. The first was the
rigid execution of that system of mediaeval
monopolies known as the Acts of Trade; the
second was the taxation of the colonies for
the partial support of British garrisons; the
third was the permanent establishment of
British troops in America.
There is scarcely a proceeding in the pre-
liminary struggles of the Revolution which is
not illustrated by the votes of the Cambridge
town meeting. It is true that the life of the
town was not especially disturbed by the acts
of the British Parliament however arbitrary,
and that the local interests of Cambridge were
not seriousl}- impaired by the enforcement
of the navigation acts; but the attitude of
the citizens of the town in opposition to the
royal measures for raising revenue by taxing
the colonies was bold and unyielding. In
town meeting in October, 1765, they declared
the Stamp Act to be an infraction of their
rights, demanded its immediate repeal and
instructed their representatives to do nothing
which should aid its operation.
The riotous outbreak in Boston, which
resulted in the destruction of Lieutenant-
Governor Hutchinson's house, did not, how-
ever, meet with an}- approval. The Cam-
bridge people voted that they "abhorred and
detested" such proceedings, and would use
their utmost endeavors to protect the property
of residents of Cambridge from such outrages.
While the}- were thus outspoken in condemna-
tion of the violence of the mob, it appears that
they were not ready to have the loss charged
to the province, and thriftily recommended
that their representatives should vote against
any such proceeding. From this opinion, after
the repeal of the Stamp Act, they receded, and,
at a town meeting a year later, instructed their
representatives to favor compensation to those
who had suffered at the hand of the mob.
The change in the British government by
which the Rockingham ministry had succeeded
the Grenville ministry and the consequent
repeal of the Stamp Act removed the immediate
difficulty, but the principle of taxing the
colonies was bv no means abandoned. When
THE SIEGE
Charles Townshend became the leading spirit
of the ministry he declared in the House of
Commons — " I know a mode in which a revenue
may be drawn from America without offence
. . . England is undone if this taxation of
America is given up." Accordingly in June,
1767, a new Taxation Act was introduced, and
rapidly passed through Parliament. In order
to avoid the objections to "internal taxes," it
laid import duties on various articles and
especially on tea. The proceeds of the act
were to be used to pay the salaries of the royal
governors and judges in America. A few
months afterwards, — December, 1767, — a colo-
nial department was created, headed by
a secretary of state. The machinery of what
might prove to be an exasperating control was
thus provided for, and the principle of taxation,
once admitted, might, of course, be carried
farther. The actual amount of money involved
was not a heavy biirden on the colonies, but
it was to be used in such a way as to make the
governors and judges independent of the local
assemblies.
Public feeling in America ran high. At the
Cambridge town meeting of November 26,
1767, the opposition of the town to the collec-
tion of the duty on tea was set forth as forcibly
as possible. The claim of Parliament to tax
the colonists was firmly denied. The sending
of the tea, subject to the payment of duties,
was a violent attack on the liberties of America.
Every person who should aid, directly or in-
directly, in unloading, receiving, or vending
any tea subject to these duties, was declared
to be an enemy of America. The factors
appointed to receive the tea in Boston, who
had been requested to resign this appointment,
but who had refused to do so, had by this
conduct forfeited all right to the respect of
their fellow-countrymen. Finally, it was re-
solved "That the people of this town can no
longer stand idle spectators, but are ready, on
the shortest notice, to join with the town of
Boston, and other towns, in any measures
that may be thought proper, to deliver our-
selves and posterity from slavery."
The protest of the other towns and of the
va'rious colonial and provincial assemblies was
equally positive, but the ministry proceeded
to new repressive measures. It was proposed
that American agitators be sent to England
for trial and troops were sent to Boston. The
regiments arrived in September, 1768, and for
nearly eight years Boston was a garrisoned
town. There was constant friction between
the troops and the people, which broke into
riot on March 5, 1770, in the affray known as
the Boston Massacre.
In November, 1772, Committees of Corre-
spondence were formed throughout Massa-
chusetts, and later in the other colonies. The
circular letter issued by the Boston Committee
was duly read at a town meeting held in
Cambridge, December 14th, and a committee
was appointed on the part of Cambridge,
which was instructed to acquaint the Boston
committee that Cambridge would "heartily
concur in all salutary, proper and constitutional
measures for the redress of the intolerable
grievances which threatened, and which, if
continued, would overthrow the happy civil
constitution of the province." The com-
mittee was also instructed to take under con-
sideration the infringements upon the rights
of the people which were complained of, and
to report at an adjournment of the meeting.
After a recess of a few minutes this committee
submitted a report, in which a long and care-
fully prepared review of the situation prefaced
instructions to the Cambridge representative.
Captain Thomas Gardner, to use his greatest
influence at the next session of the General
Court for a speedy redress of all grievances.
A year later, December 16, 1773, came the
Boston Tea Party — the violent expression of
the sentiments of the people against the tax.
It made further conciliation practically im-
possible.
It was not in the temper of Englishmen
and still less of their King, to withdraw or to
change front in the face of such daring resist-
ance. Five new bills were introduced and
hastily pushed through Parliament. The first
enacted that no further commerce was to be
permitted with the port of Boston till that
town should make its submission. The second
act abolished certain provisions of the charter
granted by William III in 1692. Under the
old charter, the members of the Governor's
Council were chosen in a convention consisting
of the Council of the preceding year and the
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Assembly. Each councillor held office for a
year, and was paid out of an appropriation
made by the Assembly. Under the new act
the members of the Council were to be appointed
by the governor on a royal writ of mandamus,
and their salaries were to be paid by the Crown.
The governor and his dependent Council could
appoint sheriffs and all the judges and court
officers, and they too were to be paid from the
royal treasury and removed at the king's pleas-
vire. Worse than all, the town-meeting system
of local self-government was practically de-
stroyed. Town meetings could indeed be held
twice a year for the election of town officers,
but no other business could be transacted in
them. "The effect of all these changes would,
of course, be to concentrate all power in the
hands of the governor, leaving no check what-
ever upon his arbitrary will. It would, in short,
transform Massachusetts into an absolute
despotism, such as no Englishman had ever
lived under in any age." The third act di-
rected that "persons questioned for any Acts
in Execution of the Law" should be sent to
England for trial. The fourth act provided
for the quartering of soldiers upon the inhabi-
tants, and was intended to establish a military
government in Massachusetts. The fifth act
provided for the goverriment of the region
ceded by France in 1763, and among other
things it annexed to Canada the whole terri-
tory between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers
and the Great Lakes. The pmpose was un-
doubtedly to remove the danger of disaffection
or insurrection in Canada, but at the same
time the act extinguished all the title of Con-
necticut, Massachusetts and Virginia to the
region west of Pennsylvania.
The news of these coercive measures was
received in Massachusetts on May 10th. Soon
after the new military governor, General Gage,
appeared, and in a few weeks the Boston Port
Bill and the modifications of the charter began
to be ruthlessly enforced. The committees
of the Massachusetts towns promptly met, and
adopted a circular letter, prepared by Samuel
Adams, to be sent to all the other colonies,
asking for their sympathy and co-operation.
The response was prompt and emphatic. In
the course of the summer, conventions were
held in nearly all the colonies, declaring that
Boston should be regarded as "suffering in
the common cause." The obnoxious acts
of Parliament were printed on paper with deep
black borders, and in some towns were publicly
burned by the common hangman. Droves
of cattle and flocks of sheep, cartloads of wheat
and maize, vegetables and fruit, barrels of
sugar, quintals of dried fish, provisions of every
sort, were sent overland as free gifts to the
Boston people, even the distant rice-swamps
of South Carolina contributing their share.
The 1st of June was kept in Virginia as a day
of fasting and prayer. In Philadelphia bells
were muffled and tolled in the principal
churches; and ships put their flags at half-
mast. Marblehead, which was appointed to
supersede Boston as the port of entr}-, imme-
diately invited the merchants of Boston to
use its wharves and warehouses free of charge
in shipping and unshipping their goods.
The time was at hand when men would be
wanted more than money or provisions or
votes of sympathy. This had become plain
to at least one American. People were telling
of the excellence of the oratory in the Virginia
Convention, and enthusiastic Virginians had
assured John Adams that Richard Henry Lee
and Patrick Henry would respectively bear
comparison with Cicero and with Demosthenes.
But a delegate from South Carolina, who on his
way to the meeting of the Continental Congress
had stopped to see what they were doing in
the Old Dominion, gave it as his opinion that
the most eloquent speech had been made by a
certain Colonel Washington. "I will raise,"
that officer had said, "one thousand men
towards the rehef of Boston, and subsist them
at my own expense."
Another violent outbreak could not be long
postponed, and this time Cambridge was the
scene of action. The powder belonging to the
Province had been stored in the magazine which
is still standing in the Powder House Park in
Somerville. This stock General Gage deter-
mined to secure. On the morning of the first
of September, in the early dajdight, detach-
ments of troops in boats rowed up the Mystic,
landed at the Temple's Farm, seized the powder,
and also secured two cannon belonging to Gen-
eral Brattle's regiment, and carried them off
down the harbor to the Castle. Rumors of
THE SIEGE
79
violence and bloodshed spread rapidly through
the country, and before nightfall the New
England militia were marching toward Boston.
The companies converged upon Cambridge,
whence the Lieutenant-Governor, Thomas
Oliver, rode hastily to Boston, to implore Gage
to send out no more troops. The militia paraded
upon Cambridge Common and called for the
newly appointed mandamus councillors. The
two Cambridge members of the Council, Judge
Danforth and Judge Lee, promised to resign
at once and to be in no way concerned in the
acts of the government. Each submitted a
written promise attested by the clerk of the
court. Then the high-sheriff of Middlesex,
Colonel David Phips, was forced to promise
to do nothing toward executing the new laws.
Benjamin Hallowell, the Commissioner of
Customs, had a narrow escape. Passing in
his chaise by the crowds on the Common, he
"spoke somewhat contemptuously of them."
Some mounted men promptly rode after him.
On seeing them coming he stopped his chaise,
unhitched his horse and mounted, and galloped
to Boston Neck, where he found safety.
After securing the withdrawal of Lee and
Danforth, the people flocked up Brattle Street
to the house of Lieutenant-Governor Oliver,
who had returned from Boston, and demanded
his resignation from the Council. This, after
demurring, Oliver gave, "My house at Cam-
bridge," he wrote, "being surrounded by about
four thousand people, in compliance with their
command I sign my name, — Thomas Oliver."
General Brattle, the colonel of the Middlesex
regiment, was then sought for but had gone
to Boston. Thence he wrote an explanatory
and apologetic letter, in which he denounced
the threatenings he had received and his prac-
tical banishment from his home.
This was obviously one of the most exciting
days in the history of Cambridge. The temper
of the people was incapable of being misunder-
stood. There was no reasonable ground for
objecting to the removal of the powder and
guns which really belonged to the Province
and there was no collision with the troops,
but it is obvious that the 2d of September,
1774, just escaped the historic importance of
the 19th of April of the succeeding year.
The Massachusetts Assembly met at Salem
on October 11, 1774. The Cambridge dele-
gates were Thomas Gardner and John Win-
throp. After waiting two days for the Gov-
ernor who never came, the members constituted
themselves into a Congress, and adjourned
first to Concord and later to the Cambridge
Meeting-house. The Assembly first took pains
to define their constitutional position, and to
defend it by adducing precedents and quoting
charters, and then they went on to the more
pressing business of the hour. They began
by ordering "that all the matters that come
before the Congress be kept secret, and be not
disclosed to any but the members thereof
until further order of this body." Then,
on the 24th of October, they appointed a
committee to consider the proper time for
laying in warlike stores; and on the same day
the committee reported that the proper time
was now. Without delay they voted the pur-
chase of twenty field pieces and four mortars;
twenty tons of grape and round shot; five
thousand muskets and bayonets, and seventy-
five thousand flints. They made an agreement
to pay no more taxes into the royal Treasury,
and arranged a system of assessment for the
purpose of provincial defence. They then
proceeded to elect by ballot three generals,
Jedediah Preble, Artemas Ward and Seth
Pomeroy. They appointed a Committee of
Public Safety, of which John Hancock was
the most notable and Joseph Warren the most
active member. They invested that Com-
mittee with authority to call out the militia,
every fourth man of whom was expected to
hold himself ready to march at a minute's
notice; — a condition of service that suggested
the name of Minutemen. Then they ad-
journed until the fourth Wednesday in No-
vember; by which time the Committee of
PubHc Safety, disbursing their funds thriftily,
had bought in addition to the prescribed
amount of ordnance three hundred and fifty
spades and pick-axes, a thousand wooden
messbowls, and some pease and flour. " That,"
said Sir George Trevelyan, "was their stock of
material wherewith to fight the empire which
recently, with hardly any sense of distress, had
maintained a long war against France and
Spain, and had left them humbled and half
ruined at the end of it."
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
The irrevocable step was thus taken in the
Cambridge meeting-house. That which for
months, and perhaps years, had been a fact
became now a visible and palpable finality.
The action of the Assembly at Cambridge gave
aim and purpose to the seething excitement of
the Province. "Appointing a receiver-general,"
wrote Dr. Reynolds, "it took possession of the
pttrse; organizing a committee of safety, it
seized the sword; through its committee of
supplies it gathered the munitions of war; by
its minute inquiries it may almost be said to
have counted up every musket and fowling-
piece, and weighed every ounce of powder, in
the Province. It appointed commanders and
one foot beyond the girdle of the bayonets of
his soldiers. " No visible lines of intrenchment
rose on the hills which surrounded Boston,
but all the same the beleaguerment was there,
ready at the first hostile movement to become
manifest and impregnable. Like the fabled
net of the magician, its meshes were so fine
that the keenest eye could not see them; so
strong that a giant's struggles could not break
them."
The tumultuous events of the 19th of April,
1775, lie somewhat outside of the scope of this
narrative, but both of the British columns that
marched to Lexington on that momentous
CAMBRIDGE COMMON. 1775
commissaries; it established military laws and
regulations; it collected in depots provisions,
clothing, tents, and military supplies of all sorts;
and it purchased powder, muskets and cannon."
It is obvious that the siege of Boston was really
a much longer affair than the eleven months of
actual investment. It began long before those
April days when the farmers from all the New
England states came hurrying to Cambridge,
and with little or no plan of action, encamped
upon the encircling hills, and with military
instinct began to intrench themselves. It
would be nearer the truth to say that the siege
began on the day that General Gage landed,
for never was he governor in Massachusetts
day trod our Cambridge soil. The first ex-
pedition was ferried over the river in the boats
of the fleet, landed at Phips' Farm or Lech-
mere's Point, filed in the darkness along the
causeway which crossed the marshes and so
went on its way to destroy the stores at Con-
cord. The supporting column under Lord
Percy left Boston about nine in the morning
and marched by the way of the highway over
the neck. Before noon Lord Percy came to
the " Great Bridge, " at the foot of what is now
Boylston Street. The Cambridge folk had
been warned of his coming. Hastily they tore
up the planking of the Bridge, but frugally
piled the planks on the Cambridge side of the
THE SIEGE
river. The delay was therefore but slight
for Percy's vanguard crossed on the string
pieces of the bridge and quickly put the planks
again in place so that the infantry could march
over them. The wagon train was delayed
until the planks could be more firmly secured.
The many tracks crossing Cambridge Common
are said to have confused Lord Percy, and he
was at no small trouble before he could find
anyone to tell him which road would lead him
to Menotomy and Lexington. His column
finally met the troops, returning from Concord,
just east of Lexington, and history records that
the relief came "just in time."
On his retreat from Lexington Lord Percy
did not pass through Harvard Square, for he
realized that this time the "Great Bridge"
would undoubtedly be so dismantled as to be
impassable. He therefore directed his march
to Charlestown Neck, and the running battle
ebbed and .flowed through Menotomy, which
was still a part of Cambridge, and along the
base of the. SiDmerville hills to Charlestown.
Percy was right, for the planking of the bridge
had again been torn up and this time built
into a strong redoubt on the Cambridge side,
which was held by the militia arriving from
the towns to the south and which would have
completely blocked the progress of the British
column.
The Cambridge Trainband had been mus-
tered before daybreak on that fateful day and
apparently followed the first of the British
detachments nearly all the way to Concord
and then joined in the running battle home
again. Thomas Gardner had succeeded Gen-
eral Brattle as the Colonel of the First Middle-
sex Regiment, and Samuel Thatcher had
succeeded Gardner as the Captain of the
Cambridge Company, with John and Jotham
Walton as his lieutenants. Seventy-seven
men were enrolled in the company, Wyeths,
Warlands, Reeds, Frosts, Prentices, Coxes,
Hastings, Goddards, Boardmans, Bradishes,
Moores and Hancocks. There was another
company in that part of the town which is now
Arlington commanded by Captain Benjamin
Locke, and it, too, was actively engaged all day.
It was in Menotomy that Percy's wagon train,
which had been detained at the Great Bridge,
and which was hurrying to overtake the march-
ing column, was set upon by the older men who
remained in the village and captured with its
guard. It was in Menotomy and North
Cambridge that the hottest fighting of that
sultrj' April day took place. More than half
of those on both sides who fell in the fighting
were killed within what were then the bound-
aries of Cambridge. All of the Cambridge men
who fell were killed near Menotomy. Jason
Winship and Jabez Wyman were two of the
band of veterans who at midday had waylaid
and captured the British wagon train. They
were caught by the returning British in Cooper's
Tavern at Menotomy Centre and killed. Ben-
jamin and Rachel Cooper escaped into the
cellar and hid till the troops had passed.
Jason Russell, another old man and substantial
farmer, lived just to the west of Menotomy
village. The Danvers company came up just
as the British approached and took post in
Mr. Russell's house. There a number of them
were caught between the main column march-
ing down the road and a flanking party that
came across the fields. Nine of the Danvers
company were killed in the house and Mr.
Russell was shot as he stood in his own door-
way. Three of the men from Cambridge
village were killed on Massachusetts Avenue
just north of Spruce Street. John Hicks was
one of an old Cambridge family and lived at
the comer of Dunster and Winthrop Streets.
He had been an active patriot, and tradition
says that he was one of the Boston Tea Party.
Moses Richardson was a carpenter who lived
where the Law School (Austin Hall) now
stands. His military spirit was reborn in his
great grandson, James P. Richardson, who
organized and led the first company that en-
listed for the Civil War. Both Hicks and
Richardson were beyond the age of military
service, so they had not marched with the
j^ounger men of the trainband, but they had
taken their guns and followed. The third
victim, William Marcy, was killed at the same
time and place. He was apparently sitting
on the fence looking on when he was shot.
Hicks' son, a boy of fourteen, found the three
bodies in the evening, and, procuring a wagon,
brought them to the village graveyard for
burial at the place where the monument to
their honor now stands.
82
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
There was no sleep in Cambridge or anywhere
else in Massachusetts that night. North,
west and south the messengers rode furiously
spreading the news. Every village green saw
the muster of the trainbands. Seizing their
muskets and their powder horns the minute-
men, without waiting for anything else, started
for Cambridge. When the alarm reached
Connecticut old Israel Putnam left his plow
in the furrow and rode on one horse one hundred
miles in eighteen hours. The New Hampshire
companies were crossing the Merrimac on the
evening of the twentieth, having run rather
than marched for twenty-seven miles. They
halted at An-
dover only long
enough for a
bit of bread
and cheese, and,
having trav-
ersed fifty-seven
miles in less
than twenty
hours, at sun-
rise on the
twenty -first
they paraded
o n Cambridge
Common. With-
in two days ten
thousand men
came pouring
into Cambridge,
and for weeks
afterwards the
numbers were
augmented. General Heath, who had been
conspicuous among the leaders on the 19th,
directed them where to go, and made a
general disposition of this loosely organized
and primitive army. On the morning after
the battle it was his foresight that provided
for the needs of the men who came rushing in
from every Massachusetts town and hamlet.
Later he wrote in his Memoirs, "All the eatables
in the town of Cambridge which could be
spared, were collected for breakfast and the
college kitchen and utensils procured for cook-
ing. Some carcasses of beef, and pork, pre-
pared for the Boston market, were obtained
and a large quantity of ship bread, said to
BRATTLE HOUSE
belong to the British navy, was taken." The
college buildings were at once occupied as
barracks, and the college kitchen continued
to be the center of the rude commissariat.
The towns hastened to send ample supplies
after their men, and there was never a time
when this hastily improvised New England
army was not abundantly fed. The flight
of the Cambridge Tories made their houses
and estates available for quarters. General
Putnam got as near to the enemies' lines as
he could by living at the Inman house. John
Stark made a headquarters for the New
Hampshire men at the Royall house in
Medford. John
Glover and his
Essex Regiment
occupied the
Vassall house
and grounds.
The Committee
of Safety and
the Senior of the
Massachusetts
Major- Generals,
Artemas Ward,
accepted the
hospitality of
the Hastings
house. With
extraordinary
rapidity the be-
leaguering lines
were drawn
about Boston.
1 1 was fifteen
months after Concord and Lexington before
a British army again took the open field.
Sad was the fate that thus overtook with
appalling suddenness the loyalist families of
Cambridge. The booming of the guns at
Lexington meant for them the signal to fly
from their pleasant homes and seek safety
behind the Boston lines. Practically the
entire congregation of Christ Church departed,
and, save for a few lay services held while
Mrs. Washington was in Cambridge, the sound
of prayer and praise was unheard within its
walls for fifteen years. For a time it served
as- a barracks and then for years it stood
deserted, its doors shattered and its windows
THE SIEGE
broken, exposed to wind and rain and every
sort of depredation. Most of the Tory mag-
nates never saw their homes again. The
Brattle house became the quarters of Major
Thomas Mifflin, afterwards the President of
Congress, while General Brattle accompanied
the British army when they sailed away and
died a broken-hearted old man at Halifax in
the fall of 1776. His son, Thomas Brattle,
was in Europe when the war broke out and
was proscribed as an absentee. Later he
returned to America, and in 1784 was finally
permitted to come back to Cambridge and
rehabilitate the old estate. He made the place
the most beautiful for miles around and lived
a quiet life among
his flowers and his
friends. .He died un-
married in 1801, and
with him ended the
Brattle line. Thomas
Oliver, the one-time
Lieutenant-Governor,
left Cambridge im-
mediatel)^ after the
uprising which had
forced his resigna-
tion on September
2d, 1774, and never
returned. H e h a d
never, indeed, been
an active opponent
of the patriotic senti-
ment, for he was of
mild and inoffensive
temperament, but all
his social connections were with the Tories.
He went to England and died there in
1815. His beautiful house at Elmwood was
first occupied by Benedict Arnold and a
Connecticut company, and later became a
hospital for the besieging army, and the
wounded were brought there from Bunker
Hill. Those who died were buried across the
road opposite the house. Colonel David
Phips also went to England and died there in
1811. His estate was confiscated and his
house later became the residence of Professor
John Winthrop. John Borland went into
Boston as soon as the troubles began and was
killed by accident there on the 5th of June,
WASHI
1775. One of his sons entered the British
army. His house, the "Bishop's Palace," was
later used as a residence for General Burgoyne
when he came as a prisoner to Cambridge, and
was then for many years the homestead of Dr.
Plympton.
Judge Danforth and Judge Lee, the two
Mandamus Councillors who resigned at the
behest of the people on September 2, 1774,
were, like Oliver, Tories by social connection
rather than by conviction. Judge Danforth
was an old and respected citizen who had been
a member of the Council by the choice of the
Provincial Assembly for thirty-six }'ears, and
who made no greater mistake than to continue
in his office when ap-
pointed by the King
mstead of elected by
the representatives of
the people. He stayed
m his house on the
eastern side of
Dunster Street, and,
though understood to
have royalist sym-
pathies, was undis-
turbed. Judge Lee
went with his neigh-
bors to Boston during
the siege, but after-
wards returned and
took up his residence
again in the old house
on Brattle Street
o\ ELM which is still known
by his name. Ralph
Inman also came back to his place after the
evacuation of Boston and was unmolested,
though both of his sons went to England and
his daughter married Captain Linzee, who had
commanded the frigate Falcon on the day of
Bunker Hill. The Lechmere-Sewall estate and
both the Vassall estates were confiscated after
the hurried flight of their owners. Colonel John
Vassall had no choice but to cross the seas with
his friends, and his mansion-house became the
headquarters of the American army. Mrs.
Henry Vassall went to Antigua, where the
family still possessed considerable property,
but returned to die in Boston in ISOO. Even
her father, Isaac Royall, to whom hospitality
84
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
was a passion, and who had won the affection
of all around him, did not escape banishment
and proscription. The Committee of Safety
provided for the care and occupation of the
confiscated estates, though not always without
difficulty, for "the honest man's scythe refused
to cut Tory grass, and his oxen to turn a Tory
furrow." Isaac Royall's cherished wish was
to be buried in Massachusetts; but even that
boon was denied him. He died in England
before the war was over, bequeathing two
thousand acres of his neglected soil to endow
a Chair of Law at Harvard.
The besieging force which made its center
at Cambridge was a heterogeneous gathering.
The militia of the various provinces served
under their own officers, but the different
commanders speedily agreed to subordinate
themselves to General Artemas Ward, as the
head of the largest body of troops. He, how-
ever, had no organized staff and very inade-
quate means of communicating orders and
receiving reports. If Gage had attacked he
could have been opposed only by scattered
regiments, and not by a united force.
The size of the army was variable and un-
certain. On paper there were more than
twenty thousand men; as a matter of fact
there can seldom have been more than three
quarters of that number. It was, further, an
army of volunteers where every man owned
his musket and cartridge box, clothed himself,
and considered himself still, to a large extent,
his own master. The men, who sprang to
arms on the 19th of April, had not prepared
themselves for a long campaign. They had
left home on the run and in the next few days
many of these men went back for the necessary
arrangement of their affairs and for more
clothing. The larger number of them returned
to camp immediately, but others stayed away
for a considerable time. Even those who
joined the army after more preparation often
had business that called them home, in which
case they considered it a hardship to be denied,
"especially when that business was haying."
Nearly two months went by without any
more active fighting than occasional skir-
mishes as foraging parties met, or when Ameri-
can detachments successfully carried off the
sheep and stock from the islands in the harbor.
By the 16th of June the time had come for an
aggressive move. The Committee of Safety,
consulting with the more prominent officers,
decided to occupy the heights of Charlestown.
Ward issued the necessary orders and in the
dusk of evening fifteen hundred men under
command of Colonel William Prescott paraded
opposite the western door of the Hastings
House. From the door, in his academic gown,
came President Langdon of the college, and
the prayer he offered stirred the hearts of all
who listened. What Prescott and his men
did that night and the next day on Bimker
Hill is written large in American history.
Nathanael Greene was right when he said that
the colonists were ready to sell King George
another hill at the same price. To Cambridge
the chief event of that momentous day was
the loss of its military chief and first patriot
citizen. Colonel Thomas Gardner. This able,
zealous and courageous man had been the leader
of the sentiment of the community throughout
the years that foretokened the Revolution.
He lived on the southern side of the river in
what is now Allston. From 1769 until his
death he was both selectman and the repre-
sentative of Cambridge in the General Court
and in the Provincial Congress. He served
on both the local Committee of Correspondence
and on the Provincial Committee of Safety.
He had been the captain of the Cambridge
Company and was promoted to be Colonel
when General Brattle adhered to the loyalist
side. His high character, his popularity, the
military skill which he had already displayed,
his patriotic ardor, all promised for him a most
distinguished career. It is probable that,
had he lived, he would have ranked among
the most conspicuous of the patriot soldiers
of the Revolution. He led his regiment to
Bunker Hill and was just entering the engage-
ment when he fell mortall}' wounded. He
was borne back to Cambridge, where he lingered
for two weeks and died on the 3d of July, just
as Washington was crossing the Common to
take command of the army.
The selection by the Continental Congress
of a general-in-chief was an epoch-making act.
John Hancock, the President of the Congress,
was ambitious to secure this difficult and
dangerous post, but John Adams was keen
THE SIEGE
enough to perceive that the New England army
could be knit together and its jealousies ap-
peased only by the appointment of a general
from another section. In militar}- experience
and ability, in strength and purity of char-
acter, there was no American then living to be
compared with George Washington of Vir-
ginia.
While others had been discussing and hesi-
tating, Washington had long ago made up
his mind that the quarrel with the king must
come to violent disruption. At the second
Continental Congress to which he was a dele-
gate it was noticed that he attended the sit-
tings in his uniform of a Virginia colonel.
Though he took no part in the debates, he
made himself felt, and his colleague, Patrick
Henry, said of him: "If you speak of solid
information and sound judgment. Colonel
Washington is unquestionably the greatest
man on the floor." Debate ran high, but finally
the Congress adopted the militia at Cambridge
as a "Continental Army," appointed four
major-generals: Lee, Schuyler, Ward and
Putnam, and eight brigadiers; and on the 15th
of June, two days before the Bunker Hill battle,
chose Washington to be the commander-in-chief.
Washington himself knew better than any
man the consequences of the momentous step.
On the 16th of June he accepted his commission,
but added: "Lest some unlucky event should
happen, unfavorable to my reputation, I beg
it to be remembered by every gentleman in
the room, that I, this day, declare with the
utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal
to the command I am honored with. As to
pay. Sir, I beg leave to assure the Congress,
that, as no pecuniary consideration could have
tempted me to accept this arduous employ-
ment, at the expense of my domestic ease and
happiness, I do not wish to make any profit
from it. I will keep an exact account of my
expenses. These, I doubt not, they will dis-
charge; and that is all I desire."
On the 3d of July, a year and a day before
the Declaration of Independence, Washington
reached Cambridge and under the great elm
still standing by the common, he took command
of the army. He made his headquarters at
first in the house of the president of the college
(Wads worth House), but after a few weeks
took possession of the beautiful mansion of
Colonel Vassall. That house had always been
the home of generous and gracious hospitality,
an association which it has never lost. Wash-
ington brought with him to Cambridge the
Virginia traditions of ample living. He was
himself a plain soldier, and a man, besides, of
remarkable self-restraint. His moderation
was seen in his early and regular hours and in
his simple diet, which was sometimes nothing,
we are told, but baked apples or berries with
milk. It was, however, his habit to gather
about him, at his headquarters, the officers
of the army and the prominent visitors who
for public or personal reasons made their way
to the Cambridge camp. In December he
was joined by Mrs. Washington and the two
had here their last experience of home life
for many long years. They maintained at
the Vassall house a style of living which com-
ported with the General's position.
Almost all of the leaders of the Revolution
who later won renown or shame were in Cam-
bridge during the siege and constant visitors
at headquarters. Hither from his vagrant
wanderings over half the earth came Charles
Lee, the second in command of the army. He
was grotesque in appearance, satirical of speech
and repulsive of countenance, but the people
believed in his ability and sincerity until he
had proved both his incompetency and treach-
ery. He came to Cambridge heralded as a
military prodigy, and though his insubordina-
tion brought his boastful career to an end long
before the war was over, the blackness of his
treason was not known until after he and those
he had tried to betray had long been dead.
That other conspicuous traitor, Benedict
Arnold, was daily at the Vassall house before
he started on his Quebec expedition. His
ability and reckless courage commended him
to Washington. Had he only been so fortu-
nate as to fall in his desperate charge at Still-
water he would have ranked among the most
valorous of our patriot heroes. Horatio Gates,
the vain, weak man who later tried to push
Washington from his command, was the Ad-
jutant-General of the army at Cambridge, and
in constant contact with his chief. The laurels
he wore, but did not win, at Saratoga, faded
86
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
at Camden, and he passed out of our history
into deserved obscurity.
How marked was the contrast between these
vainglorious but treacherous soldiers and the
honest virtues of comrades in arms like Heath
and Thomas of Massachusetts, Sullivan and
Stark of New Hampshire, Richard Gridley
and Rufus Putnam, the engineers. At the
Vassall house Washington first met those
tried and true companions of all his after
career, Nathanael Greene, Henry Knox and
Benjamin Lincoln. Greene led the Rhode
Island troops. He was Quaker bred, thought-
ful, resourceful and judicious. He had none
of the meretricious brilliancy of men like
Lee and Arnold, but he was able, loyal and
reliable, and became his chief's right arm.
Knox was a Boston bookseller who made him-
self an expert artillerist and was later Wash-
ington's first Secretary of War. It was Knox
who, with dauntless perseverance, in the depth
of the New England winter, dragged to Cam-
bridge the cannon captured at Ticonderoga,
and so made possible the occupation of Dor-
chester Heights and the consequent evacuation
of Boston. Two of those cannon now stand
on Cambridge Common in front of the Soldiers'
Monument. Benjamin Lincoln had been the
secretary of the Massachusetts Provincial
■Congress. He was sound in judgment, in-
■dustrious and faithful. To him at Charleston
it was given to win one of the noblest of achieve-
ments, the preservation in defeat of the respect
and confidence of all good men. Twent}'
years later, when Washington was asked to
describe the characteristics of the then living
officers who might be considered for com-
mander-in-chief in case of war, it was to Lincoln
that he gave the highest praise, saying that
he was "sensible, brave and honest."
There were not lacking picturesque figures
among the guests at headquarters. Israel
Putnam was a better Indian fighter than he
was disciplinarian, but his bluff, hearty ways
and his resistless enthusiasm appealed to his
men and he was easily the most popular leader
in Cambridge. His manners and his vehement
speech ma}'' not have always approved them-
selves at the General's table, but Washington
Ifhe'w a inan when he saw him and gave to the
Veteran" his respect and confidence. Daniel
Morgan, the stalwart Virginia wagoner, and
his riflemen clad in fringed hunting shirts,
lent a dramatic aspect to the camp, and Colonel
Glover and his Marblehead fishermen had been
at home at the Vassall house before it became
the headquarters. Those same fishermen a
few months later ferried the army over the
East River after the disastrous battle on Long
Island, and it was they who rowed and pushed
through the floating ice in the Delaware the
boats that bore Washington and his freezing
regiments to the victory of Trenton.
But it was not only the soldiers who walked
the broad pathway to the door of the Vassall
house. Hither, too, came the public men of
the Colony, the members of the Committee
of Safety, and of the Provincial Congress
sitting hard by in Watertown. The most
noted company, however, that sat at Washing-
ton's table was when in October a committee
of Congress, consisting of Benjamin Franklin,
Thomas Lynch of Carolina, and Colonel
Harrison of Virginia, arrived to confer with
the generals and with the New England leaders.
We have a glimpse of a dinner party given
to them, afforded by Dr. Belknap, who was a
guest, and who wrote: "Lynch, Harrison, and
Wales wished to see Boston in flames, but Lee
told them it was impossible to bum it unless
the}' sent men in with bundles of straw on
their backs to do it." Dr. Franklin apparently
took no part in the debate, but we can imagine
that no visitor would attract more attention
than this renowned man, who sat and listened
to whether his native town should be destroyed.
He was sixty-nine years old at this time, twenty-
six years older than the commanding general,
and he was the most distinguished American
then living. He had foreseen the impending
conflict years before, and was able now to
write to his friend Priestly in England, " Enough
has happened, one would think, to convince
your ministers that the Americans will fight,
and that this is a harder nut to crack than they
imagined."
There was plent}' of work to do inside and
outside of headquarters. The raw militiamen
were to be made into efficient soldiers. In the
very face of the enemy an army had to be created
and supplied, fortifications built, discipline
enforced. "There is great overturning in
THE SIEGE
camp," wrote the Reverend William Emerson.
"New lords, new laws. The Generals Wash-
ington and Lee are upon the lines every
day. New orders from his Excellency are
read to the respective regiments every morning
after prayers. The strictest government is
taking place, and great distinction is made
between officers and soldiers. Every one is
made to know his place, and keep in it. . . .
Thousands are at work every day from four
till eleven o'clock in the morning."
The lines of the beleaguering forts were care-
Frye, Bridge, Sargeant and Woodbridge, and
General Heath's brigade, consisting of his own
regiment and those of Colonels Prescott,
Patterson, Scammon, Gerrish and Phinney.
The intrenchments began at the River at the
foot of Putnam Avenue, or about where the
Riverside Press now stands, and ran along
the brow of Dana Hill until they connected
with the redoubts on Prospect Hill in Somer-
ville. Fort No. 1 was at the southern end of
this line. Fort No. 2 was at what is now the
corner of Putnam Avenue and Franklin Street.
AUSTIN H.'iLL fTHE h\W SCHOOL)
fully planned. The right wing of the army
under General Ward, with General Spencer,
and the best of the Massachusetts brigadiers,
John Thomas, blocked the neck of the Boston
peninsula and held the Roxbury forts. The
lines stretched from Brookline to Dorchester.
The left wing under General Lee was intrenched
on the Somerville hills and along the Mystic
with its outposts far out to the east. His two
brigades were led by Greene and Sullivan.
The center at Cambridge was commanded by
General Putnam with his own brigade, con-
sisting of the regiments of Colonels Glover,
Fort No. 3 was at Union Square in Somerville
Roughly estimated, there were some 4,000
men on the Roxbury lines, 7,000 more on
Prospect, Winter, Plowed and Cobble Hills
and north of the Mystic, and about 6,000 on
the Cambridge lines. Of these a thousand or
more found what must have been very close
quarters in the college buildings. Many were
in rude shelters on the Common or along the
line of the intrenchments, and the rest found
shelter in the houses and bams of the village
or in tents in the pastures between the college
and the low crest of Dana Hill. Two small
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
batteries, one at Captain's Island and one at
the next angle of the river commanded the
approach to Cambridge by water. The latter
of these was long preserved by the Dana
family, and in 1858 it was restored at the joint
expense of the City and the State and named
Fort Washington. It stands as an interesting
memorial of the siege and a curious reminder
of the time when the Charles River was navi-
gable by war vessels.
Powder was fearfully scarce in the Cambridge
camps. Very little of it was made in the colo-
nies, and none at all in the neighborhood of
Boston. More than once the army had but
nine rounds to a man. On the twenty-fourth
of August Washington wrote: "We have been
in a terrible situation, occasioned by a mistake
in a return: we reckoned upon three hundred
quarter casks, and had but thirty-two barrels."
Good muskets, too, were hard to get. The
gunsmiths of Philadelphia, who had been ex-
pected speedily to equip the army, were not able
to supply guns with any rapidity, and Washing-
ton had to pick them up, good, bad or indiffer-
ent, wherever he could.
The progress of the siege of Boston was thus
evidently predetermined by other causes than
the courage of the soldiers or the skill of the
opposing generals. General Gage did not dare
make an aggressive campaign and General
Washington could not. General Howe, on
assuming the command of the troops in Boston
early in October, wrote to the Earl of Dart-
mouth: "The opening of a campaign from
this quarter would be attended with great
hazard, as well from the strength of the
country as from the intrenched position which
the rebels have taken, and from which they
could not be forced without considerable loss
on our part; and from the difficulty of access
farther into the country they would have
every advantage in the defence of it on their
side, being indefatigable in raising field-works,
which they judiciously suppose must wear
us down by repeated onsets, whereas they are
so numerous in this part of the country that
they would not feel the loss they might sus-
tain." These were very different \'iews from
those expressed in a letter wn^tten by a British
officer eight months before: "What you hear
about the rebels taking up arms is merely bully-
ing. Whenever it comes to blows, he that runs
the fastest wiU think himself best of?. Believe
me, any two regiments here ought to be deci-
mated if they did not beat the whole force of
Massachusetts Province." Hard experience
had taught the British commanders the con-
viction that offensive operations in Massachu-
setts were hopeless. This alone accounts for
the fact that ten thousand British soldiers,
admirably equipped and led, permitted fifteen
thousand raw militia, without artillery- or suffi-
cient ammunition, to draw a net of intrench-
ments around them without making an effort
to break through the toils.
On the other hand, it was impossible for
Washington to make any assault. His soldiers
were intelligent and full of faith in their cause ;
but they were not so much soldiers as the
material out of which soldiers should be made.
The term of enlistment was so brief that the
army was perpetually changing, and was never
aU ready at one time. As Washington declared,
never before had a siege like this been main-
tained, when one army had been disbanded and
another recruited within musket-shot of the
enemy. As for cannon, not until Knox, with
incredible labor, had dragged them from the
shores of Lake George, and Captain Manly had
captured the transport Nancy, filled with
the guns and ammunition which the Americans
needed, could there be said to be any proper
train of artiUerj'.
Meanwhile, impatient patriots all over the
country were wondering and complaining that
Boston was not stormed or the commanding
points about the town occupied. Criticism of
the commander-in-chief was severe in Congress
and in the newspapers. " I cannot stand
justified," wrote Washington, "without ex-
posing my own weakness, and injuring the
cause by exposing my wants. If I did not
consult the public good more than my own
tranquillity, I should long ere this have put
everything on the cast of a die." Twice during
the siege he proposed to a council of generals,
to attempt to take the towTi by assault,— once
in September by boats, and once in February
over the ice — but his owti better judgment
must have agreed with his officers that the feat
was impossible. So, with the whole country
full of great expectations, with his own impetu-
THE SIEGE
89
ous nature chafing at the delay, Washington
had to wait and patiently plan how to expel the
enemy by less heroic means.
The chief event of the early winter was the
discovery of the treason of Dr. Benjamin
Church, formerly a leader of the Boston patriots
and now the chief medical officer of the army,
with his quarters at the Henrj^ Vassall house.
From Newport there was brought by an Ameri-
can patriot to whom it had been given by a
woman from Cambridge, a letter which he had
been requested to deliver to some officer of a
British man-of-war stationed in Narragansett
Bay. The American had opened the letter,
and found it to be in cipher. This was sus-
picious, and so he brought the letter to General
Putnam who caused the woman to be arrested,
and mounting her behind him on his horse,
carried her to headquarters, where she named
Dr. Church as the wTiter. The letter, when
deciphered, proved to give information about
the numbers and disposition of the American
forces.
The army and country, as Washington wrote,
were "exceedingly irritated" at this revelation
of treachery in a trusted leader. Abigail Adams
was probably right when she wrote, "If he is
set at liberty, even after he has received a severe
punishment, I do not think he will be safe."
Church was brought before the Massachusetts
Provincial Congress and allowed to defend
himself. He did not deny the authorship of
the letter, but insisted that he was writing to
his brother, and that he meant no harm. He
was not believed, and was expelled from the
Congress and the army. Later the Continental
Congress ordered him to be imprisoned. Re-
leased later, on account of his health, he was
allowed to sail for the West Indies, and his vessel
was never again heard from.
As the winter passed, the pressing needs of
the army were gradually supplied. "Officers"
wrote the historian of the siege, "were slowly
learning their duty; discipline was growing
more firm and stead3% and the whole army was
settling down into the habits of military life.
Every hill and projecting point from the Mystic
River to Dorchester Neck had been made im-
pregnable, stretching around Boston in a vast
semicircle of redoubts and breastworks of fifteen
or twenty miles in length, until at last — Knox's
precious convoy of cannon and mortar arrived,
the almost priceless stores of Manly's fortunate
capture transported to camp, and a moderate
supply of powder gathered up — the decisive
move was made." The first step was to plant
a battery on Lechmere's Point (East Cambridge).
This was accomplished by General Heath under
a heavy cannonade. Guns were planted
which not only commanded the shipping in the
river, but which threw their shells into Boston.
"Then one moonlight, hazy night in March,
while all along the line the artillery thundered
to drown the noise of the movement, three
thousand men, and three hundred ox-carts
laden with bales of pressed hay, quietly stole
across Dorchester Neck, and climbed the
heights. All night, while the enemy slept, the
men labored. General Howe woke to find
the town, the harbor, the fleet, commanded
by his adversary's guns." A few futile plans
of attack, a few days of uncertainty, and then
the hurried embarkation of the British and
the siege was over. On the 17th of March
the Americans marched in over the Neck and
others, crossing by boats from Cambridge,
landed at the foot of the Common.
IX
THE TOWN
TH E tides of war ebbed away from
Cambridge. The college teachers and
students who had continued their work,
first at Andover and then at Concord, returned.
There was a great cleaning out of the college
buildings and of the village houses so long
occupied by the soldiers. The community did
not, however, at once settle down into the old
ways, for practically all the men of the town
who were of mihtary age were serving at one
time or another in the Revolutionary army.
Their leader was Captain Samuel Thatcher,
who lived on the farm which had been tilled
by three generations of his family, at what is
now the comer of Mt. Auburn Street and
Coolidge Avenue, and who succeeded Colonel
Gardner in the command of the regiment in
which most of the Cambridge men were en-
listed. After the war Colonel Thatcher sold
his farm and lived for the remainder of his
life at the eastern corner of Mt. Auburn and
Boylston Streets. He was selectman and
representative, and a useful citizen. His son,
Samuel, married the daughter of General Knox
and went to Maine. He was a member of
Congress and Uved to be ninety-six years old,
being at the time of his death the oldest graduate
of Harvard. Another noteworthy Revolution-
ary officer was Dr. Abraham Watson, Jr., the
surgeon of Colonel Thatcher's regiment. He
came of a family that had Uved for four gen-
erations on a farm in North Cambridge, cover-
ing all the region from about where the railroad
now runs northerly to Spruce Street. After
the war Dr. Watson went to live in Littleton.
His father was a tanner as well as a farmer,
and began the tanning business which was
long continued in North Cambridge. Many
of the Watson stock were tanners, curriers,
cordwainers, or followed other branches of the
leather business.
Among the Cambridge patriot soldiers there
were three Adamses, four Barretts, four Board-
mans, four Champneys, six Cooks, six Coolidges,
five Cutters, four Danas, seven Frosts, three
Hastingses, five Prentices, three Reads, three
Russells, and foiu" Whittemores. These are
all family stocks that are well represented in
Cambridge today. The Boardmans, Cooks,
Danas and Hastingses have already been men-
tioned. The Adamses were one of the leading
families in Menotomy. The Barretts were
mechanics and lived on the east side of Dunster
Street. The Champneys Hved on the south
side of the river where they had long been large
landholders. The Coolidges were primarily
a Watertown family, but a good many of them
lived then, as now, within the boundaries of
Cambridge. The Cutters were a very numer-
ous clan, centering about Cutters Mill in
Menotomy. On the gravestone of John Cutter,
who was a farmer and deacon of the Menotomy
Church, and died in 1776, it is recorded that
he was survived bj' eight children, sixty-eight
grandchildren, and one hundred and fifteen
great-grandchildren. The Frosts were another
very large family. The homestead was on the
Charlestown road, which is now Kirkland Street,
but different branches of the family had spread
to North Cambridge and Menotomy. At the
time of the Revolution the chief man of the
family was Gideon Frost, the blacksmith and
deacon of the Cambridge Church, who lived
in the old house which is still standing on Lin-
naean Street. The Prentices were even more
numerous in Cambridge than the Cutters.
The original homestead was on the eastern side
of the Common, about where the Methodist
Church now stands, and that place long re-
mained in the family. Spreading from that
homestead some of the Prentices established
themselves on the Menotomy road, just above
the present railroad bridge, others built on the
westerly side of the Common, along what is
now Mason Street; another branch took root
in a farm adjoining the Oliver and the Thatcher
places, or about at the jtmction of Mt. Aubum
Street and Elmwood Avenue. Still another
THE TOWN
group of Prentices acquired the lands on what
is now Garden Street toward Fresh Pond, and
developed the brickmaking business, which has
been carried on in that section ever since.
These Prentices built their houses on Garden
Street, where the Botanic Garden now is, and
on the slope of the observatory hill opposite.
The Reads established themselves in Cambridge
early in the eighteenth century, and for three
generations dealt in leather. The homestead
was on the south side of Brattle Street, between
the estate of General Brattle and the Henry
Vassall place. In the third generation the
family spread into houses on the opposite side
of Brattle Street. One of them is the house
still standing at the comer of Brattle and Church
Streets. In the fifth generation William Read
acquired the large estate through which Apple-
ton Street and Highland Street now run, and
where the descendants of this serviceable family
still live. The Russells were early settlers, for,
in 1635, John Russell was living at the corner
of Holyoke and Mt. Auburn Streets, and it
was his son. Rev. John Russell, who was the
protector of the Regicides in his parsonage at
Hadley. In the later generations the Russells
were chiefly identified with Menotomy and with
Lexington, and we have seen how Jason Russell
was killed on the 19th of April, 1775. The
Whittemores were also chiefly connected with
Menotomy and Lexington. The Whittemore
farms were along Alewife Brook and the road
that now runs from Winter Hill to Arlington.
Captain Samuel Whittemore was the chief
revolutionary representative of the family.
He had been for sixteen years a selectman of
Cambridge, and when the war broke out was
nearly eighty years old. With the utmost
enthusiasm he joined in the Lexington battle.
He was desperately wounded and left for dead,
but recovered and lived to be ninety-six, with
living descendants to the fifth generation and
numbering nearly two hundred. His nephew,
another Samuel Whittemore, lived in Cam-
bridge village on Boylston Street, and was for
forty years deacon of the church. It shows
the typically close connection of these old
Cambridge families, when we read that the
children of this Samuel Whittemore married
respectively a Watson, an Angier, a Prentice
and a Hastings.
A curious episode of the Revolutionary time
was the occupation of Cambridge by the troops
that surrendered with General Burgoyne at
Saratoga on October 17, 1777. Cambridge
was selected as the place of their detention.
Fortunately the district was under the com-
mand of General Heath, and that efficient
officer had sufficient notice to prepare for the
coming of these unexpected visitors. The old
barracks on the Somerville hills were put in
order for the troops, and such quarters as could
be obtained were provided for the officers in
the Cambridge houses. General Burgoyne
occupied the Borland house (the Bishop's
Palace) and Baron Riedesel and his accom-
plished wife lived in the Lechmere-Sewall
house, whence the Baroness wrote the charm-
ing letters and the journal which are the best
original account of the northern campaign,
and which contain pleasant descriptions of
Cambridge and the life of the village. Bur-
goyne left Cambridge in April, 1778, but some
of the prisoners stayed imtil November, when
they departed to Virginia to complete a chapter
of our military annals which is by no means
creditable to American good faith.
The next visitors were of a very different
kind. On September 1, 1779, there convened
in the Cambridge meeting-house the delegates
of all the Massachusetts towns who had gathered
to frame a constitution for the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts. All the patriot leaders,
save those who were serving in the Continental
Congress or in the army, were there. The
Cambridge representatives were Abraham
Watson, Benjamin Cooper and Stephen Dana.
The Convention remained in session all winter,
and finally adjourned in May, 1780. On May
20th, the Cambridge town meeting ratified the
Constitution.
The next visitor was even more distinguished.
On October 27, 1789, President Washington
revisited the scenes of his first successes in com-
mand of the army, and was given an honorary
degree by the College. Dr. Joseph Willard
had succeeded President Langdon in 1781, and
it fell to him to express in the meeting-house
the greeting of the CoUege and the community.
The style of his academic welcome was some-
what more elaborate than would suit the taste
of a later day, -but it certainly lacked nothing
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
in ardent admiration and praise of the honored
guest. After lauding the character and achieve-
ments of Washington, President Willard said :
"When you took the command of the troops
of your country, you saw the University in a
state of depression — its members dispersed —
its Hteran,^ treasures removed — and the Muses
fled from the din of arms then heard within
its walls. Happily restored, in the course of
a few months, by your glorious successes, to
its former pri\-ileges, and to a state of tran-
quillity, it received its returning members, and
oirr j'outh have since pursued without inter-
ruption their literarj' courses, and fitted them-
selves for usefulness in church and state. The
public rooms, which j^ou formerly saw empty,
are now replenished with the necessarv' means
of improving the human mind in literature and
science; and everj-thing within these walls
wears the aspect of peace, so necessary to the
cultivation of the liberal arts. While we exert
ourselves, in our corporate capacity, to promote
the great objects of this institution, we rest
assured of your protection and patronage."
Washington's reply was in a similar though
simpler style. He entreated the President and
Fellows to be persuaded of the respectful and
affectionate consideration with which he received
his degree.
"Unacquainted," he said, "with the expres-
sion of sentiments which I do not feel, you will
do me justice by believing confidently in my
disposition to promote the interests of science
and true religion.
"It gives me sincere satisfaction to learn
the flourishing state of your literary republic —
assured of its efficiency in the past events of
oiu- political system, and of its further influence
on those means which make the best support
of good government, I rejoice that the direc-
tion of its measures is lodged with men whose
approved knowledge, integrity and patriotism
give an unquestionable assurance of their
success."
The next visitor came from over seas, but he
found here the memories of his generous and
ardent youth. Lafayette came in August,
1824, and the scene is presented for us by the
accounts of many enthusiastic witnesses. He
rode to Cambridge through cheering throngs,
and President Kirkland, who excelled in just
such functions, welcomed him on the steps of
Uni\'ersity Hall. Edward Everett was the
orator of the day, and the splendid peroration
of his speech has rolled from the lips of schoolboy
declaimers ever since. "Above all, the first
of heroes and of men, the friend of your youth,
the more than friend of his country, rests in
the bosom of the soil he redeemed. On the
banks of the Potomac he lies in glory and peace.
You will revisit the hospitable shades of Mount
Vernon, but him whom you venerated, as we
did, you will not meet at its door. His voice
of consolation, which reached you in the Austrian
dungeons, cannot break its silence to bid you
welcome to his own roof; but the grateful
children of America will bid you welcome in
his name. Welcome, thrice welcome to our
shores; and withersoever, throughout the limits
of the continent, yovu" course shall take j'ou, the
ear that hears j^ou shall bless you, the eye that
sees you shall bear witness to you, and every
tongue exclaim, with heartfelt joy, 'Welcome,
welcome, Lafayette.' "
For many years after the exciting times of
the Revolutionary epoch, Cambridge was a
town with no especial distinction, save the
scholastic atmosphere that hung about the
College. The chief event of the closing years
of the eighteenth and the opening years of the
nineteenth centuries was the development of
two new and almost distinct villages in the
eastern part of the town. We have seen that
the inhabited part of the town ended at Dana
Hill. East of Judge Dana's house on the crest
of the hill there were only the Inman house,
near the present City Hall, and the old Phips
farmhouse on the upland of Lechmere's Point.
All else was pasture, swamp and salt marsh.
The building of the West Boston Bridge altered
the whole topography of the town. These
changes were brought about chiefly through
some interesting real estate speculations, in
which certain new-comers to Cambridge were
particularly active. When the estates of the
departing Tories were sold, thej- were purchased
by some men of large means and active minds,
who were drawn to Cambridge, both by its
attractions as a place of residence, and by the
opportunity the place afforded for judicious
investment. The Lechmere and Oliver estates
were bought by Andrew Cabot of Salem, and
THE TOWN
the Vassal estates by Nathanael Tracy of New-
buryport. The John Vassal house, which had
been Washington's headquarters, passed, in
1792, into the possession of Andrew Craigie, and
in the same
year the heirs
of Ralph In-
man conveyed
his estate to
Leonard Jands.
Meanwhile,
Chief-Justice
Francis Dana
had acquired
very large hold-
ings of land and
marsh along
the Charles
River, from
the village to
where the river
widened into
the Back Bay.
His estate and
the estate of
Mr. Jarvis cov-
ered practically
all of what
became Cam-
bridgeport .
In like man-
ner, what is
now East Cam-
bridge came
into the hands
of two owners.
The Phips fann
had been di-
vided among
the children of
Lieutenant-
Governor
Phips; but be-
fore the war
David Lech-
mere, the hus-
band of one of
the daughters,
had bought the shares of the others, with the
exception of that owned by Mrs. Andrew Board-
man. The Boardmans were patriots, but the
Lechmeres, like all the rest of the Phips con-
nection, were Tories. The Lechmere estate
was confiscated and was bought, as we have
seen, by Andrew Cabot. Through several trans-
fprs it passed
Andrew
igie, who
t o
Cr£
thus owned
about five-
sixths of the
w hole region
known as Lech-
mere's Point,
while the
Boardmans
retained title
to the south-
w esterly part
of the old
Phips farm,
w hich reached
to the bound-
aries of the
Jarvis estate.
It was natu-
ral that these
gentlemen,
Messrs. Dana,
Jarvis, Craigie
and Boardman,
should thus
become much
interested in
the develop-
ment of the
eastern part
ot the town.
For a hun-
dred and thirty
\ears the
' Great Bridge"
at the foot of
Boylston Street
had been the
only means of
gc tting across
the river, ex-
cept by boat.
On March 9, 1792, Judge Dana and sundry
associates were incorporated as the "Proprie-
tors of West Boston Bridge," with authority
94
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
to build a toll bridge from the westerly part
of Boston to Pelham's Island in the town of
Cambridge. The toll franchise was to run
for forty years, and from the tolls the pro-
prietors were required to pay three hundred
pounds a year to Harvard College. The bridge
was at once constructed, together with a cause-
way over the marshes, as far as the present
Lafayette Square, where it connected with the
slightly higher ground known as Pelham's
Island. The bridge was opened for travel on
November 23, 1793. It required a complete
readjustment of the roads. Until this time the
later extended it from the Common to the new
bridge, along what is now Broadway. The
other built the Middlesex turnpike, of which
the eastern end leading to the bridge is the
present Hampshire Street. Houses, stores
and taverns began to spring up along the cause-
way and on the streets, as they were laid out
below Central Square. The big estates were
gradually divided off into lots ; and Judge Dana
and Mr. Jan.-is built a substantial dike along
the marshes where the river bent to the north-
east, thus reclaiming a considerable section of
low-hang land. Ambitious plans were made
old roads, one running from Charlestown Neck
to Watertown, and the other from the Great
Bridge to Menotomy and crossing on the Com-
mon, had remained the highways. Now a new
set of roads came into being. Main Street and
Massachusetts Avenue continued the new
causeway- to Harvard Square; and radiating
from this highway were River Street and West-
em Avenue to the southwest, and Hampshire
Street and Medford Street (now Webster Ave-
nue) to the northwest. Two turnpike com-
panies were incorporated. One built the road
to Concord, which is now Concord Avenue, and
for transforming the river-bank into a com-
mercial port. Docks and canals were dug out
of the salt marsh, and, in 1805, Cambridge was
made a port of entry. Then came reverses.
Mr. Jarvis became financially involved, and
his property was long in Htigation, so that it
had to be withdrawn from sale. Mr. Board-
man, however, in 1801, brought his large hold-
ings into the market by laying out Windsor
Street through his land, thus gi^'ing it a con-
nection \\ath the bridge and the fast-growang
village of Cambridgeport. The Jan-is estate
was sold at auction, and Mr. Jonathan L.
THE TOWN
Austin, who bought the old Inman mansion,
opened Austin Street. From this time the
building went on rapidly, though Judge Dana
retained all the older part of his estate, so that
between Hancock Street and the College Yard
there remained a large district without houses,
and Cambridgeport was a distinct and separate
village. The effort to make it a commercial
center ran against the Embargo Act of 1808
and the War of 1812. The commerce of the
whole country was paralyzed, and most of the
promoters of the port of Cambridge were brought
to bankruptcy. Of all the docks constructed
be genuine, must have in it some sentiment of
the sea, — it was this instinct that printed the
device of the pine-tree on the old money and
the old flag, — and these periodic ventures of
the sloop Harvard made the old Viking fibre
vibrate in the hearts of all the village boys. . . .
All our shingle vessels were shaped and rigged
by her, who was our glass of naval fashion and
our motild of aquatic form. We had a secret
and wild delight in believing that she carried
a gun, and imagined her sending , grape and
canister among the treacherous savages of
Oldtown. Inspired by her were those first
'SOUTH VIEW OF THE SEVERAL H.ALLS OF HARVARD COLLEGE"
1S23
by the various companies only Broad Canal
remains.
"Cambridge," wrote Lowell of the town as
it was in 1824, "has long had its port, but the
greater part of its maritime trade was, thirty
years ago, intrusted to a single Argo, the sloop
Harvard, which belonged to the College, and
made annual voyages to that vague Orient
known as Down East, bringing back the wood
that, in those days, gave to winter life at Har-
vard a crackle and a cheerfulness, for the loss
of which the greater warmth of anthracite
hardly compensates. New England life, to
essays at navigation on the Winthrop duck-
pond, of the plucky boy who was afterwards
to serve two famous years before the mast.
"The greater part of what is now Cambridge-
port was then (in the native dialect) a 'huckle-
berry pastur.' Woods were not wanting on
its outskirts, of pine, and oak, and maple, and
the rarer tupelo with downward limbs. Its
veins did not draw their blood from the quiet
old heart of the village, but it had a distinct
being of its own, and was rather a great caravan-
sary than a suburb. The chief featiire of the
place was its inns, of which there were five, with
96
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
vast barns and court-yards, which the railroad
was to make as silent and deserted as the palaces
of Nimroud. Great white-topped wagons,
each drawn by double files of six or eight horses,
with its dusty bucket swinging from the hinder
axle, and its grim bull-dog trotting silent under-
neath, or in midsummer panting on the lofty
perch beside the driver (how elevated thither
baffled conjecture), brought all the wares and
products of the country to their mart and sea-
port in Bo6ton. These filled the inn-yards, or
were ranged side by side under broad-roofed
sheds, and far into the night the mirth of their
lusty drivers clamored from the red-curtained
bar-room, while the single lantern, swaying to
and fro in the black cavern of the stables, made
a Rembrandt of the group of ostlers and horses
below. There were, besides the taverns, some
huge square stores where groceries were sold,
some houses, by whom or why inhabited was
to us boys a problem, and, on the edge of the
marsh, a ciurier's shop, where, at high tide, on
a floating platform, men were always beating
skins in a way to remind one of Don Quixote's
fulling mills."
The development of East Cambridge was
chiefly the work of Mr. Andrew Craigie, who
for ten or twelve years was most assiduous and
successful in securing title to large tracts, and
obtaining from the General Coturt the authority
to build another bridge. His speculation turned
out very well. It has been estimated that the
land and franchises, which were quietly secured,
and often in the names of relatives or associates,
did not cost Mr. Craigie more than twenty
thousand dollars. In 1808 he organized a stock
company, and, reserving enough land for the
bridge, its approaches and toll house, he dis-
posed of the rest of the estate at a price of three
hundred and sixty thousand dollars. The next
year the Craigie Bridge was built, and roads
and approaches constructed, of which the chief
was the present Cambridge Street, which con-
nected the bridge with Cambridge Common
and the coiontry beyond. In 1810 the stock
company was incorporated as the Lechmere
Point Corporation, lots were surveyed and the
streets of East Cambridge laid out. The sales
were, however, unsatisfactory, and in the first
three years only ten lots were sold. Then the
Corporation offered to give to Middlesex Coimty
a whole square and a half of land, and to build
a County Courthouse and jail at an expense
of twenty-four thousand dollars, if the count}'
would use and occupy the buildings. The
town of Cambridge protested against the re-
moval of the courthouse from Harvard Square,
but the offer was too munificent a one to be
resisted. The buildings were erected, and the
courts began to be held in East Cambridge in
1816. This ingenious plan worked well for
the company, and when the Boston Porcelain
and Glass Company bought another large tract
and built its factories, the success of the specu-
lation was assured. Other industries followed,
and the population of East Cambridge rapidly
increased. The proprietors of the two new
bridges entered into a lively competition. Each
party endeavored to seciu-e the opening of streets
which would serve as approaches to its own
bridge, and to block the similar efforts of the
other party. These rivalries kept the town
meetings in a turmoil for a score of years.
Meanwhile the older part of the town saw
but little change. The Cambridge of the first
half of the nineteenth century was a good place
to be bom in, as Lowell and Holmes and Dana
and Higginson have testified; and it was surely
good to live in the place where Kirkland and
Everett and Quincy ruled the academic world,
where Longfellow came to write his poetry, and
Palfrey his history, and Sparks his biographies;
where Washington Allston painted and Margaret
Fuller dreamed.
"Cambridge," wrote Lowell in his Fireside
Travels, "was still (1824) a country village
with its own habits and traditions, not yet
feehng too strongly the force of suburban gravi-
tation. Approaching it from the west, by what
was then called the New Road (Mt. Auburn
Street), you would pause on the brow of Sy-
mond's Hill to enjoy a view sing\ilarly soothing
and placid. In front of you lay the town,
tufted with elms, lindens and horse-chestnuts,
which had seen Massachusetts a colony, and
were fortunately unable to emigrate with Tories,
by whom, or by whose fathers, they were
planted. Over it rose the noisy belfry of the
College, the square, brown tower of the Epis-
copal Church, and the slim, yellow spire of the
parish meeting-house. On your right, the
Charles slipped smoothly through green and
THE TOWN
97
purple salt meadows, darkened here and there
with the blossoming black grass as with a
stranded cloud-shadow. To your left upon
the Old Road (Brattle Street) you saw some
half-dozen dignified old houses of the colonial
time, all comfortably fronting southward. . . .
We called it 'The Village' then, and it was
essentially an English village — quiet, unspecu-
lative, without enterprise, sufficing to itself,
and only showing such differences from the
original types as the public school and the sys-
tem of town government might superinduce.
A few houses, chiefly old, stood around the bare
common, with ample elbow-room; and old
women, capped and spectacled, still peered
through the same windows from which they had
watched Lord Percy's artillery rumble by to
Lexington, or caught a glimpse of the handsome
Virginia general who had come to wield our
homespun Saxon chivalry. The hooks were
to be seen from which had swung the hammocks
of Burgoyne's captive red-coats. If memory
does not deceive me, women still washed clothes
in the town spring, clear as that of Bandalusia.
One coach sufficed for all the travel to the
metropolis."
Lowell saw the development of Cambridge
from the idyllic village of his boyhood into a
great suburban city bustling with many activ-
ities. So rapid was the change that Lowell, on
his return from Eurpoe in 1889, wrote:
"I feel somehow as if Charon had ferried me
the wrong way, and yet it is into a world of
ghosts that he has brought me. I hardly know
the old road, a street now, that I have paced
so many years, for the new houses. My old
homestead seems to have a puzzled look in its
eyes as it looks down — a trifle superciliously
me thinks — on these upstarts."
Colonel Higginson, in describing the Cam-
bridge of the first half of the nineteenth century,
took as his text the familiar sketch of Harvard
Square in 1822. "It seems at first sight," he
wrote, "to have absolutely nothing in common
with the Harvard Square of the present day,
but to belong rather to some small hamlet of
western Massachusetts. Yet it recalls with
instantaneous vividness the scenes of my youth,
and is the very spot through which Holmes,
and Lowell, and Richard Dana, and Story the
sculptor, and Margaret Fuller Ossoli, walked
daily to the post-office, or weekly to the church.
The sketch was taken in the year before my
own birth, but remained essentially unchanged
for ten years thereafter, the population of the
whole town having increased only from 3,295
in 1820, to 6,072 in 1830. The trees on the
right overshadowed the quaint barber's shop
of Marcus Reemie, crammed with quaint curi-
osities; and also a building occupied by the
law professor, its angle still represented by that
of College House. The trees on the left were
planted by my own father, as were nearly all
the trees in the college yard, he being then the
newly appointed steward — now rechristened
bursar — of the college, and doing, as Dr. Pea-
body has told us, the larger part of the treas-
urer's duties. On the left, beyond the trees,
stood the First Parish Church, with its then
undivided congregation, its weathercock high
in air, its seats within each lifted by a hinge,
and refreshing every child by its bang and rattle
when dropped after prayer time. In the center
was the little Market House, which once gave
the name of 'the Market Place' to what was
later called, in my memory, 'the village.'
"The only larger building fully visible in the
sketch is the only one of these yet remaining,
having survived its good looks, if it ever had
any, and very nearly survived its usefulness.
The rooms now occupied as the waiting-room
of the West End Railway (Boston Elevated)
were then the bar-room and rear parlor of the
Cambridge hotel; the two rooms being con-
nected by a sliding panel, through which the
host thrust any potations demanded by the
guests in the parlor. There was held, in the
rear room, I remember, a moderately convivial
'spread' in 1840, given by the speakers at an
' exhibition, ' — a sort of intermediate Commence-
ment Day, long since discontinued, — in which
I, as the orator of the day, was supposed to take
a leading part, although in fact I only con-
tributed towards the singing, the speaking, and
the pajnment of the bills.
"It is hard to convey an impression of the
smallness of the then Cambridge in all its parts
and the fewness of its houses. The house in
which I was bom, in 1823, and which had been
built by my father, was that at the head of
Kirkland Street, then Professors' Row, — the
house now occupied by Mrs. F. C. Batchelder.
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
The field opposite, now covered largely b\'
Memorial Hall, was then an open common,
where I remember to have seen students climb-
ing or swinging on Dr. Charles Pollen's outdoor
gymnastic apparatus; or perhaps forming to
trot away with him at double-quick, their hands
clenched at their sides, across the country. The
rest of the Delta was covered with apple-trees
whose fruit we boys used to discharge at one
another from pointed sticks. Looking down
Professors' Row we could see but four houses,
the open road then proceeding to Somerville.
On Quincy Street there was no house between
Professors' Row and Broadwav, and we used
old houses of Tory Row and one or two late
additions. On the south side of Brattle Street
there was not a house from Hawthorn Street
to Elmwood Avenue; all was meadow-land and
orchards. Mt. Auburn Street was merely
'the back road to Mount Auburn,' with a
delightful bathing place at Simond's Hill, be-
hind what is now the hospital, — an eminence
afterwards carted away by the city and now
utterly vanished. Just behind it was a delicious
nook, still indicated by one or two lingering
trees, which we named 'The Bower of Bhss,'
at a time when the older boys, Lowell and Story,
had begun to read and declaim to us from
to play in what was said to be an old Indian
comiield, where the New Church Theological
School now stands. Between Quincy Street
and Cambridgeport lay an unbroken stretch
of woods and open fields, and the streets were
called 'roads,' — the Craigie Road and the Clark
Road, now Harvard Street and Broadwa3^ each
with one house on what was already called
Dana Hill. Going north from my father's
house, there were near it the Holmes House
and one or two smaller houses ; up ' the Concord
Road,' now Massachusetts Avenue, there were
but few; the Common was unfenced until
1830; up Brattle Street there were only the
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene.' The old willows
(now at the comer of Mt. Auburn Street and
the Parkway) were an equally favorite play-
place; we stopped there on our return from
bathing, or botanizing, or butterfiying and
lay beneath the trees."
The meeting-house, in the time thus described,
was still the town center. The sixty-seven
years of the pastorate of Dr. Appleton came
to an end in 1784, when he died, at the age of
ninety-one. A few months before his death
Rev. Timothy Hilliard was settled as his col-
league and successor. Mr. Hilliard died in
1790, and two years later began the long and
THE TOWN
eventful pastorate of Dr. Abiel Holmes. The
church members south of the river had been
set off as a separate Parish in 1783, and settled
the first minister in what became the town of
Brighton in the next year. In 1805, the Cam-
bridgeport Meeting-House Corporation was
organized, which later built its church on
Columbia Street, and, in 1814, ordained the
first minister, Rev. Thomas Brattle Gannett.
The Parish included all of the town east of the
line of Dana Street, running from the river on
the south to the Somerville boundary on the
north. In 1814, also, the College Church was
present comer of Matthews Hall, was the Col-
lege fire-engine house, before it was moved
across the Square. Behind the church, stand-
ing where it now stands, was the President's,
or Wadsworth House, erected in 1726. To the
eastward stood the two old houses heretofore
described, but now owned by the College and
rented to Professor Ware and to Professor Hedge.
The house on the comer of Quincy Street, later
occupied by Dr. A. P. Peabody and now by
Professor Palmer, was built in 1811, and was
occupied at first by members of the family of
Judge Dana. On the opposite side of the main
THE PEABODY MUSEUM
formed; and in 1829, came the division of the
First Chiu-ch itself. The more conservative
part of the congregation, being a minority of
the Parish but a majority of the Church, with-
drew and organized the Shepard Congrega-
tional Society, of which Dr. Holmes became
the minister. The First Parish settled Rev.
William Newell, and, in 1833, built a new meet-
ing-house which is still standing opposite the
College gate. The old house was removed, and
the site included in the College Yard.
Next the old meeting-house, in the time of
which Lowell and Higginson wrote, near the
street still stood the Bishop's Palace and the
Phips-Winthrop House. Owen's University
Book Store was on the corner of Holyoke Street.
In the College Yard, the second and present
Stoughton Hall had been built in 1804, and
Holworthy Hall, in 1812. University Hall,
called at the time the "handsomest building
in the State," had been built in 1815 — its archi-
tect being the famous Charles Bulfinch. In its
basement was the College Kitchen. The ground
floor had two dining-rooms, one used by seniors
and sophomores, the other by freshmen and
juniors. In the second and third stories was
100
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
the College Chapel, \\dth seats on one side for
the seniors and sophomores, and on the other
for juniors and freshmen, and with different
entranee doors, "so that there might be no
hostile collision on the stairs," says Dr. Peabody.
"In front of the ptdpit was a stage for public
declamations and exhibitions, and on each side
of it a raised sentrj-box, occupied at daily
prayers by a professor or tutor on the watch
for misdemeanors. Opposite the pulpit was
the organ with a double row of raised seats on
each side — one for the choir, the other for
parietal officers and graduates. There -^ere
lower story were the philosophical and physical
chamber and apparatus, and the mineralogical
cabinet. Holden Chapel, then divided into
two stories, contained in its lower floor the
chemical laboratory and lecture-room, and
above, a lecture-room.
"In my time," wrote Dr. Peabody, who
graduated in 1826, "a student's room was
remarkable chiefly for what it did not have, —
for the absence of all appliances of elegance
and comfort, I might almost say, of all tokens
of ci\'ilization. The feather-bed — mattresses
not having come into general use — was regarded
GORE LIBKARV (THE COLLEGE LIBRARY)
two side galleries for families of the professors."
In the second story, at the southern end, were
two rooms for the use of the Corporation; and
at the northern end and in the third ston,-, were
six recitation rooms. Originally there was a
roofed piazza on the front of the building, which
was later removed to check the "grouping"
of students, then a penal offence.
The older buildings, Massachusetts and
Hollis Halls, were dormitories, having thirty-
two rooms each, the lower floors being reser\-ed
for freshmen. Harvard Hall contained the
College Library' in its second story; and in the
as a valuable chattel; but ten dollars would
have been a fair auction-price for all the other
contents of an average room, which were a pine
bedstead, washstand, table and desk, a cheap
rocking-chair, and from two to four other chairs
of the plainest fashion, the bed furnishing seats
when more were needed. I doubt whether any
fellow-student of mine owned a carpet. A
second-hand furniture dealer had a few defaced
and threadbare carpets, which he leased at an
extra\-agant price to certain Southern members
of the senior class; but even Southerners, though
reputed to be fabulously rich, did not aspire to
THE TOWN
this luxury till the senior year. Coal was just
coming into use, and had hardly found its way
into college. The students' rooms — several
of the recitation rooms as well — ^were heated
by open wood-fires. Almost every room had,
too, among its transmittenda, a cannon-ball,
supposed to have been derived from the arsenal,
which on very cold days was heated to a red
heat, and placed as a calorific radiant on a
skillet, or on some extemporized metallic stand;
while at other seasons it was often utilized by
being rolled downstairs at such time as might
most nearly bisect a proctor's night-sleep.
Friction matches — according to Faraday the
tations, including the remaining half of the
students. Then came breakfast, which, in the
college commons, consisted solely of coffee,
hot rolls and butter, except when the members
of a mess had succeeded in pinning to the nether
surface of the table, by a two-pronged fork,
some sHces of meat from the previous day's
dinner. Between ten and twelve every student
attended another recitation or a lecture. Dinner
was at half -past twelve, — a meal not deficient
in quantity, but by no means appetizing to
those who had come from neat homes and well-
ordered tables. There was another recitation
in the afternoon, except on Saturday; then
UNIVERSITY HALL
most useful invention of our age — were not yet.
Coals were carefully buried in ashes over night
to start the morning fire; while in simimer, as
I have elsewhere said, the evening-lamp could
be lighted only by the awkward, and often
baffling, process of 'striking fire' with flint,
steel, and tinder-box.
"The student's life was hard. Morning
prayers were in summer at six; in winter, about
half an hour before sunrise in a bitterly cold
chapel. Thence half of each class passed into the
several recitation rooms in the same building
(University Hall), and three-quarters of an
hour later the bell rang for a second set of reci-
evening prayers at six, or in winter at early
twilight; then the evening meal, plain as the
breakfast, with tea instead of coffee, and cold
bread, of the consistency of wool, for the hot
rolls."
Across Harvard Square from the Meeting-
house, and on the comer of Dunster Street,
stood Willard's Hotel, where the public booked
for places in the hourly stage for Boston — fare
twenty-five cents — or for Cambridgeport — fare
eighteen and three-quarters cents. "At nine
and two o'clock, Morse, the stage-driver, drew
up in the College Yard and performed upon a
tin horn to notify us of his arrival. Those who
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
went to Boston in the evening were generally
forced to walk. It was possible, to be sure, to
hire a chaise of Jeremy Reed, yet his horses
were expensive animals, and he was ver}^ par-
ticular in satisfying himself of the undoubted
credit of those to whom he let them," wrote
Josiah Quincy of the Class of 1821, in his
"Figures of the Past," and Dr. Peabody speaks
of "that dreary walk to Cambridge in dense
darkness, with no Hghts on our way, except
dim oil lamps at the toll-houses, over a road
believed to be infested with footpads, but on
which we neither met nor passed a human being
between the bridge and the College Yard. In-
deed . . . the
roads then
were so lonely
that we used
to make up
parties of four
or five to at-
tend meetings
or lectures in
Boston."
On the cor-
ner of Boyls-
ton Street
stood Deacon
Levi Farwell's
country store.
On the west
side of Har-
vard Square
stood the old
County Court
House (on the
present site of
the Har\'ard Co-operative Society), a square,
wooden building with a cupola, "where," as
Lowell wrote, " Parsons once laid down the law,
and Ames and Dexter showed their skill in the
fence of argument. Times have changed, and
manners, since Chief-Justice Dana (father of
Richard the First and grandfather of Richard
the Second) caused to be arrested for contempt
of court, a butcher who had come in without a
coat to witness the administration of his coun-
try's laws, and who thus had his curiosity exem-
plarily gratified. Times have changed since the
cellar beneath it was tenanted by the tvnn
brothers Snow. Oystermen were they indeed.
OLD COURT HOUSE
silent in their subterranean burrow, and taking
the ebbs and flows of custom vnth \'ival\4an
serenity. Careless of the months ^\nth an R in
them, the maxim of Snow (for we knew them
but as a unit) was 'When 'ysters are good, they
are good; and when they ain't, they isn't.' "
The old Court House, though abandoned for
court purposes in 1816, when the Court moved
to East Cambridge, continued to be used for
town meetings until 1831.
North of the Court House, there was a garden,
and then an old, two-story, wooden dwelling,
with a gambrel roof, much after the style of
Wadsworth house. It had been occupied by
Professor Sam-
uel Webber,
who succeeded
Dr. Willard as
President of
the College in
1806, at the
time when he
was Professor
of Mathemat-
ics and Natural
Philosophy.
Next to this
was a long
structure
"iv called the
Smith House;
and on its site
a little later,
and farther
back from the
street, was a
small one-story
building which sheltered the College fire-engine.
About on the location of the present Church
Street, was College House No. 1, a wooden
three-story btulding with brick ends, long called
by the students " Wiswall's Den." It contained
twelve rooms, and these, together with the rooms
in College House No. 2, were occupied by law
students and undergraduates who could not
get rooms in the Yard, and, says Dr. Peabody,
"in great part by certain ancient resident gradu-
ates who had become waterlogged on their life
voyage, by preachers who could not find willing
listeners, by men lingering on the threshold of
professions for which they had neither the
THE TOWN
103
courage nor capacity." Next the graveyard
(where the First Parish Church now stands)
was the Manning House; and next the Deacon
Kidder House, both owned and rented by the
College, and both torn down when the church
was built in 1833.
In the middle of what is now Harvard Square
stood the town pump and scales, and the market-
house, a small square one-story building, which
was removed about 1830. Great elms lined
both sides of the Square. In the middle of the
Square stood also that old milestone, long
located, after 1830, in front of Dane Hall, and
now in the old graveyard, bearing the apparently
lying legend, "8 miles to Boston A.D. 1737."
It is hard to remember that the road to Boston,
prior to 1793, was over the Boylston Street
Bridge, through Brookline to Roxbury, and
over the Neck up Washington Street to the old
State House on State Street.
West of Brattle Square (where Brattle Hall
now is) was the town spring, and a good-sized
pond with an island, and the handsome grounds
of the Brattle place which extended to the river.
In the 50's the pond was filled up; and a large,
square, ugly hotel, known as the Brattle House,
was built on its site, later purchased by the Law
School for a dormitory, and still later sold to
John Wilson's University Press.
Walking out Brattle Street, where once "the
red-coated, rapiered figures of Vassall, Lech-
mere, Oliver and Brattle creaked up and down
on red-heeled shoes, lifting the ceremonious,
three-cornered hat, and offering the fugacious
hospitalities of the snuff-box," one passed the
old Tory mansions standing in unchanged
dignity. The Henry Vassal house was occupied
by Bossenger Foster, the brother-in-law of
Andrew Craigie, and from his heirs Mr. Samuel
Batchelder bought it in 1841. The John Vassall
house, after a brief occupancy by Mr. Nathanael
Tracy, became the home of Mr. Craigie. Like
so many of the promoters of the new villages of
Cambridgeport and East Cambridge, Mr.
Craigie fell on evil days and became seriously
embarrassed. He had to part with all but some
eight acres of the estate, and it is said for seven
years before his death, in 1821, that he never
came out of his house except on Sundays, for
fear 'of arrest. Mrs. Craigie let rooms in the
famous old house to Harvard students, among
them Edward Everett and Jared Sparks, and
later to the young professor, Henry W. Long-
fellow. It is related that one day Mr. Long-
fellow found Mrs. Craigie sitting by an open
window through which innumerable canker-
wonns were crawling and festooning themselves
on her dress and turban. Longfellow offered
to remove or destroy the invaders but was met
with the rebuke, "Young man, have not our
fellow- worms as good a right to live as we?"
Beyond, in the Fayerweather house, lived
Mr. William Wells, who kept there a school
which had a wide-spread influence and reputa-
tion. Mr. Wells had been a publisher and
bookseller in Boston, and was the author of
various useful Latin text-books. In 1826, his
store and stock were destroyed by fire at a
time when the insurance had just expired.
During his business career he had never ceased
to carry on the classical teaching which he had
begun as a tutor in the College. He bought
the Fayerweather house and opened a school,
first for boys, and later for girls. After his
active days were over, Mr. Wells continued
to live, until his death in 1860, in the family
of his daughter, who was the wife of Rev.
William Newell, the beloved minister of the
First Parish Church, and from whose children
the fine old house was bought by its present
owners.
At the end of the old Tory Row, in the Oliver
mansion, lived the most distinguished citizen
of Cambridge. Elbridge Gerry, the Vice-
President of the United States, bought Elm-
wood and the adjoining Thatcher farm in 1793.
Mr. Gerry was a Democrat living in a Federalist
stronghold at a time of hot political feeling,
but, whatever may have been the political
differences, there is no evidence that the Cam-
bridge people treated their fellow-citizen with
anything but the respect due to his office. Dr.
Charles Lowell, the beloved and honored minis-
ter of the West Church in Boston, bought Elm-
wood in 1817, and there, in 1819, his son, James
Russell Lowell, was bom.
Returning toward the Common one passed
at the corner of Mason and Garden Streets
where the Shepard Congregational Church
now stands, the house of Deacon Moore, and
opposite, in the house which is now the Fay
House of Radcliff College, lived Joseph McKean,
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, and five
years later, in 1822, Edward Everett. In the
northwest room of that house, in 1836, Rev.
Samuel Oilman, of Charleston, while a guest at
the celebration of the two hundredth anniver-
sary' of the College, wTote " Fair Harv^ard." On
the north side of the Common, on what is now
Waterhouse Street, lived William Ware, the
author of "Zenobia," and the famous physician.
Dr. Waterhouse. He was the first American
physician to practise inoculation for small-pox.
Lowell's graphic pen pictures him for us as he
walked abroad with his "queue slender and
tapering, like the tail of a ^•iolet crab, held out
horizontally by the high collar of his shepherd's-
gray overcoat, whose style was of the latest
when he studied at Leyden in his hot youth.
The age of cheap clothes sees no more of those
faithful old garments, as proper to their wearers,
and as distinctive as the barks of trees, and by
long use interpenetrated with their very nature.
. . . The great collar disallowing any inde-
pendent rotation of the head, I remember he
used to turn his whole person in order to bring
the foci of his great spectacles to bear upon any
object. One can fancy that terrified Nature
would have \-ielded up her secrets at once, with-
out cross-examination, at their first glare.
Through them he had gazed fondly into the
great mare's-nest of Junius, publishing his
observations upon the eggs foimd therein in a
tall octavo. It was he who introduced vaccina-
tion to this Western World. Malicious persons
disputing his claim to this distinction, he pub-
lished this advertisement: 'Lost, a gold snuff-
box, wdth the inscription, "The Jenner of the
Old World to the Jenner of the New." Wlio-
ever shall return the same to Dr. Waterhouse
shall be suitably rewarded.' It was never
returned. Would the search after it have been
as fruitless as that of the alchemist after his
equally imaginary' gold? Malicious persons
persisted in bclie\'ing the box as \'isionary as
the claim it was meant to buttress with a sem-
blance of reality. He used to stop and say good-
morning kindly, and pat the shotilder of the
blushing school-boy who now, with the fierce
snowstonns wildering without, sits and remem-
bers sadly tho.se old meetings and partings in
the June sunshine."
Crossing the bare, windswept Common, one
came, on Holmes Place, to four old houses. In
one lived Cabcl Gannett, who succeeded Mr.
Hastings as the College Steward, and who had
married Ruth Stiles, whose elder sister was the
first wife of Dr. Abiel Holmes. There was bom,
in 1801, Ezra Stiles Gannett, afterwards for
forty-seven years the minister of the Arlington
Street Church, in Boston. The Hastings house,
which had been General Ward's headquarters,
came, in 1807, into the possession of Judge
Oliver Wendell, and there his grandson, and
the son of the Rev. Abiel Holmes, was bom in
1809, and christened Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The house may be taken as typical of the better
houses of the \'illage, and Dr. Holmes' descrip-
tion of his birthplace is classical.
"The worst of a modem stylish mansion,"
he wTote, "is, that it has no place for ghosts.
Now the old house had wainscots, behind which
the mice were always scampering and squeaking
and rattling down the plaster, and enacting
family scenes and parlor theatricals. It had
a cellar where the cold slug clung to the walls,
and the misanthropic spider withdrew from the
garish day; where the green mould loved to
grow, and the long white potato-shoots went
feeling along the floor, if haply they might find
the daylight; it had great brick pillars, always
in a cold sweat with holding up the burden they
had been aching under day and night for a
centuT}^ and more; it had sepulchral arches
closed by rough doors that hung on hinges
rotten with rust, behind which doors, if there
was not a heap of bones connected with a mys-
terious disappearance of long ago, there well
might have been, for it was the place to look
for them. It had a garret, very nearly such a
one as it seems to me one of us has described
in one of his books; but let us look at this one
as I can reproduce it from memory. It has a
flooring of laths with ridges of mortar squeezed
up between them, which if >-ou tread on you
will go to — the Lord have mercy on you! where
will >-ou go to? and the same being crossed by
narrow bridges of boards, on which you may
put your feet, but w4th fear and trembling.
Above you and around you are beams and
joists, on some of which you may see, when the
light is let in, the marks of the conchoidal clip-
pings of the broad-axe, showing the rude way
in which the timber was shaped as it came, full
THE TOWN
105
of sap, from the neighboring forest. It is a
realm of darkness and thick dust, and shroud-
like cobwebs and dead things they wrap in
their gray folds. For a garret is like a sea-
shore, where wrecks are thrown up and slowly
go to pieces. There is the cradle which the
old man you just remember was rocked in;
there is the ruin of the bedstead he died on;
that ugly slanting contrivance used to be put
under his pillow in the days when his breath
came hard ; there is his old chair with both arms
gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had
nothing earthly left to lean on ; there is the large
wooden reel which the blear-eyed old deacon
sent the minister's lady, who thanked him
graciously, and twirled it smilingly, and in
fitting season bowed it out decently to the limbo
of troublesome conveniences.
"The southeast chamber was the Library
Hospital. Every scholar should have a book
infirmary attached to his library. There should
find a peaceable refuge the many books, invalids
from their birth, which are sent 'with the best
regards of the Author;' the respected but un-
presentable cripples which have lost a cover;
the odd volumes of honored sets which go
mourning all their days for their lost brother;
the school-books which have been so often the
subjects of assault and battery, that they look
as if the police court must know them by heart ;
these, and still more the pictured story-books,
beginning with Mother Goose (which a dear
old friend of mine has just been amusing his
philosophic leisure with turning most ingen-
iously and happily into the tongues of Virgil
and Homer), will be precious mementos by
and by, when children and grandchildren come
along.
' ' Let us go down to the ground floor. I should
have begun with this, but that the historical
reminiscences of the old house have been recently
told in a most interesting memoir by a distin-
guished student of our local history. I retain
my doubts about those 'dents' on the floor of
the right-hand room, 'the study' of successive
occupants, said to have been made by the butts
of the Continental militia's firelocks, but this
was the cause the story told me in childhood
laid them to. That military consultations
were held in that room, when the house was
General Ward's headquarters, that the Provin-
cial generals and colonels and other men of
war there planned the movement which ended
in the fortifying of Bunker's Hill, that Warren
slept in the house the night before the battle,
that President Langdon went forth from the
western door and prayed for God's blessing on
the men just setting forth on their bloody ex-
pedition, — all these things have been told, and
perhaps none of them need be doubted.
"It was a great happiness to have been bom
in an old house haunted by such recollections,
with harmless ghosts walking its corridors,
with fields of waving grass and trees and singing
birds, and that vast territory of four or five
acres around it to give a child the sense that
he was bom to a noble principality."
Walking out what is now Kirkland Street,
one passed the houses of what was known as
"Professors' Row." First came the house of
Stephen Higginson where, in 1823, his son,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, was bom.
Stephen Higginson had succeeded Mr. Gannett
as College Steward, and is described as a man
who "was both before and after his time, —
before it in the warmth of his sympathy and
breadth of his ability; behind it, in the courtli-
ness and refinement which belonged to the bom
aristocracy."
Beyond the Higginson house, and extending
to the Charlestown line, were the one hundred
and twenty acres of the Foxcroft estate on which
stood the house of James Hayward, Professor
of Mathematics; of Professor Asahel Steams,
the first teacher of law in the Harvard Law
School; and of John Farrar, Professor of Natural
Philosophy from 1807 to 1836. Professor
Farrar was, wrote one of his students, "the
most eloquent man to whom I ever listened. . . .
His were the only exercises at which there was
no need of a roll-call. No student was wiUingly
absent." The last house in "Professors' Row"
was that of Dr. Henry Ware, Hollis Professor
of Divinity. Tradition declares that he was
generally known by the students as "general
scope," from the frequency with which that
phrase recurred in his lectures. It is also alleged
that the students were inclined to impugn his
honesty, because in conversation and sermon
he so often introduced a sentence by saying
"I am not a-ware/'
Two remarkable people made their home at
106
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
the other end of the town, but were intimately
associated with the College circle. Margaret
Fuller was a singular product of the Cambridge
soil. Her father, Timothy Fuller, was one of
the first to buy land in Cambridgeport, and
established his homestead there. He was a
member of Congress from 1817 to 1825. His
famous daughter, Margaret, was bom in Cam-
bridgeport, in 1810 — the first of a family of eight
children. Her father took entire charge of her
education, which was adapted to a precocious
child, and Dr. Frederick H. Hedge wrote of her,
that when she was thirteen years old she passed
for a mature woman.
"She had," he said, "in
conversation at that
early age begun to dis-
tinguish herself and
made much the same
impression in society
that she did in after
years." She wTote her
own description of her
life in Cambridge at the
age of fifteen, which was
probably not in accord-
ance with the usual rule
of Cambridge families.
Her day was occupied
as follows: she rose be-
fore five, walked an hour,
practised at the piano
until seven, ^breakfasted
and read French at eight,
read Brown's Philosophy
(two or three lectures)
until half -past nine, went
to school and studied
Greek until twelve, recited, went home and
practised until two, read two hours in Italian,
walked or rode and spent her evenings with
music or friends. Certainly she ought to have
been one of the learned women of her genera-
tion. "In our evening reunions," said Dr.
Hedge, "she was conspicuous by the brilliancy
of her wit, which needed but little provocation
to break forth in exuberant sallies, that drew
around her a knot of listeners and made her the
central attraction of the hour. Rarely did she
enter a company in which she was not a promi-
nent object. . . . For some reason or other
MARGARET FULLER
she could never deliver herself in print as she
did with her lips." Margaret Fuller left Cam-
bridgeport when she was twenty-three years
old, when her family removed to Groton. Her
after career as a woman of letters and the friend
and associate of Emerson, Charming and the
Transcendentahsts was that, as Colonel Hig-
ginson said, of "a person whose career is more
interesting than that of any other American of
her sex; a woman whose aims were high and
whose servdces great; one whose intellect was
vmcommon, whose activity was incessant, whose
life varied and whose death dramatic."
The famous painter,
Washington Allston, also
lived in Cambridgeport.
His pictures are still the
proud possession of many
an old New England
family, and during his
lifetime he was easily
the most admired of
American artists. A
man with so genuine an
artistic temperament and
spirit, and with so rich
a sense of form and color,
was another curious
product of the Puritan
environment of Cam-
bridge. "If," wrote
Lowell, "it were svirpris-
ing that Allston should
have become a painter
at all, how almost mirac-
ulous that he should have
been a great and original
one! I call him original
deliberately, because, though his school be essen-
tially ItaHan, it is of less consequence where a
man buys his tools, than what use he makes of
them. Enough English artists went to Italy
and came back painting history in a very Anglo-
Saxon manner, and creating a school as melo-
dramatic as the French, without its perfection
in technicalities. But Allston carried thither a
nature open on the southern side, and brought
it back so steeped in rich Italian sunshine that
the east winds (whether phj'sical or intellectual)
of Boston, and the dusts of Cambridgeport as-
sailed it in vain. To that bare wooden studio
THE TOWN
107
one might go to breathe Venetian air, and, better
yet, the very spirit wherein the elder brothers of
Art labored, etherealized by metaphysical specu-
lation, and sublimed by religious fervor. The
beautiful old man! Here was genius with no
volcanic explosions (the mechanic result of
vulgar gunpowder often), but lovely as a Lap-
land night; here was fame, not sought after
nor worn in any cheap French fashion as a
ribbon at the button-hole, but so gentle, so
retiring, that it seemed no more than an assured
and embold-
ened modesty;
here was ambi-
tion, undebased
by rivalry and
incapable of the
side-long look;
and all these
massed and
harmonized to-
gether into a
purity and
depth of char-
acter, into a
tone , which
made the daily
life of the man
the greatest
masterpiece of
the aritst."
Another
Cambridge
worthy of a
very different
type, but who
well deserves
remembrance,
was Captain
Nathanael F.
Wyeth, the leader of a party of Cambridge
young men who struck the Oregon trail in
the spring of the year 1832. Wyeth and his
two brothers, James and Jacob, and nearly
a score of comrades, inspired by the tales of
adventure among the Indians and the wild
•beasts of the far northwest, formed an emi-
grant and hunting company with the purpose
of going overland to the northwest coast.
For their long and untried journey they built
a curious conveyance, which one side up was a
WASHINGTON ALLSTOX
wagon running on wheels, and when turned
over was a boat to be propelled by oars. This
odd vehicle was dubbed "The Amphibium,"
though the Cambridge boys, mindful of the
pecuHarities of the enthusiastic leader of the
expedition, called it "The Natwyethum." In
order to toughen themselves for the hardships
of their journey, the adventurers, clad in uni-
form and with broad belts which carried axe,
knife and bayonet, went into camp for ten days
on one of the islands in Boston harbor. Then
they set out on
their overland
march, drag-
ging the Am-
phibium across
the hills, and
using it as a
ferry for them-
selves and their
goods across
the rivers. In
fifty days they
accomplished
the march to
St. Louis, and
there they
abandoned
their curious
vehicle and
went on by
"^ steamer up the
Missouri River
to Indepen-
dence. They
were fortunate
enough to fall
in with some
experienced
guides and
traders who knew the passes over the moun-
tains; and on the 4th of July they drank
the nation's health from the water of the
Snake River, which flows to the Columbia
and the Pacific. On the river they established
Fort Hall, which passed later into the hands
of the Hudson Bay Company and became
an important station for the emigrant trains
that later made their way to Oregon and
California. Wyeth's enterprise was short-
lived, and he and his brothers came back to
\^X
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
take up their old life in Cambridge. They
could not accomphsh anything in the face of
the well-estabUshed monopoly of the Hudson
Bay Company throughout the Northwest; but
the expedition not only revealed the survival
of the pioneer quality of an old Cambridge stock,
but as a genuine American attempt at coloniza-
tion and settlement in the Northwest it played
its part in the negotiations and treaties which
finally made the great region, which is now
Oregon and Washington, a part of the United
States.
But the distinctive atmosphere of the Cam-
bridge of the first half of the nineteenth century
was that made by the presence of the College.
The academic habit of thought and life, which
characterized so many of
the leading citizens, made
Cambridge differ from other
or neighboring towns. It
was not only the natural
place for Lowell and Holmes
and Margaret Fuller to be
born in, and for Longfellow
and AUston to make their
homes in, but the everyday
life of the College people,
the ways of thinking and
talking, their interests and
their characteristic union
of simplicity and refine-
ment, limited means and
scholarly pursuits, plain
living and high thinking,
gave a unique charm to
the old village. Kirkland
and Quincy ruled the College world. The
duties of the President had changed since
the days of the earlier leaders, when their
task was described with sufficient accuracy as
"thankless labor, unrequited service, arrearages
unpaid, posthumous applause, a doggerel dirge
and a Latin epitaph." President Kirkland was,
according to Longfellow, "a jolly little man."
He came to the presidency from the ]3ulpit of
the New South Church in Boston, and brought
with him the reputation of a man of broad
culture, of social charm, and of remarkable
gifts as a preacher. He had, too, a kindly wit
which enlivened his practical wisdom. When
someone called on him for advice about a church
quarrel over the dogma of "the perseverance of
the saints," he replied: "Here in Boston we
have no difficulty on that score; what troubles
us here is the perseverance of the sinners."
Lowell gives a pleasant account of him: "This
life was good enough for him, and the next not
too good. The gentlemanlike pervaded even
his prayers. His were not the manners of a
man of the world, nor of a man of the other
world either; but both met in him to balance
each other in a beautiful equilibrium. Prajang,
he leaned forward upon the piilpit-cushion, as
for conversation, and seemed to feel himself
(wdthout irreverence) on terms of friendly, but
courteous familiarity with heaven." He knew
well how to deal with undergraduates. "Hear-
ing that Porter's flip
(which was exemplar}-)
had too great an attraction
for the collegians, he re-
solved to investigate the
matter himself. Accord-
ingly, entering the old inn
one day, he called for a
mug of it, and ha\nng drunk
it, said, 'And so, Mr. Porter,
the young gentlemen come
to drink your flip', do
they ? ' ' Yes, sir, — some-
times.' 'Ah, well, I should
think they would. Good
day, Mr. Porter,' and de-
parted saying nothing
more."
^'M!''«i- "On Sundays," wrote
Dr. Peabody, "Dr.
Kirkland generally preached once, — in the after-
noon, if I remember aright; and his sermons
were listened to with interest and admiration,
and that rather for the structure, meaning, and
point of each successive sentence, than for any
continuous course of thought or reasoning. He
preached almost always on the ethics of daily
life ; and his sermons were made up for the most
part of epigrammatic, pro\-erb-like utterances,
gems of the purest lustre, alike in diction and
in significance, but, if not unstrung, strung on
so fine a thread that only he could see it. In-
deed, we had a strong suspicion that his sermons
were put together on the spot. He used to
carry into the pulpit a pile of loose leaves, from
THE TOWN
which he was visibly employed in making a
selection during the singing of the hymns. I
doubt whether he often, if ever, wrote a whole
sermon after he came to Cambridge. The law
that underHes the arithmetical rule of ' permuta-
tion and combination,' gave him, in a limited
number of detached leaves, an unlimited number
of potential sermons. His voice was pleasant
and musical; his manner in the pulpit, grave
and dignified; but it was commonly quite evi-
dent that he felt less interest in his preaching
than his hearers did."
When a stroke of paralysis obliged Dr. Kirk-
land to retire while still in the prime of life, it
was desirable that his successor should be a man
of administrative experience and acquainted
with the management of financial interests.
Josiah Quincy was a man of distinguished
lineage, and of unquestioned courage and
ability. He had been a prominent member of
the Massachusetts Legislature, a judge of the
Municipal Court, a member of Congress and
mayor of Boston, and became, as one of his
successors, Dr. Walker, said of him, "the great
organizer of the University." During his
administration the fast-growing library was
housed in Gore Hall; Dane Hall was built for
the Law School; the Astronomical Observatory
was established, first in the Dana House at the
corner of Quincy and Harvard Streets, and later
on the Concord Avenue hill, where it now stands.
He reformed the state of the College Commons,
cleansed the Commencement season of rowdy-
ism, systematized the courses of study, and
filled the life of the expanding University with
his characteristic vigor. In his intercourse with
people, Mr. Quincy lacked the consummate
tact that had distinguished Dr. Kirkland. He
could not remember names, and when a student
— someone sent for but a few minutes before,
came into his office, it was to be met with the
abrupt question, "What's your name?" So
much was this his habit that if, as occasionally
happened, he did recognize a face, he would prob-
ably say, "Well, Brown, what's your name?"
Rev. Artemas B. Muzzey, the longtime minister
of the Cambridgeport Parish, recalled in his
Reminiscences how "an extraordinary energy
pervaded the whole character and life of Mr.
Quincy; whatever his hand found to do he did
with his might. This trait was seen in his
emphatic mode of conversation. I often no-
ticed a reaction of this intensity. He would
express himself with great clearness and force,
and, notwithstanding he was a thorough
gentleman and full of courtesy, he would in
a few moments — even while one perhaps was
responding to his words — from the power of
his temperament, be sometimes lost in ob-
livion, and, seeming unable to resist the
tendency, even close his eyes as if overtaken
by sleep.
"To this peculiar temperament, I think, was
owing in part his occasional lapse of memory.
He often forgot the names of those he knew
perfectly well, even of college students, whom
he wished specially to address aright. The
story was told, probably without a sure founda-
tion, that he went one day to the Cambridge
post-office for his mail, and, upon his asking
if there were any letters for him, the clerk, being
that day a newcomer in the office, asked, 'For
what name, sir ? ' ' For what name,' Mr. Quincy
replied, 'you know me of course.' In his ab-
sence of mind, as the story went, he for the
moment actually forgot his own name. Turning
away he was met by a friend who thus accosted
him: 'Good-morning, Mr. Quincy.' 'Ah,
Quincy,' said he, returning to the clerk, 'are
there any letters for Mr. Quincy?' I think
those who had known and enjoyed the benefit
of the remarkable memory for names of his
predecessor. Dr. Kirkland, liked to repeat, and
would sometimes exaggerate, anecdotes of this
kind.
' ' The industry of this rare man was as remark-
able as his intellect and eminent virtues. I
remember in a conversation upon the dangers
and evils of the prevalent excessive reading of
newspapers, he once said: 'For myself, I devote
but ten minutes a day to the papers.' Perhaps
this will appear to many a meagre allotment
of time for such reading. But it reveals that
marvellous economy of time which enabled him
not only to read so many solid books, but to
write volume upon volume himself, in addition
to his practical labors, as a lawA^er and as a
business man, the discharge of his manifold
offices as representative in the State and
National Legislatures, on the bench as mayor,
for six years of a rapidly-growing city, for six-
teen years as president of Harvard College,
110
A HLSTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
besides working elsewhere in the cause of edu-
cation, and in many other distinguished and
useful occupations."
Mr. Quincy lived to be the oldest graduate
of the College, and sat for his photograph with
his four successors in office, Everett, Sparks,
Walker and Felton. He retained to his ninety-
second year his keen interest in all College
affairs, and wrote its history, a book which found
its origin in the oration which Mr. Quincy
delivered in 1836, on the occasion of the two
of the Law School. The Dane Professorship
of Law was founded with the condition that the
first occupant of the chair shotild be Judge
Story, then at the height of his fame as a justice
of the Supreme Court. It was not altogether
an inviting opportunity, for the Law School
had no building, a very small library, and during
the year before his appointment, not a single
student. The fame of the great judge soon
changed that discouraging situation, and so
interesting were the lectures that the students
PRESIDENTS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
hundredth anniversary of the founding of the
College.
Of the College professors who gave to Cam-
bridge its distinctive atmosphere, there were
many who bore names famous outside of the
academic world. George Ticknor, Henry Wads-
worth Longfellow and James Russell Lowell
served successively as Professors of Belles-
Lettres; Norton, Palfrey, Willard, Noyes and
Francis were upbuilding the Divinity School,
and Joseph Story was laying the foundations
were willing to give up their holiday's for the
sake of attending. Richard H. Dana, just
back from his famous "Two Years Before the
Mast," was one of the students. He wrote:
"At the close of a term there was one more case
than there was an afternoon to hear it in, unless
we took Saturday. Judge Story said: 'Gentle-
men, the only time we can hear this case is
Saturday afternoon. No one is obliged or
expected to attend. I am to hold Court in
Boston until two o'clock. I will ride directly
THE TOWN
out, take a hasty dinner, and be here by half-
past three o'clock, and hear the case, if you are
willing.' He looked round the school for a
reply. We felt ashamed, in our own business,
where we were alone interested, to be outdone
in zeal and labor by this aged and distinguished
man, to whom the case was but child's play, a
tale twice told, and who was himself pressed
down by almost incredible labours. The pro-
posal was unanimously accepted. The judge
was on the spot at the hour, the school was never
more full, and he sat until late in the evening,
hardly a man leaving the room."
Among the law students in 1838 was Lowell.
"I am reading Blackstone," he wrote, "with as
good a grace and as few wry faces as I may."
Eight months later he could write more cheer-
fully. " I begin to like the law. And therefore
it is quite interesting. I am determined that
I will like it, and therefore I do." On Story's
death, in 1845, the school numbered one hundred
and sixty-five students, who had flocked to his
teaching, not only from New England, but from
almost every State in the Union.
During the sixteen years in which he filled
the chair Judge Story wrote all of his legal text-
books and his treatises, filling no less than thir-
teen volumes. He lived in the house on Brattle
Street which is still standing near to the comer
of the street which bears his name. "With fully
two men's stated work," wrote Dr. Peabody,
"he had time for every good cause and worthy
enterprise. There was no public meeting for
a needed charity, for educational interests, in
behalf of art or letters, or for the advancement
of a conservatively liberal theology, in which
his advocacy was not an essential part of the
programme. When there were no other speakers
of note, it was enough to hear him; and he was
not unwilling to occupy, and never failed to fill
to the delight of his hearers, all the time that
could be given him. When there were others
whom it was desirable to hear, he was generally
made chairman; and in his opening speech he
always contrived to say as much as all those
who followed him, and often unconsciously took
the wind out of their sails. He formed a large
part of the life of Cambridge society. His son
is the only other man that I have ever known
who could talk almost continuously for several
successive hours, and leave his hearers with an
appetite for more. Wherever Judge Story was,
he did not usurp the conversation, but the floor
was spontaneously and gladly conceded to him;
and his listeners were entertained with an unin-
termitted flow of wit, himior, anecdote, literary
criticism, comments on passing events, talk on
the highest themes of thought, — the transition
from topic to topic never abrupt, but always
nattu-al and graceful. . . . Judge Story was a
good citizen of Cambridge, and took an active
part in all important municipal affairs. No man
did more than he in securing for Cambridge
the right to enclose the Common, in opposition
to the towns lying farther in the interior, which
claimed as of immemorial prescription the un-
restricted and unbounded right of way for the
herds of cattle that were driven through Cam-
bridge to Brighton. In fine, one can hardly
have filled a larger place in the community of
his residence than he filled, with prompt and
faithful service, with overflowing kindness and
good will, and with the grateful recognition of
people of every class and condition."
The theologians played a large part in the
social and intellectual life of Cambridge. Pro-
fessor Andrews Norton lived in Cambridge for
forty-three years, and made his beautiful house
at Shady Hill a place of pilgrimage for two gen-
erations of students. For twenty years he
served as tutor, librarian and lectiirer; and then
for twenty-three he gave himself to his inde-
pendent work as a Biblical scholar. His suc-
cessor in the Professorship of Sacred Literature
was John Gorham Palfrey, who was not only
famous for the thoroughness of his scholarship
and the charm of his teaching, but also for his
labors as editor of the North American Review,
and for his anti-slavery words and works. After
his withdrawal from teaching he continued to
live on the ample estate which he had made at
the end of Divinity Avenue, and added to his
fame by writing his "History of New England,"
and by serving as a member of Congress and
as the Postmaster of Boston.
Sidney Willard was another theological pro-
fessor who was also a useful citizen. He held
the Hancock professorship of Hebrew, and was
editor of the American Monthly Review and later
of the Christian Register. Like Dr. Palfrey,
after withdrawing from teaching, he gave his
time and ability to the public service. He was
112
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
for several terms in the Legislature, then a
member of the Governor's Council, and for
three years Mayor of Cambridge after the organi-
zation of the city.
Among the professors of the College proper
under the administration of Presidents Kirkland
and Quincy there were many others who gave
unique quality to Cambridge life. There was
Edward Everett, who left the pulpit to become
the first incumbent of the Eliot Professorship
of Greek, and who was afterwards for four years
president of the University; and there was John
Quincy Adams, who was the Boylston Professor
of Rhetoric and Oratory. These are great names
in American history, but the bearers of these
names walked our Cambridge streets and
stopped for their letters at the Post-office along
with the humblest of their fellow-citizens. Their
successors were men of lesser fame, but their
personalities gave flavor to the town. Professor
John S. Popkin was the best Greek scholar of his
generation. He was a man of majestic presence,
but of very odd appearance and manner. Lowell
describes his "great silver spectacles of the heroic
period, such as scarce twelve noses of these
degenerate days could bear;" and Dr. Peabody
said: "Shyness and solitude gave him an aspect
and manners more eccentric than can easily be
imagined in these days, when, under the assimi-
lating influence of modern habits, idiosyncrasies
have faded out, and every man means and aims
to look like every other. His dress, indeed,
was, in an historical sense, that of a gentleman;
but his tailor must have been the last strr\avor
of an else long extinct race. He never walked.
His gait was always what is termed a dog-trot,
slightly accelerated as he approached its termi-
nus. He jerked out his words as if they were
forced from him by a nervous spasm, and closed
every utterance with a sound that seemed like
a muscular movement of suction. In his recita-
tion-room he sat by a table rather than behind
it, and grasped his right leg, generally ^\^th both
hands, lifting it as if he were making attempts
to shoulder it, and more nearly accomplishing
that feat daily than an ordinary gjTnnast would
after a year's special training. As chairman
of the parietal government, he regarded it as
his official duty to preserve order in the College
Yard: but he was the frequent cause of disorder;
for nothing so amused the students as to see
him in full chase after an offender, or dancing
round a bonfire; while it was well understood
that as a detective, he was almost always at
fault.
"Oddities were then not rare, and excited
less surprise and animadversion than they woiild
now. The students held him in reverence, and
at the same time liked him. His were the only
windows of parietal officers that were never
broken. Personal insult or outrage to him
would have been resented by those who took
the greatest delight in indirect methods of
annoying him. Once, indeed, when he was
groping on the floor in quest of smothered fire,
in a room that had been shattered by an ex-
plosion of gunpowder, a bucket of water was
throwTi on him by a youth, whose summary
expulsion was the only case of the kind that I
then knew in which the judgment of the students
was in entire harmony with that of the Faculty.
As may be supposed, he was not without a
nickname, which he accepted as a matter of
course from the students ; but hearing it on one
occasion from a young man of dapper, jaunty,
unacademic aspect, he said to a friend who was
standing with him, 'What right has that man
to call me " Old Pop " ? He was never a member
of Harvard College.'
"Dr. Popkin's only luxury was the ver>' mod-
erate use of tobacco. Every noon and every
evening, Sundaj^s excepted, he trotted to an
apothecary's shop, laid down two cents, then
the price for what would now cost five times as
much, and carried to his room a single Spanish
cigar. Of course, though the shop was open, he
would not go to it on Sunday ; and he would not
duplicate his Saturday's purchase, lest he might
be tempted to duplicate his Saturday evening's
indulgence. A friend who often visited him
on Sunday evening always took with him two
cigars, one of which the doctor gratefully ac-
cepted."
Dr. Popkin retired in 1833, but lived, chiefly
occupied in reading the Greek Testament and
the Greek poets, until 1852. During his teach-
ing days he had lived at first in a College room
and later in the old Wigglesworth house next
to the President's house. He afterwards built
a house on Massachusetts Avenue (then North
Avenue) next to the house of his classmate and
lifelong Associate, Professor Levi Hedge. The
THE TOWN
113
old gentlemen held pleasant intercourse daily
over the fence, but it is said that neither, ever
entered the other's house. Dr. Hedge was for
many years the professor of logic and meta-
physics. He had written the text-book which
was used in his classes. He did not attempt to
teach, but expected his students to memorize
the book. According to common report he
was in the habit of sajdng: " It took me fourteen
years, with the assistance of the adult members
of my family, to write this book, and I am sure
that you cannot do better than to employ the
precise words of the learned author." He is
best remembered, by a later generation, as the
father of Dr. Frederic Henry Hedge, the great
preacher, theologian and German scholar.
The successors of
John Quincy Adams
in the Boylston
professorship were
both noteworthy
men, Joseph
McKean (1809-
1818) and Edward
T. Channing (1819-
1851). Channing
it was who formed
the English style of
a generation of
American writers
and speakers who
belonged to what is
sometimes called
the golden age of
American literature.
Three learned and beloved professors of this
period became successively presidents of the
University. Jared Sparks was the professor
of history from 1838 to 1849, and president from
1849 to 1853. His voluminous and painstaking
work as author and editor sustained the literary
pre-eminence of the College. James Walker,
one of the most influential preachers of his gen-
eration, became professor of philosophy in 1838,
and was president from 1853 to 1860. After
his retirement his home on Sparks Street was
the resort of innumerable leaders of the yoimger
generation who sought the guidance of his far-
seeing wisdom and rich experience. Cornelius
C. Felton began to teach Greek at Cambridge
in 1832, succeeded Dr. Popkin in the Eliot pro-
DIVINITY HALL
fessorship two years later, and in 1860 succeeded
Dr. Walker as president.
The great name of Benjamin Pierce appeared
in fifty-four of the annual catalogues of the
University, and he died at the beginning of his
fiftieth year of continuous service as tutor and
professor. His fame as a mathematician early
became worldwide, and added not a little to the
renown of Cambridge. Asa Gray came to
Cambridge in 1842, and for forty-six years his
name and fame made Cambridge illustrious in
the eyes of all who loved plants and flowers, or
who sought to find the secrets of natiire. He
established the Botanic Garden on Garden
Street, and was the foremost of American bot-
anists. The Observatory was established in
President Quincy's
administration, and
under the guidance
of William Cranch
Bond soon became
the most renowned
place of astronomi-
cal research in
America.
Finally, among
the scholars who
gave to Cambridge
its unique distinc-
tion, were a number
of distinguished
gentlemen of foreign
birth, who came to
the town because
of its literary
associations, or were connected with the Uni-
versity life. Francis Sales, a high-bred French
gentleman, was the tutor in French and Spanish
from 1816 to 1854, and was worthily held in
high regard in the society of his adopted town,
introducing into what may well have been a
somewhat prim and formal intercourse, a per-
petually youthful vivacity, and the manners
and dress of a Frenchman of the Old Regime.
Lowell wrote of him: "Perpetual childhood
dwelt in him, the childhood of his native South-
em France, and its fixed air was all the time
bubbling up and sparkling and winking in his
eyes. It seemed as if his placid old face were
only a mask behind which a merry Cupid had
ambushed himself, peeping out all the while,
114
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
and ready to drop it when the play grew tire-
some. Every word he uttered seemed to be
hilarious, no matter what the occasion. If he
were sick, and you \4sited him, if he had met
with a misfortune (and there are few men so
wise that they can look even at the back of a
retiring sorrow with composure), it was all one;
his great laugh went off as if it were set like an
alarm clock, to run down, whether he would or
no, at a certain nick. Even after an ordinary
Good morning! (especially if to an old pupil,
and in French), the wonderful Haw, haw, haw!
by Shorge! would burst upon you unexpectedly.
would it have occurred to him to turn it into
view, and insist that his friends should look at it
with him. Nor was this a mere outside good-
humor ; its source was deeper, in a true Christian
kindliness and amenity." t- I .
Charles Follen was the first teacher of German
at Harvard, and a man of remarkable gifts.
He had been a student and professor at the
University of Giessen; and when driven from
Germany because of his participation in certain
patriotic and insurrectionary' demonstrations,
found refuge in Switzerland. Encouraged by
Lafayette and by Professor Ticknor he came to
MEMORIAL HALL AND SANDERS THEATRE
like a salute of artillery on some holiday which
you had forgotten. Ever^-thing was a joke to
him, — that the oath of allegiance had been
administered to him by your grandfather, —
that he had taught Prescott his first Spanish
(of which he was proud), — no matter what.
Everything came to him marked by Nature
Right side up, with care, and he kept it so. The
world to him, as to all of us, was like a medal,
on the obverse of which is stamped the image
of Joy, and on the reverse that of Care. S.
never took the fooUsh pains to look at that other
side, even if he knew its existence; much less
America, and in 1825 became instructor in
German at Cambridge and proved a most stimu-
lating leader. It was Dr. Follen who introduced
g^-mnastics in the College. Under his enthusi-
astic direction the Delta, where Memorial Hall
now stands, was fitted up as an out-of-door
gymnasimn; and imder Dr. Pollen's leadership
there first began the interest in athletics which
has in later years filled so prominent a place in
student life. Dr. Follen married Miss Eliza
Lee Cabot, and built a house on Waterhouse
Street, at the comer of the street that now bears
his name. Withdrawing from teaching in 1835,
THE TOWN
lis
he took up the work of the ministry and was
the founder of what is now the FoUen Chiirch
at East Lexington. He lost his life in 1840, in
the burning of the steamer Lexington on Long
Island Sound.
Charles Beck was another notable German
scholar who was implicated in the same demon-
strations against autocratic government in
Germany that had forced Dr. FoUen to fly.
They were comrades on the voyage to America;
and, in 1832, he became professor of Latin at
Harvard. He taught for eighteen years and
then retired, but his home, at the corner of
Quincy and Harvard Streets where the Harvard
his boundless sympathies, his extraordinary
gift of making friends, his genial personality,
led all his hearers captive. In 1848 the Law-
rence Scientific School was organized at Cam-
bridge ; and Agassiz became Professor of Natiu-al
History, and another great scientist who was
Cambridge trained, Jeffries Wyman, became
Professor of Anatomy. Agassiz at once estab-
lished himself at Cambridge with a company of
friends and assistants who had followed him
from Europe, and who together made a cheerful
household. In this domestic group were Count
Francois de Pourtales, M. Edward Desor, M.
Jaques Burkhard, the draughtsman, and M. A.
THE HARVARD U!
Union now stands, was long the center of a
boundless hospitality. Beck Hall, the earliest
of the privately-owned dormitories for students,
was built by his daughter on part of the estate ;
and his name is also borne by the old Cambridge
Post of the Grand Army of the Republic. He
was a most ardent patriot, and foremost among
Cambridge citizens at the time of the Civil War
in recruiting and providing hospital suppUes.
Most famous among these memorable Cam-
t)ridge citizens of foreign birth was Louis Agassiz.
Agassiz came to Boston in 1846 to lecture at the
Lowell Institute. His scientific enthusiasm,
Sourel, the lithographic artist. M. Christison,
an old Swiss minister, was their housekeeper
and -homemaker. Later, Professor Guyot
arrived and many guests, chiefly foreign scien-
tists, were constantly coming and going. Down
on the marsh by the Boylston Street Bridge
was an old shanty on piles. This Agassiz utilized
for the storage of his first collections. Boards
nailed against the walls were the cases for speci-
mens, and a single rough table completed the
laboratory. Such were, in 1848, the htmible
beginnings of the Museum of Comparative
Zoology, now one of the greatest institutions
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
of the kind in the world. In 1850 Agassiz
married Miss Elizabeth Cabot Gary, an alliance
which made him a member of a large and happy
family circle, and brought him into especial
intimacy with his colleague. Professor C. C.
Felton, who became his brother-in-law. Agassiz
not only lectured in all parts of the country, but
carried on a vast scientific correspondence; and
Cambridge became the Mecca of an ever-
increasing body of students of zoology, geology
and cognate subjects. In 1854 the Agassizs
moved into the house which the CoUege had
built for them, at the comer of Quincy Street
and Broadway, and there they carried on for
eight years, in addition to all the great public
labors, a private school of the highest reputa-
tion. The Museum building, which is popularly
known by the name of Agassiz, was begun in
1860. To the life and work of this most eminent
of all American students of nature and his asso-
ciates and successors, Cambridge owes not only
its incomparable Museum, but also its fame as
the chief American center for scientific research.
Such were some of the remarkable group that
made the old Cambridge of the first half of the
nineteenth century a singularly interesting
place of residence. A more agreeable or stimu-
lating society, or one more united in habits of
life, common intellectual interests and happy
personal relationships it would be difficult to
recall. Longfellow, writing from Rome, told
of a talk he had had with Darwin: "Why,"
said Darwin, "what a set of men you have in
Cambridge. Both our Universities put together
cannot furnish the like. Why, there is Agassiz,
he counts for three."
If Cambridge was thus renowned for the
quality of the people who lived there, it is inter-
esting to record that new reputation came to
the town in the nineteenth centurj' because of
the fame of the people whose bodies were brought
to rest in Cambridge soil. In 1831 the Massa-
chusetts Horticultural Society, which owned a
beautifully variegated tract of land at the
western end of Cambridge, was authorized by
act of legislature to establish there a rural ceme-
tery-. Judge Story was the leader in this move-
ment, and he it was who delivered the dedication
address on September 24, 1831. Mount Auburn
was laid out in accordance with designs made by
Mr. Alexander Wadsworth, and was the first,
as it is still the most beautiful, of the well-
planned country cemeteries in the United States.
Mount Auburn is in no small degree the West-
minster Abbey of our Nation, for \vithin its
gates rest many of the most famous of Americans.
X
THE CITY
THE time had arrived when Cambridge
must become a city. Between 1840 and
1845 the population had nearly doubled
and with this sudden growth in mmibers there
had been an almost equal increase in the town's
valuation. The habits of local government
which were suited to a community of a few
thousand people were strained to meet the needs
of a population of over twelve thousand. The
stormy debates about the inclosing of the Com-
mon had demonstrated the inadequacy of the
old Court-house at Har\'ard Square to accom-
modate the voters, and the town meeting had
been obliged to adjourn across the street to the
Meeting-house. An agitation for larger quarters
resulted in the building, in 1832, of anew town-
house on Norfolk Street in Cambridgeport.
This was another grievance for the people of
the Old Village who had already seen the County
Courts transferred from Harvard Square to
East Cambridge. Most of the new population
and wealth were in the new villages, and jealousy
between the three sections still disturbed the
civic life of the town. The spirit of rivalry
between "the Port" and "the Point," which
had begun -ndth the building of the two bridges,
was still active and both of the new villages had
a long-standing grievance against Old Cam-
bridge, because of the real or supposed unwilling-
ness of the taxpayers who lived there to be taxed
for the building of schools and streets in the
newer parts of the town. Communication
between the three villages was slow and at some
seasons even difficult. No one section was
strong enough to control the town meeting, but
there was constant wrangling. One solution
of the difficulty was to still further subdivide
the town which had already seen Lexington,
West Cambridge (ArHngton), Newton and
Brighton carved out of its original territory.
Another solution was to effect "a more perfect
union" by adopting a city form of government.
The latter course prevailed. A petition of some
of the residents of Old Cambridge, presented
to the General Court in 1842, and praying to be
set off as a distinct town, was rejected; and a
petition for a City Charter adopted at a town
meeting held on January 14, 1846, was granted
by the General Court with a referendum to the
voters of the to\\Ti. The act incorporating the
city was signed by Governor Briggs on March
17, 1846. On March 30th, the voters, by a vote
of 645 to 224, adopted the charter, and on May
4th the first city government was inaugurated.
It was no easy task to care for the fast-growing
needs of the young city. It is difficult to realize
how very recent in discovery and adoption are
all the conveniences of community life which
the people of a modem city take for granted.
The old town of Cambridge had indeed provided
for schools and for vet}' inexpensive schoolhouses,
for the care of the poor in an almshouse, and
for the occasional repair of the dirt roads, but
that was all. When the citizens had arranged
for the primary education of the children and
made decent provision for the destitute, their
civic obligations appeared to them to be ful-
filled. Everything else that contributed to
the health, comfort, protection and happiness
of the people was disregarded or left to the initia-
tive of private individuals. When the city was
incorporated the streets were unpaved and un-
lighted. The sidewalks were uncurbed and
neglected. Water was drawn from wells or
rain-tanks attached to the individual houses.
There were no sewers and no system of garbage
collection. Not until 1852 was an ordinance
adopted establishing a system of sewers, and not
until 1865 did the city tmdertake to provide
water. There was no provision for the care
of the public health, nor means for preventing
or checking epidemics: no hospital, no ambu-
lance, no nurses. The people were accustomed
to pasture their cattle on the grassy roads, and
there was a good deal of resentment when the
new city government tried to put a stop to that
practice. A watchman or constable was em-
ployed in each of the three villages, but there
118
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
CITV HALL
THE CITY
119
was no police force, and indeed, to the credit
of the citizens, it must be said that there was
very seldom any occasion for the services of a
policeman. There were several volunteer fire
companies, but it sometimes happened that
their efforts did more damage to property than
the fire they were supposed to extinguish . There
was no public library, and parks and play-
grounds were undreamed of. The two bridges
connecting Cambridge with Boston were both
privately owned toll bridges, and did not become
free until 1858. The hourly stage sufficed for
public conveyance. Save for the works of the
New England Glass Company at East Cam-
bridge, some small soap factories in the Port,
the brick-making on the Fresh Pond meadows,
and the printing business at Harvard Square,
there was no manufacturing. The chief in-
dustry was still the College, which, with the
Divinity School and the Law School, had in
the middle of the century some five hundred
students. The business of teaching, lodging,
boarding, clothing and generally providing for
these temporary residents was the occupation
of the majority of the households of the Old
Village.
The new city government went to work
promptly and judiciously. The first mayor
was James D. Green, who had been the minister
of the Unitarian Church in East Cambridge,
and who had already served as a selectman and
as a representative in the General Court. He
served two terms and was succeeded by Pro-
fessor Sidney Willard for three terms. Mr.
Green was mayor again in 1853, and again during
the early years of the Civil War. Police and
fire departments were organized, roads began
to be paved and sidewalks to be constructed.
The "Old Villagers," the "Porters" and the
"Pointers" began to lose their sectional dis-
tinctions. Houses grew up on the intervening
fields and marshes until the three villages could
no longer be distinguished. A community
feeling more and more superseded the old
rivalries. Conveniences and comforts multi-
plied, population continued to grow rapidly,
and if the tax rate showed a steady increase
there was no complaint, because the people
received their money's worth. In twenty years
in the place of the three villages there was a
united, busy, suburban city, with many and
diversified industries, abundant pubhc spirit
and an intelligent, progressive population.
John Fiske, in his oration at the celebration
of the fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation
of the city pointed out that the chief causes of
the growth of Cambridge were three in number :
proximity to Boston, the reputation and growth
of the University and its allied interests, and
the availability of the city as a manufacturing
center. The whole city shared in the general
prosperity of the metropolitan district of Boston,
and the early development of a transportation
system gave Cambridge a good start. The
Union Railway Company was organized in 1855,
under the leadership of Gardiner G. Hubbard,
Charles C. Little, Estes Howe and other active
and sanguine citizens, and the first street cars
began to run over the West Boston Bridge
between Harvard Square and Bowdoin Square
in Boston in the following year. The trans-
portation facilities have since kept pace with the
needs of the people. Electricity took the place
of horses as a motive power on the street rail-
ways in 1889, and the rapid transit afforded by
the new system of subways will undoubtedly
again stimulate the growth of population.
Many of the leading merchants and pro-
fessional men of Boston make their homes in
Cambridge, where their families can enjoy access
to sunlight and fresh air, to green lawns and
gardens, where the schools are admirably con-
ducted, where health conditions are the best
of any city in the state, where there are no
saloons and where the libraries and parks and
the various activities of the University provide
unusual facilities for education, recreation and
social enjoyment. Famous lawyers like Henry
W. Paine, Richard H. Dana and Chauncy Smith,
who were leaders of the Boston Bar, were thus
Cambridge residents; and among the many
honorable business men who lived in Cambridge
while conducting their affairs in Boston two
should be especially remembered, both because
of the service which they rendered to the civic
life of their home city, and because they manu-
factured and distributed a characteristic Cam-
bridge product. Henry 0. Houghton was the
founder of the Riverside Press, and senior part-
ner of the great publishing house of Houghton,
Mifflin & Company. He served one year
as Mayor of Cambridge. Charles C. Little
120
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
was the founder of another great publishing
firm, Little, Brown & Company, and he was
the active promoter of many of the local
enterprises which contributed to the develop-
ment and welfare of Cambridge.
The growth of Cambridge has, in the second
place, been influenced by the presence of the
University. More than four thousand officers
and students live in Cambridge and in the long
vacation a thousand other students come to
attend the summer courses. Every year a
considerable number of families move to Cam-
bridge in order to educate their children, and
others come because of teaching appointments,
or for purposes of scientific research. The co-
operation between the University and the city
for the public welfare is close and cordial. The
great literary and
scientific collections
of the University
are open to all
under suitable
restrictions. The
Library, the Bo-
tanic Garden, the
University Mu-
seum, the Fogg
Museum of. Arts,
the Peabody Mu-
seum, the Semitic
Museum, the Ger-
manic Museum,
the Social Muse-
um, are all places
of large public
resort. The University chapel is a center of
interest for many Cambridge people, for through-
out the year services are conducted there by
eminent preachers of many different denomina-
tions. The University also provides a very
large number of evening lectures open to the
public. These lectures cover a wide range of
subjects and afford to Cambridge people many
opportunities of seeing and hearing distinguished
men. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has
for many years given an annual series of concerts
under the auspices of the University, and there
are many other opportunities of musical culture
afforded by the presence of the College.
The University gives to the city a unique
atmosphere. It is cheerful and inspiring to
live in a city through which pours an ever-rising
tide of healthy and manly youth making ready
for worthy service in the world, but not yet
burdened by its cares and griefs. It is agreeable
to live where hundreds of men work with their
minds bent primarily on intellectual pursuits,
and kindled by enthusiasms which have nothing
material as their object. "A society," said
Horace Scudder, "in which a university is
planted cannot easily make riches the measvire
of social rank, and Cambridge thus still attracts
the lovers of a literary life, who value in society
the coin which is struck from the same mint as
that they carry about with them in their empty
pockets;" and William D. Howells wrote of his
Cambridge experiences: "One could be openly
poor in Cambridge without shame, for no one
was very r i c.h
there, and no one
was proud of his
riches. . . . The
air of the Cam-
bridge that I knew
was sufficiently
cool to be bracing
but what was of
good import in me
flourished in it.
The life of the
place had its lat-
eral limitations;
sometimes its lights
failed to detect
excellent things
that lay beyond
it; but upward it opened inimitably."
It is easy to see that Cambridge should profit
by its advantages as a place of suburban resi-
dence and as a resort for scholars, but it is more
surprising to discover how its growth has been
expedited by the establishment of numerous
factories. In recent years the combined facilities
for railroad and water communication in the
eastern part of the city have proved peculiarly
favorable to great maniifacturing plants. The
Fitchburg Railroad skirts the northern boundary
of the city and the main line of the Boston and
Albany Railroad is just across the ri\-er on the
south. The Grand Junction freight tracks
run through the eastern end of Cambridgeport
and East Cambridge, connecting these trunk
LLI.AM H.WES FOGG ART MUSEU
THE CITY
lines that enter Boston and giving to that sec-
tion of Cambridge unusual transportation ad-
vantages. The chief manufacturers are of
various kinds of machinery, and among the other
important industries may be mentioned printing
and publishing, musical instruments (especially
pianos and organs), furnitixre, clothing, soap
and candles, biscuit-making, carriage-making
and wheelwright's work, plumbing and plumber's
materials, bricks and tiles and confectionery.
"Most of the steel railway bridges in New Eng-
land," said Mr. Fiske in the semi-centennial
oration, "are built in Cambridge, and a con-
siderable part of the world is supplied with
hydraulic engines. The United States Navy
comes to Cambridge for its pimaps, and this
Cambridge product may be seen at work in
Honolulu, in Sydney, in St. Petersburg. In the
dimensions of its pork-packing industry Cam-
bridge comes next after Chicago and Kansas
City. Fifty years ago all the fish-netting used
in America was made in England; today it is
chiefly made in East Cambridge. The potteries
on Walden Street turn out most of the flower-
pots used in this coimtry." Such facts as these
bear witness to the unusual facilities of the city,
where coal can be taken and freight can be
shipped at the very door of the factory, where
the protection against fire is efficient, where
skilled labor is easy to get, because good work-
men find life comfortable and attractive, with
healthy conditions of Kfe and unrivalled means
of education for their children.
Among the Cambridge industries, several
are especially characteristic and famous. The
University Press is the successor of the first
printing establishment in America, of which we
have spoken as beginning in 1639. The River-
side Press sets the standards of bookmaking as
one of the fine arts. The Athenaeum Press,
founded by the ability and practical foresight
of Edwin Ginn and his associates, turns out the
school books that are used all over the country.
The past half century has seen Cambridge come
into the foremost rank among the printing and
publishing centers of the world. A unique
industry goes on in a modest establishment on
Brookline Street, where, just before crossing
the bridge, one comes upon a pleasant dwelling
house, with a private observatory, and hard
by it a plain brick building. That is the shop
of Alvan Clark and Sons, who have carried the
art of telescope-making to a height never reached
before. There have been made the most power-
ful refracting telescopes in the world. The
Mason and Hamlin Company built its factories
on Broadway in 1874, and sends its famous
organs and pianos all over the globe. The
gardens of the world are watered, its fires
quenched, its wheels tired, by the products of
the Woven Hose Company, which, starting
from very small beginnings in 1870, has grown
into an enormous concern. The Cambridge-
port plant of the New York Biscuit Com-
pany, formerly the famous factory of Mr.
Frank A. Kennedy, is the second largest in
the country. The John P. Squire Company
Corporation, leading pork-packers; Ginn and
Company, leading publishers.
The prosperity of Cambridge has also been
upbuilt and its political and social life unified
by the energies of its municipal administration
and the supply of the varied needs of the com-
munity. When the city was organized its people
drank from a thousand different private wells.
All now drink alike from one public supply.
It was in 1852 that a charter was granted to
the Cambridge Water Works, and four years
later Fresh Pond was set aside as the source of
supply. A high service reservoir was estab-
lished at the corner of Reservoir Street and
Highland Street with a tower which was long
a landmark. "I shall hardly expect to know
mj^ native Cambridge when I come back,"
wrote Lowell from Europe, "what with
railroads and water-works. . . . The water-
works I have no manner of conception of.
Whence is the water to come? Where is the
reservoir to be? And will a pipe run through
Elmwood lane and cut off all the roots of the
ash-trees? Will there be any fountains? Will
it be against the law to mix anjrthing with the
water?" And on his return he wrote: "Rome,
Venice, Cambridge! I take it for an ascending
scale, Rome being the first step and Cambridge
the glowing apex. But you wouldn't know
Cambridge — with its railroad and its water-
works and its new houses. . . . Think of a
reservoir behind Mr. Wells's! And then think
of Royal Morse and John Holmes and me in
the midst of these phenomena! I seem to see
our dear old village wriggling itself out of its
122
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
chrysalis and balancing its green wings till the
sun gives them color and firmness."
As the demand for water increased new sources
of supply were utilized: Spy Pond (afterwards
abandoned) and Wellington Brook, then Stony
Brook, and Hobbs Brook, where large storage
basins have been constructed. Fresh Pond
is now practically the distributing reservoir,
and the high ser\ace reservoir is now on the hill
in Pay son Park at the west of the Pond. The
surroundings of the Pond are now a Park under
the control of the Water Board and appropriately
named for Chester W. Kingsley, who was for
dedicated with an address by President Edward
Everett. In 1886 the high school, then located
in the building at the comer of Broadway and
Fayette Streets, was divided, the classical
department becoming the Cambridge Latin
School, and the remaining departments, the
Cambridge English High School. The grammar
schools of Cambridge take high rank among
the similar organizations and the city has always
enjoyed the ser\'ices of able and high-minded
superintendents. The standards of attainment
are such as befit a university town, and Cam-
bridge spends more money on its schools than
:ambkid(;e public
nearly thirty years a member of that Board, and
for fourteen years its President.
At the time when Cambridge became a city
a high school and a grammar school was con-
ducted in each of the three villages; and one of
the first steps of the new government was to
bring the high schools together in a central
school in Cambridgeport. This step still further
reduced the sectional jealousies and promoted
the growth of more sympathetic relations be-
tween the different parts of the city. The first
building of this united high school stood at the
comer of Simimer and Amory Streets and was
most American cities. In addition to the public
schools Cambridge enjoys the presence of a
number of famous private schools. The Browm'e
and Nichols School was started in 1883 and at
once attained a very high reputation as a pre-
paratory school for Harvard. The Cambridge
School for Girls was opened in 1886, and has
had a large success and an increasing influence.
The Buckingham School for children on Buck-
ingham Place and the School of the Misses
Smith on Buckingham Street are also well
known.
The University naturally attracted to its
THE CITY
123
neighborhood not only these preparatory schools,
but also independent professional schools. Par-
ticularly Cambridge has become the great center
for the education of ministers. The Harvard
Divinity School has had a long and honorable
history. In 1867 the Episcopal Theological
School was established at Cambridge on account
of the advantages to be had from the academic
associations. St. John's Memorial Chapel was
built in 1869. Reed Hall, adjoining the Hbrary
and commemorating the name of the chief
founder of the School, was built in 1875, Law-
rence Hall in 1880, and Winthrop Hall in 1893.
In 1889 the New Church Theological School
moved to Cambridge, and for its use there was
purchased the residence of President Sparks.
Tw0 years later the adjoining Greenough estate
was purchased, so that the grounds of the School
now extend along Quincy Street from Cambridge
to Kirkland. In 1910 the Andover Theological
School removed from Andover to Cambridge,
and in the following year its beautiful and com-
modious building was dedicated.
Radcliffe College was begun in 1879 under
the name of the Society for the Collegiate In-
struction of Women. This Society was in-
corporated in 1882; at which time the Fay
House, which is the oldest of the present group
of buildings, was purchased, enlarged and im-
proved. In 1894 the Society became Radcliffe
College and entered in close and official relation-
ship with Harvard University. The buildings
of the College, opposite the Washington elm,
already form a conspicuous and handsome group.
The need for parks and playgrounds did not
arise in Cambridge until after the rapid growth
of population had brought about undesirable
congestion in several sections of the city. It
was not until 1892 that the committee was ap-
pointed to consider the subject of parks. Since
that time the development has been rapid. The
embankment along the Charles River has been
laid out with a continuous parkway. A tract
of twelve acres in East Cambridge has been set
aside and improved as the Cambridge Field,
and a large tract in North Cambridge as a play-
ground known as Rindge Field. The building
of a dam across the mouth of the Charles River
has turned the entire river into a splendid water
'park. At Captain's Island on the river bank
a park of some thirty-eight acres is being de-
veloped. The new impulse for the purchase of
playgrounds is effective, and considerable pur-
chases of ground for these purposes have been
made in the year in which this book goes to the
press.
In 1846 when the City Charter was granted
there were fourteen Protestant churches and
one Catholic Church in Cambridge. The two
branches of the First Church, the First Parish
(Unitarian) and the Shepard Congregational
Society dated from 1636 and Christ Church
from 1761. The Cambridgeport Parish (Uni-
tarian) had been organized in 1808. The first
Methodist Church was organized in East Cam-
bridge in 1813, the first Baptist Church in
Cambridgeport (Central Square) in 1817, and
the first Universalist Church in Cambridgeport
in 1822. The first Roman Catholic Church was
founded in East Cambridge in 1842. There
are now fifty-three churches in Cambridge,
representing all denominations.
In the care of the needy, in the adoption of
modern methods of charity and correction, in
the application of the best intelligence to the
prevention of disease and the amelioration of
suffering, Cambridge has been as much a pioneer
as in education and religion. The Cambridge
Humane Society was one of the eariiest organiza-
tions in the world for village improvement and
community welfare. It was founded in 1814
under the guidance of Dr. Abiel Holmes. It
had a long and honorable career and has now
ceased to exist, save as it survives in one of its
offshoots, the Female Humane Society. There
are now a score or more of vigorous philan-
thropic agencies at work in Cambridge. The
thoroughly organized and efficient Associated
Charities date from 1881. The Cambridge
Hospital was incorporated in 1871, the Avon
Home for Children began in 1874, and the Homes
for Aged People a little later. Among the other
well-known institutions there should be men-
tioned such educational and social centers as
the Cambridge Social Union, the Prospect Union
and the Young Men's and Young Women's
Christian Associations; such social settlements
as the East End Christian Union, the Neighbor-
hood House, the Margaret Fuller House, the
James A. Woolson House and the Riverside
House. In recent years there have arisen the
Anti-Tuberculosis Association, the Visiting
124
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
THE CITY
125
Nitrsing Association, the Home Savings Asso-
ciation and other vigorous and useful organiza-
tions for the prevention or the cure of poverty
and sickness. It would be difficult to discover
any physical, moral or spiritual need that is un-
of these was designated simply by the name of
the city. The public service corporations are
admirably administered. The Boston Elevated
Railway Company, whose president General
Wm. A. Bancroft is a citizen and former
FliEDEKICK H. RiNDGE.
supplied by one or another of these channels
of a generous commvtnity spirit.
The banking institutions of Cambridge are
numerous and sound. The first bank was
chartered in 1826, the first savings bank in
1834, and the first trust company in 1890. Each
mayor of Cambridge, furnishes rapid and
reliable transportation in and through all parts
of the city. The New England Telephone
Company provides ample facilities for telephonic
communication. The Cambridge Gas Company
was organized in 1852 by the same energetic
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
group of men that originated the Street Railway,
and has done a large and constantly increasing
business. The Cambridge Electric Light Com-
pany was incorporated in 1886 and provides an
excellent system of illvmiination for the city.
In 1887 Mr. Frederick H. Rindge began a
series of gifts to his native city which provide
for a noble group of buildings. The first build-
ing erected by Mr. Rindge was that for the Public
Library, an ample, convenient and beautiful
building which houses a large and valuable
collection. Mr. Rindge supplemented this gift
in the following year by building near the Library
a Manual Training School, and later he built
on an adjacent lot a large and handsome High
School, and then a home for the Latin School.
Meanwhile, in 1889, he had further provided
for the erection of a beautiful City Hall, a
building remarkable for its fine proportions and
imposing dignity. Mr. Rindge was a son of
Cambridge, but he spent the years of his man-
hood in California. His gifts were made during
the mayoralty of William E. Russell, the brilliant
j-oung leader of public opinion, Cambridge born
and educated, who was afterwards for three
years Governor of Massachusetts, and who, but
for his early death, would svirely have risen to
still higher places of responsibility and honor
in a nation that knows how to secure for its
service men of wide vision, integrity of purpose
and administrative ability.
In the thirty years between 1880 and 1910
Cambridge again almost exactly doubled in
population, a gain chiefly accounted for by an
extraordinary increase in the number of families
of foreign birth, and even as this book is pub-
lished two events which foretoken further
changes in the aspect and life of Cambridge
are taking place. The completion of the subway
from Harvard Square to Park Street in Boston,
and the consequent rapid transit, will presum-
ably be followed by another rapid increase
in population, for Cambridge is the most
quickly and easily accessible of all the towns
and cities adjacent to Boston; and the purchase
by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-
of fifty acres of land on the Charles River em-
bankment and the removal of that great and
famous school to Cambridge will both increase
the renown of the place as the chief educational
center of the country and insirre the rapid devel-
opment and improvement of all the property
on the river front between the Harvard and
Cambridge bridges.
Patriotism was inevitable in a place of such
heroic memories as Cambridge. It was not by
accident that the first company received into
the service of the Union in the war for the Union
was a Cambridge company. It was not by
accident that it was from Cambridge that the
"Bigelow Papers" went out, and, by their
mingled himior and reproach, pleaded the
cause of freedom and brotherhood. It was not
by accident that when the war was done, here
was recited the "Commemoration Ode," the
noblest lyric utterance that owns an American
origin. In the war for the preservation of the
Union, Cambridge furnished to the army 4,135
men, and to the navy 453 men, which was about
one-sixth of the entire popvdation, and, as at the
time of the Revolution, must have taken nearly
every able-bodied man of military age in the
community. To Cambridge belongs the honor
of organizing the first company of United States
Volunteers. Soon after the presidential election
of 1860 it became apparent to far-seeing men
that an irrepressible conflict was on foot. With
patriotic energy James P. Richardson, great
grandson of Moses Richardson, who fell at the
battle of Lexington, organized a company of
•\'olunteers. When after the fall of Sumter
President Lincoln issued his call for 75,000
soldiers, on the very next morning Captain
Richardson and ninety-five rnembers of his
company marched to the State House and re-
ported for duty to Governor Andrew. There
were ninety-seven men in the company that
enlisted for three months; and at the end of that
time ninety-three of them re-enlisted for the
war. In the words of one of these men, who
expressed the feeling of all, he was "determined
to go back to the seat of war and to fight till
the war was over, and if need be he would leave
his bones to bleach on Southern soil." The
name of that man, Edwin T. Richardson, is
inscribed upon the soldiers' monimient on the
Common, one of twenty-one of this first com-
pany, more than one in five, who gave their
lives for the country's salvation.
Cambridge people are very loyal to their
city. They are apt to share Mr. Lowell's
opinion of his birthplace, "There is no place
THE CITY
127
128
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
like it, " he said, "no, not even for taxes. ' ' When
he was ambassador in London, Mr. Lowell was
asked if he did not long to visit Egj-pt and see
the works of Ramses. "No." he answered,
"but I should like to see Ramsays in Harvard
Square." Next to Lowell the most ardent
lover of Cambridge was his particular crony,
John Holmes, the brother of the "Autocrat,"
who "held his native town," said Mr. Howells,
"in an idolatry which was not blind but which
was none the less devoted because he was aware
of her droll points and her weak points. He
alwaj's celebrated these as so many virtues."
His wit was as sparkling as that of his more
famous brother, and he had equal kindliness
with more of modesty. His fame is local, but
he was the cherished companion of those who
occupied a greater place in the public eye, and
they acknowledged him their peer.
Richard Henry Dana was another scion of
the best Cambridge stock, a blend of aristo-
cratic inheritances with democratic principles,
which is highly characteristic of the place. He
was a lawyer in active practice in Boston and
fulfilled the just expectations of his fellow citi-
zens by the way in which he measured up to
every public dut}'. He was part of the history
of the anti-slavery movement and his rare gifts
were always and everywhere at the service of
the oppressed. The book of his sea-faring
experiences, "Two Years Before the Mast," is
a classic, and it probably has had a wider circu-
lation than any American book, unless it be
' ' Uncle Tom's Cabin. ' ' The well-deserved fame
of that book has ecUpsed the later reputation
of its author as a noble-minded citizen and
leader of public opinion, but Cambridge cherishes
his renown, and in no small measure bears today
the stamp of his public-spirited and progressive
influence.
Charles Eliot Norton was another Cambridge-
born author of the same generation. He in-
herited the beautiful estate of his father, Pro-
fessor Andrews Norton, at Shady Hill, and
there lived a life that came as near to the ideal
as the conditions of the nineteenth century per-
mitted. He was for many years Professor of Art
in the Univcrsit}^ and kindled high ideals in the
minds and hearts of two generations. He was
the mediator between the best culture of the
past and the active life of the present, inter-
preting the Greek ideals to our hurrj-ing gen-
eration, rebuking our materialism while he
encouraged our better hopes. Ruskin and
Carlyle were his European correspondents;
Lowell and George William Curtis were his
intimates. His contributions to literature only ^
partially represent what he did for the humani- |
ties in America, for it was his creative sympathy j
that set the standards of our literar>' and artistic ',
life and inspired the endeavors of artists and
poets. He edited the letters of Ruskin and of
Lowell, collected the orations of Curtis, wrote
the biographical sketch of Longfellow, trans-
lated Dante's "Di\'ine Comedy," conducted
the North American Review, and was the friend
and helper of the leading men of letters in Eng-
land and America.
But Cambridge drew to itself many distin-
guished men of letters who were not native bom.
It would be sufficient honor to be known as the
birthplace of Lowell, Holmes, Higginson and
their comrades, but there are names of equal
distinction that are associated with the place.
"We are potted plants here in Cambridge,"
said the witty Frances Wharton, explaining to
an English visitor that the men of whom he
inquired were not natives of Cambridge, but
were drawn thither by its University and its
kindred spirits. Hither in the fifties came from
his Oxford fellowship and his principalship of
University Hall in London, Arthur Hugh Clough.
His stay was short, but it is good to remember
the contact wdth the life of the community of a
poet whose word, as Mr. Lowell said, "will be
thought a hundreds year hence to have been
the truest expression in verse of the moral and
intellectual tendencies, the doubt and struggle
toward settled con\dctions, of the period in which
he lived." Hither came later Elisha Mulford,
who brought with him the reputation built upon
"The Nation," a book that sets forth his mas-
terly interpretation of our federal union, and
here he wrought upon his great conception of
"The Republic of God," making in these books
"two pillars for sustaining the great arch of our
social philosophy." Christopher P. Cranch, a
man with the soul of an artist and a gift of
poesy, lived on Dana Hill, and joined a tuneful
voice to the chorus of minor singers who met
at Longfellow's table. He wrote good poetry,
painted pictures that are not so good, and lived
THE CITY
129
130
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
a life of genial simplicity and patient endurance
under trouble.
It was in December of 1836 that Mr. Long-
fellow established himself in Cambridge, and
entered upon the duties of the Smith professor-
ship. He first roomed in the house of Dr.
Stearns, on Kirkland Street— then called Pro-
fessors' Row, where Cornelius Conway Felton,
Professor of Greek and aftenvards President
of the College, was already established. Their
acquaintance soon ripened into a warm friend-
ship, which continued through life. Charles
Sumner was then lecturing in the Law School,
and with him sprang up an equally close and
lifelong intimacy. George Stillman Hilliard, his
law partner, and Henry R. Cleveland, then
living at Jamaica Plain— both men of literary
tastes— completed the friendly circle. These
five young men formed themselves into what
they came to call "The Five of Clubs." Some-
what later on, when they began to write favor-
able comments on each other's books in the
Reviews, the newspapers gave them the name
of "the Mutual Admiration Society."
In Cambridge and Boston Mr. Longfellow
was everywhere welcomed. His sunny presence,
his native refinement, his cultivated mind and
his growing reputation united to make a favorite.
He was not exempt from some social criticism,
particularly in the matter of dress, for he was
fond of using bright colors in his waistcoats,
and neck-ties. In 1837 he first occupied rooms
at the Craigie house, where Mrs. Craigie took
lodgers. Established in these comfortable
quarters he pursued with diligence his various
occupations, academic, poetic and social. At
the early dinner or the evening supper one or
more of his friends were usually his companions.
Felton was coming and going at all hours of the
day, with some new book or criticism, or for
friendly talk, prolonged into the night. Sumner
and Hilliard came frequently from Boston, and
often Allston and Palfrey were guests at the
round table. In 1842 when Charies Dickens
came over from London, there was a bright
little breakfast, at which Felton's mirthfulness
helped, and Andrews Norton's gra\'ity did not
in the least hinder, the exuberant liveliness of
the author of "Pickwick." In 1843 Mr. Long-
fellow married his second wife, and his father-in-
law, Mr. Nathan Appleton, bought the Craigie
house for their occupancy. It became the social
and literary center of the community. Haw-
thorne, Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz,
James T. Fields, Charles EHot Norton were
frequent visitors. What Emerson did for Con-
cord that Longfellow did for Cambridge. He
made it the port at which every ship that sailed
the sea of literature was sure to put in. There
is no house so much the object of pilgrimage
as the beautiful mansion which so unites the
memories of patriot and poet as to make each
contribute to the other's fame.
The pages of Longfellow's diary are set thick
with the names of the people, great and small,
who lifted the knocker at his hospitable door.
In the journals we find the names, among others,
of Thomas Hughes, James Anthony Froude,
Anthony TroUope, Wilkie Collins, William Black,
Charles Kingsley and his daughter, Professor
Bonamy Price, Dr. Plumtre, the admirable
translator of Greek tragedies; Dean Stanley,
Athanase Coquerel, Lord Houghton, Lord and
Lady Dufferin, the Duke of Argyll, Salvini,
who read to him scenes from Alfieri to his great
delight; Madame Titjens, Christine Nilson,
the Governor of Victoria ; Admiral Coffin, of the
British Navy ; and Lord Ronald Gower, who has
given the story of his visit in company with Mr.
Sam. Ward. When the Emperor Dom Pedro,
of Brazil, was traveling half-incognito through
the United States, he came to a dinner, having
named the guests he would like to meet —
Agassiz, Holmes, Emerson and Lowell. At the
close of 1879, Ole Bull appeared from Norway,
to spend the winter at Elmwood, re-viving its
relations with Craigie house, and delighting
Mr. Longfellow alike with his music and his
ov/n charmingly simple and sincere nature.
On one day the journal records "fourteen
\4sits, thirteen of them Englishmen." All who
came were received with unfailing kindness
and courtesy, and a quick, instinctive adaptation
of his conversation as to their measure. If, as
was usual, they turned the conversation to his
writings, he thanked them for the sjinpathy,
which gratified him, but very quickly and easily
turned the talk to some other topic. Doubtless
his courtesy and his kindness were often sub-
jected to a heavy strain, by some who forgot
the law of limits in the diu-ation or frequency
of their visits and their claims. Mr. Norton
THE CITY
131
132
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
relates that he once gently remonstrated wnth
his friend for suffering an unworthy protege to
impose himself so long upon him; when he
replied, with a humorous look, "Charles, who
will be kind to him if I am not'"
"The key to Mr. Longfellow's character,"
said his biographer, "was sympathy. This
made him the gentle and courteous receiver of
every visitor, however obscure, however tedious;
the ready responder to every appeal to his pity
and his purse; the kindly encotirager of literary
aspirants, however unpromising ; the charitable
judge of motives, and excuser of mistakes and
offences; the delicate yet large liker; the lenient
critic, quick to see every merit beyond every
defect. This gave to his poetrj'- the human ele-
ment, which made thousands feel as if this poem
or that verse was written for each of them espe-
cially, and made in thousands of hearts in many
lands a shrine of reverence and affection for
his name."
William Dean Howells came to live in Cam-
bridge in 1866, first taking a "box of a house"
on Sacramento Street, thence mo\dng to Berke-
ley Street, and finally building a house on Con-
cord Avenue. His account of his Cambridge
neighbors, printed in 1900, adds another charm-
ing description of the characteristic life of the
place. "Cambridge society," he WTote, "kept
what was best of its \'illage traditions, and chose
to keep them in the full knowledge of different
things. Nearly every one had been abroad;
and nearly everyone had acquired the taste
for olives without losing a relish for native
sauces; through the intellectual life there was
an entire democracy, and I do not believe that
since the capitalistic era began there was ever
a community in which money counted for less.
There was little show of what money could bu}^;
I remember but one private carriage (naturally,
a publisher's); and there was not one livery
except a livery in the larger sense kept by the
stableman Pike, who made us pay now a quarter
and now a half dollar for a seat in his carriages,
according as he lost or gathered courage for the
charge. We thought him extortionate, and we
mostly walked through snow and mud of amaz-
ing depth and thickness.
"The reader will imagine how acceptable this
circimistance was to a young literary man be-
ginning life with a fully mortgaged house and a
salary of untried elasticity. If there were dis-
tinctions made in Cambridge they were not
against literature, and we found ourselves in
the midst of a charming society, indifferent,
apparently, to all questions but those of the
higher education which comes so largely by
nature. That is to say, in the Cambridge of
that day (and, I dare say, of this) a mind culti-
vated in some sort was essential, and after that
came civil manners, and the willingness and
abilit}"- to be agreeable and interesting; but the
question of riches or poverty did not enter.
Even the question of family, which is of so great
concern in New England, was in abeyance.
Perhaps it was taken for granted that every one
in Old Cambridge society must be of good family,
or he could not be there ; perhaps his mere resi-
dence tacitly ennobled him; certainly his ac-
ceptance was an informal patent of gentility.
To my mind, the structure of society was almost
ideal, and until we have a perfectly socialized
condition of things I do not believe we shall ever
have a more perfect society. The instincts
which governed it were not such as can arise
from the sordid competition of interests; they
flowed from a devotion to letters, and from a
self-sacrifice in material things which I can give
no better notion of than by saying that the out-
lay of the richest college magnate seemed to be
graduated to the income of the poorest.
"In those days the men whose names have
given splendor to Cambridge were still living
there. I shall forget some of them in the alpha-
betical enumeration of Louis Agassiz, Francis C.
Child, Richard Henr\- Dana, Jun., John Fiske,
Dr. Asa Gray, the family of the Jameses, father
and sons, Lowell, Longfellow, Charles Eliot
Norton, Dr. John G. Palfrey, James Pierce,
Dr. Peabody, Professor Parsons, Professor
Sophocles. The variety of talents and of
achievements was indeed so great that Mr.
Bret Harte, when fresh from his Pacific slope,
justly said, after listening to a partial rehearsal
of them, 'Why, you couldn't fire a revolver
from your front porch any^^'here without bring-
ing down a two-volumnerl' Ever>'body had
written a book, or an article, or a poem ; or was
in the process or expectation of doing it, and
doubtless those whose names escape me will
have greater difficulty in eluding fame. These
kindly, these gifted folk each came to see us
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133
134
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
and to make us at home among them; and my
home is still among them, on this side and on
that side of the line between the liWng and the
dead, which in\-isibly passes through all the
streets of the cities of men."
Some of these "kindly, gifted folk" have
already been described. The others are equally
worthy of remembrance, for they made that
Cambridge atmosphere that Howells enjoyed.
Never was man more fitly named, "for no man
ever kept here more perfectly and purely the
heart of such as the Kingdom of Heaven is of,"
than Francis J. Child. His outward appear-
ance, too, expressed the inner man as happily
as his name. He was short of stature and round
of body so that the students affectionately
called him "Stubby." His e^-es looked through
his gold spectacles with naive simplicity and
directness, his thick sunny hair, which never
grew gray, curled tightly over his head. His
smile was infectious, and his face bore the
brightness of inextinguishable youth. With
playful humor and profound scholarship he
taught the English language and literature and
was the world's first exp2rt in the study of
English and Scottish balladry. He was a poet
in nature, and he wrought with passion as well
as knowledge in the achievement of as monu-
mental a task as any American has performed.
But he might have been less intellectually keen,
and yet been precious to those who knew him
for the gentleness and the goodness which in
him were protected from misconception by a
dignity as delicate and a reserve as in\'iolable
as that of Longfellow himself. "He was," wnrote
Mr. Howells, "most amusingly dramatic in
reproducing the consciousness of certain in-
efTectual alumni who used to overwhelm him
at Commencement solemnities with some such
pompous acknowledgment as, "Professor Child,
all that I have become, sir. I owe to your influ-
ence in my college career." He did, with deli-
cious mockery, the old-fashioned intellectual
poseurs among the students, who used to walk
the groves of Harvard with bent head, and the
left arm crossing ; the back, while the other
lodged its hand in the breast of the high-but-
toned frock-coat; and I could fancy that his
classes did not form the sunniest exposure for
young folly and vanity."
John Fiske made Cambridge his home not
only because he had learned to love the town
during his college years, but also because he
found it the most congenial place for his literary
work, and because there he found access to two
of the largest libraries in America and many
smaller special collections. A residence in
Cambridge kept him also in neighborly relations
\\"ith his publishers and in immediate connections
wth the printers of his books. As Mr. Fiske's
house on Berkeley Street was the resort of those
who loved to discourse of history and philosophy
and the arts, so the house of Charles Deane on
Sparks Street gathered people from all over the
world who were interested in matters of genea-
logical and antiquarian research. He, and
later his own neighbor, Justin Winsor, the libra-
rian of the University, were our foremost author-
ities on the sources of American histor\' and
the maps and pictures, the family records, the
original manuscripts and letters, which illustrate
it.
Henry James, ranked by no less a critic than
Tolstoi as the keenest and most enlightening
of American philosophers, lived on Quincy
Street in the house now occupied by the Colonial
Club, and his two sons have won an even larger
fame, William as the foremost of American
psychologists, and Henr\- as a novelist and man
of letters. Horace E. Scudder lived on Buck-
ingham Street and thence sent out his famous
books for children. John Bartlett btult a
house on Brattle Street just above the Lee
house. His indispensable "Familiar Quota-
tions" made his name a household word in
many American families. Adiniral Charles H.
Davis and later Colonel Theodore A. Dodge
lived in the house on Quincy Street at the comer
of Broadway. There Colonel Dodge wrote
his treatises on the art of war and the stor\' of
many a campaign of the Civil War, and Admiral
Davis there prepared the scientific papers that
made his name as well known in the world of
higher mathematics as in the naval history of
the Civil War.
Then there was Joseph E. Worcester, the
busy compiler of the great dictionary; William
J. Rolfe, the erudite and genial Shakespearean
scholar; William W. Newell, the foremost
American authority on folk-lore; Alexander
V. G. Allen, the biographer of Phillips Brooks
and the historian of the "Continuity of Christian
THE CITY
135
Old eambKTd§e3apnst
136
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Thought;" and Frank Bolles, who relieved his
arduous and remarkable work at the College
office by excursions into the country round
about Cambridge and into the New Hampshire
woods and hills. He was one of the lovers of
wild life, whose books have opened the eyes and
enriched the lives of our generation.
It is of course the presence of the University
that accounts for the Cambridge residence of
such scientific leaders as the great geologist,
Josiah D. Whitney, the Sturgis Hooper Pro-
fessor of Geology, long the head of the United
States Geological Survey; of Josiah P. Cooke,
the Erving Professor of Chemistry and one of
the pioneers of chemical research in this country ;
of Joseph Lovering, the Hollis Professor of
Physics, whose lectiires were dominated by a
philosophy which kept them free of narrowness
or technicality; and Nathanael S. Shaler, the
inspiring teacher of ardent nature and remark-
ably varied gifts of mind and heart. The Law
School brought to Cambridge such famous
teachers of the law as Theophilus Parsons,
Emory Washburn, who also served as Governor
of the Commonwealth; Christopher C. Langdell,
who revolutionized the teaching of the law in
this country; and his distinguished colleagues,
James B. Thayer and James B. Ames. The
Divinity School brought to Cambridge such
scholars as Charles Carroll Everett, a theologian
of exquisitely-balanced mind, keen insight and
liberal spirit; Ezra Abbott, the most learned
and kindly of Biblical critics, a well-remembered
Cambridge figure, "alert, nervous and almost
furtively shy, skimming along the walk, his
eyes bent on his book, which he read as he
walked; the deadly foe of error on the printed
page, his own work as faultlessly accurate as
his handwriting was unmistakably legible;"
and his successor, Joseph Henry Thayer, the
editor of the monumental dictionary of the New
Testament Greek and the American member
of the distinguished company that prepared
and published the Revised Version of the Bible.
Finally, we should recall the courtly presence
of Charles Folsom, who, wrote Mr. Scudder,
"well deserved the English title of corrector of
the press, but whose chastening for the time
seemed scarcely joyous to the printer as he waited
impatiently for the proof-sheets which Mr.
Folsom carried around in his pocket till he
could, after long search in the libraries of the
neighborhood, relieve them of possible errors
of statement. Of the same indefatigable temper
in exorcising the black art was George Nichols,
for whose aid Lowell stipiilated when he under-
took to edit The Atlantic Monthly. It would
be hard to overestimate the value of these two
subterranean builders of literature. Their own
craft recognized their power ; every author whose
books passed through their hands blessed them,
with occasional lapses, and the reputation which
the great printing-offices of Cambridge enjoy
is due largelj' to the standard which these men
raised, and to the traditions which they estab-
lished."
These are a few of the names among the dead
that give distinction to modem Cambridge as a
literary center. It would be in-vidious to dis-
tinguish among the living, nor is it prudent, for
though some names could be mentioned that
may safely now be added to the roll of honor
in American letters, who knows what names
there are which need but a little more time to
carry them into higher niches than now are
occupied? The alcove in the Cambridge library
which holds the books of Cambridge authors
is but a beginning of a literary treasure-house,
for there is a contagion of literature, and though
Cambridge becomes more urban with each
decade, there is that about a bookish community
which stimulates literary endeavor. To prove
that traditions are well maintained let it suffice
to mention the names of Charles W. Eliot,
George H. Palmer and Josiah Royce, the phi-
losophers; of Edward Channing and Albert B.
Hart, the American historians; of William R.
Thayer, the biographer of Cavour and the
historian of Italy; of preachers and essayists
Hke Samuel M. Crothers, John O'Brien, George
Hodges and Michael J. Doody; of writers on
social ethics like Francis G. Peabody and John
Graham Brooks ; of interpreters one to the other
of Gennany and America like Kuno Francke
and Hugo Munsterberg; of critics and inspirers
of the literary art like Bliss Perry and George
P. Baker; of economists like Frank W. Taussig;
of educational guides and prophets like LcBaron
R. Briggs; of leaders in the world of science
like John Trowbridge and William M. Davis
and Theodore W. Richards; of poets like
Jeaimette Peabody Marks.
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138
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
It is true of Cambridge as Emerson said of
Boston: "It is not an accident, nor a windmill,
or a railroad station, or a cross-roads tavern,
or an army barracks grown up by time and luck
to a place of wealth; but a seat of humanity.
of men of principle, obeying a sentiment and
marching loyally whither that should lead
them; so that its annals are great historical
Unes, inextricably national, parts of the history
of poUtical liberty."
Tilt Nhw Lecture Hall
HARVARD UXIVERSITY
THE CITY
139
XI
THE OUTLOOK
CAMBRIDGE has not the natural attrac-
tions of many of the other tovms and
cities of the MetropoUtan district. Its
territory is comparatively fiat and in natural
beauty it is inferior to the varied charm of
Winchester, Medford or Milton. The Cam-
bridge streets cannot be compared with those
of BrookHne, nor the houses with those which
cluster on the hillsides overlooking the Chestnut
Hill reservoir. What is it that gives Cambridge
her prestige? Is it not such institutions, such
events, such lives, as those that are recorded
in this book? It is the human element in the
landscape
that gives it
its charm.
The town
where the
first college
in the land
was planted,
where the
first church
council was
held, where
the fi r s t
printing-
press was set
up and the
first book
printed; the
dwelling - > hari^k- ri
place of the
Puritan leaders in Church and State, the scene
of many of the noteworthy events in the colonial
history of New England; the point where the
British soldiers began their march to Lexing-
ton at the opening of the Revolution; the soil
on which occurred some of the hardest fighting
of that eventful day; the gathering-place and
headquarters of the patriot army during the
siege of Boston; the point of departure for
the epoch-making battle of Bunker Hill; the
place where Washington took command of
the American army; the sender-forth of the
first company to be received into the service
of the nation in its struggle to destroy slavery
and keep the Union whole; an intellectual
center unequaled on the hither side of the
Atlantic ; the home of three of our most famous
poets, and the place where so many renowned
scholars and men of letters have done their
work; a community always plain, simple and
democratic in its social habits and believing
in intelligence and character above all other
things, — it is obvious that Cambridge is a place
of which its citizens may well be proud.
It is not the part of an historian to also play
the prophet,
community. For most people the next thing
is more interesting than the last thing. What
we want is more fascinating than what we have.
Civic pride is a quick soil in which to grow
civic patriotism. When men glory in the his-
tory of their city, in its beauty, its influence,
its famous men and great institutions, it is
comparatively easy to inspire sacrifice in order
to render the present worthy of so great a past.
The great classic centers of ci\dlization and the
free cities of the Middle Ages could command
the enthusiastic devotion of their people, who
THE OUTLOOK
141
were proud of their citizenship. Most Ameri-
can cities exist under radically different con-
ditions. Their past is not old enough to be
overgrown and beautified by legend and ro-
mance as ancient castles are with ivy. There
is no twilight to stimulate the imagination.
There is as little in their past to gratify men's
love of the heroic as there is in their present
to satisfy the sense of the beautiful. Cambridge
is exceptionally fortunate in this respect. But
like all Americans its people look forward more
readily than backward. It is not simply be-
cause of the heroic generations which have
gone, but because of those which are to come,
that Cambridge appeals to the imagination.
The future is more roomy than the past, and
we may bave part
in its history, for
it is even now in
the making.
Americans are
free to have the
kind of civic de-
velopment and
administration
they want. They
get the kind of
government which
they deserve to
get. In no other
civilized country
is municipal gov-
ernment so com-
pletely within the
control of public
opinion. Everywhere else there are deeply-
rooted habits, long-established customs, much-
respected vested rights and cherished prejudices
to be dealt with, before any satisfactory frame-
work of city government can be set up. In
America the situation is absolutely controlled
by popular sentiment. There is comparatively
white paper to write on. Our cities, therefore,
might easily have been made the model cities
of the modem world. It is America which
ought to have shown the Old World how to live
comfortably in great masses in one place. We
have no city walls to pull down, or ghettos to
clear out, or guilds to buy up, or privileges to
extingvdsh. We have simply to provide, in our
own way, according to the latest experience in
WELLINGTON SCHOOL
business, art and science, the facilities, comforts
and conditions which will enable large bodies
of free men to live contentedly together within
a certain more or less artificially restricted area.
The problems of transportation, Hght, water,
fire and police protection, health, education,
recreation, are all fundamental to city life.
These services are the life-blood of the com-
munity. The law recognizes the rights of
individuals to control many of these enter-
prises, but hiamanity is more important than
private gain. The citizens of Cambridge must
increasingly give attention to the things that
are beyond the immediate necessities of today
and plan their city so as to destroy what is ugly,
promote what is beautiful, protect the poor,
educate the chil-
dren and upbuild
the convenience
and well-being of
the entire com-
munity. In Cam-
bridge, as in most
American cities,
there is a com-
plicated division
of responsibility
about these mat-
ters. The munici-
pality is almost
solely responsible
for the assessing
and collection of
taxes, for the care
of the streets, side-
and public buildings, for the
and the registry of
walks, brid
supervision of elections
voters, for fire and police protection, for the
supply of water, for the sewers and drains, and
for various minor services of a public nature
such as the collection of ashes and garbage,
the inspection of milk and other foods, the
issuing of licenses and the verification of weights
and measures. The city is primarily responsible
for the care of the public health, for the educa-
tion of the children, for providing parks, play-
grounds and opportunities for recreation, for
the relief of the destitute and for the mainte-
nance of cemeteries; but in all these functions
the public agencies have the aid of many private
institutions and volunteer organizations. Trans-
142
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
portation facilities, lighting, telephone and tele-
graph service, and all building operations are
in Cambridge carried on by private corpora-
tions or individuals under more or less municipal
supervision or restraint.
The administration of the city is vested in a
mayor and a city council consisting of a Board
of Aldermen of eleven members and a common
council of twenty-two members. The schools
are in charge of a special school committee of
five members. The various functions of the
city govern-
ment indicated
by the names
of the different
departments :
Executive, City
Clerk, Treasury,
Auditing, Mes-
senger, Law,
Engineering,
Fire, Inspection
of Buildings,
Health, Police,
Street, Asses-
sors, Electrical,
Inspection of
Animals, Bridge,
School, Ceme-
tery, Public
Library, Water
Works, Park,
Registry of
Votes, Over-
seers of the Poor,
Sinking Fund,
Soldier's Aid,
and various
special trusts or
inspectorships.
This list indicates not only the variety of the
functions discharged by the municipality, but
also by its omissions it reveals how many public
needs are still left to be met by private initiative.
As Cambridge has become more densely
populated, all the problems of administration
multiply in number and complexity. A mis-
take is further reaching ; it has a longer leverage ;
and as efficient government grows more essen-
tial it becomes increasingly difficult. To ad-
minister the affairs of a village of a thousand
WARE STREET
inhabitants requires only ordinary intelligence
and integrity, but the government of a city of
a hundred thousand people demands expert
knowledge, abiHty and character of the highest
order. Cambridge has almost always been
able to command the services of high-minded
men to serve the public interests and there is
a well-established tradition of efficiency in most
of the city departments.
The street plan of Cambridge grew naturally
and followed the lines of public convenience.
It escaped the
miserable check-
erboard plan of
so many unfor-
tunate Ameri-
can cities. The
main arteries
radiate from the
principal bridges
and while rea-
sonably direct
are by no means
monotonous .
The curves of
Brattle Street
following the
original lines of
the river and the
marsh are pecu-
liarly charming.
Massachusetts
Avenue turns
not infrequently
and opens op-
portunities for
vistas and for
the location of
hands cm e
buildings denied
to a perfectly straight street.
Cambridge is also fortunate in the charac-
teristic names of many of its streets. The
hopeless prosaic system of numerical or alpha-
betical names has been completely avoided.
The local color has been preserved. Many of
the street names, as we saw in the opening
chapter of this book, preserve the local history
and traditions, remind us of the men and women
of distinction who have lived in Cambridge and
record the community's interests and admira-
THE OUTLOOK
143
tions. It would be a good plan if simple and
permanent tablets setting forth briefly the
careers of the men for whom the streets are
named could be placed at the comers of many
of the streets.
There is, however, a present peril which
should be promptly met. In the newer parts
of the city real estate speculators are laying
out new streets without any regard to beauty
or right adjustment to the neighboring streets.
Patchwork improvements which disregard the
plan of adjacent districts will soon disfigure
what might be a well-designed and interrelated
street design. The city needs to take such
situations in hand and to avoid the oversights
and mistakes that will follow inaction. The
Engineering De-
partment should
forestall the action
of private owners
and adopt a com-
prehensive plan
for new streets.
It is increasingly
difficult to remedy
a bad plan after it
has once been
adopted.
American cities
have expended a
great deal of
energy and money
in curing the mis-
takes of the past.
They need to give
more attention
to preventing the unnecessary repetition of the
same evils. The futvire should not be taken
at haphazard. Too often the municipality
is listless or inert. Railroad approaches must
be made right; grade crossings eliminated;
adequate highway lines established; public
buildings conveniently grouped; open spaces
secured. In order to do this it is indispensable
to recognize the value of expert judgment.
"The people," said John Stuart Mill, "should
be masters employing servants more skilful
than themselves."
'The main highways of Cambridge are subject
to imusually severe treatment. They must
carry not only the largest traffic of the city
itself, but an enormous amount of traffic which
simply passes through the city. Automobiles,
trucks, market wagons, expresses and pleasure
vehicles of all kinds use the Cambridge streets
in passage to and fro between Boston and the
towns and cities lying to the west and north.
The towns that are thus accommodated pay
nothing toward the maintenance of the Cam-
bridge pavements and bridges and the wear and
tear is excessive. The best and most expensive
pavements must be used in Cambridge if its
streets are to be kept in decent order, and these
pavements must be constantly kept in repair
and thoroughly cleaned. In 1911 a special
commission made a comprehensive report to
the City Government and laid out a plan of
action for ten years
ahead.
The report of
the Commission
recommends the
construction in the
near future of a
much larger pro-
portion of durable
pavements than
have been previ-
ously provided
and the provision
of several well-
paved parallel
thoroughfares.
It recommends the
prompt and thor-
ough repair of
defects in the
street service and the strict supervision of the
excavation and refilling of trenches. It advo-
cates systematic, frequent and thorough clean-
ing of the streets and the adoption and efficient
execution of scientific methods of dust laying.
The adoption of these recommendations will
add greatly to the comfort of the people.
The schools have always been the special
pride of the city. A complete course of edu-
cation is provided from the Elindergarten up
to the High and Latin Schools. There is a
school for training teachers, a famous manual
training school, and thirty-one grammar and
primary schools. The buildings are for the
most part modem and satisfactory in regard
HARVARD SCHOOL
144
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
to lighting, ventilation and safety from fire.
Some of the old buildings need more or less
reconstruction. A few of the buildings are
without proper yards, but in the majority of
cases there is ample room for the play and
physical development of the children. The
school buildings should be further used as social
centers, and as soon as financial arrangements
can be made the facilities the buildings offer
can be more largely utilized in the evenings. By
arrangement with Harvard College, free tuition in
their freshman year is offered to Cambridge boys
from the High and Latin School whose parents
HOUGHTON SCHOOL
cannot afford to pay their expenses in college;
and the university athletic fields are as far as
possible offered as playgrounds for Cambridge
children in summer. The policy of the School
Board has been almost always broad-minded
and far-sighted and devoted to the welfare of
the children.
The public library is an important factor in
the educational life of the community. It
co-operates closely with the schools, maintains
traveling libraries and deposit stations in differ-
ent parts of the city, and substantial branches
in East Cambridge and in North Cambridge.
The total number of books is a little less than
one hundred thousand, and the circulation is
more than three times that number.
The fire fighting force of the city is adequate
and competent. The Department as now
organized consists of seven steam engine com-
panies, four chemical engine companies and four
ladder companies. There is a force of ninety-
two permanent men and forty-six call men.
In the Police Department there is also a grati-
fying condition. Cambridge maintains a larger
police force than almost any other city of its
size in the country, not because it is conspicuous
for crime, but because it believes in adequate
protection. The Department consists of a chief,
four captains, four inspectors, eight heutenants,
twelve sergeants, one hundred and two patrol-
men, twenty-two reserve patrolmen, eight wagon
and ambulance drivers and two matrons.
In health statistics Cambridge ranks among
the highest of American cities. The Water
Department has always been ably administered
and the water supply is pure and wholesome.
The record of Cambridge brings additional
testimony to the fact that even in a densely
settled community urban conditions are usually
better for health than country conditions. Cam-
bridge has an entirely satisfactory system of
sewerage. It maintains a hospital for contagious
diseases and a special tuberculosis hospital.
The Cambridge Hospital with its contagious
wards and the Stillman Infirmary of Harvard
College are under private control, but available
for the use of many citizens. The District
Nursing Association is another private corpora-
tion which greatly aids in preserving the high
standards of health and promoting sanitation.
The care of the poor is under the direction of
a Board of Overseers. There have been times
when there were very few cases of destitution
in the city. Of recent years some four hundred
MORSE SCHOOL
people have annually found shelter at the City
Home, and perhaps two hundred more have
been under the charge of the City at various
other hospitals and institutions. The private
institutions and relief societies do a large benefi-
cent work.
THE OUTLOOK
The territory of Cambridge is four and a
half miles long and from one to two miles wide.
Across the center of the city runs the modest
elevation known as Dana Hill. To the east
the svirface is level and was formerly meadow
and marsh. To the west the land is a trifle
higher, though never much above the old high-
tide levels imtil near the western boundary of
the city, where there is another line of low hills
rtmning northeasterly from the Mount Auburn
tower, over the elevation where the Reservoir
formerly stood, by the hill now crowned by
the dome of the Harvard Observatory, and
terminating in what was formerly known as
Gallows Hill just west of Massachusetts Avenue.
that should be more amply availed of and pre-
served. The charm or significance of a city
is in something more than the picturesqueness
of its siUTOundings.
In one respect Cambridge is topographically
fortunate. At either end of the city there is a
large permanent body of water, and along the
entire southern boimdary stretches another
permanent open space, the channel of the
Charles River. At the eastern end of the city
the Charles River Basin forms a great water
park of more than five hundred acres, and at
the western end the Fresh Pond basin makes
another natural water park of some three hun-
dred acres. Both of these areas, as well as the
The territory is comparatively lacking in dis-
tinction or picturesque features. There are
no rugged crags like those which contribute
such regal possibilities to the Riverside Drive
in New York; no mountain such as rises behind
the city of Montreal; no panorama of a snowclad
range such as greets the eye from Capitol Hill
in Denver; no outlook across a shining lake to
distant mountains as at Burlington, Vt. There
is no superb Castle Rock such as dominates
the .site of Edinburgh, no Acropolis, no Cathe-
dral-crowned hilltop. The site of Cambridge
is comparatively commonplace and yet there
are opportunities of beauty and attractiveness
bank of the Charles River for nearly its entire
length, are now public reservations of inesti-
mable value.
In his epoch-making report of 1893 upon the
Park development of the Metropolitan District,
Charles Eliot first drew public attention to
these advantages and showed how they should
and could be preserved. In his special report
of the same year to the newly organized Cam-
bridge Park Commission he pointed out how
the river bank should be utilized and what other
properties should be acquired for public use.
He first recommended the acquisition by the
city of the river frontage at the extreme eastern
146
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
end of the city between the two canals which
penetrate the manufactirring district of East
Cambridge. He advocated a water front reser-
vation of considerable breadth and available
for the recreation of a crowded population.
This reservation, which he called "The Front,"
would extend nearly 1,500 feet along the river
bank and be enclosed by a sea wall. Provision
was to be made for children's games and for
boating on the river.
Next there was pointed out the value of the
public esplanade, already planned by the Cam-
bridge Embankment Company, which provided
an avenue and promenade 200 feet wide along
the whole river front between the Cambridge and
In order to complete this admirable park
development it is still necessary to provide for
finishing the river parkway between Captain's
Island and the Western Avenue Bridge. Most
of the work has been done, and it is to be hoped
that within another year the incomplete section
between River Street and Western Avenue will
be constructed. This is the most expensive
part of the parkway, as it involves some re-
arrangement of the buildings of the Riverside
Press and the Cambridge Electric Light Com-
pany.
It will next be necessary to provide connec-
tions between this attractive river parkway,
which will become the chief highway for pleasure-
THE NEW CAMBRIDGE
the Brookline bridges. Above the Brookline
Bridge, Mr. Eliot recommended the acquisition
of the whole of the Captain's Island property
with the marshes about it for a playground and
a bathing beach. From Captain's Island to
the Cambridge Hospital he recommended a
continuous river front parkway and the acqui-
sition of the bordering marshes. These prop-
erties, together wnth two inland fields, the Rindge
Field in North Cambridge and the Binney Field,
now known as the Cambridge Field, in East
Cambridge, were rapidly secured, and the fields
have since been laid out as attractive recreation
parks.
driving and automobiling, and the more thickly
settled centers of the city. Particvilarly a park-
way connection should be made between the
river parkway and Quincy Square along the
line of the present DeWolf Street. This will
provide a much-needed driving connection be-
tween the grounds of Harvard College and
Boston.
Still another improvement is the opening of
a boulevard or parkway which will connect
the Harvard Bridge with the Wellington Bridge
in Somerville. At present traffic and pleasure-
driving between Boston and the northern sub-
urbs has to find its way through an intricate
THE OUTLOOK
147
labyrinth of streets, either in the North End of
Boston and Charlestown or in Cambridgeport
and Somerville. The MetropoUtan Commission
has made excellent plans for the proposed park-
way, and these plans should be carried out as
soon as financial conditions permit.
Finally, the Fresh Pond Parkway should be
promptly extended through the marshes at the
north of Fresh Pond to connect with the park-
way now under construction along Alewife
Brook and the Mystic River. This will give
a complete circumferential road for pleasure-
driving, and connect the great Metropolitan
park reservations to the south of the Charles
with those to the north of the river.
enlargement is needed at the Boston end of the
bridge to provide space to allow the traffic to
be distributed. The Charles River Parkway
ftirther needs, for the sake of Boston traffic
solely, to be extended through this new square
in a broad, direct street following the line of
Parkman and Fruit Streets, Sudbury Place and
Eaton Street to the North Station. There is
no street improvement in Boston more urgently
needed than this direct connection between
the North Station and the Cambridge Bridge
and the Charles River Parkway. The present
narrow, crooked and inconvenient connections
are disgracefully insufficient.
After the completion of the Park developments,
THE VIADUCT
(Over the Charles; from Boston to East Cambridge)
One of the most sorely-needed street improve-
ments which affect the interests of Cambridge
lies wholly within the limits and jurisdiction
of Boston. The approach to the Cambridge
Bridge at the junction of Cambridge and Charles
Streets is utterly squalid and inadequate. The
approaching streets are less than half the width
of the bridge and are further blocked by the
piers of the Elevated Railroad. It is impossible
for the bridge to perform its traffic duties effi-.
ciently through such a cramped entrance and
e.xit, and the dignity of the design of the bridge
is sadly marred by this incongruous and ill-
related approach. Evidently a considerable
the question of new bridges must have atten-
tion. A good bridge requires not only strength
and durability, but also fitness and beauty.
The dam at Craigie Bridge and the Cambridge
Bridge are fine and permanent structures, but
the rest of the bridges over the Charles are
temporary in construction and wholly lacking
in artistic merit. The Boylston Street Bridge
must be first attended to, and there is a splendid
opportunity there for the building of a bridge
which shall be worthy of the place. It is the
site of the original "Great Bridge," and it is
the highway which connects Cambridge with
all the region on the south of the river. It has,
148
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
too, new significance as the connection between
the grounds and buildings of Harvard College in
Cambridge and the Stadium and athletic grounds
on the Boston side of the river. The bridges
at Western Avenue, River Street and Brookline
Street are poor wooden structures which are
constantly in need of repair and quite unworthy
of the beautiful water park which they span.
They should be replaced as soon as possible
by stone or steel bridges of handsome and reason-
ably uniform design. To reduce the cost of
such thoroughfares, Boston and Cambridge
should carefully consider the feasibility of sub-
stituting earth causeways for portions of the
bridge structures. A third to a half the cost
of a continuous bridge between the present
embankment lines might be saved by such
earthworks. The
interspaces be-
tween the bridges
might be re-
deemed from mo-
notony by cause-
ways planted with
trees and shrub-
bery, and their
margins devoted to
fuller recreative
use by taking ad-
vantage of em-
bankments in-
tended to reduce
the cost of the
bridging opera-
tions. Earth causeways of this kind, if used
as peninsulas to shorten the actual water space
to be spanned, would place the bridges in mid-
stream and produce a series of basins not unlike
the Alster Basins at Hamburg, while if these
causeways were placed in mid-stream like islands
and connected with the Boston and Cambridge
shores by short bridges, an effect would be pro-
duced like that to be seen in the rivers which
contain the Isle de la Cite at Paris, the Island at
Geneva, or the Kohlen-Islen of Munich. If
these mid-stream islands were connected with
one another to form one island of greater length,
its recreative service would be immensely in-
creased, and the appearance of the lower basin
would be controlled largely by it rather than
by the bridge structures and their approaches.
KELLEY SCHOOL
This disposition of the earthworks would leave
the present margins of the basin uninterrupted
and would not interfere with convenient along-
shore passenger boat traffic or pleasure boating,
although the headroom under the bridges could
not be so great as with the peninsula treatment.
On the other hand, the peninsulas would in-
terrupt the continuity of the present embank-
ments and force pleasure and passenger boating
into the mid-stream of the basin. The service
of tree-planted earthworks of either kind, to
check the winds of the basin and to make its
use for skating and boating more popular would
be important.
When the trees are grown, the bridges built,
and stately buildings, such as those planned
for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
have arisen on the
" ' ^ embankment, the
,^ ^„,^^^ basin and channel
of the Charles
will become the
great center of the
Metropolitan Dis-
trict. It will have
a distinction which
will be comparable
only to the splen-
did quays and
bridges of the
Seine at Paris, and
the magnificent
promenades which
extend for three
miles along the Danube at Budapest.
The growth of a city should have the same
oversight that an architect gives to the erection
of a building. The liberty of the individual
to do what he pleases with his own property
ought not to be pennitted to become a detri-
ment to the convenience or attractiveness of
the community as a whole. Town planning
has become a science. In many European and
American cities large dreams of city planning
have been worked into practical success. Care-
ful attention is given to the topography, the
natural advantages, the best uses to which each
district of the city should be put. The prevailing
winds are studied, and factories permitted to lo-
cate only in certain prescribed areas. Some sec-
tions arc devoted primarily to business and
THE OUTLOOK
149
others to residences. Streets, parks, open spaces,
play-grounds, sites for public bmldings and
schoolhouses are arranged for in advance of
the city's growth. The orderly development
of the whole municipaUty is the first considera-
tion. Everything must be done for the good
of the community at large. The health, beauty
and comfort of the whole city stand higher than
the individual rights of the land speculators
or the builders of factories and tenements.
Competent town planning is carried into many
details. There must be no telegraph or tele-
phone wires overhead, but they must be placed
in conduits underground. There must be no
obtruding street railway tracks under foot.
PEABODY SCHOOL
The tracks must be of a pattern which will
offer no obstruction to traffic. The street
pavements should be of the most approved
quahty and kept thoroughly cleaned and re-
paired. The sewers must be in the center of
the streets, but the gas, water, Ught and tele-
phone condtdts placed under the sidewalks
close to the building line. It should never be
necessary to block a street or tear up the pave-
ment in order to get access to them. Business
signs should be under public control so that they
be inoffensive, and bill-boards should be pro-
hibited or limited to certain districts only.
Smoke ordinances should be rigidly enforced.
In a city like Cambridge special provision should
be made for recreation on the water front, where
landing stages should be provided for pleasiue
sailing, rowing and motor boating, and in the
winter for skating and ice-boating.
Such a regulation of a city plan and adminis-
tration permits sufficiently free play for indi-
vidual initiative, but it subordinates the in-
terests of property to those of htunanity. It
reserves to the city the right to determine where
the liberty of the individual must yield to the
good of the community. The whole design
and administration must be directed to the
task of upbuilding the health and happiness
of all the people. It has been abundantly
proved that careful attention to these matters
also promotes industrial prosperity. A hand-
some and well-planned city attracts an ever-
increasing population. It draws to itself busi-
ness. People choose a beautiful city as a place
where they wish to live. Good schools make
better citizens. Parks and playgrounds pro-
mote health and morality. A handsome city
well planned and well administered pays in
the ciarrent coin of commerce and also in the
cheerfulness and the well-being of all the citi-
zens.
Another improvement which will make life
in Cambridge healthier and happier is more
ample provisions for playgrounds. We are
coming to understand that play is not simply
something that children like to have, but some-
thing they must have. Playgrounds are not a
luxury but a necessity in a modem city. The
City has recently established a Playground
Commission, and both the needs and the possi-
bilities have been carefully studied. The Com-
mission has purchased and contracted for various
available land for playground piu-poses, mostly
in connection with schools, and it is developing
some of the older properties held by the City.
The plans of the Commission provide for three
types of playgrounds. In the first place, there
should be a considerable mmiber of small play-
grounds well distributed over the city so that
little children need not be obliged to travel too
far from home. The schoolhouse land is very
well adapted for this type of playground. In
the second place, it is necessary to provide larger
playgrounds for the boys and young men, which
should also be well distributed, though not so
nixmerous as the children's grounds. In the
third place, there should be recreation parks.
These should include the types previously men-
tioned, but in addition should offer opportunity
for field days for the schools, for competition
150
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
in all the best forms of outdoor sports, and be
the natural center for the observance of local
and national celebrations.
"The details of development of these play-
grounds," said Mayor Barry in his address of
RUSSELL SCHOOL
1911, "are comprehensive. Playgrounds are
to be enclosed by suitable fences. Enclosures
axe to be set off within the fields. Halls are
to be erected as a protection from the heat of
summer and the cold of winter. These halls
may also be used at night for various forms of
recreation for young men and women who are
obliged to work during the day, and afford a
place for dancing under sanitary and moral
conditions in place of the unsanitary dance-halls
into which our young people are often forced,
with danger to both health and morals. Nursery
corners are to be fitted out with sand-boxes,
wading pools, baby-hammocks and other suit-
able means of amusement and instruction.
Children's departments will contain teeters,
merry-go-rounds, swings and slides. Girls'
fields are to be set apart for the enjoyment and
physical development of the girls. Baseball dia-
monds, tennis courts, running tracks, bleachers,
skating rinks, coasting inclines and gymnastic
apparatus of various kinds are to be provided.
"Captain's Island, because of its size, its
accessibility, and its situation on the river,
offers the best opportunity for the main recrea-
tion park of the city of Cambridge. It is there-
fore necessary to have on this park, not only
the usual children's corners, the usual oppor-
tunity for girls' play, the activities of our young
school athletes, our high school boys, but also
features which will offer opportunity for whole-
some recreation for the men and women of the
city. There shall be something which shall
attract parents as well as children. The first
development needed is an enclosed athletic
field which will best be constructed in the form
of a stadium. Inside of this stadiimi there will
be a regiilar running track, regular athletic
field and a football field. On each side of this
stadium will be situated a regular diamond,
each with bleachers accommodating many
hundreds of spectators. At the street side of a
harbor will be situated a boat house. There
should be an extension of the present bathing
facilities. It is proposed to build a large open-
air structure, as well as a building suitable for
girls' gymnastics; also a girls' field properly
equipped.
"Dividing the diamonds on the main field
and backing the stadiimi the main recreation
building of this park will be situated. It will have
a large shelter on each side. A music pavilion
will be in the top of the structure and a band
concert would readily be enjoyed by all of the
people all over the park and along the river
front; and the whole of Captain's Island should
be fenced in to offer absolute control of the whole
area."
These judicious plans prove that it is under-
stood that children not only need a place to
play, but also some guidance in the conduct of
their play.
There is one peril which Cambridge is likely
to encounter very soon. Increasing density
of population will mean increase of land values
and of rents, and the people will be packed in
closer and closer quarters. All modem cities
tend to multiply houses designed for more than
one family. There is nothing inherently ob-
jectionable in the two-family, three-family or
even the ten-family type of dwelling. It is
well nigh the universal form of dwelling in
European cities. It is increasingly the form
in American cities. The objection to such
houses lies only in permitting them to be built
without proper regulation. It is already true
that every American city has on its hands a
serious housing problem. Tenement houses
spring up before adequate restrictions have been
thought of by the commimity. Rapidly evils
develop: unhealthy premises, dark rooms, over-
crowding, excessive rents, and other deplorable
manifestations of the social life of modem cities
Church of the Blessed Sacrament
Charles R. Greco, Architect
Thorndike School
Charles R. Greco. Archilecl
THE OUTLOOK
Some of the evils are peculiar to a single com-
mtuiity, but most of them sooner or later are
found in all cities. The chief underlying fact
is that in nearly every case they are due to
unnecessary neglect. There is usually a failure
on the part of the municipality and of the citi-
zens to recognize evil tendencies in their early
stages. There is often an unwarranted feeling
of confidence that all is right when they see
little that is going wrong, or a false civic pride
which deludes itself into thinking that every-
domestic life. When a man has a home of
his own he has every incentive to be thrifty,
to take his part in the duties of citizenship, and
to be a real sharer in the obligations and the
privileges of the community in which he lives.
Very few such separate houses are now being
built in Cambridge. The apartment house,
the "three-decker," the two-family house are
taking the place of dwellings designed for the
use of a single family.
There can be no question about the fact that
MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE LOOKING NORTH FROM WATERHOUSE STREET
thing must be satisfactory. This kind of ig-
norance is played upon by the greed of those
persons who for the sake of larger profits on
their investments are willing to sacrifice the
health and welfare of helpless people.
The only really satisfactory way of living is
in separate houses, each house occupied by a
single family with a small bit of land attached,
and always with a reasonable privacy and a
sense of individuahty and opportunity for real
Cambridge is inevitably to become a city of
growing density of population. The area is
small, and the situation at the center of the
metropolitan district has many and manifest
advantages. There are already 105,000 people
living on an area of only six and a half square
miles. This means an average density of 25 . 1
persons to an acre — a density greater than that
of almost any city in the country and exceeding
that of Boston. More and more people every-
152
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
where live in cities because they prefer city life.
They find there the social and industrial rela-
tionships which they cannot find in the country
districts. There are the opportunities for
employment and for amusement. The shops,
the theaters, the Hghted streets, the saloons,
the churches, the different lodges and societies
all have their attractions. There is but Httle
vacant land now left in Cambridge and in some
parts of the city there is already dangerous
congestion. As the population multipHes, the
serious Tiousing evils are likely to develop and
none need be tolerated. Where they exist
today they are a reflection upon the intelHgence
and right-mindedness of the coihmunity. The
city needs to profit by the mistakes of others,
to study perilous tendencies, to be vigilant in
forestalling e\nls, to act in time to keep the
city a city of homes and not permit it to become
merely a city of tenements.
It should go without saying that urban beauty
requires the burying of wires, the suppression
LONGFELLOW PARK
city must see to it that the buildings which
are erected for dwelling purposes are suitable
for people to live in. Cambridge must prevent
the growth of slums and forbid the creation
of types of buildings which will later become
a menace to the community. It must see to
it that the dwellings of the poor are maintained
in a sanitarj' condition, are kept in repair, and
are provided with the necessities of decent
Hving. If there has been neglect and careless-
ness in the past, the older buildings must be
renovated and made fit for human habitation.
If Cambridge is aUve to a growing danger, no
of smoke, and the control of outdoor advertising.
The time has gone by when the industrial pre-
eminence of a city was crudely judged by the
volumes of smoke pouring from the factory
chimneys, the glaring prominence of the bill-
boards and signs, and the network of overhead
wires that shaded the streets. These are now
recognized as nuisances that no progressive
city will tolerate. It is more difficult, but
equally necessary, to control building opera-
tions, to limit the height of buildings, to require
that the designs of all public buildings receive
the approval of artists, and to secure in the
THE OUTLOOK
appearance of the structures on any given block
or street a reasonable degree of harmony. Most
of the chief European cities have adopted ex-
plicit regulations in regard to these matters,
and their example deserves to be more generally
followed in America.
The civic spirit of Cambridge has always
been reUable. There is a keen and general
interest in public affairs. The activities of
the government are closely followed, and good
citizenship is highly prized. If the public
spirit of the community will provide the im-
provements which the new times demand and
All times were modem in the time of them.
And this no more than others. Do thy part
Here in the living day, as did the great
Who made old days immortal! So shall men.
Gazing back to this far-looming hour.
Say : ' Then the time when men were truly men :
Though wars grew less, their spirits met the
test
Of new conditions; conquering civic wrong:
Saving the state anew by virtuous lives;
Guarding their country's honor as their own,
And their own as their country's and their
sons' ;
COOPER-AUSTIN HOUSE
BUILT IN 1557
guard against the perils which new conditions
have evolved, the future of the city will be
worthy of its honorable past. It will justify
the prophecy of Richard Watson Gilder's
verses:
"He speaks not well who doth his time deplore.
Naming it new and little and obscure.
Ignoble and unfit for lofty deeds.
Defying leagued fraud with single truth ;
Not fearing loss and daring to be pxire.
When error through the land raged like a pest
They calmed the madness caught from mind to
mind
By wisdom drawn from eld, and counsel sane;
And as the martyrs of the ancient world
Gave death for man, so nobly gave they life;
Those the great days, and that the heroic age."
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
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The Anderson Bridge
The Anderson Bridge extends across the
Charles River and connects Boylston Street
in Cambridge with North Harvard Street in
Boston, gi\ing adequate accommodation for
the traffic between Har\ard Square and the
Stadium. It is the gift of Larz Anderson,
a graduate of Harvard in the Class of 1888,
as a memorial of his father, Nicholas Long-
worth Anderson. One of the conditions of
the gift is that the inscription which is re-
produced under the illustration of the Bridge
shall be maintained in perpetuity by the city
within whose boundary it occurs.
The Bridge, built of brick and concrete,
corresponds in construction with the fence
around Soldiers Field and also with the Weld
Boat House, the latter a gift of the late George
W. Weld (Harvard '60), the uncle of Mrs.
Larz Anderson. The use of brick in the
Bridge likewise carries out the Georgian
spirit of the University buildings. The
foundation is for the most part of concrete;
but granite has been used for the base course
where the structure comes in contact with
the water and the ground. The concrete
construction above the foundation is rein-
forced with steel.
The Bridge itself consists of three arches.
The one in the middle is 76 feet wide, and
measures 16 feet at its highest point. Each
of the two flanking arches has a span of 65
feet, with a maximum height of 14 feet. The
arches, piers, abutments and balustrades
have carefully designed embellishments of
brick-work. The side-walks are built of
granolithic separated by strips of granite;
the road-bed is made of wooden-block paving.
The side-walks are raised very little above
the level of the road-bed, so that the whole
width of the Bridge may be used by foot
passengers whenever occasion requires. In-
cluding the approaches, the Bridge is 440 feet
long; and at the extreme end, with the ten-
foot side-walk, 60 feet wide. A monumental
staircase on the Cambridge side gives access
to the parkway.
Nicholas Longworth Anderson was born
in Cincinnati, Ohio, April 22, 1838, the son
of Larz Anderson, and a nephew of General
Robert Anderson, He was graduated at
Harvard College in 1858, after which he spent
NICHOLAS LONGWORTH ANDERSON
about two years in study at the German
universities. Returning to America in 1860,
he began the study of law; but on the break-
ing out of the Ci\il War he enlisted as a
private. On April 19, 1861, he was com-
missioned lieutenant and adjutant of the
6th Ohio Volunteers; on June 12, following
he was made lieutenant-colonel, and in August
of the succeeding year, colonel. He was
with the Regiment in the West Virginia
campaign, and shared in all the marches and
long battles of General Buell, Rosecrans,
and Thomas, being wounded at Shiloh, and
again at Stone Ri\er and Chickamauga. On
March 13, 1865, he was brevetted brigadier-
general for gallant conduct at Stone River,
and major-general for distinguished gallantry
at Chickamauga. The war over, he completed
his preparation for the bar, to which he was
duly admitted at Cincinnati. Subsequently
he removed to Washington. His death oc-
curred at Lucerne, Switzerland, Sept. 18, 1892.
BIOGRAPHIES
Rev. EDWARD ABBOTT, D.D.
Abbott, Edward, Rev. D.D., for nearly
thirty years associated with St. James Episcopal
Chitrch, as rector and rector emeritus, was bom
in Farmington, Me., July 15, 1841. He was
the youngest son of Jacob and Harriet Vaughan
Rev. EDWARD ABBOTT, D.D.
Abbott. He was prepared for college at the
Farmington Academy and was graduated from
New York University in 1860; this institution,
moreover, bestowed upon him his doctor's
degree in 1890. He was educated in theology
at the Andover Theological Seminary and was
ordained as Congregational minister in 1863.
Prior to this, however, he spent some months
with the Army of the Potomac, diiring the Civil
War, in the service of the United States Sani-
tary Commission. Dr. Abbott was twice mar-
ried. His first wife was Clara Davis, by whom
he had one son and two daughters. Of these
children, Mrs. Eleanor Hallowell (Abbott)
Cobum of Lowell alone survives. Mrs. Cobum
is a writer of short stories under her maiden
name. In 1883 he married Katherine Kelley
Dunning. Dr. Abbott organized the Steams
Chapel Society, as a Congregationalist, which
has since become the Pilgrim Church in Cam-
bridgeport. He retired from his duties there
in 1869 to become associate editor of the Con-
gregationalist; from 1877 to 1888, he was editor
of the Literary World, serving in the same
capacity again from 1895 to 1903. During his
early Cambridge experience, he was a member
of the School Board, and was chaplain of the
State Senate. In the seventies, through a
gradual change in his religious views. Dr. Abbott
was confirmed in the Protestant faith and was
ordained deacon by Bishop Paddock, January,
1879. In the following year, on the twentieth
of January, he was made priest, and became
rector of St. James Parish. Here was Dr.
Abbott's life work.
When he began his rectorship, there was only
the Greenleaf Chapel in Beech Street. In 1884
a commodious parish house was erected. It
is believed to be one of the first, if not the first,
ever built for an Episcopal Church. In 1885,
under Dr. Abbott's supervision, the parish
purchased the comer lot, and in 1889, the new
chvuch was built. Devoted as he was to his
parish duties. Dr. Abbott nevertheless was the
author of a number of books and stories among
which are the following: "A Paragraph History
of the American Revolution"; "Revolutionary
Times " ; " History of Cambridge " ; " Memoir of
Jacob Abbott"; "Phillips Brooks Memorial,"
1900; "The Bells Own Story," 1901; "Mrs.
James Greenleaf," 1902; "John Svimmerfield
Lindsay, D.D."; "Memorial Sermon," 1904.
His more important magazine articles were:
"Lighthouses"; "The Galaxy," 1869; "The
Parkman Murder," 1875; "Wellesley College,"
Harper's Magazine, 1876; "The Androscoggin
Lakes," Harper's Magazine. 1877; and "Grand
156
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Manan and Quoddy Bay," Harper's Magazine,
1878.
In public life, Dr. Abbott filled numerous
posts, such as "Visitor" to Wellesley College,
Trustee of the Society for the Relief of Widows
and Orphans of Clergymen; President of Asso-
ciated Charities of Cambridge; President of
Cambridge Branch of the Indian Rights Asso-
ciation; Member of the Missionary Council
of the General Church; Member of Provisional
Committee on Church Work in Mexico; Presi-
dent of the Indian Industrial League ; President
of the Cambridge City Mission.
Dr. Abbott spent a part of his early life in
Cambridge in a house since burned, which he
built in Channing Street. It was the first
dwelling in that now well occupied thorough-
fare; and because from its windows he could
see across the meadows to the Charles River,
he gave it the name "Long Look House." In
later life he lived at 11 Dana Street, the home
still occupied by his widow. The services of
Dr. Abbott as pastor were sought from time to
time by a number of parishes away from Cam-
bridge. Among such calls may be mentioned
that to be rector of Christ Church, Detroit,
Mich., in 1885 ; the rectorship of Trinity Chtirch,
Columbus, 0., in 1888; and the superintendency
of the Boston City Mission, in the same year;
in 1889, Dr. Abbott was elected by the General
Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church
to be missionary bishop of Japan. All these
calls were notable, and suggested the type of
man to whom they were extended ; in particular,
the election to Japan opened a field of activity
much to Dr. Abbott's liking; but he felt that
his place was with his parish in Cambridge, and
after careful consideration he declined the honor.
Dr. Abbott resigned as rector of St. James
Parish in June, 1905, but his resignation did
not take effect until July 1, 1906, and even then
was accepted with great reluctance by the
Vestry.
His death occurred on April 5, 1908, but his
memory is still green. Folio-wing a largely
attended funeral in St. James Chiirch on April 7,
the burial service was held in Brunswick, Me.,
on April 8. His resting-place is within sight
of the campus of Bowdoin College and of the
Library building which contains his Memorial,
the Abbott Room. In Brunswick, members
of his family had resided, and from Bowdoin,
many of his ancestors had been graduated. In
1905, Dr. Abbott began the preparation of a
history of St. James's from careful records which
he had kept through many years. The manu-
script was completed some time before his death
and was published by the Vestry in 1909, under
the title, "St. James Parish, Cambridge; Forty
Years of Parish History." The picture of
Cambridge as Dr. Abbott knew it — now nearly
fifty years ago — is given briefly, but interest-
ingly; and in all her growth and useful activities,
Cambridge had no warmer friend than Dr.
Edward Abbott.
WILLIAM ROBERT ADAMS
Adams, William Robert, dry-goods
merchant of East Cambridge for forty years,
was bom at Derry, N.H., in 1839, and at the
age of fifteen years he came to Cambridge,
where he resided up to the time of his death,
which occurred February 6, 1910.
He was a veteran of the Civil War, having
entered the army at the age of twenty-three
years. He served in Company E of the 44th
Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers for two
years, being honorably discharged with the
rank of corporal. In 1864 he re-enlisted for
three months, at the end of which time he
was honorably discharged and returned to
his home in East Cambridge.
In 1870 he opened a dry goods store on
Cambridge Street, East Cambridge. He
changed his location after a few years, and
located at 258 Cambridge Street, where he
was located for thirty years. Altogether he
was in business on that street for forty years,
which was up to the time of his death.
He was prominent in Post 57, G.A.R., and
for several years, until his death, served as
chaplain and patriotic instructor. He had
several times refused to become its commander.
At the dedication of the Soldiers and Sailors
Monument on the Boston Common, he took a
very prominent part in the exercises. He
was a member of the Cambridge Veteran Fire-
men's Association, of Lechmere Council, Royal
Arcanum, and of the Knights of Honor, of
which he was chaplain. He was also a director
of the East Cambridge Savings Bank.
BIOGRAPHIES
157
At the Trinity Methodist church, of which
he was a member, he was one of the leaders.
He had been treasurer of the church for over
twenty years, and was also class leader and a
teacher in the Sunday school.
Mr. Adams was a very benevolent and genial
man, and the residents of East Cambridge,
WILLIAM ROBERT ADAMS
where he was identified with the people's
interests, will miss him, particularly the poor
people of old Ward Three whom he always
befriended.
ALEXANDER AGASSIZ
Agassiz, Alexander, the son of Louis
Agassiz, was bom at Neuchatel, Switzerland,
December 17, 1835, his mother being Cecile
Braun, a sister of Alexander Braun, Louis
Agassiz's college friend. She was distinguished
in many ways, but especially by her skill in
drawing. Her father had already become known
in the scientific world by his embryological
investigations, and Humboldt advised him to
visit America, which he did in 1846 — alone,
because his circumstances were limited and the
venture doubtful. He was, however, at once
invited to deliver a course of lectures on "Com-
parative Embryology," at the Lowell Institute,
and soon saw that the opportunities he sought
werej,'to be found here, and he remained. In
1847jhis wife died, and Alexander, a boy of
eleven years, came to Cambridge to live with
his father. Later his father married Miss
Elizabeth Cary, and this riveted the bonds
which bound the son to Cambridge, where he
for nearly half a century resided.
Alexander prepared for Harvard, and gradu-
ated in the class of 1855. Even then it was not
made clear that he had his father's vocation,
though he entered the Lawrence Scientific
School for a course of engineering and chemistry,
and got his B.S. in 1857. Meanwhile he assisted
his parents in the girl's school which Mrs.
Agassiz opened at the corner of Quincy Street
and Broadway, for the times were hard and
Professor Agassiz's investigations were costly
and his professional income limited. After
an extra two years' course in chemistry, Alex-
ander Agassiz joined the Coast Survey, the great
chief of which. Professor Bache, was one of his
father's warmest friends. He was assigned to
duty on the California coast, and found time
to collect specimens for the Cambridge Museum
in mines on the shore.
He spent the greater part of the winter of
1859-1860 at Panama and Acapuleo, collecting
specimens for the Museum of Comparative
Zoology at Cambridge. The next spring he
resumed his work at San Francisco. After
examining the mines in the interior of Cali-
fornia in July, 1860, he returned to Cambridge,
where he was appointed agent of the museimi.
He then took the full course in the zoological
and geological departments of the LawTence
Scientific School. Previous to the absence of
his father in Brazil in 1865, he had been ap-
pointed assistant in zoology at the museimi, of
which he was in full charge at that time. In
1865, he also engaged in coal mining in Pennsyl-
vania, additional to his work at home in Massa-
chusetts.
In 1866 he was in the Lake Superior region
as a mining expert. He was made treasurer
of the Calvimet, and the next year general super-
intendent of both the Calumet and Hecla mines.
He put in an immense amount of work for their
development. People are accustomed to think
of mining successes as windfalls, and certainly
those who had a cue to go into the stock of the
158
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
discredited "coppers" and bought the shares for
the price of waste paper had great luck, but it
took Mr. Agassiz fifteen hours a day for months
and months to make the properties what they
are. Once, after a long and irrepressible fire
in the mines had raged for months, he had the
happy thought of extinguishing it by blowing
in carbonic acid gas. He was fertile in his ex-
pedients, scientific in planning, practical inexe-
cution, and the millions that have enriched
Boston, enlarged her charities and spread hap-
piness all about the land were the direct gift
of this man's wisdom and energy.
He afterwards went abroad to examine the
museimis of the leading countries of Europe.
When in 1870 he retximed to Cambridge he was
made assistant curator of the museum. His
father died in 1874, and Alexander succeeded
him as curator. In that year he was also elected
by the Alumni as one of the overseers of Har-
vard. Foiu- years subsequently he was chosen
by the corporation one of its fellows. He re-
signed the honor in 1885, on account of bad
health. Mr. Agassiz retained his connection
with the museum, which he enriched by liberal
gifts, and was director of the University Museimi
at the time of his death. It is stated that in all
he gave more than half a million dollars to
Harvard University.
Mr. Anderson, the tobacconist, gave Profes-
sor Agassiz an island in the Elizabeth group—
Penikese — for a simimer school, and Alexander
Agassiz had charge of it in 1873. Through lack
of funds for its maintenance, the school was
abandoned.
Alexander Agassiz is next foimd exploring the
west coast of South America — Peru, Chili and
Lake Titicaca — sending home tons of specimens
to the Peabody Museum; and in England assist-
ing Sir Wyville Thompson to aixange the treas-
ures brought by the Challenger, and securing
specimens for his own musetun. Some results
of his work in various parts of South America
in 1875 are seen in the collection of Peruvian
antiquities at the Peabody Museum.
Agassiz spent the winters from 1876 to 1881
in deep-sea dredging, the steamer Blake being
placed at his disposal by the Coast Survey.
Alexander Agassiz was for many years presi-
dent of the Calimiet & Hecla Mining Company.
The Academic des Sciences, Paris, awarded
him a prize, and Cambridge University the
degree of LL.D. In 1910 he received the Vic-
toria Research Medal. He was a member of
many scientific organizations in America and
abroad, and the author of numerous works on
marine zoology.
He was married in 1860 to Miss Anna Russell.
His three sons are Maximilian, George R. and
Rodolphe L. Agassiz.
Alexander Agassiz died on March 27, 1910.
LOUIS AGASSIZ
Agassiz, Louis (1807-1873), a Swiss-Ameri-
can naturalist, especially distinguished in ich-
/Si^^^^
LOUIS AGASSIZ
thyology and the study of glaciers, was bom at
Motier in the canton of Fribourg. He became
in 1832 a professor at Neuchatel. In 1839 he
began his never-completed Historie Naturelle des
Poissons d'Eau Douce de V Europe Centrale, and
published between 1833 and 1843 the five vol-
umes of text (with five more of plates) of his
Recherches sur les Poissons Fossiles. Between
1839 and 1845 he made (chiefly on the Unteraar
Glacier in the Bernese Oberland) some of the
earliest recorded observations on the motion
of glaciers. Narrative accounts of their jour-
neys were published by Desor in his two series
of Excursimts et Sejours sur les Glaciers (1844-
1845); and Agassiz embodied his scientific
observations in his Ettides sur les Glaciers (1840)
BIOGRAPHIES
159
and his Nouvelle Etudes (1847). His theory
of glacier motion (dilation of water frozen in
the crevasses) soon gave way, however, to that
formtdated by Forbes (gravitation plus plas-
ticity). In 1847 Agassiz accepted the newly-
founded professorship of natural history in
the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard
University, a post which he held till his death,
having in 1862 become a citizen of the United
States. He made many scientific journeys in
America (particularly one to Brazil in 1865),
and in 1858 founded at Harvard the Museum
of Comparative Zoology, which is especially
rich in fishes. He assailed with great earnest-
ness Darwin's evolutionary theory, which to
the end he refused to accept. Agassiz's memory
is preserved in the Alps by the Agassizhorn
(12,980 feet), in the Bernese Oberland; in
Arizona by a peak 10,000 feet, near the Grand
Canon of the Colorado; in Utah by a peak in
the Uintah range; and in North Dakota, Min-
nesota and Manitoba by the basin termed Lake
Agassiz.
Besides the works mentioned, his publications
include Contributions to the Natural History of
the United States (foiur volumes) ; The Structure
of Animal Life (1874); A Journey to Brazil
(1868) . See his wife's Life and Correspondence of
Agassiz (1886) and Marcou's Life, Letters and
Works of Agassiz (1896).
employing more than five hundred persons and
one hundred sewing machines in the manu-
factvire of ladies' garments. In January, 1868,
Mr. Allen, having reHnquished the dry-goods
trade, returned to Boston and estabhshed the
Oriental Tea Company on Court St. In July,
1910, after transferring his interest in this
business to his son and other junior partners, Mr.
Allen retired altogether from active business life.
While in Portsmouth, Mr. Allen was married
to Miss Annie G. Scribner, of Gorham, Me.,
FRANK AUGUSTUS ALLEN
Allen, Frank Augustus, son of Horace O.
and Elizabeth (Derby) AUen, was bom in
Sanford, York County, Me., January 29, 1835.
He received his education in the village schools
of his native town and in the Academy at Alfred,
Me. His father died when he was two years
old, and at the age of seventeen years he left
home and worked as a bobbin-boy in the cotton
mills in Biddeford. From the age of eighteen
to twenty-one he was a clerk in a dry-goods
store; and in the spring of 1856, when he was
twenty-one years old, he began the dry-goods
business on his own account, at Saccarappa,
Me. A year later he removed to Portsmouth,
N.H., continuing in the same business, and three
years after he sold out his retail business in
Portsmouth, and entered into the wholesale
dry-goods business in Boston. In 1863 he
removed his business to New York, at one time
FRANK AUGUSTUS ALLEN
who died in 1865, leaving two children, Annie E.
and Herbert M. In 1866 he married Elizabeth
M. Scribner. Mr. Allen came to Cambridge
in April, 1871. He served in the Common
Cotmcil in 1876 and 1877, the latter year as
president of that board. He was Mayor of
the city in 1877, and a member of the Board of
Sinking Fund Commissioners from January,
1878, until January, 1912, and chairman of the
Board dvuing the last ten years of this period of
thirty-four years' service. Also a member of the
Water Board from July, 1894, until June, 1899.
Mr. Allen is a member of the Prospect Street
Congregational Chtirch, and a No-license Re-
pubHcan in politics. He has always been promi-
nent in all plans for the improvement and de-
velopment of Cambridge.
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
OSCAR FAYETTE ALLEN happy disposition, and never had an enemy.
Allen, Oscar Fayette, son of Harrj' and He was a Universalist; a Whig in politics, a
Jane (Whitman) Allen, was bom at Pomfret, Free Boiler, and later a Republican. He
Vt., Januar\' 20, 1S43. His father was a trained in the early militia. Jane (Whitman)
OSCAR FAYETTE ALLEN
farmer, a native of Pomfret, Vt., bom May 13,
1814; died May 31, 1901, and was engaged in
the farming business all of his life. He was
a man of remarkable perseverance, had a ver}'
Allen, mother of Oscar Fayette Allen, was bom
in Pomfret, Vt., April 23, 1919, and died June 6,
1S88. Her father, William, was a farmer and
served in the Revolution.
BIOGRAPHIES
Oscar Fayette Allen received his education
in the common schools and in the Green
Mountain Institute at Woodstock, Vt., now
the Green Mountain Perkins Academy. When
he was nineteen years old he began to teach
in his own district school, the first term. The
second term he taught in the (Chedel) district,
near his home, and the third term at the Broad
Brook district in Royalton. He then taught
the No. 9 district at Sharon, and at East Bar-
nard, Vt., and the fifth term again in his own
district. In the fall* of 1867 he removed to
Wauconda, 111., where he taught a year in the
primary and high schools. He then removed
to Cameron, Mo., and taught in the public and
private schools for eight years. Here he
became identified with the Congregational
church and sang in the choir, and was superin-
tendent of the Sunday school. In 1876 he
came to Boston, and later accepted a position
as salesman in Dodge's Ninety-Nine Cent Store
on Hanover Street. After two years with that
establishment he entered the Cambridge Sav-
ings Bank, where for seven years he worked
as clerk and bookkeeper, and also served as
paying teller. In 1884 he was elected treasurer
of the institution, which position he now holds.
He is also trustee and clerk of the corporation.
Mr. Allen resides at 39 Martin Street,
in a beautiful home which he built in 1900.
He attends the Unitarian church, which was
the first church in Cambridge, being founded
in 1633. He is a Republican in politics. He
is a life member of Mizpah Lodge of Masons
at Cambridge, joining May 13, 1889. He
served as its Worshipful Master in 1900 and
1901, and also as auditor of the Grand Lodge
of Masons of Massachusetts since 1901. He is
a member of Cambridge Royal Arch Chapter
of Masons, since November 13, 1891, and is
also a life member of this body. He received
his degrees of knighthood in the Boston Com-
mandery of Knights Templars in Boston,
April 15, 1903, and served as its treasurer in
1906 and 1907, although he has now resigned.
He is a member of Signet Chapter, No. 22, of
the order of the Eastern Star.
Mr. Allen is a charter member of the Cam-
bridge Historical Society, which was chartered
in 1905, and was treasurer of this society in
1905, 1906 and 1907; now resigned. He is a
member of the Vermont Association of Boston,
and of the Massachusetts Savings Bank Treas-
urers' Club, of which he was secretary four
years, and a member of the Citizens' First
Volunteers Association of Cambridge, Mass.
This association annually banquets the first
company of volunteers that enlisted in the
Civil War, on April 17, 1861. He served in
the Vermont state militia when a young man.
He married October 20, 1865, Flora Viola
Allen, bom April 2, 1844, daughter of Roswell
Jr. and Mary (Snow) Allen of Pomfret, Vt.
Her father was a farmer. They have no
children.
JAMES BARR AMES
Ames, James Barr, was bom in Boston.
June 22, 1846; died January 8, 1910. He got
his early education in the grammar schools of
Medford and Boston and in the Boston Latin
School. He received his degree of bachelor of
arts at Harvard in the class of 1868, and entered
the Harvard Law School, receiving the LL.D.
degree in 1872. He won his A.M. degree in
the same year. His honorary degrees were
doctor of laws from New York University in
1898, University of Wisconsin, 1898, University
of Pennsylvania, 1900, Northwestem (111.),
1903, and Williams, 1904.
In 1868-1869, instead of going directly from
college to the law school, he taught in the private
school of Epes S. Dixwell, in Boston. And, as
it turned out, teaching was to be his life work,
and was to be so well done as to place Professor
Ames among the very first of American educa-
tors. He traveled in Europe for a year in 1869-
1870.
While in the law school he was first a tutor
in French and German in Harvard College,
1871-1872, and the following year an instractor
in history. He was admitted to the bar of
Massachusetts in 1873.
He never practised, for, in the fall of 1873, he
became assistant professor of law at the Harvard
Law School. He became professor of law in
1877, and two years later was given the Bussey
chair of law, April 9, 1879. He succeeded Pro-
fessor Langdell as dean of the law school, June
18, 1895, and on January 26, 1904, he was trans-
ferred from the Bussey professorship to the
Dane professorship.
162
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Professor Ames developed the "Harvard"
system, or "case" system, of teaching law,
which is the best recognized modem method.
A constant contributor to law reviews, he
also wrote a nimiber of case complications
which rank high among law text books. His
essays on the history of the common law, how-
ever, probably gained for him the most popular
fame.
In 1880, he married Miss Sarah Russell,
of Boston. They had two sons, Robert Russell
Ames and Richard Ames.
WALTER IRVING BADGER
Badger, Walter Irving, corporation
attorney and lawyer, was bom in Boston,
Mass., January 15, 1859. His father, Erastus
W.ALTER IRVING BADGER
Beethoven Badger, was a son of Daniel B. and
Anne (Clarke) Badger, and a descendant from
Giles Badger, who came from England to
Portsmouth, N.H., about 1750. Walter Irving
Badger was a vigorous, athletic child and
youth, brought up in both the city and country
and fond of all kinds of sport. He played
four years on the Yale University football
team and three years on the Varsity nine, being
captain of the latter. After passing through
the Grammar and English High School in
Boston, he was fitted for college at Adams
Academy, and matriculated at Yale University
in 1878, graduating A.B. with the class of 1882.
He became a clerk in the law office of Solomon
Lincoln in 1882, and, while serving as a law
clerk he took the regular course in the law
school of Boston University, graduating LL.B.
Cum Laude, 1885.
His practice has included such clients as
the Boston & Maine Railroad: the Travelers'
Insurance Company; Henry H. Rogers, of
New York City; the Boston Ice Company;
the Boston Gaslight Company; the Cudahy
Packing Company; the United States Rubber
Shoe Company; the Jones and Laughlin Steel
Company, of Pittsburg, Pa; the United States
Express Company, etc. He was attorney for
the gas company in the celebrated trial of the
cases growing out of the subway explosion of
March 4, 1897, and also for Mr. H. H. Rogers,
in the litigation growing out of the gas war in
Boston. He was married October 6, 1887,
to Elizabeth Hand, daughter of Daniel and
Frances (Ansley) Wilcox, of New Haven, Conn.,
and the two children bom of this marriage are
Walter Irving Badger, Jr., and Grace Ansley
Badger. Mr. Badger's political affiliation is
with the Republican part}'; he has never
changed his allegiance. He is a member of
the Baptist denomination. His club member-
ship includes the University of Boston, the
Exchange, the New Algonquin, the Curtis,
the Country Club of Brookline, the University
of New York, the Yale of New York, the East-
ern Yacht and the Boston Yacht.
HOLLIS RUSSELL BAILEY
Bailey, Hollis Russell, law^-er and
chairman of the board of bar examiners of
Massachusetts, was bom February 24, 1852,
in that part of Andover which in 1855 became
the town of North Andover. His ancestry
from James Bailey, who was bom in England
and settled in Rowley about 1640, is as follows:
James, bom (about) 1612, married Lydia;
John Bailey, bom 1642, married Mary Mighill;
James Bailey, bom 1680, married Hannah
BIOGRAPHIES
163
Wood; Samuel Bailey, bom 1705, married
Mary Rolf; Samuel Bailey, bom 1728, married
Hannah Kittredge; James Bailey, born 1757,
married Lucy Brown; Otis Bailey, born 1806,
married Lucinda Alden. John Bailey of the
second generation perished in 1690 in the
expedition against Quebec under General
Phipps, and Samuel Bailey, Jr., of the fifth
generation fell at Bunker Hill.
Hollis R. Bailey's father, Otis Bailey, lived
in the old Governor Bradstreet house, once
HOI.LIS RUSSELL BAILEY
the home of Anne Bradstreet, the first female
poet of America. He was a farmer and
butcher, a deacon in the Unitarian church,
held several town offices and was a man of
integrity, fmgality and public spirit. He
married Lucinda Alden, daughter of Alden
and Lucinda (Briggs) Loring, of Duxbury,
Mass., and a descendant of Thomas Loring,
of Axminster, England, who came to Hingham,
about 1635, and of John Alden, who came over
in the Mayflower in 1620. Thus Mr. Bailey
on his mother's side inherits the toleration of
the Pilgrim Fathers; on his father's side, the
sternness of the Puritans of the Bay Colony.
Hollis Russell Bailey was a strong and active
child, fond of out-door life, including fishing
and hunting, and from his earliest years was
constantly engaged on the farm in strenuous
manual labor when not in school. He claims
that this mode of life had the effect to make
him strong, self-reliant, industrious and per-
sistent. His mother's influence in these early
days also made for truth, sobriety and willing-
ness to work.
His father's death, in 1866, increased the
duties and responsibilities of the boy, and led
him to form habits of self-reliance. His
models and ideas of great men were derived
from the reading of biographies and auto-
biographies. He attended the Punchard Free
School, Andover, and the Johnson High School,
North Andover. Until 1870 the young man
did not have a collegiate education in view,
but at that date the advice of Dr. Samuel
Taylor, the principal of Phillips Andover
Academy, led him to that decision; and it was
the Academy where he fitted for college, gradu-
ating in 1873, fourth in his class. At the
commencement he delivered a Latin oration.
He received honors in Latin and Greek on his
entrance examinations to Harvard.
He graduated from Harvard in 1877, stand-
ing eighth in his class. He was elected a
member of the Phi Beta Kappa as one of the
first eight, in his junior year at the Phi Beta
Kappa exercises, and was second marshal
in 1877. He did a good deal of tutoring
throughout his college course and served as
proctor. During his senior year, in addition
to his regular work, he took two courses in
the Law School and passed the examinations.
He entered the Harvard Law School one year
in advance, in October, 1877, and (the course
then being two years) obtained his degree of
LL.B.inJune, 1878. A further course of one
year in the Law School gave him the degree
of A.M. in 1879. He also studied law with
Hyde, Dickinson and Howe. Speaking of his
choice of a profession, he says : " I had no strong
bent for the law. I could have pursued medi-
cine or engineering with equal pleasure. The
influence of my oldest sister. Miss Sarah Loring
Bailey, largely determined my choice and
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
first roused my ambition to seek success in
the legal profession. Outside my own family,
my college associates were probably the most
helpful factors in stimulating and shaping
my life."
He was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar
in 1880, and began a general practice through-
out New England, with an office in Boston
at No. 30 Court Street. He served for a short
time as private secretary to Chief Justice
Horace Gray of the Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court. He was married February 12,
1885, to Mary Persis, daughter of the Hon.
Charles H. and Sarah A. (Oilman) Bell, of
Exeter, N.H. Her father was at one time
governor of New Hampshire and United States
Senator. One child was bom of this marriage,
Gladys Loring Bailey. They lived in Boston
up to 1890, when they removed to Cambridge.
He served as chairman of the City Committee
of the Non-Partisan Municipal Party of Cam-
bridge for one year, 1902; is conveyancer for
the Cambridge Savings Bank; clerk of the
First Church in Cambridge (Unitarian) ; in
1900, became a member of the board of bar
examiners of Massachusetts, and in 1903,
became chairman of the board. He was
elected to membership in the Cambridge Club,
and became its president. He is a member
of the Colonial Club of Cambridge, where he
served for a time as a member of the committee
on admission; of the American Free Trade
League; the Bailey-Bayley Family Associa-
tion, of which he was president, and is now
treasurer; the Bostonian Society, and the
American Bar Association. He left the Repub-
lican party when James G. Blaine was nomi-
nated for president in 1882, and since that
time has acted with the Democratic party.
He has written articles for the Harvard Law
Review, and is the author of "Attorneys and
their Admission to the Bar of Massachusetts."
He assisted in the compilation and pubhcation
of a volume of the Bailey genealog>'.
He received his early education at the primary
and grammar schools of this city, and prepared
for college at the Cambridge Latin School. He
matriculated at Harvard with the class of 1898,
but, completing the course in three years, grad-
uated at the age of seventeen, with the class of
1897. He next studied civil engineering at
the Lawrence Scientific School, received his
degree of A.M. in 1898, and entered Harvard
Law School, whence he was graduated in 1901.
Ha\ang been admitted to the Bar in January
HUGH BANCROFT
Bancroft, Hugh, lawyer and chairman of
the Directors of Port of Boston, was bom at
Cambridge, on September 13, 1879, being the son
of WilHam Amos and Mary (Shaw) Bancroft.
HUGH BAXCROFT
of that year, he now became a member of the
firm of Stone, Dallinger & Bancroft. His con-
nection with it lasted till 1907. He had, in
the meantime, been assistant district attorney
of Middlesex County from 1902 to 1906. In 1907
he was district attomej^ for the same County.
At one time General Bancroft was among the
most active trial law^^ers in the state, but in
1909 he gave up court practice to take the posi-
tion of treasurer of the Boston News Bureau.
He still maintains his office practice, however.
He is a director of the News Bureau and the
Massachusetts Fire and Marine Insurance Co.,
and also of the Central Trust Co. of this city.
He served in the militia of Massachusetts
BIOGRAPHIES
165
from 1894 to 1909, when he was retired with
the rank of major-general. He has been judge
advocate general of Massachusetts. During
the Spanish war he held a commission in the
United States service as adjutant of the 5th
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.
He married Mary A. Cogan on June 25, 1902.
Her death occurred on October 29, 1903. He
married his second wife, Jane W. Waldron, on
January 15, 1907.
He is a Congregationalist. He is a member
of the following organizations: the Chamber of
Commerce, the Massachusetts Bar Association,
the Union, the Union Boat, Colonial, Harvard
(New York), and St. Botolph Clubs.
WILLIAM AMOS BANCROFT
Bancroft, William Amos, president of the
Boston Elevated Railway Company, son of
Charles B. Bancroft, was bom at Groton, Mass.,
on April 26, 1855. He received his school edu-
cation partly (1867-1872) in the Lawrence
Academy, Groton, partly (1873-1874) in Phil-
lips Exeter Academy. He then entered Harvard
University, from which he graduated in 1878.
After studying at the Harvard Law School
(1879-1881), he was admitted to the Suffolk
Bar in 1881. In 1882 he was elected to the
Cambridge Common Council. He sat in the
Legislature from 1883 to 1885. He served the
city as alderman in 1891 and 1892, and as mayor
from 1893 to 1896. General Bancroft was
elected overseer of Harvard in 1893, and at the
expiration of his first term in 1899 was re-elected
for six years more. Having enlisted in the
Massachusetts Volunteer MiHtia in 1875, he
reached the rank of major-general after serving
in the various grades. At the time of the
Spanish War he was appointed brigadier-general
of United States Volunteers. He was connected
with the Boston Elevated Railway Company
from 1885 to 1890. In March, 1896, he renewed
his connection with this company, and has been
president of it since October, 1899. General
Bancroft is a director in the United States,
Piuitan and Chelsea Trust Companies; a
trustee of the Norwich University, Vermont;
Lawrence Academy, Groton, Mass.; and Phil-
lips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire. He
presided at the Massachusetts State Republican
Convention in 1893, and at the 120th anniver-
sary of Phillips Exeter Academy in 1903; he
was chief marshal of the Harvard Alumni in
1903, and grand marshal of the Veterans Coltunn
in the Hooker Moniunent Parade the same year.
He is president of the Mayors' Club of Massa-
chusetts, Cambridge Club and New England
WILLIAM AMOS BANCROFT
Alumni of Phillips Exeter Academy; a member
of the Cincinnati Order of Foreign Wars; Order
of Spanish War, and the following clubs : Union,
Commercial, Exchange, Art, Colonial (Cam-
bridge) and Middlesex. His marriage to Miss
Mary Shaw took place in Boston, 1878.
JOHN EDWARD BARRY
Barry, John Edward, mayor of Cambridge,
was bom on September 18, 1874, his parents
having long been residents of Cambridge. He
was named for his two uncles, brothers of his
mother, and as he was "Eddie," as a child, so
he continued to be known by his middle name,
until many of his friends did not know that it
was not his only one.
He went to St. Mary's parochial school in
Cambridgeport, and having advanced through
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
all the grades he finished in St. Thomas Aquinas
college. Incidentally, Mr. Barry is the first
graduate of St. Mary's School to be elected
mayor of Cambridge.
A course at a Boston commercial college fitted
the young man for entrance into business life.
He lost no time selecting an occupation and
decided in favor of the railroad business. As a
boy he went into the passenger and freight
agency of a large trunk line and rose to the
position of clerk. He mo^-ed about the railroad
JOHN ED\V.\RD B.\RRY
offices of Washington Street, increasing his
acquaintance and the number of his friends, and,
accordingly, received successively better offers,
until eleven years ago, he was placed in charge
of the New England toiurist department of the
Wabash Railroad, with headquarters in Boston.
As the agent for the Wabash, it is Mr. Barry's
business to persuade and induce persons con-
templating a trip to the west or southwest to
take his lines. He has been singularly successful
in securing patronage, and he arranged for the
trip of the Massachusetts delegates to the Denver
convention of the Democratic party in 1908.
Some men are bom with a zest for politics,
and Mayor Barry is one of that kind. He
began to engage modestly in the game as soon
as he had a vote. There was always some can-
didate in whose success he was interested, and
he worked heroically soliciting votes for many
men who since have reciprocated.
There came a time when he aspired to office,
and it was with ease that he was elected to the
Common Council from Old Ward 2 in the fall
of 1900. Two years he served in the lower
body of the City Council, and when he had com-
pleted that term he was advanced to the Board
of Aldermen. In 1903, 1904 and 1905 he sat
in the Board of Aldermen, and during the latter
year he was its president.
During 1906 he was a member of the House of
Representatives from old Ward 2, and he was
courageous enough to try for a second term in a
district which had then been made Republican
by a normal majority of 1,200. No Democrat
was assumed to have a chance in that district,
but when the votes were covmted Mr. Barry
was defeated by only 83, which shows the hea\^
RepubHcan following he had.
As he did not propose to move out of his home
ward in order to reach Beacon Hill again, Mr.
Barry had about settled down to the life of an
ex-office holder when he was importuned to be
a candidate for alderman again. He was re-
turned to the Board of 1908, ending his service
in April, 1909.
Two years ago Mr. Barry made his first try
for the Democratic nomination for maj^or, and
when Mayor Brooks was selected he entered
into the campaign a loyal supporter of the party
candidate. He did not oppose the renomination
of Mr. Brooks, but when the Mayor expressed
an intention to retire, Mr. Barry entered the
field and became the Democratic candidate.
Probably no candidate for maj^or ever had
a more enthusiastic body of volunteer workers
or a larger band than were enlisted in the cam-
paign for mayor. Without request and with
no instructions from the candidate, scores of
young men canvassed the city, conducted a
door-beU campaign, rounded up voters on the
streets, in the stores and on the cars. Everyone
spent his own money in i\Ir. Barr>''s behalf, so
strong was the admiration for him.
Speaking of his policy as mayor Air. Barry
said: "Cambridge cannot be further developed
as a residential city. We cannot hope to in-
BIOGRAPHIES
crease the amount of taxable property as a
city of homes merely. It is essential that if
we are to add to otir valuation the increase must
come from industrial plants.
"It is my hope as Mayor to encourage the
location of manufacturing plants in Cambridge.
We have large tracts in the northern and eastern
sections of the city that offer very attractive
industrial sites.
"We hold out to manufacturers good railroad
facilities, the privilege of water transportation
and proximity to Boston. I believe that manu-
facturers consider it an advantage to be located
near Boston, and in that respect Cambridge is
near enough to satisfy anybody.
"I beHeve that much may be accomplished
through the co-operation of the city adminis-
tration and the Citizens' Trade Association. If
we strive to secure more manufacturing and
endeavor to induce the people who now work
here to live in Cambridge we shall be doing a
work that means increased business for oiu"
merchants as well as an addition to oiu- valua-
tion."
He is a bachelor, and lives with his two sisters,
Misses Abbie C. and Kathryn C. Barry, at 347
Broadway, the three constituting the family.
He has little use for the street car lines which
pass his door, for Mr. Barry's chief form of
recreation and exercise is walking. Being an
ardent fresh-air advocate, he usually walks to
and from his office, and on the coldest and most
blustering days he may be seen tramping across
the West Boston Bridge.
Mayor Barry did much to bring about the
settlement of the Amherst Street controversy.
The question of closing this street threatened
at one time to deprive Cambridge of the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology.
Mr. Barry is a member of the Elks, Knights
of Columbus, Catholic Union and St. Mary's
Catholic Association, and was elected president
of the Association of Railroad and Steamship
Agents, January 6, 1912.
Beal. His father was bom August, 1845, and
is engaged in the grocery business in Danvers.
Henry W. Beal received his early education
in the public schools of his native town and
fitted for college at Phillips Academy. He
entered Harvard College as a member of the
class of 1897, and, though working his way
through, graduated with his class, receiving
his degree, Summa Cum Laude, as well as
highest honors in history and political economy.
After leaving Harvard he took up the study of
law at Boston University Law School, and
HENRY WILLIAMSON BEAL
Beal, Henry Williamson, lawyer, and
•progressive citizen of Cambridge, was bom
in Danvers, Mass., February 25, 1875. He is
the son of Abram S. and Margaret E. (Hay)
HENRY WILLIAMSON BEAL
graduated with the class of 1900. At the latter
place he still continued to be dependent only
on his own efforts.
Admitted to the bar, he began to practice
law with Col. J. H. Benton, at 102 Ames Build-
ing, Boston. One of the noteworthy incidents
of his career is that he secured the necessary
authority of city, county and state boards to
permit the building of the Industrial Track at
East Cambridge; this is the only track of its
kind in the state of Massachusetts. Mr. Beal
is a Republican in politics and was a member
of the Cambridge Board of Aldermen in 1909
and 1910. He was a candidate for another
term in 1911, but the tidal wave that swept
168
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
away all the Non-Partisans carried him with
it, though he polled a very large vote. He
married, June 12, 1902, Miss Bessie Helen
Roper, daughter of George H. and Maria L.
Roper. They have one child, Bruce Hilton
Beal, bom November 17, 1907. Mr. Beal
attends the Congregational Church, and is a
member of the following organizations: Colo-
nial Club, Cambridge; Boston Real Estate
Exchange; Alumni Associations of Harvard;
and Phillips Academy Andover Alumni Asso-
ciation.
HENRY M. BIRD
Bird, Henry M., who in his career showed
what triumphs can be achieved in the business
HENRY M. BIRD
world by industry and enterprise, was bom in
Easton, Mass., October 24, 1824, and died in
Cambridge, December 27, 1890. He was
married to Sarah A. Clark, who was bom in
Acworth, N.H., March 2, 1827, and died
August 30, 1895, five years after his death.
He was educated in the public schools, where
he received a good training, and was fully
equipped for starting out in the world to make
a name in business for himself, which he did
most successfully. He entered the employ
of the Chelmsford Foundry Co., at North
Chelmsford, Mass., in 1840; there he remained
for some time, and then went to work in the
Navy Yard at Charlestown, Mass., where he
stayed for a number of years, during the last
two of which he was foreman. In 1864 he
established the Broadway Iron Foundry in
Cambridge. He lived to see the plant grow
to be one of the most prosperous concerns of
Cambridge. His estate carried on the business
until 1895, when it was incorporated under
the Massachusetts laws. Mr. R. C. Bird was
made president, and W. W. Bird, treasurer.
The plant comprises a foundry one hundred
by one hundred and fifty feet in area, with
pattern and fitting shops, and gives steady
employment to fifty men. The present Broad-
way Foundry differs greatly from the foundry
established in 1864 by H. M. Bird, yet does
resemble it in one respect, for it is equipped
with the most improved facilities of the day,
just as the original foundry was with the best
facilities known nearly half a century ago.
To do good work at short notice and for fair
prices has always been the policy of the Broad-
way Foundry.
Mr. Bird was always very active in church
affairs, and for a number of years was a deacon
in the North Avenue Congregational church,
and later filled the same position in the Prospect
Street Congregational church. In the latter
years of his life he was an ardent supporter
of the Prohibition party. The children bom
to Mr. and Mrs. Bird are as follows: Charles A.
Bird, now with the Albany Sand Company,
of New York; George H. Bird, Congregational
minister in Chicago; William W. Bird, pro-
fessor of mechanical engineering at the Wor-
cester Polytechnic Institute; and Robert C.
Bird, who is manager of the Broadway Iron
Foundry.
MARSHALL FRANKLIN BLANCHARD
Blanchard, Marshall Franklin, merchant
in Boston, and resident of Cambridge, was bom
at Wellfleet, Mass., being the son of Marshall
L. Blanchard by his wife Phoebe H. Bunting.
His father was bom at Charlestown, Mass., in
1824, his mother at Wellfleet, and both died at
BIOGRAPHIES
Newton, Mass. Marshall F. Blanchard was
educated first at the public schools of Swamp-
scott, Boston and Newton, and afterwards at
Bryant and Stratton's Business College. When
he had completed the course of studies at this
place, he entered the employ of Bunting &
Emery, of which firm he is now a member. He
has been president of the T Wharf Fish Market
since 1902. In national politics he is a Repub-
lican; and in municipal, a Non-Partisan. He
served the city on the Board of Aldermen from
January, 1902, to April, 1911, when he volun-
Club (Cambridge), Cambridge Club, Middlesex
RepubHcan Club, and the Boston Chamber of
Commerce.
MARSHALL FRAXKLIX BLANCHARD
tarily retired, and thus terminated an honorable
career of five years in that branch of the City
Government. Mr. Blanchard married Emma,
daughter of William D. A. Whitman by his
wife Emma Paty. Mrs. Blanchard was bom
in Boston and so was her mother; her father
was a native of Waltham. The marriage took
place at Newton. Two children were bom of
this union, Arthur F. and Helen. The daughter
is dead. Arthur, bom at Newton in 1881, at-
tended the Dana, the Harvard, and the Latin
Schools of Cambridge, entered Harvard, and
graduated in 1904.
Mr. Blanchard is a member of the Colonial
WILLIAM F. BRADBURY
Bradbury, William Frothingham, Master
Emeritus of the Cambridge Latin School, was
bom in Westminster, Mass., May 17, 1829.
He is descended on his father's side from
Thomas Bradbury, of Essex County, England,
who was bom in 1610, settled in Salisbury,
Mass., in 1639, and died in 1695. The line of
descent is as follows; (2) William, 1649-1678;
(3) William, 1672-1756; (4) James, 1701-? ;
(5) Sanders, 1737-1779, killed in the Revolu-
tion; (6) James, 1767-1811; (7) William
Sanders, 1800-1881. William Sanders Brad-
bury, the father of the subject of this sketch
and a merchant in Westminster, was bom in
HoUis, N.H., and attended the common school
there. He was a Congregationalist, serving as
deacon for many years. In politics he was
first a Whig and later a Republican. He served
in the Legislature of Massachusetts, in 1844,
and was a trial justice for his district. Eliza-
beth Emerson, his wife, was bom in HolHs,
N.H., July 29, 1800, being a descendant of the
Rev. Daniel Emerson (1743-1801), the first
minister of HoUis, N.H., through (2) Deacon
Daniel Emerson, born December 15, 1746, and
(3) the Rev. Daniel Emerson, 1771-1808. The
/atter's wife was Esther Frothingham (1770-
1849), and her father. Major Frothingham, who
was bom in 1734, served through the Revolu-
tion, became a major, entered the honorable
ranks of the Cincinnati, and died in 1809.
General Washington visited him when on his
last tour north, the only special call made by
him when in Charlestown. Mr. Bradbury
often heard his grandfather say that he remem-
bered being carried out of Charlestown when
the British were going to set it on fire. From
1844 to 1848, Mr. Bradbury was employed as
clerk in the country- store and post-office of
Hollis, N.H.; in 1848, was land surveyor for
that place and its vicinity, and taught in the
district school during the winters of 1848 to
1854. He had never thought of going to
college until May, 1852; so, when he entered
170
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Amherst College in August of that year it was
without any special preparation. He worked
his way through college by teaching during
the winters, and graduated as valedictorian
of the class of 1S5G, his brother being the
salutatorian of the same class. The Cambridge
school committee had not seen him, yet before
his graduation he was elected teacher of mathe-
matics and physics in the Cambridge High
School at a salary of nine hundred dollars, and
entered upon the work of the position on
Monday, September 1, ISofi. There were
WILLIAM F. BRADBURY
five teachers, two men and three women, and
two hundred pupils at that time. Early in
April, 1857, the master having died, Mr. Brad-
bury was appointed acting-master for the
remainder of the year. On November 10,
1865, he was elected Hopkins Classical Teacher,
which position he continued to hold nearly
forty-five years. In April, 1881, Mr. Bradbury
was elected head master of the Latin School,
but at the same time held the mastership of
the English High School until the following
September. He resigned December, 1908,
from the Latin School. Thus, for more than
fifty-three years he served the city as a teacher,
and for thirty-three years as the head of one
of its most important schools. On his retire-
ment from the head of the Latin School, Mr.
Bradbury was made Master Emeritus of the
Latin School.
Mr. Bradbury has been active in professional
and many other organizations, serving most
acceptably in various positions of honor and
trust. He is an ex-president of the Middlesex
County Teachers' Association, of the Massa-
chusetts Teachers' Association (1879-1880),
of the Cambridge Choral Society (1874),
of the High School Masters' Club (1885-1886),
of the School Masters' Club (1898-1899), and
of the American Institute of Instruction
(1901-1902).
He has been secretary and treasurer of the
Classical and High School Teachers' Associa-
tion since its organization in 1868, of the
Teachers' Association since October, 1867,
treasurer of the Teachers' Annuity Guild since
April, 1893, of the Friday Evening Club since
1880, and of the Cambridge Club since 1882.
He has been a member of the Handel and
Haydn Society since 1864, and its president
since May, 1909, having been on the board
of directors twenty-five years, and secretary
from 1899 to 1909. He served in the common
council of this city for the years 1883 and 18S4,
and is an Independent Republican in politics.
During the fifty-three years and five months
"of Mr. Bradbury's career as teacher in Cam-
bridge, he was absent on account of illness but
two days; he has not had a doctor since 1849.
Mr. Bradbury, on August 27, 1857, married,
in Templeton, Mass., Margaret Jones, a
daughter of Abijah and Phoebe Jones. Abijah
Jones was a carriage maker and served as
captain in the militia. Mrs. Bradbury is a
graduate of Mt. Holyoke College. Three
children were bom of this marriage: William
Harvard Templeton, bom July 28, 1858, gradu-
ate of Harvard College, wool broker; Marion,
bom December 1, 1863; Margaret Seymour,
bom September S, 1877, graduate of Rad-
cliffe College, teacher in the Cambridge Latin
School. Mr. Bradbury, in addition to being the
author of many text-books on mathematics, is
the inventor of several school appliances, in-
cluding a device for illustrating the metric
system.
BIOGRAPHIES
171
EDWARD J. BRANDON
Brandon, Edward J., City Clerk of Cam-
bridge, was bom in a small country town of
Ireland, Jvdy 15, 1863, and came to this country
with his parents, John and Margaret Brandon
when he was but two years old. After living
in Boston a few months the family removed to
Cambridge. Edward attended the Cambridge
public schools until he was graduated from the
grammar school, and then entered the Boston
College preparatory school. After graduating
from the latter school he entered Boston College,
but in his junior year left college to take a posi-
tion in the counting-room of the New England
News Company. He was rapidly promoted
in this office, and in 1882 was made assistant
cashier.
He resigned this position with the News com-
pany when he was elected assistant City Clerk
of Cambridge, January 12, 1887. The election
was by the City Council in joint convention
to fill an unexpired term, and was not made until
the tenth ballot. The following March, how-
ever, he received the unanimous vote of the
Council for the ensuing year, and since that
date was always unanimously elected.
Mr. Brandon was elected City Clerk in Octo-
ber, 1895, upon the death of City Clerk Walter
W. Pike, and has been re-elected year after
year up to the present.
From the very first of his work as a city
official, Mr. Brandon became interested in his-
torical Cambridge and the preservation of public
records. He was one of the founders and mem-
bers of the first council of the Cambridge His-
torical Society, and at the request of that society
has compiled a volume of the "proprietors'"
records of Cambridge, covering a period from
1635 to 1829, and a volume of the selectmen's
records of the town of Cambridge, covering a
period from 1630 to 1703. Both of these vol-
umes have been highly commended by historical
and genealogical societies.
Mr. Brandon has always been an ardent
worker in the Father Mathew Total Abstinence
societies. He was first grand knight of the
Cambridge council Knights of Columbus.
He is a member of St. Mary's Catholic Asso-
ciation, the Riverside Boat Club, Division 5
A.O.H., the Cambridge Club, the Cambridge
Board of Trade, the Catholic Union of Cam-
bridge and the Holy Name Society of Cambridge.
He was the first president of the latter society.
Mr. Brandon was married to Miss Mary A.
Corcoran of Cambridge, September 18, 1890,
and has three children; Margaret J. Brandon,
the elder daughter, who is a graduate of the
Notre Dame Academy of Boston; Edmund J.
Brandon, the only son; and Mary A. Brandon.
Although unable to continue his course at
Boston College, which he always regretted, Mr.
Brandon did not stop studying, and in 1901
EDWARD J. BR.^XDON
he began the study of law, taking a few lessons
in an evening school. He completed the course
by studying at home and in a law office, and was
admitted to the bar of the Massachusetts
Supreme Court in special sitting in August, 1905.
SILAS EDWARD BUCK
Buck, Silas Edward, one of the public-
spirited citizens of Cambridge, son of Silas
Beaman and Mary Elizabeth (Smallidge)
Buck, was bom in Cambridge, Mass., May 20,
1847. He was a pupil in the public school of
Cambridge, and his first business position was
with Parker, Wilder & Company, the well-
known commission dry goods merchants of
Boston. He remained with this firm for nine
172
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
years, and at the end of that time opened a
store in East Cambridge for the sale of gentle-
men's furnishing goods at retail. He con-
ducted this business for three years, and then
engaged in the coal business in connection with
the firm of Joseph A. Wellington & Company,
and he was with this firm for nine years, when
he was offered a partnership, and on May 1,
1887, the firm of Wellington & Buck succeeded
daughter of Nehemiah Wellington, of Middle-
sex County, and cousin of Austin C. Wellington
(q.v.), of Cambridge, and Frederick W. Welling-
ton, of Worcester, Mass. Silas Edward and
Ellen Antoinette (Wellington) Buck had no
children. They resided in Cambridge, and
have a summer home at Jaffrey, N.H. Mr.
Buck was a member of the New England Lodge,
Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Putnam
SILAS EDWARD BUCK
that of, Joseph A. .Wellington & Co., and the
business was continued at 211 Bridge Street,
East Cambridge. On the death of his partner,
Joseph A. Wellington, August 1, 1888, he con-
tinued the business alone, but retained the
firm name under which he was carrying it on
in 1907. Mr. Buck was married November,
1874, to Ellen Antoinette, daughter of Joseph
Abbott and Ellen (Smith) Wellington, grand-
Lodge, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons;
and of the Cambridge Chapter Commandery
Knights Templar. He became a trustee of
the East Cambridge Savings Bank, and a
member of the common council of the city of
Cambridge in 1889, and a member of the board
of aldermen of the city in 1890. Mr. Buck
died at his summer home, Jaffrey, N.H., August
28, 1908, survived by his wife.
BIOGRAPHIES
173
WILLARD AUSTIN BULLARD
BULLARD, WiLLARD AuSTIN, SOn of Joseph
and Harriet (Loker) BuUard, was born in Way-
land, December 14, 1837. He was educated
in the public schools of his native town, and at
the age of eighteen began his business career
as a clerk in the Faneuil Hall Bank, of Boston.
In 1861, when the Harvard Bank of Cambridge,
He was elected president of the First National
Bank in 1896, succeeding Daniel U. Chamberlin
after his death. He had been cashier for many
years, and had had much of the responsibility
of its management for thirty years or more.
Mr. Bullard was called upon to act as
trustee and executor of many important estates.
He stood high among the financial men of
WILLARD AUSTIN BULLARD
then a state bank, began business, he connected
himself with it and was identified with it until
his death. It was reorganized a few years
later as the First National Bank of Cambridge,
under the National Bank Act, finally resuming
a State charter under the name of the Harv^ard
Trust Company. Mr. Bullard rose through
the various positions in the bank to the head.
New England, and was interested in many of the
important industries of Cambridge. He was
president of the Cambridge Gaslight Company;
treasurer and director of the Allen and Endicott
Building Company of Cambridge; a director
of the Boston Woven Hose Company; was
formerly a trustee of the Cambridge Mutual
Fire Insurance Company; was a trustee of the
174
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Cambridgeport Savings Bank; a director of
the Home for Aged People of Cambridge;
trastee and treasurer of the Cambridge Hospital,
from its organization; trustee of the Dowse
Institute; trustee of Daniel White Charity,
which distributes coal to the poor of the City;
a director of the West Point (Georgia) Manu-
f acttiring Company ; a director of the Riverdale
Cotton Mills; and a director of the Chatta-
choochee Valley (Georgia) Railroad Company.
He was a member of the Cambridge Club, and
attended the Unitarian Church. He had a sum-
mer home in his native town, Wayland. He
married Susan Matilda Bennett, daughter of
Jonas Bennett. His children are: (1) Amy
CeHnea, bom March 10, 1862, who married
Herbert C. Wells; (2) Henry Willard, bom
December 2, 1863; . (3) Gardner Cutting, bom
January- 17, 1866, graduate of Har\'ard, 1889;
(4) Arthur Bennett, bom July 20, 1872; (5)
Channing Sears, bom December 20, 1879, died
January 8, 1907.
Mr. Bullard died November 12, 1912.
ARTHUR A. CAREY
Carey, Arthur A., was bom in Italj-, Feb-
ruary 23, 1857. He is the son of John Carey,
Jr., and Alida Astor. His early Ufe was spent
in New York, where his parents made their
home. He matriculated at Harvard, and in
1879 was graduated. He then spent several
years in Europe. In 1889, his marriage to
Miss Agnes "\^Tiiteside took place, and they
chose Boston as their place of residence. Mr.
Carey became interested in the Museum of
Fine Arts and the ]\Iassachusetts General Hos-
pital. Later, in 1898, he came to Cambridge,
and is a resident of this city at the present time.
Social betterment work absorbs a large part of
Mr. Carey's attention now: he has founded a
settlement house in Waltham for the employees
of the Waltham Watch Company, and sen-es
as a tmstee. His children are Henry Reginald,
Arthur Graham, Alida and Frances.
HANS L. CARSTEIN
Carsteix, Hans L., coal merchant for a
number of years at North Cambridge, was bom
in Schleswig, Germany, March 17, 1841; died
at his home, January', 1911; son of Glaus P.
and Margareta (Detlefsen) Carstein. Glaus
P. Carstein was a fanner and land owner, and
during the war between Prussia and Denmark,
in 1848, he was in command of a military com-
pany, and it was through political differences,
that he was obliged to leave Germany, in 1850,
and seek refuge in the United States. On his
way from New York to California by way of
Panama, he was a victim of yellow fever
dying at Panama, in 1851. His property
was confiscated and his family lost its usual
income. His son, Hans L., under the custom
of Germany, received a commercial education,
and he then went to sea before the mast, and
after fifteen years' sea service came back to
Germany, master of the ship. The Franco-
Prussian War having closed, he brought his
mother and sister to the United States to join
a brother who had preceded them. They
arrived in Boston, Mass., 1871, at the time of
the great Chicago fire, and his first work was
one of philanthropy, to collect clothing for
the relief of the sufferers in that city, making
appeals for help on Boston Common, and
receiving not only clothing, but provisions
and money. He joined his brother Theodore
in the paint and oil business on Hanover Street,
Boston, and, meeting with business reverses
in 1873, during the financial panic of that year,
they gave up the business two years later.
Meantime, his sister Theresa had married
Frank Canter, who was in the provision busi-
ness in Jamaica Plain, and in closing out the
paint and oil business he joined him as a partner
in 1874. He bought out the coal business of
Benjamin F. Rogers at North Cambridge, and
from an output of two thousand tons annually
he built up the business so that in 1910, the
output was over forty thousand tons annually.
He married (first), in 1876, Ida Peterson, a
daughter of a German Lutheran clerg>-man,
and they had one son, Gustave E. Carstein,
bom July 24, 1881, in Jamaica Plain, Mass.,
and he was prepared for college, going through
Harvard, class of 1905, and on leaving college
engaged in business with his father, as manager
of the yards. Mrs. Carstein died in 1S81. He
married (second) June 17, 1883, Magdalene,
daughter of the Rev. C. F. Doring, a German
Lutheran clergyman. By this marriage his
BIOGRAPHIES
175
children were: Lorenz F., born May 14, 1884,
graduated at the United States Naval Academy,
Annapolis, Md. In 1906, he was assigned to
the Asiatic Squadron at the Philippines. Hans
L., Jr., bom in Cambridge, Mass., October 13,
1885, who after leaving school took a three
years' course at Culver Military Academy in
Indiana, graduating as a commissioned officer,
first lieutenant-quartermaster, preparatory to
engaging in business with his father and elder
a congregation of between sixty and seventy
German families, residents of the neighborhood
of the mission house. With his family he
was connected with St. James church. North
Cambridge, from 1888, and he was made treas-
urer of the church corporation. He was a
member of the Pilgrim Fathers, Young Men's
Christian Association of Cambridge, and held
the offices as director, trustee and treasurer
of the organizations. He was also trustee of
HANS L. CARSTEIN
brother. Gretchen, bom in Cambridge, Mass.,
October 22, 18S8, was prepared for entrance
to Smith College, Northampton, Mass., at the
Gilman school, Cambridge, and at Burnham
school, Northampton, Mass. Mr. Carstein
became a layman and lay reader in the Episco-
pal Protestant church, of which his family
were also members, and he conducted mission
work in East Cambridge from 1891, in connec-
tion with the church of the Ascension, where
he conducted service every other Sunday, and
the Pitchman Estates in Cambridge. He
was a member of the Cambridge and Colonial
clubs, and in the Middlesex Republican club.
He was a member of the common council of
Cambridge, 1899, and alderman for six con-
secutive years, 1890-96, and in 1896 he refused
further nomination on account of ill health.
As a member of the board of aldermen he was
a member of the finance committee, and the
highway committee, all special committees
and chairman of the investigating committee.
176
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
In the board he advocated the extension of
the Boston Subway to Cambridge, being the
first member to open the subject on committees,
and for three years he was chairman of the
committee appointed to act on behalf of the
city government, and before he left the board
the matter was practically settled and the
subway assured. In this connection he in-
vited fifty of the most prominent citizens of
Cambridge to meet at the City Hall and confer
with him and Mayor Augustine Daly, and
after several meetings it was unanimously
voted that the subway system was far superior
to the elevated system for securing effective
and reasonable rapid transit from Boston to
Harvard Square. Mr. Carstein was made a
delegate from the eighth Massachusetts district
to the Republican National Convention at
Chicago, in 1904, as an acknowledgment of
his work in the interest of the party in Cam-
bridge. He composed a campaign song which
was received with rousing cheers when sung
to the air of "Die Wacht am Rhein," by the
delegates, when Theodore Roosevelt was
nominated, the chairman of the Massachusetts
delegation having provided five thousand
copies with both words and music printed for
distribution in the Convention Hall. Few
men, indeed, pass on whose death is so gen-
erally and so sincerely mourned as that of
Hans L. Carstein. While he had been in
failing health for some time and the end was
not unexpected, the realization at the present
moment that he is gone is none the less an
occasion for sadness and regret. His honesty
and kindliness, whether in business or social
matters, surrounded him with friends and
associates whose respect for him only increased
as time went on. Mr. Carstein was most
fortunate in his home surroundings. He made
his home and his family circle the happiest
place that he or any member of it could know.
Even when an incurable malady fastened
itself upon him, his cheerfulness did not desert
him, and his weakness was borne with a coitrage
that showed his abiding serenity of spirit.
What this meant to him and to Mrs. Carstein
and to all those whom he met in his native
land on his trip abroad can well be imagined.
Cambridge parts sorrowfully with such a
man as Mr. Carstein, who spent here an active
and highly useful and honorable career. His
memory and his example, however, will long
remain as one of the city's best heritages.
Dr. A. P. CLARKE
Clarke, Dr. Augustus P., who was one
of the leading physicians of the University
City, was bom in Pawtucket, R.I., September
24, 1833, being the son of Seth Darling and
Fanny (Peck) Clarke, both lineal descendants
of the earliest Puritans who were among the
most influential settlers of Plymouth, Boston,
Dorchester, Hingham, Roxbury, Dedham and
Mendon in Massachusetts, and Providence,
Newport, Portsmouth and Warwick, in Rhode
Island. His father was of the eighth genera-
tion in descent from Joseph Clarke, who with
his wife Alice came with the settlers comprising
the first Dorchester companj^ that embarked
at Plymouth, England, March 20, 1630, in
the ship Mary and John. He was the ancestor
of the late eminent Professor Edward H. Clarke
of the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Clarke's
mother was of the sixth in descent from Joseph
Peck, who came in the ship Diligent from old
Hingham, England, to Hingham, Mass., 1638.
Among his ancestors who may be mentioned
on his mother's side, was Dr. James Tallman,
a physician in Portsmouth, R.I., in the early
part of the eighteenth century. He was the
son of Peter Tallman, who was general solicitor
of the Colony; commissioner and deputy of
Rhode Island. Abraham Staples was another
ancestor who served in Captain Poole's com-
pany in the war against King Philip, in 1675.
Another ancestor on his father's side was
Rev. Ebenezer Kencks, ordained pastor of
the First Baptist church of Providence, in 1719.
Still another paternal ancestor was David
Thompson, who settled in 1619 on Thompson's
Island, Boston Harbor, prior to the landing
of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. He was a
" Scottish gentleman, scholar and traveller."
Among the other direct lineal descendants may
be mentioned Richard Everett, who was also
the ancestor of the late orator Edward Everett,
and Maturin Ballou, Universalist preacher and
author. Another ancestor on his father's
side that may be mentioned was Geary Pufler;
BIOGRAPHIES
177
he, in 1639, settled in Mount Wollaston, Mass.,
and became an ancestor of the late Hon. Charles
Sumner.
Dr. Clarke attended the public schools in
his native state and fitted for college in the
University Preparatory School, Providence,
R.I., where he entered college receiving the
degree of A.M. from Brown University in the
class of 1861. Before leaving college he began
the study of medicine under the direction of
Dr. Lewis L. Miller, a graduate of Brown, who
at that time, was the most eminent surgeon
of Rhode Island. Dr. Clarke received his
degree M.D. from the Harvard Medical School.
On September 30, 1861, he was appointed
Assistant-Surgeon of the 6th Regiment New
York Cavalry. He served in the Peninsular
Campaign under General MacClellan, was at
the siege of Yorktown and in that concatena-
tion of Seven Days' Battles including those
at Mechanicsville, Gaines' Mill, Peach Orchard
and Savages' Station in June, 1862. On
June 29th (1862) he was on duty at the great
field hospital at Savages' Station, and realizing
that the hospital would soon be captured, he
preferred to remain caring for the wounded,
and thus, though on duty, to become a prisoner
of war and to endure all the hardships incident
to such trying service, than to abandon the
many helpless victims to the unready hands
of the enemy. By his persistent efforts he was
allowed to continue for several weeks' attend-
ance on the wounded until all were dulj' ex-
changed.
He was promoted to the rank of full surgeon
in the same regiment on May 5th, 1863, and
served under General Dix in an expedition
against Richmond in the spring and summer
of 1863, and under General Meade with the
Cavalry Corps in the Rappahannock Campaign
and in all the operations of the army of the
Potomac in the autumn of the same year.
On the opening campaign of 1864, undertaken
by General Grant, Dr. Clarke was appointed
the surgeon-in-chief of the Second Brigade,
First Cavalry Division, and was on duty in all
the operations undertaken by General Sheridan
of that year.
At the opening of the campaign of 1865 under
General Grant, he was appointed surgeon-in-
chief of all General Sheridan's First Cavalry
Division, and was with Sheridan in his "colos-
sal raid" from Winchester to Petersburg, and
in the Battle of Five Forks and other battles
until the surrender of the enemy at Appomatox
Court House, April 9, 1S65.
During his four years' service, the war
records show unmistakably that he participated
in ninety-two (92) battles and engagements
with the enemy. He was commissioned at
the close of the war, on recommendation of
his superior officers, brevet-lieutenant colonel
Dr. A. p. CLARKE
and colonel of volunteers for faithful and meri-
torious conduct during his term of service.
Dr. Clarke next spent some time in study
at the medical schools and hospitals in London,
Paris and Leipzig, returning in 1866 to Cam-
bridge, where he soon estabHshed himself in
practice of his profession and where he resided.
He was a member of the Massachusetts Medi-
cal Society; of the American Academy of Medi-
cine, and was the chairman of the committee
of arrangements at its meeting in Boston, 1906;
member of the American Medical Association,
178
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
and was vice-president of that body, now
numbering seventy-five thousand members,
in 1895-96, and was chairman of the section on
physiology', 1897. He was vice-president of
the Pan-American Medical Congress, at its
meeting at Mexico City, Mexico, 1896. He was
elected by the Russian Board, honorary presi-
dent of the XII International Medical Congress
held at Moscow, Russia, by invitation of his
August Majesty, the Czar of Russia, 1897. He
was also honored in 1890 by an invitation to
contribute a paper which he read before the
International Medical Congress, in Berlin,
Germany. This paper was favorably received
and an abstract of the same was at the time
published in some of the German Medical
Journals. He was a founder of the American
Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,
in 1888, and wrote original and valuable con-
tributions to its yearly published volumes
for twenty years. He was a founder of the
Cambridge Society for Medical Improvement,
and was its secretary from 1869 to 1874. He
was a member of the Association of Military
Surgeons of the United States, member of the
New England Historic-Genealogical Society.
He was a member of the Boston Medical Library
Association.
He was a member of the Sons of the American
Revolution, his great-grandfather. Captain
Ichobod Clarke, having served in that war in
the army under General John Sullivan in Rhode
Island, 1777-78, and his grandfather, Joel Peck,
having served in Captain Thomas Allen's
company under the same general commander.
He was a frequent and authoritative contribu-
tor on subjects coimected with his chosen pro-
fession to medical societies and journals. He
was the author of a volxmie "Clarke's Kindred
Genealogies," 1896, and author of a volume,
"Transactions of the Gynecological Society of
Boston," written while Secretary of that body,
1901-1905, and of a "Book of Poems, 1896."
He was a member of the Military- Order of the
Loyal Legion and was elected a member of the
Council, 1895-1896. He was a member of the
Cambridge Club, of the Boston Commandery
Knights Templars, of the Amicable Lodge,
F. and A.M., and member of Cambridge Lodge,
No. 13, I.O.O.F. ; member of the Boston Brown
Alumni Association, and of the Harvard
Medical Alumni Association, and charter
member of the Post 56, G.A.R. He was a
member of the Cambridge common council,
187 1-3, serving on the committee on finance,
etc., and a member of the board of aldermen,
1874, serving on the committee on health and
other committees. He was soon subsequently
most influential in effecting the establishment
of an independent board of health for Cam-
bridge, as now organized.
He married in 1861, Mary Hannah, daughter
of Gideon Gray, the fifth in descent from
Edward Gray, of Plymouth, Mass., who mar-
ried, January 16, 1651, Mary Winslow, daughter
of John and Mary (Chilton) Winslow of May-
flower fame. By Dr. Clarke's marriage he
had two daughters, Inez Louise and Genevieve
Clarke, both educated in the arts at Radcliffe
College, and both in medicine at Tufts College
Medical School, where each received the degree
of doctor of medicine. They are now in active
practice of the profession. Mrs. Clarke died
May 30, 1892. Dr. Clarke issued in 1911, the
second edition, enlarged, of his original poems,
entitled "A Volume of Original Poems."
This, then, is the career, briefly stated, of a
man to whom Cambridge points as an heir to
those qualities of his Puritan ancestors which
had such a profound influence in the building
up of the communities that settled in Massa-
chusetts; and whose life she considers irre-
futable evidence that the strong moral prin-
ciples and the stem determination to foUow
the dictates of conscience have not become
impoverished in transmission. The events
narrated above without adornment are per-
haps the best commentary on the loyalty to
duty that was always the guiding motive of
Dr. Clarke's acts. Consider for a moment
what it meant to be a military surgeon during
the four years of the fratricidal conflict, that
terrible period when the fate of the nation
hung in the balance. The soldier, rifle or
saber in hand, facing the enemy, finds, in the
excitement which the lust to kill (latent, it
is said, in even the most ci\alized) arouses in
him, a kind of narcotic, as it were, by which
the sensation of fear and horror is benumbed.
The surgeon must, above all things, avoid any
excitement, because his work requires him to
be calm and self-possessed ; he must, therefore,
BIOGRAPHIES
179
depend only on his sense of duty and his human-
ity to help him endure the sights and sounds
of the battle-field. Nor can he rest when the
victory is won; then, indeed, his labors seem
to be just beginning, for he must hasten night
and day in his efforts to heal wounds, amelio-
rate suffering, and forestall the dread diseases
that are the usual concomitants of war. Bear-
ing all this in mind, one reads with a new under-
standing the line which says that Dr. Clarke
was in ninety-two battles and engagements.
Since the close of the war his activity had
been constant. In spite of the demands made
on his time by practical professional duties,
he, nevertheless, added to the literature of
medicine; for, not content with personally
alleviating the distress of those who came
directly vmder his care, he crystallized the
results of his experience and study in the
volumes and monographs which the medical
world has received with so much appreciation.
Fvirthermore, he even found time to give ex-
pression to his love of belles lettres, in the book
of verse of which he is the author. Many
would claim that having served humanity
at large so well, they should be exempted from
the duties of civic and political life. Dr. Clarke
made no such plea, but, as a member of the
city government, devoted some of his best
efforts to Cambridge. Alwaj^s a believer in
the power for good of organized effort, he allied
himself with many professional, fraternal and
social bodies, giving them both his moral and
financial support. His home life, almost ideal,
had only one cloud, the death of his wife, in
1892. His two daughters well repaid his tender
indulgence and well-directed care in their rear-
ing, by the consolation they gave him. He
had no sons, but his daughters, who have taken
up his chosen profession, were of late able to
ease him part of its burdens. Many famiUes
that relied on him in the hour of need still
continue in the feeling of security that comes
from the knowledge that life and health are
being watched over by one who has mastered
the art of healing, knowing that his ability
has been inherited by his children.
Dr. Clarke died Aoril 22, 1912.
EDWARD E. CLARK
Clark, Edward E., was bom in Cambridge,
Mass., November 4, 1870. He is the son of
Martin V. B. and Sarah M. (RoUins) Clark,
both natives of New Hampshire. Edward E.
Clark attended the Willard Primary, the Web-
ster Grammar, and the Cambridge Latin Schools,
and entered Harvard College in 1890. De-
pendent upon his own resources in acquiring
a college education, he supported himself by
doing newspaper work and tutoring, and, in
1894, graduated from Harvard with the
EDWARD E. CLARK
of A.B. He then attended the Harvard Law
School, and was admitted to the Bar in 1897.
Closely identified with Cambridge life from
his boyhood days, he has the knowledge of city
affairs, the training, the education, the tem-
perament and the other qualifications necessary
to fit him to serve in any position with credit
to his constituents.
He is a member of Amicable Lodge, F.&A.M. ;
the Economy Club of Cambridge; Dtmster
Lodge, I.O.O.F.: Citizens' Trade Association;
Cambridge Lodge of Elks; Middlesex Club;
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Economic Club of Boston; and many other
social and political organizations.
Mr. Clark's first entry into politics was
made in 1900, when he became a member of
the Cambridge Common Council, and he re-
mained there four years; in 1903 he was elected
and ser\-ed as president of that body. During
his ser\-ice in the council, he was a member of
all the important committees, including those
on finance, claims, city charter, legislative
matters, etc., thus being enabled to acquire
an intimate knowledge of how the city's business
and financial affairs should be conducted.
He was sent to the House of Representatives
from Cambridge, in 1904, and was re-elected
in 1905.
During the years when Cambridge Repub-
licans were passing through the most trjang
experience that had ever come to them in the
historj' of the party of that city, after the Demo-
crats, under the leadership of Mayor IMcNamee,
had wrested the control of the City Government
from them, iSIr. Clark was a member of the
Common Council and was chosen president of
that body. The Democrats were in complete
possession of the Board of Aldermen and the
Mayoralty, and the Non-Partisanship idea
found expression only through a bare majority
in the Common Council.
His inctmibency of the office of president
of the lower branch became, therefore, in many
respects, a noteworthy one. There were occa-
sions when turbulence and dissension threatened
to ovens-helm the sessions of the lower branch,
and only the exercise of rare judgment and dis-
crimination prevented subversion of the delib-
erative character of its proceedings. Mr. Clark
succeeded admirably in performing the task
devoh'ing upon him. So well did he act his
part that, when he aspired to represent the
fourth representative district on Beacon Hill,
his fitness for the higher legislative arena was
immediately recognized and his election was
assured.
age of sixteen he came to Boston, and imme-
diately began to profit by the opportimities
afforded to a youth of courage and energy. At
the age of twentj'-one he joined his father and
brother in a co-partnership for the manttfacture
of fancy crackers. In 1861 he began, upon his
own account, the manufacture of confectionery
in East Cambridge, employing at the outset
about half a dozen hands. His energy and
business sagacity enabled him to develop the
large and successful establishment which he
controlled. On February 23, 1879, the frame
structure in which his business was located
GEORGE CLOSE
Close, George, one of the most prominent
and public-spirited citizens of Cambridge, was
bom in Stratford, England, in 1845. At the
was totally destroyed by fire; but with char-
acteristic energy he immediately began the
erection of the spacious building on Broadway,
which, at the time Mr. Close was taken ill, he
had begun to enlarge. By untiring attention
to details, always among the first to adopt
improved methods of production, he had de-
veloped a business that required several hundred
employees, and j-ielded a product of about
ten tons of confectionerj' daily. Mr. Close
had rendered valuable public ser\ace to the
city of Cambridge in various capacities. He
was a member of the Common Council in 1883,
of the Board of Aldermen in 1885 and 1886, and
of the House of Representatives in 1888. Mr.
BIOGRAPHIES
Close was a member of Dunster Lodge of Odd
Fellows; Amicable Lodge, F.&A.M.; Royal
Arcaniun; New England Confectioners' Club;
and the Universalist Club of Boston. He was
for several years president of the Howard Benevo-
lent Association, and had been active in various
charitable movements. He was a director of
the Cambridge Electric Light Company and
other corporations, and was connected with the
Cambridge Mutual Fire Insurance Company.
He was a member of the Cambridge Club and
of the Citizens' Trade Association, of which
he had been president. Mr. Close was a member
of the First Universalist Chtirch. He died at
his summer home at Allerton, Mass., August 18,
1911. He is survived by two sons, George E.
Close and Frank D. Close, and four daughters:
Mrs. Florence A. Gale, Mrs. Alice L. Mandell
of Newton, Mrs. Bertha M. Bunton and Miss
F. Evelyn Close. He also leaves two sisters.
Miss Caroline Close and Mrs. John F. Moore,
of Allston.
Cambridge Hospital; a director in the Charles
River National Bank; and president and
EDWARD R. COGSWELL, M.D.
EDWARD R. COGSWELL
Cogswell, Edward R., was bom in South
Berwick, Me., June 1, 1841, and came to Cam-
bridge in April, 1852. He entered Harvard
College in 1860. In August, 1862, he enlisted
in Company F, 44th Regiment of the Massa-
chusetts Volimteer Militia, and served with
that regiment as a non-commissioned ofiBcer
tmtil the following June, when the regiment
was mustered out of service.
After leaving coUege, he entered the Harvard
Medical School, from which he was graduated
in 1867 and immediately entered upon the prac-
tice of his profession in this city.
When an independent Board of Health for
the city was established in March, 1878, he
was appointed its executive officer, resigning
at the close of the year 1879. In Jime, 1869, he
was chosen a member of the School Committee,
upon which Board he served over ten years.
In the years 1885, 1886, 1887 and 1890, he was
a member of the Board of Aldermen, and from
1885' to 1887 a trustee of the Public Library.
At the present time, he is a trustee of the
member of the Board of Investment of the
Cambridge Savings Bank.
FRANCIS COGSWELL
Cogswell, Francis, formerly Superintendent
of the Schools of Cambridge, was bom in Atkin-
son, N.H., Jvme 24, 1827, being the son of
Joseph B. and Judith J. Cogswell. He attended
school at the Atkinson Academy and at the
Kimball Union Academy, at Meriden, N.H.,
and taught district schools in Merrimac, George-
town and Weymouth, Mass. He also conducted
a private school in Georgetown for one or two
years. His first connection with the Cambridge
schools was in April, 1854, when he was elected
Master of the Putnam School, which position
he held for about twenty years. In Septem-
ber, 1874, he was elected Superintendent of
Schools and held that position until 1905.
Mr. Cogswell's work at the head of the school
department needs no encomiimi. For the
twenty-two years of his administration the edu-
182
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
cational development of the City kept ahead,
of its rapid, general growth, and Cambridge
public schools are looked upon today as models.
He has contributed quite extensively to educa-
tional publications. Harvard College honored
him with the degree of Master of Arts in 1861.
HIRA]M M. COMSTOCK
CoMSTOCK, Hiram M., son of Israel Comstock,
was born at Strafford, Vt., October 19, 1833.
He was a descendant, in the eighth generation,
of William Comstock, his immigrant ancestor,
HIRA.M M. COMSTOCK
who, in the early seventeenth century, came
from England with his wife Elizabeth, settled
first in Wethersfield, Conn., and subsequently
removed to New London. The subject of this
sketch was educated in the district schools of
his native town. At the age of eighteen he
came to Boston, and a few years later engaged
in business with Charles S. Gove, under the
firm name of Comstock & Gove, manufacturers
of soda water. The business prospered ex-
ceedingly under Mr. Comstock's direction,
which as head of the firm he continued up to
the time of his death on March 22, 1883.
He was a well-known and highly-esteemed
citizen of Cambridge, where he made his home
and where his widow still resides. He was a
prominent Free Mason, being a member of
Cambridge Chapter, Royal Arch Masons;
Boston Commandery, Knights Templar; and
other Masonic bodies ; and had taken the thirty-
second degree of Masonry. Mr. Comstock
married January 1, 1857, Betsey J. Richardson,
bom in Corinth, Vt., daughter of Henry and
Charlotte (Batchelder) Richardson. Her father
was a descendant, in the seventh generation
from William Richardson, who, bom in England
in 1620, came to Massachusetts about 1640, with
his brother Edward. One child was bom of
this marriage, but died in infancy. Mrs. Com-
stock has been from early life a lover of art, and
when quite young she developed a talent for
painting. After the death of her husband she
pursued her art studies under some of the best
masters in this country and in Europe, and
has attained a creditable rank among contem-
porary artists. This gift has been consecrated
to charity. The proceeds from the sale of her
pictures are devoted to some worthy cause.
Mrs. Comstock is a New England woman of
the best type, and among her many sterling
qualities the most conspicuous are courage,
cheerfulness and charity. She is a member of
the Shepard Memorial Church, Cambridge;
of Hannah Winthrop Chapter, Daughters of
the American Revolution; and of the Society
of the Founders and Patriots of America.
Both the Comstocks and the Richardson
family were identified ^vith the important events
of the colonial and revolutionarj' periods.
Alfred E. Richardson, bom ]\Iay 25, 1832, who
was engaged in architecture and building in
Boston for many years, was a brother of Mrs.
Comstock. He died in Strafford, Vt., April 4,
1880.
JOHN W. COVENEY
CovENEY, John W., one of the most
prominent men in Cambridge, was bom in
Cambridge, April 10, 1845. He received his
education in the public schools of Cambridge.
In 1861, when Sumter was fired upon, he enlisted
at the age of 16 as a volunteer, and marched to
the defence of the Union, in the Twenty-sixth
BIOGRAPHIES
183
Massachusetts Regiment. He served under
Butler at New Orleans, and in the campaign
of the Gulf. On his return from the war, he
began work as an undertaker in Cambridge,
which business he carried on successfully. On
his return to Cambridge he became prominent
in the politics of Old Ward Three, and, with his
brother, Jeremiah W. Coveney, the late post-
master of Boston, made the initial move that
won recognition for the people of the Irish race
in that section of the city.
Although a factor in political matters in his
section of the City, he did not seek office for
himself vmtil 1886, when he was elected a member
of the Common Council. He was re-elected
in 1887, and his fearlessness won him the respect
of all with whom he came in contact.
In the faU of 1887 his record in the Council
was recognized by his nomination and election
to the legislature as a representative from what
was then the fifth, now the third, Middlesex
district. He was re-elected in 1888, and again
in 1889. During his three years in the House
his ability was quickly recognized, and he ranked
high among the Democratic leaders of that time.
He was unyielding in his fealty to the interest
of the Democratic Party, and was among the
most aggressive debaters in the House.
In 1891 and 1892 he served in the State Senate
and was on the committee on railroads and
mercantile affairs. He was also chairman of
the committee on library. He served on the
Boards of Aldermen of 1902, 1903, 1904 and
1905. In the fall of 1903 he accepted a Non-
partisan nomination to the Board of Aldermen
and was one of the Non-Partisan majority in
the Board that upheld the hands of Mayor
Daley during his first term in 1904. He was
chosen by the Non-Partisans as president of
the Board, and he served impartially and well.
He was re-elected as a Non-Partisan member
of the Board for 1905, being one of the two
Non-Partisans elected. In the summer he
announced that he would not seek re-election
to that body again.
He was a man of magnetic personality, an
interesting talker, a hard fighter for whatever
interests he represented. In the turbulent days
in the Aldermanic Chamber, he proved himself
a master on questions of parliamentary proced-
ure and was quick to take advantage of openings
left by his adversaries.
JOHN W. COVENEY
Mr. Coveney died Wednesday, April 14, 1909,
being survived by his wife and two daughters.
Mrs. Coveney died in January, 1912.
GEORGE HOWLAND COX
Cox, George Howland, youngest child of
James and Mercy Nye (Howland) Cox, was
bom October 9, 1854, in Fairhaven, formerly
New Bedford, Mass. He attended the public
schools of his native place, and was so well
equipped that he was enabled to enter the West
Point Military Academy. Owing to his ill
health he was obliged to resign, and this was
the occasion of his reluctantly entering upon a
civil rather than a military career. However,
this change was anything but disastrous so far
as concerns material success. He was proven
himself an admirable financier, as is attested
by his successful labors as president of the Cam-
bridge Trust Company and a member of its
directorate; and his abilities as an executive
officer have been abundantly evidenced in vari-
ous important positions, as president of the
Cambridge Park Commission, and a member
184
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
of the State Armory Commission. His interest
in local benevolent and charitable institutions
is manifested by his connection with the Cam-
bridge Home for Aged People, as director and
treasurer of the Cambridge Hospital, the Cam-
bridge School for Nurses and the Dowse Insti-
tute, in each of which he is a trustee. He is
an active member of leading patriotic and social
daughter of Zenas and Mary (Toby) Whitter-
more, of New Bedford.
GEORGE HOWLAND COX
bodies — the society of Colonial Wars; the Good
Government League of Cambridge, in which he
is a director; the Colonial Club and the Cam-
bridge Club of Cambridge, in each of which he
is an ex-president; the Saint Botolph Club of
Boston; and the Oakley Country Club of Water-
town. He is also a member of the Cambridge
Board of Trade, and has served as president of
that body. He is affiliated -svith Amicable
Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons, of Cam-
bridge. He is a member of the Unitarian Church,
and in politics is a Republican.
Mr. Cox married, in New Bedford, September
25, 1877, Ella P. Whittennore, and they have
one child, George Howland, Jr., bom February
8, 1880. The family residence is Riverbank
Court, Cambridge. Mrs. Cox is the youngest
JAMES VALENTINE COX
Cox, James Valentine, son of Gershom
Flagg Cox, was bom in Hallowell, Me., July 1,
1813. Like his ancestors he followed the sea.
He made his home at New Bedford, Mass., and
engaged in whaling, rising step by step to the
position of master. He made many voyages
at a time when the whaling industry was very
profitable, and amassed considerable wealth
for his day. He served several years in the
office of inspector of customs at New Bedford,
and held various other positions of trust and
honor in New Bedford. He married, November
19, 1838, Mercy Nye, daughter of John and
Mercy (Howland) Nye, of Fairhaven, Mass.
He married second, Annie E. Edwards, Octo-
ber 5, 1869. He died November 23, 1884, be-
loved and honored by the entire community.
Children: James Nye; Myra; George Howland,
bom October 9, 1854.
JOHN F. CROCKER
Crocker, John F., son of Isaiah and Deborah
(Goodnow) Crocker, was bom in South Yar-
mouth in 1851. His early education was in the
public schools of that town. Later he studied
at the Friends' School at Pro\'idence. In 1869
he entered business as the Cape Cod representa-
tive of a Boston grocery company. He took
up business for himself in 1884, forming the
firm of Crocker & Eldridge, now Eldridge, Baker
& Co. He devoted his time to this business
vmtil 1891, when he retired for two years.
In November, 1894, Mr. Crocker succeeded
to the business of Wallace F. Robinson & Co.,
and in 1896 consoHdated the firm with Niles
Bros., in a corporation known as the Boston
Packing and Prov-ision Co., of which he became
treasurer and manager. Reorganization of this
corporation was effected in 1898, and it was
merged with the John P. Squire Company, with
Mr. Crocker as general manager. He remained
wdth the firm until 1906, when he formed the
banking firm of Crocker & Fisher, of Boston.
In 1910, he retired from active business, but
BIOGRAPHIES
had devoted a great deal of time to business at
Leroy, N.Y., where is located the Leroy Cold
Storage & Produce Co., of which he was vice-
president and treasurer.
Mr. Crocker was married, in 1874, to Martha
A. Earle of Boston. Their children are Avis W.,
Grace G., Martha E., John F., Jr., Allan E.,
Richard S. and Stewart M. Mr. Crocker died
December 6, 1911.
man of the Board of Trustees of Cambridge
lodge of Elks. He is one of the ablest of our
citizens. A man of education, he brings within
the circle of business a ripeness of culture and
breadth of courtesy which has greatly assisted
his keen intelligence in carving out his high
HENRY J. CUNNINGHAM
Cunningham, Henry J., commissioner of
public safety, was graduated from St. Dunstan's
College in 1887, after which he entered upon a
five years' course of philosophy and theology
at the famous Urban University, commonly
known as the College of the Propaganda, Rome.
His health failed him, however, and at the end
of two years, he returned home, finally abandon-
ing the ministry and devoting himself to the
business which he has carried on with such
pronounced success.
In 1894 he established the real estate firm
of Cunningham Brothers, one of the largest
in Cambridge. He was the active member of
the firm until this year (1912) when he retired
in order to give his entire time to the city as
Commissioner of Public Safety. The appoint-
ment was made by Mayor Barry, under the
provisions of the Act of the Legislature of May
20, 1912, which places the poHce and fire de-
partments of Cambridge in charge of a single
commissioner.
Mr. Cunningham has long been interested
in social, commercial and political interests of
the city, and has taken an active part in public
life for several years. He has been on the
executive committee of the Cambridge Tax-
payers' Association, a member of the Citizens'
Trade Association, and of the Intercolonial
Club of Boston; was formerly president of the
Catholic Union of Cambridge; one of the
founders of the Hospital Aid Society of the
Holy Ghost hospital, and today acts as one of
its board of directors. Mr. Cunningham's
judgment as an insurance man is highly re-
garded. He was for several years a member of
the rating committee of the Cambridge Board
of Fire Underwriters. He was the first chair-
HENRY J. CUNNINGHAM
position among local business men. Mr. Cun-
ningham was formerly chief of police of Cam-
bridge. He is an active leader in Democratic
affairs in the city. Mr. Cunningham is a bache-
lor and resides at Camelia Avenue.
THOMAS EDWARD CUNNINGHAM, M.D.
Cunningham, Thomas Edward, M.D., son
of John and Mary (Murphy) Cunningham, was
bom in Prince Edward Island, January 5, 1851.
His general education was obtained in the schools
of his native town and at St. Dunstan's CoUege,
Charlottetown, P.E.I. Then he began the study
of medicine with Dr. Breer of Charlottetown,
a leading practitioner of that place, and in 1870
came to Boston. Two years after he entered
the Harvard Medical School. Graduating in
1876, he established himself in Cambridge, and
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
in a few years built up a large and successful
practice. He is a memlicr of the Harvard
Alumni Association, Massachusetts Medical
Society, Cambridge Medical Improvement Asso-
ciation, Boston Medical Library, Advisory
Board of the Hospital for Contagious Diseases,
American Medical Association. He organized
the Hospital Aid Society of the Holy Ghost
THOMAS EDW.'VRD CUXNIN'GHAM, M.D.
Hospital; and for the first five years was the
only visiting physician; he was the first Medical
Director of the Hospital.
Dr. Cunningham has been married twice.
His first marriage occurred in 1879, to Miss
Marjr Doolej' (deceased); and the second on
Februar}' 3, 1891, to Miss Mar>' Kane. He
has two children, Edward and Thomas Cunning-
ham.
SAMUEL SILAS CURRY
Curry, Samuel Silas, president of the
School of Expression, Boston, author and
educator, was bom on a farm in Chatata,
Bradley County, Tenn., November 23, 1847.
His father, James Campbell Curry, was a
farmer, characterized by honesty and upright-
ness. He married Nancy Young, a relative
of David Crockett. Dr. Curry's great-great-
grandfather on his father's side was Robert
Campbell (1755-1831), brother of Col. Andrew
Campbell and of Col. Arthur Campbell (1745-
1781), whose ancestors came from Scotland
through the north of Ireland and settled in
Augusta County, Va. Dr. Curry's great-grand-
mother had eight uncles in the battle of King's
Mountain.
Samuel Silas Curry was brought up in the
country on his father's farm. He did his full
share of hard work while preparing himself
for college during the period of the Civil War
and, while at college, during vacations. He had
few books in childhood, but studied history by
the advice of his father.
He planned to enter one of the eastern col-
leges, but through the influence of Dr. N. E.
Cobleigh, president of East Tennessee Wesleyan
University, at Athens, he matriculated there,
in 1869, taking his A.B. degree in 1872, with
the highest honors of the class or of any pre-
vious class of the college, having done four
years' work in two and a half years of resi-
dence. He had an imaginative and artistic
temperament.
Literature was from his childhood his ambi-
tion, and President Cobleigh therefore advised
him to adopt it as a profession. He entered
Boston University as a post-graduate student,
taking within eight years the successive degrees
of "A.D., A.M. and Ph.D. Much of his work
was done in the Boston Public Library, where
he pursued many courses in reading and inde-
pendent investigation. He was teacher of
Latin and Greek in New Hampshire Seminary
in the spring of 1873. In 1878 he was gradu-
ated in the Boston University School of Oratory.
He had expected to enter the ministry', when
the loss of his voice compelled him to relin-
quish his plans, but not till after he had taken
vocal lessons of specialists in all parts of the
world in hopes of regaining his voice. This
experience led him to take up the teaching of
speaking as his life-work.
In 1879, on the death of Prof. Lewis B.
Munroe, dean of the Boston University School
of Oratory, and the consequent discontinuance
of the School of Oratory, he became instructor
of elocution and oratory in the College of
Liberal Arts connected with the University.
BIOGRAPHIES
He made three trips to Europe, and while
there was a pupil of Lamperti, James, Good-
sonne and Ricquier, and had the advice and
counsel of Regnier with the privilege of ob-
serving the methods at I'Ecole de Declamation
in the Conservatoire. Besides his instructions
from these masters, he was a pupil for several
years of Steele Mackaye, the pupil and succes-
sor of Delsarte, and Mackaye made him a
tempting ofTer to take charge of a school of
acting in New York City, which he declined.
In 1883 he was made Snow professor of oratory
in Boston University, and in 1880, he was
granted the privilege of arranging special
classes from the overflow of applicants, and
these classes in 1884 became a part of the School
of Expression. In 1888 he presented to the
directors of the University the alternative of
allowing him to establish a separate depart-
ment, or to accept his resignation as a teacher
in the University. An increase in salary and
other advantages were offered to him, but the
University again declined to recognize officially
a school of oratory, and he thereupon resigned
and devoted the time thus released to develop-
ing the School of Expression which had already
become well known. He has been acting Davis
professor of oratory at Newton Theological
Institution from 188-4; instructor in elocution,
Harvard College, 1891-94; in Harvard Divinity
School, 1892-1902; instructor in Yale Divinity
School, 1892-1902; Teachers' College of Colum-
bia University; the University of Chicago;
lecturer on art, the State University of Minne-
sota, The State University of Washington,
and in many other leading educational insti-
tutions throughout the country.
In 1895 he founded a quarterly review. Ex-
pression, and made it the organ of the School
of Expression. Its aim, like that of the school,
is to show the relation of vocal training to
education; to make the spoken word the ex-
ponent and servant of the highest literature,
and thus to save elocution from becoming
merely mechanical and artificial; to raise the
standard of public taste and to prove the possi-
bility of successfully reading the best literature
in public entertainments. Sir Henry Irving
gave a recital for the benefit of the school, in
1888, the proceeds endowing the Irving
lectureship.
From this school-teaching experience, Dr.
Curry undertook a series of works based upon
his investigations and discoveries in regard to
voice training, vocal expression and delivery,
and the relations of these to art, with a view
of publishing them as text-books. The first
of these was "The Province of Expression"
(1891), followed by "A Text-Book on Vocal
Expression" (1895); "Imagination and Dra-
matic Instinct" (1896) ; "The Vocal and Liter-
ary Interpretation of the Bible" (1904);
"Alexander Melville Bell," (1906); "Founda-
SAMUEL SILAS CURRY
tions of Expression" (1907); "Browning and
the Dramatic Monologue" (1908); "Mind and
Voice" (1908). He also edited "Classics for
Vocal Expression," (1888), and has several
volumes (ready for publication) in prepara-
tion.
He received the degree of Litt.D. from Colby
University in 1905. He served the Boston
Art Club for fifteen years as librarian. He has
made scientific investigation of the cause of
minister's sore throat, of stammering, of the
primary cause of the misuse of the voice, of
the fundamental principles underlying the
science of training the voice, also of training
the body. He has endeavored to reform all
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
elocutionary teaching, and to show that true
speaking can only be taught by stimulating
the processes of the mind. In speaking of his
experiences he says: "Young people should
dare to do as they dream; to think about what
they do and to act out what they think; not
to be governed too much by outer influences."
In 1882 he married Anna Baright, of Pough-
keepsie, N.Y. Miss Baright was of a long
line of Quaker ancestors, including the Car-
penters, Deans, Mabbets and Thomes, well-
known families of Duchess County. Her
maternal great-grandfather, the only break
in the Quaker line, was Gen. Samuel Augustus
Barker, who served in both wars between the
United States and Great Britain, and after-
ward was a member of the New York Legis-
lature. Mrs. Currj^ was a graduate of the
Boston University School of Oratory, and
has been a teacher at the School of Expression
from its establishment. They have had six
children, of whom four are living.
FREDERICK W. DALLINGER
D.\LLiNGER, Frederick W., was bom in
Cambridge, October 2, 1871, graduated from
the Cambridge Latin School in 1889, entering
Harvard College in the fall of the latter year,
where, in 1893, he received the degree of A.B.
summa cum laude. He received the degree of
A.M. in 1894, and of LL.B. in 1897. During
his eight years at the imiversity he paid his
expenses by working during the summer and
by private tutoring. He was one of the origi-
nators of intercollegiate debating, having been
secretary and president of the old Harvard
Union, a member of the \actorious Har\'ard
debating teams in 1892 and 1893, and the man-
ager and coach of many subsequent Harvard
teams. He was also president of the Har\'ard
International Law Club, and a member of many
other college organizations. In the fall of 1893
he was elected to the Massachusetts House of
Representatives and was re-elected by a large
majority the following year.
As chairman of the committee on county
estimates, single-handed, at a time when reform
was not popvdar, he fought the state and cotmty
machines of his own party and succeeded in
securing the enactment of laws completely
reorganizing the whole system of county finances.
He was one of a handful of Republican members
who supported Governor Greenhalge in his veto
of the Fall River police bill and of the Bell tele-
phone stock watering bill.
Because of his fearless attitude, a determined
effort was made by the state and county ma-
chine of his own party, the corporations and
the liquor interests to prevent his return. Al-
though it was for his own personal benefit to
devote himself to his studies at the Harvard Law
FREDERICK W. D.^LLINGER
School, he felt it his duty to the public to go
back to the legislature. Accordingly he an-
nounced himself as a candidate for the Senate,
which body had blocked some of his measures
in the interest of the people. His candidacy
was ridiculed by the press, and a niimber of
other strong candidates entered the field. He
went straight to the people of Cambridge, how-
ever, and carried ever)- ward by large majorities,
and received a unanimous nomination in the
convention. His election was bitterly contested
and a very large sum of money was spent to
accompUsh his defeat. Most of his enemies,
CLlu?^
BIOGRAPHIES
then, as now, were in his own political party,
but he was elected by over 900 majority.
In the Senate he made good, and the next
year he was re-elected by 2,750 majority.
He is a member and officer of the Cambridge
Board of Trade, and is now (1912) serving his
third year as president.
For many years he has been a director of the
Cambridge Young Men's Christian Association,
and was for some time vice-president of that
beneficent organization.
He is a member of the board of directors of
the Odd Fellows Hall Association and was one
of the incorporators of the Cambridge Masonic
Hall Association. He is warden, treasurer and
president of the Men's Club of the Church of
the Ascension; vice-president of the Middlesex
Branch of the Massachusetts Sunday School
Union; member of the council of the Middlesex
Bar Association, and chairman of the legislative
committee of the Massachusetts Conveyancers'
Association. He has for many years been a
public administrator for Middlesex County and
attorney for the Reliance and Columbian Co-
operative Banks.
Mr. Dallinger was awarded highest honors
in poUtical science by Harvard University, and
in 1897 Longmans, Green & Co. pubUshed his
book, "Nominations for Elective Office in the
United States," which soon came to be recog-
nized as a standard authority throughout the
country.
He is married and has fovir children — two
boys and two girls.
RICHARD HENRY DANA
Dana, Richard Henry, lawyer, was bom
in Cambridge, January 3, 1851. His father,
Richard Henry Dana (1815-1882), was a son
of Richard Henry (1787-1879) and Ruth
Charlotte (Smith) Dana, and grandson of
Francis (1743-1811) and Elizabeth (Ellery)
Dana, and John Wilson and Susanna (Tilling-
hast) Smith, of Taunton, Mass., great-grandson
of Richard (1700-1772) and Lydia (Trow-
bridge) Dana, and of William Ellery, the signer,
and a descendant from Richard and Ann
(Ballard) Dana, through Daniel their youngest
son and Naomi (Croswell) Dana, his wife.
Richard Dana, the emigrant and progenitor
of the Dana family in America, was probably
of French descent. Richard settled in Cam-
bridge by or before 1640 and died in 1690.
Richard (1700-1772) of the third generation
was graduated at Harvard, 1718, was a Son
of Liberty, and presided at some of their
meetings in Faneuil Hall. He subjected
himself to the penalties of treason by taking
the oath of Andrew Oliver, not to enforce the
Stamp Act (1765). He was representative
to the General Court and was at the head of
the Boston bar. He married Lydia, daughter
of Thomas and sister of Judge Edmund Trow-
bridge, of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts,
one of the first to wear the scarlet and powdered
wig. Francis Dana (1743-1811), Harvard,
1762, was a Son of Liberty, delegate to Conti-
nental Congress from November, 1776 to
1784-85, signer of the Articles of Confederation;
United States Minister to Russia, 1781-83;
judge of the Supreme Court of Massachu-
setts, 1785-91, and Chief-Justice of Massa-
chusetts, 1791-1806; a founder and vice-
president of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences; LL.D., Harvard, 1792.
Richard Henry (1787-1879) was the author,
poet and essayist. He was one of the founders
of the North American Review. Richard H.
Dana (1815-1882) was the defender of Sims
and Anthony Bums, fugitive slaves; counsel
of the United States government before the
Intemational Conference at Halifax, N.S., in
1877, growing out of the Geneva Award of
1872; author of "Two Years Before the Mast"
(1840), (1869), "To Cuba and Back" (1859),
"Annotations to Wheaton's Intemational
Law" (1886), etc. Richard Henry Dana,
bom January 3, 1851, counts among his direct
ancestors Governor Simon Bradstreet and
Thomas Dudley, and the first American Poetess,
Ann Bradstreet. He was prepared for college
in public and private schools of Cambridge,
Mass., and at St. Paul's School, Concord, N.H.,
and was graduated at Harvard University,
class orator and A.B., 1874, and at the law
school of the University LL.B., 1877. He was
stroke oar of the freshman crew, 1870; for
three years stroke oar and for two years
captain of the University crew, and during his
law course at the University he had the ad-
vantage of extended travel in Europe, where
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
he carried letters of introduction that brought
him in contact with persons of distinction in
society and statesmanship in everj' city he
visited. He continued the study of law in
the office of Brooks, Ball & Storey, and in
1879, made the trip in a sailing vessel from New
York to San Francisco, in which voyage he
visited many of the scenes so graphically
described in his father's "Two Years Before
the Mast." He declined the position of secre-
tary of Legation at London, proffered by
President Hayes in 1877, and on January 6,
1878, he was married to Edith, daughter of
Henry Wadsworth and Frances (Appleton)
Longfellow, and one of the " blue-eyed banditti"
of the poet's " Children's Hour." Six children,
four sons and two daughters, blessed this
union. Mr. Dana's law practice soon became
extensive and his service in behalf of various
religious, and charitable and civil service
reform organizations was freely given. He
became a regular contributor to the "Civil
Service Record," which he edited in 1889-92,
and he was an uncompromising advocate of
tariff and political reform. He was for many
years secretary of the Massachusetts Civil
Service Reform League; in 1888 he drafted
the act which resulted in the adoption of the
Australian ballot by the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts, the pioneer in the movement
in the United States in that direction. He
planned the scheme of work of the Associated
Charities of Boston, 1878-79, and was chairman
of its committee of organization. He served
as president of the board of trustees of the
New England Conservatory of Music, 1891-98,
and during that time raised $165,000 for the
institution. He has been president of the
Boston Young Men's Christian Association
1890-91, and was active in trying to intro-
duce into Massachusetts the Norwegian system
of regulating the sale of liquors. He served
as president of the Cambridge Civil Service
Reform Association, 1897-1901. He was a
member of the standing committee of the
diocese of Massachusetts, and was elected a
substitute delegate to the general convention
of the Protestant Episcopal church in America,
held in Boston in 1904, serving as chairman of
the general convention committee. He was
made trustee and treasurer of the Episcopal
Theological School, of Cambridge, in 1894, and
has held the office of president of the Alumni
Association of St. Paul's School, Concord, N.H.
In 1901, Governor Crane, of Massachusetts,
appointed him one of the three commissioners
to inquire into the question of constructing
a dam at the mouth of the Charles River, and
the favorable report of the commission made
in 1903, which led to the accomplishment of
the great project, was written largely by Mr.
Dana. In 1901 he was appointed by the board
of overseers of Harvard University on the
visiting committee in the department of phi-
losophy, and organized the movement for
raising funds for building Emerson Hall, which
resulted in procuring about $165,000. He was
a member of the executive committee of the
Cambridge Good Government League and the
Massachusetts Election Laws League, was presi-
dent of the Massachusetts Civil Service Re-
form Association, and is chairman of the council
of the United States Civil Service Reform
League. He is a vice-president of the Massa-
chusetts Reform Club; a member of the New
York Reform Club, and was president of the
Library Hall Association, organized for the
improvement of the municipal government
in Cambridge. His social club affiliations
include the Union and Exchange Clubs, of
Boston; the Essex County Club; the Oakley
Country Club, of Watertown, of which he was
president ; and the Harvard Club, of New York.
His trusteeships have included the New
England Conservatory of Music; the Oliver
Building Trust; the Washington Building
Trust; the Delta Building Trust; the Brom-
field Building Trust and the Congress Street
Building Trust. He is the author of "Double
Taxation Unjust and Inexpedient" (1892);
"Double Taxation in Massachusetts" (1895);
"Substitutes for the Caucus" (Forum, 1886);
"Workings of the Australian Ballot Act in
Massachusetts " Annals of American Academy,
(1892) ; and Conference of Good Government,
(1906); Address on the One Hundredth Anni-
versary of the Town of Dana (1901) ; and other
papers and addresses on civil service reform,
taxation, ballot reform, election expenses and
better houses for working men. ,
BIOGRAPHIES
ROBERT DOUGLASS
Douglass, Robert, the second child and
older son of Robert and Betsey Hadley Douglass,
was bom in Cambridge, Mass., June 17, 1806.
In 1812 his parents left that City, business
being at a standstill on account of the Embargo.
His father was a carpenter and an expert me-
chanic, and set up the machinery in cotton mills
which were being built at that time. They re-
turned in 1816 or 1817, after having lived in sev-
eral towns of Massachusetts. With that excep-
tion Cambridge was always his home. As a boy
he worked with a carpenter, but this was too
hard for him. In 1822 his father died, leaving
his mother in very poor circumstances with a
ROBERT DOUGLASS
family of seven children dependent upon her.
It was necessary that the older son shovild help
his mother, and he was apprenticed to Isaac
Lum, probably the earliest manufacturing
confectioner in Cambridge, of whom he learned
the trade. After leaving the latter' s establish-
ment, he spent a short time in Roxbury, and in
June, 1826, before he was of age, commenced
business for himself on the comer of School and
Cherry Streets. He bought his sugar in small
quantities and brought it out of Boston him-
self, and after it was made into candy carried
it into Boston to sell. From this small beginning
by untiring industry, strict economy and fair
dealing was built up the largest confectionery
manufactory at that time in New England,
sending wagons all over these states. Soon he
moved to near the comer of Windsor and
School Streets. On account of his increasing
business and of loss and annoyance caused by
the high tides, which in those early days had
unobstructed rise over the marshes, one of
which in 1830 covered the place to a depth of
three feet in fifteen minutes, he bought an
estate on what is now Massachusetts Avenue,
comer of Douglass Street, where his business
was carried on. He introduced the manu-
facture of English and medicated lozenges
in this vicinity. In 1834 his brother Royal
became his partner, and in 1843 this firm was
dissolved. In the following year he entered
into partnership with Charles Everett, under
the firm name of Everett and Douglass, for the
sale of domestic goods on commission in Boston.
This continued for three years only, and he
was never afterwards in any active business.
In 1836, he bought shares in the Cambridge
Bank. He was connected with that institution
and its successor, the Cambridgeport National
Bank, as director or president for more than
forty-four years, holding the latter office for
nineteen years. He was trustee of the Cam-
bridgeport Savings Bank from its incorporation
in 1853 vmtil his death, and vice-president for
the last twenty-six years of his life. He served
as one of the Commissioners of the Sinking
Fund of the city of Cambridge, was a member
of the Cambridge Water Board, and was the
treasurer of the Union Glass Works of Somer-
ville. He always attended the First Universalist
Church, having identified himself with that
society when very young. He was married
in 1832 to Adeline M. Welch, daughter of
Joseph W. Welch of Cambridge, who died in
1857. In 1860 he married Anna E. Dexter,
daughter of Henry Dexter of Cambridge, and
they had three daughters. Mr. Douglass died
Febmarv 19, 1885. Mrs. Anna E. Douglass
190b
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
died October 26, 1913. Mr. Douglass was
pre-eminently a self-made man. He had little
opportunity to obtain an education when a boy ;
but notwithstanding that fact, he became
a successful business man, and one whose
advice was sought by many, and this he was
always most willing to give. He was kind and
genial to all with whom he was brought in
contact. He was a man of the strictest integ-
rity, of whom it could truly be said that his word
was as good as his bond. He was very quiet
and retiring, and refused to hold any public
office.
HENRY ENDICOTT
Endicott, Henry, was bom in Canton,
November 14, 1824; son of Elijah and Cynthia
(Childs) Endicott. He belongs to the branch
of the Massachusetts family of Endicotts that
settled in Canton in 1700. Mr. Endicott was
educated in the public schools, and began
business life in the manufacturing of steam
engines and boilers in Boston, in 1845, under
the firm name of Allen & Endicott, and has
had a long and successful career in this branch
of work. He was president of the Allen &
Endicott Building Company, director of the
Cambridge Gas Light Company, director of
the First National Bank of Cambridge, and
president of the Cambridgeport Savings Bank.
Mr. Endicott was connected with the Masonic
order fifty-seven years, being Master Mason,
in 1860, in Amicable Lodge, and Worshipful
Master in 1864, '65, '66; was Master Mason
of Mizpah Lodge (U.D.) in 1868, and elected
Worshipful Master in 1869, under charter, and
was District Deputy Grand Master, District
No. 4, in 1867, '68. Was exalted, in 1861, in
St. Paul's Royal Arch Chapter, Boston; was
Scribe in 1862, '63; King, 1864; High Priest,
1865, '66; also High Priest of Cambridge
Royal Arch Chapter (U.D.) in 1865, and
Grand King of the Grand Chapter of Mass-
achusetts in 1867. He was made Royal and
Select Master, in Boston Council, in 1861, and
was made a Knight Templar, in 1861, in Boston
Commandery, and became a member the same
year; was elected Captain General in 1868;
Generalissimo, 1869, '70; and Eminent Com-
mander in 1891, '92. He received the degrees
of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite,
from the fourth to the thirty-second, in the
Grand Consistory of Massachusetts. Mr. Endi-
cott has filled a ntmnber of other important
offices in the order, was a member of the Colonial
Club, of Cambridge, and the Union Club. He
married, in 1847, Miss Miriam J. Smith, who
died in 1849. In 1851 he was again married,
to Miss Abby H. Browning, of Petersham.
They had four children, of whom one only
survives; Emma Endicott Marean. He has
five grandchildren. Mr. Endicott died No\^-
ember 8, 1913.
ROBERT OLIVER FULLER
Fuller, Robert Oliver, son of Oliver and
Sarah (Richardson) Fuller, was bom in Cam-
bridge, September 12, 1829.
He was educated in the public schools. He
began his commercial career in the iron business
in 1855, under the firm name of Gay, Manson
& Co., changed in 1857 to Robert O. Fuller,
then Fuller & Dana in 1860, and in 1866 to
Fuller, Dana & Fitz.
A'Ir. Fuller was a trustee of Worcester Acad-
emy, Colby University, and Newton Theologi-
cal Institution. He was one of the founders of
the Boston Baptist Social Union, and its presi-
dent in 1874; president of the Boston Baptist
Bethel ; president of the American Baptist Home
Mission Society, and a member of the executive
committee of the American Baptist Missionary
Union. He was a member of the Cambridge
common council in 1861-'62, but had uniformly
declined all other city offices.
He was a member of the House of Represent-
atives, 1871; in 1872-'73 a member of the state
Senate, and in 1889 a member of the executive
council of Governor Ames, from Cambridge.
Mr. Fuller was married in Cavendish, Vt.,
May 31, 1855, to Sarah P., daughter of Joseph
and Emma (Baldwin) Parker. Of this union
were seven children: Mary F., Robert O., Alfred
C, Grace, Annie, Charles Sumner and Helen
Fuller.
Mr. Fuller died on the ninth r.f March, 1903.
BIOGRAPHIES
ARTHUR ELMER DENISON
Denison, Arthur Elmer, for thirty-six years
a resident of Cambridge, was bom in Burke, Vt.,
December 5th, 1847. He fitted for Tiifts Col-
lege at Westbrook Seminary, during which
period he enlisted in the service of the United
States Army, being mustered out with the rank
of Sergeant, and graduated from Tufts in 1869
with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He was
also a member of the Phi Beta Kappa.
After his graduation, he returned to Maine,
and there founded and became the first cashier
of the Norway National Bank, reading law in
his spare moments. After he had made the
decision that he was fitted to adopt the legal
profession as his life work, he resigned his posi-
tion in the Bank, went to Portland and entered
the office of the Hon. William Wirt Virgin, who
later became one of the Associate Justices of
the Supreme Coiut of Maine, and in whose
office Mr. Denison received a fine legal training.
He was admitted to the Maine Bar in 1872,
and directly afterward came to Boston, where
he was associated with Henry W. Paine, then
one of the foremost lawyers and citizens of the
Commonwealth, and for thirty-eight years
thereafter practised law in Boston, where he
attained the highest eminence in his chosen
profession, both as a practicing attorney, and
as Master and Auditor in nimierous important
and complex cases.
He was married in 1873 to Ida E., a daughter
of the late Dr. Ward Eddy Wright of Cambridge.
Of this union two children were bom, one, a
daughter, died in infancy; the other, a son, is
now a practicing attorney in Boston. After
Mr. Denison's marriage, he moved to North
Cambridge, and here he spent the remainder
of his life. Suggestions of public honors were
frequently made to him, to all of which he gave
a firm refusal, but in his own quiet way, and
by the very force of his remarkable personality,
he found much good to do in the world as a
citizen in the ranks.
He was a member and had been a vice-presi-
dent of the Cambridge Club; a past president
of the Universalist Club of Boston; a member
of the Mizpah Lodge of Masons; and honorary
counsel of the Avon Home. He was a trustee
of Tufts College, to the duties of which he gave
largely of his time, strength and ability, which
the College recognized by giving him the hon-
orary degree of Master of Arts in 1908. For
many years he was Chairman of the Standing
Committee of the First Universalist Chiu-ch on
Inman Street; and later, after his removal to
North Cambridge, he took a prominent part in
ARTHUR ELMER DENISON
the affairs of the Third Universalist Parish, and
was Chairman of the Board of Trustees for
thirteen consecutive years.
Mr. Denison died on the 18th of May, 1910,
after a brief illness, closing a life fvdl of honor,
and possessed of the respect of all who were
privileged to know him.
HENRY DEXTER
Dexter, Henry, sculptor, was bom at Nel-
son, Madison County, New York, October 11,
1806, on a farm in the midst of an unsettled
wilderness, where his parents had settled shortly
before. He is notable as having been one of the
earliest sculptors of the United States, and
typically American, in that being entirely a
self-taught genius, his achievements were wholly
due to his natural talents and his own unguided
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
efforts. As a child he made pictures on cloth,
paper being an unattainable luxury, with colors
made from fruit juices. When he was eleven
years old his father died, and the family re-
moving to Connecticut, he was put to work with
a farmer, who sent him to school in winter. He
sought to obtain emplo}'ment with a family
named Alexander, whose son, Frank, then little
more than a boy, was already a recognized
artist, and it became the dream of young
Dexter's life to meet this "Frank" and learn
his art from him. Years afterwards he became
HENRY DEXTER
his friend, and related to him by marriage, and
though at first discouraging him from an artists'
career, he finally proved of great assistance to
him. In the meantime, when he left the farm,
Dexter was, much against his will, apprenticed
to a blacksmith; and after learning the trade,
he made it necessary for himself to follow it,
by marrying a niece of Alexander, and thus
assuming the responsibilities of the head of a
family. He made his first attempt at portrait
painting about this time; but Alexander him-
self expostulated with him for even dreaming
of giving up his trade, and he reluctantly con-
tinued it for seven years. Then, in 1835, he
went to Boston, resolved that, whether success-
ful or not, he would at least try to become an
artist, and, with the assistance of Alexander
he soon made a certain reputation as a portrait
painter. In the following spring he went to
Pro\'idence, R.I., where he painted portraits
of General Carpenter and his family. Return-
ing in the autumn to Boston, he followed the
profession of a portrait painter until Mr. Alex-
ander, chancing to suggest to him to obtain a
quantity of modeling clay, his attention was
thus accidentally turned to the art of sculpture,
and he at once achieved remarkable success in
making portrait busts. His first commission
in marble was to make a bust of the mayor of
Boston, Hon. Samuel A. Eliot, after whom
many of the most distinguished gentlemen of
Boston made request for similar works. He
made busts of Longfellow, Agassiz, Henry
Wilson, Cornelius C. Felton, president of Har-
■\'ard College, Anson Burlingame, and of Charles
Dickens, when that noveHst \asited Boston,
as well as of several hundred others; and the
work, executed entirely by his own hands, was
frequently of surpassing merit. In statuary
he executed the figure now in Mount Auburn
cemetery, known as the Biimey Child, a colossal
figure of a "Backwoodsman"; figures of the
children of J. B. Gushing, of Watertown, ex-
hibited as "The Young Naturalist" and "The
First Lesson;" a statue of the daughter
of William P. Winchester; a statue of Gen.
Joseph Warren, now at Bimker HiU, and figures
entitled "Nymph of the Ocean," and "Devo-
tion." In 1860 he set about making a group
of busts of the president of the United States
and all governors of states then in office, and
in the execution of this work he traveled over
every state except California and Oregon. On
completing the casts, he exhibited them in the
rotunda of the State House in Boston, and
though the outbreak of the Civil War prevented
him from executing all of them in marble, the
work in its partial completion is still a valuable
portion of the art collection at Washington.
Among the best of these busts are those of
Governors Hicks, Morgan, Morrill, Banks, Ellis
and Chase.
In May, 1828, he was married to Miss KeUey,
the niece of the artist Francis Alexander. They
had three children: a son who died in infancy
and two daughters; one of the latter, Mrs.
BIOGRAPHIES
Harriet D. Mason, is dead; the other, Mrs.
Anna E. Douglas, is living. His first wife died
in 1857. Just before beginning a tour through
the United States, he married Mrs. Martha
Billings, of MiUbury, Mass.
Mr. Dexter resided in Cambridge, Mass., for
many years, having a studio on Broadway.
He died there, January 23, 1876.
which seemed to be for the public welfare, and
to all the duties of the various offices which he
was called upon to fill he gave freely of his time
and talents.
WILLIAM BULLARD DURANT
DuRANT, William Bullard, died at his
home, Lowell Street, Cambridge, on Wednesday,
October 4, 1911.
Mr. Durant was bom in Barre, Mass., in
1844, the son of Rev. Amos Bxollard and Mary
Ann Durant. He was known as William Bullard
until after he had finished his education, when
he took as his surname the maiden name of his
mother. He received his elementary education
at the Leicester Academy and graduated from
Harvard in the Class of 1865. He received
an A.M. in 1868, and his degree from the Har-
vard Law School in 1869. He married, in 1879,
Caroline V. Aldrich, the daughter of Judge P.
E. Aldrich, of Worcester; and she and three
sons — Aldrich, an engineer at Havana, Cuba;
Henry W., a lawyer in Boston; and William
B. Durant, an engineer at Greenfield, Mass., —
survive him.
Mr. Durant lived in Cambridge for fifty
years, and always took an active interest in
city affairs. He was sent to the Common Coun-
cil in 1880 and 1881, and his ability was at once
recognized by his fellow citizens. He was a
member of the House of Representatives in
1894 and 1895. He served as president of the
Water Board from 1899 to 1906, and here his
legal training was most valuable, and he was
able to render great service in settling many
important questions. At the time of his death
he was a director of the Charles River National
Bank and a trustee of the Cambridge Savings
Bank. He was an attendant at the First Con-
gregational Chxu-ch, a member of the Oakley
Country Club and the Cambridge Club.
Mr. Durant was the typical "good citizen,"
and was always found ready to perform his duty
in serving the City. He could be depended
upon to lend his support to any movement
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
Eliot, Charles William, president emeritus
of Harvard University, was bom in Boston,
on March 20, 1834, the grandson of one of the
famous merchant princes of the New England
capital, and the son of Samuel Atkins and Mary
(Lyman) EHot. His father was one of the
most eminent public men of the Commonwealth,
having been mayor of Boston, a member of
CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT
Congress, and the treasurer of Harvard College.
The family was descended from Andrew Eliot,
who came from Devonshire, England, about
1632, and settled in Beverly, Mass., very soon
after the first Puritan migration.
To have sprung from such a sterling race is
more honor than kinship with any titled aris-
tocracy. Through every generation the men
of the Eliot name have justified their heritage.
No youth could have had a more fortunate
or inspiring environment than that of the
Boston home whence young Eliot went to the
Boston Latin School and to Harvard College.
His was the class of 1853. Graduating with
the degree of Bachelor of Arts and an enviable
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
reputation for scholarship, second in rank in his
class, Mr. Eliot remained at the college as a
tutor in mathematics, studying chemistry
meanwhile with Professor Josiah P. Cooke, and
in 1856 receiving the degree of Master of Arts.
For two years more he continued to be an in-
structor in mathematics, applying himself
at the same time to research in chemistry, but
in 185S he became assistant professor in mathe-
matics and chemistry in the Lawrence Scien-
tific School at Harvard.
In 1S61 Mr. Eliot relinquished one part of
his double professional duty to become assist-
ant professor of chemistry alone, holding this
post for two years. From 1863 to 1865 he
studied chemistry and investigated educational
methods in Europe. Returning to America,
he became professor of anah-tical chemistry
in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
then a young institution brought into being
by the progress of New England and the need
of a more thorough scientific knowledge in the
industrial arts.
For four years, from 1865 to 1869, Mr. Eliot
continued in the Faculty of the Institute of
Technology, passing parts of the years 1867-
1S6S in France.
Through the stormy years of the Civil War
the urgent problem of American higher educa-
tion had been thrust aside, but it came to the
forefront as soon as the war had ended. There
was much of dissatisfaction and unrest at
Harvard. New methods and new men were
demanded. The election of a new president
of Harvard was impending when Professor
Eliot printed in the Atlantic Monthly, two
vigorous and stirring articles on "The New
Education," which stamped him at once as an
iconoclast in the judgment of conservative
Massachusetts. But there were powerful men
of progress to whom these new ideas appealed,
and Professor Eliot, in 1869, was elected by
the Harvard corporation as President. The
overseers at first refused to concur, but finally
yielded, and Dr. Eliot began his great work of
educational reformation.
President Eliot, once seated, began straight-
way to broaden the curriculum of the Uni-
versity and to give the individual student some
freedom of choice in the courses which he should
pursue. This was a perilous attack on im-
memorial custom. Latin, Greek, mathematics,
a smattering of modem languages and a smat-
tering of some of the sciences had been the
prescribed higher education of New England
ever since the beginnings of education there.
Regardless of individual characteristics and
regardless of the careers which they were to
pursue, the young men of one academic gen-
eration after another were passed through the
same mold and rigidly required to learn the
same things, or try to learn them, whether the
topics interested them or not.
President Eliot changed all this, but the
process required years of patient endeavor.
The "elective system," as it came to be called,
did not win a complete triumph at Harvard
until about 1884. Yet there was progress
from the first; the broadening which the new
president began was never halted. The gradu-
ate school was developed and "That truth
should be the final aim of education and that
without liberty the attainment of truth is
thwarted," became the guiding principle at
Harvard. At the same time, President Eliot
gave his splendid energies to the allied task
of making Harvard a genuine university.
There were law and medical schools, a divinity
school, a scientific school and a school of den-
tistr}', but the organization was loose and
sprawling, and Harvard in 1869 was still a
university only in name. The new president
sought to bring these scattered departments
genuinely together after a new plan which
was not European, but American. "A uni-
versity in any worthy sense of the term," he
said, "must grow from seed. It cannot be
transplanted in full leaf and bearing. It
cannot be run up, like a cotton mill, in six
months, to meet a quick demand. Neither
can it be created by an energetic use of the
inspired editorial, the advertising circiilar and
the frequent telegram. Numbers do not con-
stitute it, and no money can make it before
its time."
One of the first points upon which President
Eliot insisted was that the departments of
the university should have a common treasury'
and a uniform and efficient system of govern-
ment. He carried his point, and went on to
modernize the methods of instruction in the
various schools. He gave his personal atten-
BIOGRAPHIES
195
tion and presence to the various branches of
the university. "Well, I declare," said Gov-
ernor Washburn, when the new president first
appeared officially in the law school, "the presi-
dent of Harvard College in Dane Hall! This is
a new sight."
The leadership of President Eliot in American
education has been frankly and graciously
recognized abroad as well as at home. He is
an'''officer of the Legion of Honor, of France,
and corresponding member of the Institute
of France. In this country he is a Fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and a member of the American Philosophical
Society and of many other organizations for
intellectual and social advancement.
JOHN R. FAIRBAIRN
Fairbairn, John R., Sheriff of Middlesex
County, was born in Boston, January 26, 1851,
of Scotch ancestry. His father, John Fairbairn,
was bom near Glasgow, and served eleven years
in the Forty-Second Regiment Scottish High-
landers before emigrating to America. Shortly
after the birth of the son, the family moved to
Cambridge, where the subject of this sketch was
educated in the public schools. At an early
age he was apprenticed to the upholstery trade,
at which he worked several years as a journey-
man after completing his term of service. In
1874 he established himself in East Cambridge
as an auctioneer and dealer in real estate, in
which he was successful. He was appointed
Deputy Sheriff in 1884. In 1889 he was a
member of the Common Council of the city of
Cambridge; and in 1890, 1891, 1892, 1893, 1895
and 1896, one of the Board of Aldermen, serving
as President in 1893, 1895 and 1896. In June,
1896, he succeeded the late John M. Fiske as
keeper of the jail and master of the house of
correction in Cambridge, and as Special Sherii?
under Henry G. Gushing. June 22, 1899, after
the death of Sheriff Gushing, he was appointed
Sheriff by Governor Walcott to fill the vacancy,
and subsequently elected by the people term
after term, and is now serving his second year
of a five-year term. He is connected with the
Masonic fraternity in Cambridge, being a
member of the lodge, chapter, council and com-
mandery, and several other fraternal organiza-
tions.
JOHN FISKE
FiSKE, John, philosopher, historian and
man of letters, was bom in Hartford, Conn.,
March 30, 1842; son of Edmund Brewster and
Mary Fiske (Bound) Green; grandson of
Humphreys and Hannah (Heaton) Green of
Delaware, and of John and Mary (Fiske)
Bound of Middletown, Conn., and a descendant
from Phineas Fiske of Fressingfield, Suffolk,
England, who came to America in 1641, and
settled in Wenham, Mass. His name was
originally Edmund Fiske Green, and in 1855,
on the marriage of his widowed mother to
Edwin W. Stoughton, he took the name of his
maternal great-grandfather, John Fiske, there
being no other male descendant of the family
to carry down the name.
He passed his early boyhood with his mater-
nal grandparents who lived in Middletown,
Conn., and displayed great precocity as well as
diligence in preparing for college. He entered
Harvard as a sophomore in 1860, although he
had already advanced in every department
farther than the college course could take him.
Here he became an enthusiastic investigator
on his own account in history, philosophy
and comparative philology, averaging fifteen
hours of work daily.
196
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
He had studied Euclid, algebra, trigonome-
try, surveying and navigation at twelve ; could
read Plato and Herodotus, and had begun Ger-
man at fifteen; could read Spanish, French,
Italian and Portuguese at seventeen, studying
Sanscrit and reading the Bible in Hebrew at
eighteen, meanwhile continuing an incessant
course of reading.
He was graduated at Harvard in arts in 1S63,
and in law in 1S65, having been admitted to
the Suffolk bar in 1SG4. He was married at
Appleton Chapel, Cambridge, September Gth,
1S64, to Abby Morgan, daughter of Aaron
Brooks, Jr., of Petersham, Mass.
He never practised law, devoting himself
to literature, gaining position as an author,
from the publication of his first article in the
National Quarterly Rrciew, in 1861, a review
of Buckle's "History of CiviUzation," which
won for him the consideration of editors of
both American and English periodicals, and
he became a frequent contributor to the leading
magazines and reviews.
He was university lecturer at Harvard,
1869-71, his subjects being "Positive Philos-
ophy," and the "Doctrine of Evolution." He
was instructor in history there, 1870; assistant
librarian, 1872-79; overseer, 1879-91; and
member of the Board at the time of his death.
He was non-resident lecturer on American
history in the University College, London,
England, 1879, at the Royal Institution of
Great Britain, 1880, and in Washington Uni-
versity, St. Louis, Mo., 1881-1885; and from
1885, non-resident professor of American
history in that institution.
After ISSO, he gave his entire time to writing
and lecturing. On April 4th, 1881, he gave
by request a lecture on the Old South Meeting
House on the site of the pulpit where Samuel
Adams and Warren once roused the people
to resist the encroachments of George III.
He wound up -n-ith a grand and eloquent appeal
to save the building, and convert it into a place
for teaching American histor}-. The audience
was large and most enthusiastic, and a fresh
impulse was started towards saving the
building.
"The Old South meeting-house, and John
Fiske inside it, is a combination that can make
an honest patriot of anyone," was the remark
of a certain Boston statesman. These words
but reflect the public estimation of this big,
hearty, clear-minded teacher of the people.
He delivered in 1890, 1895, and 1S9S three
series of twelve lectures each on " The Discovery
and Colonization of America' ' ; " Old Virginia " ;
and "The Dutch and Quaker Colonies," before
the Lowell Institute, Boston.
He was elected a fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences; a member of
the Historical societies of Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Missouri, California, Oneida County, N.Y.;
the Military Historical Society of Massachu-
setts; the Essex Institute; the American
Antiquarian Society; the American Geographi-
cal Societ}-; and the American Folklore Society;
was given the degree of LL.D. by Harvard in
1894, and that of Litt.D. by the University of
Pennsylvania the same year.
He composed a mass in B minor, and several
hymns and songs, and was president of the
Boylston Club of Singers, Boston, from 1876
to 1881. He was joint editor with James
Grant Wilson of Appleton's "Cyclopaedia of
American Biography" (6 vols.) 1887-1889.
BIOGRAPHIES
197
His published works include: Tobacco and
Alcohol (1868) ; History of English literature,
abridged from Taine and edited for schools
(1872); Myths and Myth-makers (1872);
Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy based on the
Doctrine of Evolution (2 vols. 1874) appeared
simultaneously in London and in Boston;
two years later, The Unseen World (1S76);
Darwinism and Other Essays (1879) ; new edi-
tion (1885) ; Excursions of an Evolutionist
(1883); The Destiny of Man viewed in the
Light of his Origin (1884); The Idea of God
as Affected by Modem Knowledge (1885);
American Political Ideas viewed from the
Standpoint of Universal History (1885) ;
Washington and His Country (1887); The
Critical Period of American History, 1783-
1789 (1888, illustrated edition, 1897); The
Beginnings of New England or the Puritan
Theocracy in its relation to Civil and Religious
Liberty (1889, illustrated edition, 1898).
"In the Beginnings of New England John
Fiske has given us another of those practical
philosophic studies, which have placed him
among the very foremost of living historical
writers. Indeed, for insight, for appreciation
of the continuit}^ of human thought and de-
velopment, for the true perspective, and for
literary skill, and lucidity, there is no English
writer of the day who can be named with him
except Prof. Bryce, and while his style is not
less soHd than that of the author of "The Holy
Roman Empire," it is more picturesque.
" In his introductory chapter, Dr. Fiske,
opening the way for New England, treats of
the Roman idea and the English idea in the
development of government. It is a masterly
chapter. We wish every congressman was
compelled to read it before he takes his seat,
and obliged to pass an examination upon it.
We might hope then for some little comprehen-
sion of the philosophy of real statesmanship."
The War of Independence, for Young People
(1889) ; Civil Government of the United States,
considered with some references to its Origins
(1890); The American Revolution (2 vols.
1891, illustrated edition, 1896); The Discovery
of America, with some account of Ancient
America and the Spanish Conquest (2 vols.
1892); Frantz Schubert (in Millets Famous
Composers, 1892) ; Edward Livingston You-
mans, Interpreter of Science for the People
(1894) ; Old Virginia and her Neighbors (2 vols.
1897); The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in
America (2 vols. 1899); Through Nature to
God (1899); and Japanese translations of The
Destiny of Man and The Idea of God; Life
Everlasting (1901); New France and New
England (1902) ; Essays, Historical and Lit-
erary (2 vols.) ; History of All Nations (3 vols.
Lea Brothers, publishers, Philadelphia) ; Colo-
nization of the New World; Independence of
the New World; Modem Development of the
New World.
He was equally at home in treating of lan-
guage, art, natural science, music, religion,
modem literature, the classics, history or phi-
losophy; but it was in the two last-named
fields that he chose to do the bulk of his most
serious work. In philosophy he ably supple-
mented the system of Herbert Spencer by
opening up, while he expounded it, new vistas
into a reverent theism.
It is not too much to say that he shows an
insight and comprehension greater than Spen-
cer's own, while his form of statement is often
more felicitous.
Of the extremely important original contri-
bution of John Fiske to the general theory of
evolution, his own statement is to be found
in his "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy" (tenth
edition, New York, 1889), ii, 159, 342, and in
his "Excursions of an Evolutionist" (ninth
edition, Boston, 1889) in a paper entitled
"The Meaning of Infancy."
In his treatment of history he displays the
same grasp, insight, and analytic power, and
the same ingenuity in extending the applica-
tion of the evolutionary principle.
"The government of the United States,"
he says, in the preface to "American Political
Ideas," "is not the result of special creation,
but of evolution." This sentence strikes the
key-note of his historical method. In writing
history, he was still the philosopher, seeking
before everything else the why of the great
movements and events.
His style was invariably rich, flexible, and
clear, — "such a style," said the Atlantic
Monthly, " as was perhaps never before brought
to the illustration of the topics with which
Mr. Fiske habitually deals."
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
In a letter of Charles Darwin to Dr. Fiske,
bearing date December 8th, 1874, he says:
"I never in my life read so lucid an expositor
(and therefore thinker) as you are." Added
to his profound scholarship, this gift of expres-
sion was invaluable to the great leader of
philosophic and historic thought in America.
Just before his death Dr. Fiske had taken
passage for England, having accepted an invi-
tation to represent this country at the com-
memoration of the millennial of the death of
King Alfred the Great, to be held at Winchester,
England, and to give an address at the unveil-
ing of the statue.
James W. Bright, secretary, in acknowledg-
ing Dr. Fiske's acceptance, said: "I am ex-
ceedingly gratified to receive your acceptance
of the invitation to deliver an address at the
Alfred celebration, and I can assure you that
this announcement will be received with
peculiar pleasure bj' the English committee.
"The initial construction of the programme is
chiefly in my hands. I have accordingly first
addressed you, as the pre-eminently qualified
man to represent America in a broad historical
view of the real meaning of the celebration.
You may, of course, select your own theme;
whatever you do select will be treated in that
deeply interpretative manner for which you
are so justly admired."
Intensely interested in the subject, and-
appreciating the honor conferred upon him
by a committee of distinguished Englishmen.
happy also at the honor bestowed through him
on America, and his Alma Mater, Harvard,
in connection with a celebration of such mag-
nitude, he was looking forward to the event
with great enthusiasm, feeling, as he said, that
he had "something to say."
He died suddenly in Gloucester, Mass., on
the morning of July 4th, 1901.
Of his six children, Maud, Harold Brooks,
Clarence, Ralph Browning, Ethel and Herbert
Huxlev, four onlv sur^nve him.
MICHAEL E. FITZGERALD
Fitzgerald, Michael E.. superintendent of
Cambridge schools, was bom in East Abington,
Mass., November 22, 1863, son of John C. and
Mary D. His early education was received at
the public schools of his native town, and he
was graduated from the Bridgewater Normal
School in 1887. The twenty-five ensuing years
have been devoted to school work. Before
coining to Boston, in 1901, as sub-master in the
Lawrence district, he spent four years as prin-
cipal of the largest school in Spencer, Mass.,
and had charge of the evening school during
that time; ten years as principal of the Lincoln
Grammar School in South Framingham; and a
short time as principal of the Wetherbee School
in Lawrence; and while in Framingham, having
studied law in the office of Judge Walter
.MICHAEL E. FITZGERALD
Adams, was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar
in 1898. His work in Boston has included
the directorship of the vacation schools. He
received the appointment as master of the
Christopher Gibson district in Dorchester, in
1903. On the opening of the new Oliver Wendell
Holmes district in 1905, he was transferred to
that district. In 1909-1910 the Franklin Park
Open Air School was under his charge. He is
president of the Schoolmen's Club whose mem-
bership of four hundred and fifty includes all
the men teachers of the Boston school system.
In 1892 Mr. Fitzgerald was married to Miss
Mary E. Brassill of South Weymouth. ' He has
a family of seven sons.
BIOGRAPHIES
199
RUEL HASSELTINE FLETCHER
Fletcher, Ruel Hasseltine, sixty years
a" teacher (1849-1910), one of a family of
twelve children, six sons and six daughters,
was bom in Cornish, N.H., May 16, 1829, and
was brought up on a farm until his majority.
He was educated in the schools of his native
town, in the Newport, N.H., High School, at
Kimball Union Academy, and at the New
Hampton Institute. Years later he took
courses in geometry, physics and physical
geography at Harvard University.
ruel hasseltine FLETCHER
At the age of twenty he taught his first
school in Newport, N.H. Subsequently he
taught winter schools in his native town, in
Hartford, Vt., Canaan, N.H., and West New-
bury, Mass. He began teaching in annual
schools at Abington Centre, Mass., in March,
1854, where he remained two years, resigning
to accept the mastership of the Coddington
School in Quincy, Mass.
In December, 1857, he was called to the
mastership of the Olis Grammar School in
this city. In January, 1861, for lack of accom-
modations, the school was moved into the
building that it now occupies, on the comer
of Thomdike and Sixth Streets. After fifty-
two years of service as master of the Thomdike
School, Mr. Fletcher retired, January 1, 1910,
and was unanimously elected Master Emeritus
by the school officials.
In Febmary, 1863, Mr. Fletcher married
Rebecca Caroline Wyman, daughter of the
late WilHam and Ruth Bradstreet Wyman, of
Cambridge. Eight children were bom to them
two of whom died in infancy, and one, Fred-
erick William, died June 22, 1909, at the age
of thirty-one years. Mrs. Fletcher, his bosom
companion for forty-three years, died July 10,
1906, in her seventieth year. Of the five
children still living, all are graduates of the
Thomdike School. Two of them, Charles
Ruel and Austin Bradstreet, are graduates of
Harvard; Caroline Rebecca, of Wellesley
College; Edward Wyman, of the Cambridge
High School; and Frank Kelley was two years
in the Cambridge Manual Training School.
All are well employed.
On the day of the graduation exercises of the
Thomdike Grammar School, June 20, 1907, the
committee met and by a unanimous rising vote
passed resolutions formally expressing the es-
teem of the members, and their appreciation
of the patient, industrious and successful efforts
of Mr. Fletcher in his career of fifty years as
head principal of the school. An account of
the meeting and copies of the resolutions, signed
by the secretary, were sent to him. The other
occasion was the day when Mr. Fletcher's
resignation and that of Mr. Bradbury of the
Latin School were accepted by the committee.
At the meeting on that day, December 31,
1909, a resolution was adopted, which, after
commenting on the work and the great influ-
ence for good exercised by the two educators,
concluded as follows: "The School Committee,
desiring to note these remarkable careers and
in some especial manner to approve and honor
such lives and service, has created the office of
'Master Emeritus' and appointed William
Bradbury and Ruel H. Fletcher as the first
incumbents thereof. (Signed) Sanford B.
Hubbard, Secretary of the School Committee."
200
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
JAMES AUGUSTUS FOX
Fox, James Augustus, son of George Howe
and Emily (Wyatt) Fox, was bom in Boston,
August 11, 1827. He traced his ancestry to
prominent English and Scotch families; on
the paternal side of one in Lincolnshire, Eng-
land, which included the author of the celebrated
"Book of Martyrs"; and on the maternal to
the Scotch family of Forbes, represented in the
State by Hon. John M. Forbes and Hon. Lincoln
F. Brigham, Chief of the Superior Court of
Massachusetts.
His academical education was attained in
the public schools of Boston, after which his
studies were in the Hne of his chosen profession,
and were pursued in the law school of Harvard
University and the office of the late Hon. John
C. Park. He was admitted to the Suffolk bar
in 1854.
In 1848 he married Julia Elizabeth, daughter
of Col. James and Julia (Sterry) Valentine, of
Providence, R.I., and the granddaughter of
William and Elizabeth (Borden) Valentine, of
Fall River. Her grandfather was one of the
original projectors of the extensive manufactur-
ing enterprises of that city. She died in 1872,
leaving three daughters, Henrietta, Jtdia and
Lillian.
He continued in practice until the outbreak
of the war of the Rebellion in 1861, which found
him as captain of the Boston City Guard in
the militia of the State, and his company became
the nucleus of the Thirteenth Regiment of
Massachusetts Volunteers. He left with his
command for the front, July 29, 1861. Captain
Fox ser\'ed in the perilous campaigns in Vir-
ginia during the remainder of that year and in
1862, receiving the warm commendation of his
superior officers and the respect and love of
the men of his command.
He was early a member of the Military Order
of the Loyal Legion of the United States, and
an active comrade of the G.A.R., and in his
Memorial Day addresses on several occasions,
his oratorical abilities were conspicuously mani-
fest, especially in one oration, entitled "The
Two Civilizations," which has been published.
and another given upon the ever memorable
field of Gettysburg.
In 1864 and 1865 he was the commander of
the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company
of Massachusetts, and was one of the delegation
of that historic organization at the three hun-
dred and fiftieth anniversary of the parent
corps, the Honorable Artillery Company ■ >i
London, held in London during the jubike
period of Queen Victoria, in 1887.
In civil life Mr. Fox had a somewhat extended
experience, having been a member of the School
Committee of Boston for three years, and a
member of the Legislature in both its branches
- — in the House of Representatives in 1867 and
1868, and in the Senate in 1870 and 1871. While
in the last-named branch he delivered a merited
and eloquent eulogy upon the life and military
service of Major-General George H. Thomas,
then recently deceased.
After his removal to the university city of
Cambridge, in 1872, he served for two years in
the Aldermanic Board, and subsequently as
Mayor for four consecutive terms.
He was identified as an active officer or mem-
ber with several of the prominent beneficiary
orders of the country, such as the Independent
Order of Odd Fellows, Improved Order of Red
Men, and the Knights of Pythias; in the latter
named body he had been Grand Chancellor of
Massachusetts, Supreme Representative to the
national branch, and Judge-Advocate-General
of the uniform rank, upon the staff of Com-
mander-in-Chief Major-General Camaham, of
Indiana. In the world-wide institution of Free
Masonry, he attained the very highest grade.
Commencing with the "blue lodge" he advanced
through all the series of degrees of York and
Scottish rites, the chapter, cryptic masonry,
the commandery (K.T.), the consistory, unto
the sovereign grand inspector-generalship of
the thirty-third and last degree, and in most of
these he served as the president officer.
As a legislator, municipal chief -magistrate,
soldier, orator, or officer of fraternal benefici-
ary societies, he always discharged his varied
duties with abiHty and faithfulness.
Mr. Fox died in September, 1901.
BIOGRAPHIES
2-^1
FRANK FOXCROFT
FoxcROFT, Frank, was bom in Boston,
Mass., January 21, 1850. He was the son
of George Augustus and Harriet Goodrich
Foxcroft, and was educated in the public
schools of Boston and of Pittsfield, Mass., and
at Williams College, from which institution
he graduated in 1871. His father was a news-
paper writer, so that Mr. Foxcroft turned
naturally to journalism, when he had completed
his college course. Naturally, also, when he
came to Boston, in the fall of 1871, to take an
editorial position upon the Boston Journal, he
established his home in Cambridge, — for he
is a direct descendant of the Judges Francis
Foxcroft, father and son, who, in the eighteenth
century, owned and occupied the Foxcroft
estate, comprising two hundred acres or more
in old Cambridge, including " Norton's Woods,"
and whose name is perpetuated in the Foxcroft
Club and the Foxcroft House. Mr. Foxcroft
retained his editorial connection with the
Boston Journal from 1871 to 1904, as literary
editor, editorial writer, and associate editor.
From 1895 to 1911 he edited a department in
The Youth's Companion; since 1896 he has
edited The Living Age (Littell's) ; and since 1905
he has also been treasurer of The Living Age
Company. He published a volume of verse
entitled "Transcript Pieces," in his youth;
and he edited a collection of hymns and songs
of the resurrection, entitled "Resurgit," in
1878. He has also contributed to various
magazines and reviews, including the Atlantic
Monthly, and the Nineteenth Century and the
Contemporary Review, of London. Mr. Fox-
croft was married in 1872, to Elizabeth True
Howard, formerly of Columbus, 0., who died
suddenly in October, 1885. In 1888, Mr. Fox-
croft was married to Lily Sherman Rice, of
Dan vers. Three children of the first marriage
and two of the second are living. Mr. Foxcroft
was a deacon in the North Avenue Congre-
gational Church from 1872 to 1895; he taught
a Bible class in the Sunday school of that
.church for more than twenty years; and for
five years after the death of his first wife, in
1885, he conducted the Monday class, a week-
day class of boys and girls for religious instruc-
tion, comprising nearly four hundred members
of all denominations, which Mrs. Foxcroft
had estabhshed in 1880. Mr. Foxcroft early
identified himself with temperance activities
and no-license work. He was vice-presidsnt
of the Home Protection League, the organiza-
tion formed in 1881 to carry on the no-licens;
campaigns, which soon gave place to the Citi-
zens' No-license committee; he was chairman
of the executive committee of the Law and
Order League, an organization which mad 3
itself dreaded by violators of the liquor law3
from 1881 to 1886; he was for twenty years a
member and for fifteen years chairman of th^
FR.^XK FOXCROFT
Citizens' No-license committee. He was active
in the organization of the Law Enforcement
Association, which, in the early years of no-
license, lent valuable aid to the authorities in
the enforcement of no-license; and it was he
who christened, and up to the time of his resig-
nation from the committee, edited the no-
license organ "The Frozen Truth." On his
retirement from the committee, he was given
a banquet in recognition of his services. Mr.
Foxcroft has always been interested in public
affairs. He served two years upon the Cam-
bridge school committee in the seventies; and
he was appointed a member of the Massachu-
202
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
setts Civil Service Commission by Governor
Bates in 1904, was reappointed by Governor
Guild in 1907, and again reappointed by
Governor Draper in 1910. Mr. Foxcroft is a
member of the Cambridge, Twentieth Century,
Boston City, Congregational and Pudding-
stone Clubs.
HENRY HAMMOND GALLISON
Gallison, Henry Hammond, the first Ameri-
can artist to have a painting placed in the
National Museum of Italy, was born in Boston,
HENRY HAMMOND GALLISON
Mass., May 20, 1850. He was the son of
Joseph Henry and Lavinia (Hammond) Gallison.
He received his early education in Boston at
the public schools and at the private school of
Mr. Fetto, who fitted him to enter Harvard.
He graduated from the Harvard Medical School
in 1871. In settling his grandfather Hammond's
estate, he found it necessary to have a knowledge
of law, and entered the Harvard Law School.
After having been admitted to the bar in the
County of Suffolk, and after having settled his
grandfather's estate, he did not practise law
except for a short time, when he was appointed
judge in the town of Franklin. He never prac-
tised law or medicine, except to help his friends.
It was the profession of art to which he was
most strongly drawn, and finally he gave himself
up exclusively to painting. His first studies
were in the evening schools of Boston; then
he watched other painters and profited by their
criticisms of his work. When Tomaso Inglaris
came to Boston and had charge of the drawing
and painting classes that were features of the
Boston Art Club, Mr. Gallison had his criti-
cisms. In 1883 he went to England, Italy and
Paris, where he studied with Adrian Bonne-
foy. In Paris he met Marie Reuter of Lubeck,
Germany, to whom he was married at Paris in
1886. She was the daughter of Dr. Franz
Reuter, and studied singing in Paris under
Madame Pauline Viandot-Garcia.
After Mr. GalHson returned to America he
exhibited in London, Munich and Paris and
in Turin. In Italy the newspapers spoke enthu-
siastically about the simplicity of his subjects,
his broad masses and his glorious colors. The
first time he exhibited in Italy his picttire created
a sensation, and the King of Italy wished to
meet his teacher, Cavalier Tomaso Inglaris.
In London and Paris his pictures received dis-
tinction by honorable mention. In St. Louis
he received a medal.
The Italian government in 1903 purchased
one of his pictures, entitled "Rising Mists," for
the National Museum. This was an unusual
distinction, as it was the first picture by an
American artist which the Italian government
had purchased.
The greatest monument to the genius of Mr.
Gallison in this country is the Ray Memorial
at Franklin, Mass. It is a ci\'ic building, in-
cluding a library, lecture haU, reading-room and
other conveniences. The decorations which
Mr. Gallison painted for the memorial were of
a landscape character, ideal and poetic. He was
given charge to plan and execute the bviilding,
and everything was carried out under his direc-
tions. He put a great deal of time, thought,
energ>' and love into his work, and the Ray
family seconded him in the work by pro\ading
the funds. It cost about one miUion dollars,
and is a memorial such as few towns in the
country possess, and it is a monimient not only
to the Ray family, but also to the genius of Mr.
Gallison.
Edwin Ginn
BIOGRAPHIES
203
Mr. Gallison's pictures have been exhibited
in all the prominent art exhibitions of the
country. His work has a nice distinction of
freshness in color and a very suggestive poetic
quality. He had a rare sympathy for the larger
aspects of nature — for broad stretches of land-
scape in storm or sunshine, in the mists of early
morning, or the purple mystery of svmset and
twilight. He was delicately sensitive to atmos-
pheric qualities in nature — to great cloud
shadows that drifted over the face of the land-
scape; to the bursts of sunlight that gilded
moimtain, foliage and fields; to the gray subtle-
ties of the mist and the palpitating warmth of
midsummer sunshine on water and land. Na-
ture spoke to him in terms of color, and there
were few artists who could as adequately express
the rich greens of spring and summer as Mr.
GaUison. He seemed to revel in greens — greens
that were fresh and juicy and full of life. But
he also used purples and blues with these greens,
and he was especially successful in expressing
topography in his blue and purple distances.
He saw pictures in light and color and atmos-
phere; and some of those he painted down at
Annisquam, and in the White Mountains in
New Hampshire, seem as if they were painted
by an inspired brush.
He had a studio at Annisquam, where in
the last years of his Hfe he painted from late
spring until early fall, when he returned to his
studio in the Grundmann Studio on Clarendon
Street over Copley Hall, in Boston. He was
one of the most active members of the Boston
Art Club and also of the St. Botolph Club.
Many of the prominent galleries of the country
have purchased his pictures.
He died October 12, 1910, at his home on
Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass., being sur-
vived by his wife.
EDWIN GINN
GiNN, Edwin, was bom in Orland, Me.,
February 14, 1838. His father, James Ginn,
farmer and lumberman, was a man of remark-
ably good judgment; he often acted as arbi-
trator and referee in cases of dispute, and had
great influence in the community in which he
lived. His ancestors came from England,
and were among the early settlers of Maryland
and Virginia. His mother, Sarah Blood,
daughter of Daniel and Esther (Rideout) Blood,
was descended from Puritan stock, and through
John Putnam, brother of Israel Putnam,
claimed descent from John and Priscilla (Gould)
Putnam, emigrants from England about 1630-
34, settling in Salem.
Edwin, although a rather delicate boy, was
bent on obtaining an education. As a child
his advantages in this direction were very
limited, as his home in the country was far
removed from good school privileges. His
ambition to obtain an education he inherited
largely from his mother, his keen business
insight from his father. His early childhood
was passed on the farm — where the customary
chores were a part of his daily duties — in a
logging camp, and on a fishing schooner to
the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. In the
winter he attended the district school.
At the age of sixteen his father gave him his
time and fifty dollars with which to gain an
education. He then began to attend the
country high school, but as the teacher could
not instruct him in Latin he entered the Semi-
nary at Bucksport, two miles and a half from
his home, walking to and from school each
day. Later he went to Westbrook Seminary,
where he finished his preparation for college.
He graduated from Tufts in 1862, and later
received the degree A.M. In 1902 his Alma
Mater conferred upon him the degree of Litt.D.
He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa college
fraternity, and of the Twentieth Century Club.
While in college his eyes failed him and his
health broke down. The professors urged
him to drop out for a year, but he objected,
saying that if he left his class he should never
return. His classmates lent a helping hand
by reading his lessons to him and he succeeded
in graduating even above the middle of his
class.
Mr. Ginn had hoped to devote himself to
purely literary work, but physically handi-
capped as he was, he abandoned this purpose
and determined to enter the publishing busi-
ness. In coming to this decision he was
actuated largely by a desire to influence the
world for good, by putting the best books into
the hands of school children.
On leaving college he engaged in a small
204
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
way in a school-book agency, buying his books
outright, and thus was under obligation to
no one. His first independent venture was
the publishing of Craik's English of Shakes-
peare, which he obtained from the house of
Crosby and Ainsworth. The study of Shakes-
peare had just begun to be taken up in colleges
and secondary schools, and the j'oung pub-
lisher realized that it was an opportune time
to put out this book. A little later he secured
the services of the Rev. Henr>- N. Hudson,
who edited for him twenty-one plays for the
use of the schools and the Harvard edition of
Shakespeare for libraries.
His second work of importance was Allen's
Latin Grammar, a book which was very well
received. The success of this book led the
young publisher to apply to Professor Goodwin
of Harvard for a Greek Grammar. He called
I'-pon the professor and made known his errand;
he at once said to him: "The manuscript
3-0U wish is in m}- desk at this moment, well-
nigh finished."
Professor Goodwin's "Moods and Tenses,"
had already established his name among
Creek scholars, and almost immediately upon
its publication his Greek Grammar found an
entrance into nearly all the leading classical
schools and colleges in the country.
The popularity of Allen's Latin Grammar,
l:owever, was of short duration. It was soon
found that the brief course was not sufficient
for the schools, that a fuller treatise was neces-
sary for the intelligent study of the texts.
Therefore, Professor J. B. Greenough was called
in to revise and enlarge this book, and to pre-
pare editions of the Latin texts, Caesar, Cicero
and Virgil. Professor Goodwin also enlarged
and revised his Greek Grammar, and he and
Professor John Williams White began the edit-
ing of the Greek texts. These Latin and Greek
books laid the foundation for the success of
the house of Ginn and Company.
Philanthropy of all kinds has always appealed
to Mr. Ginn. He has given especial attention
to the housing of the poor in model tenements,
and to the cause of peace and arbitration, look-
ing forward to the disarmament of the world's
great armies. This last he counts as his
greatest effort for the good of mankind, and
to this work he is giving a large amount of
time and money.
He was married in 1869 to Clara, daughter
of Jesse and Martha (Bartlett) Glover; and
again in 1893 to Francescam, daughter of
Carl Christian and Maria Christiana (Vitriarius)
Greb^, of Germany. By his first wife he had
four children: Jessie, Maurice, Herbert and
Clara; and by his second wife, two: Edwin,
Jr., and Marguerita Christina.
WALTER S. GLIDDEN
Glidden, Walter S., a member of the
Governor's Council for the years 1908-9-10, was
bom in Pittston, now Randolph, Me., April 30,
1856, and resides at 380 Broadway, Somerville,
Mass. He is a member of the firms of N. E.
Hollis&Co.; Sands, Furber& Co.; L.A.Johnson
& Co.; and the J. H. Whiton Company;
director of J. V. Fletcher Company; president
of Hollis Cold Storage Company; president of
Hinckley Rendering Company; director of
the New England Dressed Meat & Wool ^Com-
pany; director of the Beacon Trust Company,
Boston, and member of the executive com-
mittee; director and chairman of the invest-
ment committee of the Winter Hill Co-opera-
tive Bank; director of the Somerville Trust
BIOGRAPHIES
205
Company; president of the Winchester Home
for Aged Women; vice-president and member
of investment committee of the Charlestown
Five Cents Savings Bank; vice-president
and member of the finance committee of the
Mutual Protection Fire Insurance Company;
one of the board of management of Hunt's
Home for Orphan Children, Charlestown;
trustee of the Somerville Home for the
Aged; trustee and member of the finance
committee of the Somerville hospital; member
of the Boston Fruit & Produce Exchange and
Chamber of Commerce; member of Faith and
Soley lodges, A.F. and A.M., Charlestown Royal
Arch chapter, and Coeur de Lion commandery,
Knights Templar; a thirty-second degree
Mason; member of Olive branch, I.O.O.F., of
Charlestown, and the Central Club of Somerville,
Mass.
WILLIAM WATSON GOODWIN
Goodwin, William Watson, Ph.D., LL.D.,
D.L.C., for forty years Greek professor at Har-
vard University, up to 1901, and from that year
professor emeritus, was bom in Concord, Mass.,
on May 9, 1831, the son of Hersey Bradford
Goodwin and Lucretia Ann (Watson) Goodwin.
He was graduated from Harvard in 1851 and
later studied at the universities in Berlin, Got-
tingen and at Bonn. He was abroad till 1855.
The next year he became a tutor in Greek at
Harvard and continued as such until 1860,
when he was appointed Eliot professor of Greek
literature. This chair he filled for two-score
years, giving up his active part in the depart-
ment in 1901, while retaining his long and deep
interest as professor emeritus. His knowledge
of the classics was profound, as his industry was
untiring.
He was only the fourth professor to hold the
Eliot professorship, although the Eliot endow-
ment was established by Samuel Eliot, the
grandfather of President Eliot. It was held
first by Edward Everett, who was succeeded
by Professor Popkin. Professor Felton suc-
ceeded to the endowment in 1834.
Just previous to his retirement Professor
Goodwin was guest of honor at a dinner given
at Hotel Somerset by thirty of his colleagues,
headed by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, then president
of the University. He was given a magnificent
silver loving cup, and the presentation was made
by Bishop Lawrence.
He received honorary degrees from Harvard,
Columbia, Amherst, Yale and Chicago, as well
as from Cambridge, Oxford, Gottingen and
Edinburgh. He received from the King of Greece
the decoration of Knight of the Cross of the
Saviour.
WILLIAM WATSON GOODWIN'
Professor Goodwin was a most active sup-
porter of the American School of Classical
Studies in Athens, and he was its first director,
in 1882-1883. Twice he was president of the
American Philological Society. He was also a
member of the Massachusetts Historical Society,
the Archaeological Society and the Colonial
Society. He was active in a nimiber of social
organizations. Some of the other societies of
which he was a member are the Hellenic, Lon-
don; Philological of Cambridge, England;
Archaeological Society and Academy of Science,
Athens ; Hellenic, Constantinople ; and Imperial
German Archaeological Institute, Berlin.
He brought distinction to Harvard and
America through many of his pubUshed works.
One of his last works was an edition of " DemoS-
206
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
thenes on the Crown," published by the Cam-
bridge (Eng.) University Press. He had not
yet become recognized as one of the world's
greatest Greek scholars when he published
"The Greek Moods and Tenses," afterward
considered as a standard work. Professor
Goodwin was a generally accepted authority
on Plato. He was also the author of a widely
known work on Athenian law and of "Goodwin's
Greek Grammar," known to every student in
classical languages throughout the country.
Professor Goodwin died June 16, 1912, at his
residence, 5 Follen Street, after an illness of
about a month's duration. He was eighty-one
years old, and succimibed to heart disease.
His wife survives him.
JOHN WILKES HAMMOND
Hammond, John Wilkes, born in Rochester
(now Mattapoisett), December 16, 1837, is
the son of John Wilkes and Maria Louise fSouth-
JOHN WILKES HAMMOND
1861. He began the practice of law in March,
1866, havang an office at East Cambridge. He
continued to practice in Middlesex and adjoining
counties until March 10, 1886, having in the
meantime, from 1873 to 1886, been City Solicitor.
He was elevated to the Superior Court Bench
at that date. On September 7, 1898, he received
his appointment to the Supreme Court of Massa-
chusetts, of which he is still a Justice.
He enlisted September, 1862, in the Third
Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, and served
nine months. He is a member of the Cam-
bridge, Colonial and Union Clubs. He repre-
sented Cambridge in the General Coiirt in 1872
and 1873, and has also served terms on the
Common Council and School Committee. He
was married in August, 1866, to Clara E., only
daughter of Professor Benjamin Tweed, the
well-known educator.
worth) Hammond. He received his education
in the schools of his native town, fitting for
college at the Mattapoisett Academy, and
graduating from Tufts College in the class of
LEANDER MOODY HANNUM
Hannum, Leander Moody, one of Cam-
bridge's most prominent real estate and mort-
gage brokers, was bom in Northampton, Mass.,
December 22, 1837. He was the son of Alex-
ander C. and Laura A. (MoodjO Hannum, and
was educated in the public schools of North-
ampton and Chicopee, at Williston Seminary,
Easthampton; and at the English and Classical
Institute, Springfield. After he had finished
at Williston, being seventeen years old, he
went to California, where he spent two years
in the mining fields, and upon his return, in
1856, resumed his studies at the Institute at
Springfield, remaining there a year. He was
employed for the next two years as salesman
in the wholesale grocery house of J. W. Hale
& Co., Springfield. Going to New York, he
was employed as cashier and correspondent
for Elias Howe, inventor of the Howe sewing
machines, until 186-i, when he came to Cam-
bridge, and soon became extensively engaged
in the grocery and ice business, and later
in real estate, which business he followed
with gratifying success. Mr. Hannum served
the city in various public capacities. He
was first elected to office in 1873, as a
member of the common council, where he
served one year. In 1874 and 1S75 he was
BIOGRAPHIES
207
a member of the board of aldermen. In 1876
and 1877 he represented his city in the House
of Representatives, serving as chairman of
the committees on pubHc buildings and on
street railways. In 1881 and 1882 he was a
member of the Senate, and there served as
chairman of the committees on prisons and
on state house, and a member of the insur-
ance committee. He also served for several
Lodge F. and A.M., and chairman of its board
of trustees, past officer of the Cambridge Royal
Arch Chapter, and member of the Boston
Commandery; was an honorary member of
several military organizations and G.A.R.
Posts; of the Cambridge and Colonial Clubs,
the Citizens' Trade Association, and of the
Real Estate Association.
Mr. Hannum was married December 15,
LEANDER MOODY HANNUM
years as special commissioner for Middlesex
County, and for twelve years as one of the
water commissioners of Cambridge. For seven
years he was chairman of the Republican city
committee, and had been especially prominent
in municipal politics, and was a member of
the Library Hall Association. His church
connections were with the Third Congregational
(Unitarian) church, where he served many
years as chairman of the parish committee.
He was a member and past master of Amicable
1869, to Anne Howard Demain. Mrs. Hannum
died in April, 1 909 . This was a great sorrow and,
no doubt, hastened Mr. Hannum's death, which
occurred, September 17, 1909. He is survived
by one sister, Esther F. Hannum, who has
for many years been a member of his household,
Mr. Hannum was a true type of a self-made
man. He was liberal both in his views and
with his means; he was a man of high ideals,
a wise counselor, a safe leader, a patriotic
citizen, a good neighbor, and a loyal friend.
208
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Dr. WILFRED ERNEST HARRIS
Harris, Wilfred Ernest, physician, was
born at Aylesford, Nova Scotia, September 3,
1873. His father, the late Major Thomas Rees
Harris, merchant, mihtary man and for many
years representative of King's County in the
Nova Scotia legislature, was bom in 1837; and
his mother, whose maiden name was Annie I.
Famsworth, in 1846. His paternal ancestors
came from Massachusetts and were among the
original grantees that settled in the Township
Dr. WILFRED ERNEST HARRIS
of Horton, King's County. On the maternal
side he is a direct descendant of John Alden
and Priscilla Mullens.
Dr. Harris's early education was received in
Nova Scotia, and he had the advantage of being
instructed by private tutors as well. Foreseeing
the important part that osteopathy would play
in the art of healing, the young man decided
to adopt it as his life work. He accordingly
matriculated at the American School of Oste-
opathy, Kirksville, Missouri, where he pursued
his studies under the foimder of Osteopathy,
and from which he obtained his degree of Doctor
in February, 1900. The post-graduate work
that he did later in European hospitals supplied
him with much valuable experience; so when
he came to Cambridge, Massachusetts, a short
time after, and began to practise, he was well
prepared for his task.
It was his intention, however, to continue
his researches, and hence the offer of the chair
of therapeutics in the Massachusetts College
of Osteopathy was accepted by him with that
end in view. How highly his services to that
institution are appreciated is shown by the fact
that four years later, when the then president
retired. Dr. Harris was unanimously chosen to
succeed him and has held that position since,
also retaining the chair of therapeutics. His
ability as an executive was given national recog-
nition when, at the convention of the American
Osteopathic Association in 1907, he was elected
president of the Associated Colleges of Oste-
opathy in America.
The Cambridge Osteopathic and Surgical
Sanitarium, an important addition to the insti-
tutions of the city, was opened in 1903; Dr.
Harris became resident physician, and subse-
quently was made its president. For the past
six years he has been giving special attention
to diseases of the stomach and intestines.
Though thus actively occupied with his pro-
fessional duties, he has nevertheless found time
to help propagate, by his lectures and writings,
a clearer understanding of the aims of osteopathy.
Much distinction has been won by him on ac-
count of his addresses on this subject to scien-
tific and popular audiences, among which might
be mentioned those at Bates College, Maine, the
Boston Physiological Society, the Greater New
York Osteopathic Society and the Canadian
Club of Boston, etc.
His marriage took place in 1899, his wife being
Miss Jean Cordelia Hammond Van Allen, a
native of Morrisburg, Dundas County, Ontario.
They have no children.
Dr. Harris is a member of the following pro-
fessional organizations: the American Oste-
opathic Association; the Massachusetts Oste-
opathic Society; the Academy of Osteopathic
Physicians; and the Associated Colleges of
Osteopathy, of which he was president in 1907
and 1908. The religious and social bodies with
which he is affiliated are the Episcopal Church,
the British Charitable Society, the Canadian
Club of Boston, the Intercolonial Club of Boston
BIOGRAPHIES
209
and the Independent Order of Foresters. He
is also a member of the firm of Fred E. Harris
and Company, importers and merchants, of
Aylesford, Nova Scotia. He is a registered
physician of the Commonwealth of Massa-
chusetts. His constdting office is at 483 Beacon
Street, Boston, but his residence is in Cam-
bridge.
JOHN J. HIGGINS
The life of John J. Higgins, district attorney
of the County of Middlesex, reads like the story
of one of Horatio Alger's heroes. The story
JOHN J. HIGGIXS
might be called "From Breaker Boy to Prose-
cuting Attorney," for that is just what Mr.
Higgins' experience has been. Since early
youth he has been compelled to fight his own
way, and to his undying ambition to rise in life
is due the fact that he is now one of the chief
ofificials of Middlesex County rather than a
poor miner in the pits of the Pennsylvania coal
mines. Bom in the North End of Boston, May
17, 1865, of poor parents, he was moved from
place to place with his parents, going at various
times to Newark, Philadelphia, Savannah and
to Scranton, where he worked as a breaker boy
at the age of eight, receiving the munificent
salary of seven dollars a month for his work. His
mother died in 1874, when he was less than nine
years old, and his father lost his life in the con-
struction work of the Eads jetties at the mouth
of the Mississippi River shortly after. At the
age of ten the boy worked in afvimiture store
in Boston for two dollars a week, and still later
worked on a farm in Madbury, near Dover, N.H.
Here he attended the district school until he had
learned all it could teach him. Then with
but fifty cents that he had borrowed in his pocket,
he went to Exeter, where he attended Phillips
Academy. He graduated from Exeter in 1887,
and that fall entered Harvard Law School,
doing chores for his tuition and board. He
was admitted to the Suffolk bar just after the
completion of his second year at Harvard, and
on the completion of his course opened an office
in Boston. In 1891 he removed to Somerville
where he stUl lives.
In January, 1906, Mr. Higgins formed a law
partnership with Albert A. Gleason with whom
he is still associated. He was elected Alderman
of Somerville, in 1902, and has also been a
member of the legislature. In the fall of 1907
he was elected district attorney, which office
he has since held. He has filled the office with
dignity and honesty, and has tried, as govern-
ment prosecuting officer, many of the most
sensational cases in the history of the country.
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
HiGGiNsoN, Thomas Wentworth, author,
soldier, and reformer, was one of the men to
whom Cambridge will always point with pride.
He is the son of Stephen and Louisa (Storrow)
Higginson, and was bom in this city, December
22, 1823. His preparatory education was
received at the private school of William Wells.
He was graduated from Harvard College in
1841, and from the University Divinity School
in 1847, when he was ordained as pastor of
the First Congregational Society in Newbury-
port. He left this church on account of anti-
slavery preaching in 1850, and the same year
ran as a Free-Soil candidate for Congress. He
was pastor of a free church in Worcester from
1852 to 1858, when he left the ministry, and
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
devoted himself to literature. With Theodore
Parker and Wendell Phillips he was indicted
for murder for his connection with the at-
tempted rescue of Anthony Bums, and was
very prominent in all the exciting scenes of
the troublous times just preceding the Civil
War. He was a captain in the Fifty-first
Massachusetts Regiment, and afterwards
colonel of the First South Carolina Volunteers
(later known as the Thirty-third United States
Troops), the first regiment of freed slaves en-
listed in the National Army. He took and
THOMAS WEXTWORTH HIGGI.XSON
held Jacksonville, Fla., but was wounded
in South Carolina, in August, 18(33, and in
October, 1864, resigned, on account of dis-
ability. His subsequent life was devoted al-
most entirely to literary pursuits. He resided
in Newport from the time of his withdrawal
from service until 1878.
Colonel Higginson was a member of the Massa-
chusetts House of 1880 and 1881, serving as
aide-de-camp to Governor J. D. Long during
this time. From 1881 to 1883^ he was a member
of the state board of education, and was state
military and naval historian. He was also a
trustee of the Cambridge public library.
Colonel Higginson was an earnest advocate of
woman suffrage, and a prominent contributor
to the literature of the cause. He was also
a frequent contributor to the leading Ameri-
can periodicals, and had written numerous
histories and biographies. He was also promi-
nent as a translator from the French, German
and Italian, and was a popular lecturer. He
married, September 16, 1847, Mary Elizabeth
Channing, of Boston, and February 6, 1879,
Mary Pattee Thatcher, of West Newton.
Mr. Higginson died at his home in Cambridge,
May 9, 1911.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, was bom in
Cambridge, Middlesex County, August 29, 1809.
He was the son of Rev. Abiel Holmes, D.D., and
Sarah (Wendell) Holmes. His father was a
native of W^oodstock, Conn., a graduate of
Yale in the Class of 1783, and pastor of the First
Congregational Church, Cambridge, 1792 to
1832. His mother was the daughter of the
Hon. Oliver Wendell of Boston, a graduate of
Harvard, and the son of Hon. Jacob Wendell,
an eminent Boston merchant.
Dr. Holmes obtained his preparatory educa-
tion under the tuition of various instmctors,
during the year 1824-1825 at Phillips Academy,
Andover, and matrictilated at Harvard, graduat-
ing therefrom in the famous class of 1829.
After graduation he devoted a year to the
study of law, but not finding it quite congenial
to his tastes, abandoned it for that of medicine.
In 1833 he visited Europe, pre-vious to which
he had chosen the medicinal profession, and
for two years and six months had studied with
Dr. James Jackson and his associates. While
in Europe he attended L'Ecole de Medicine,
Paris, and spent between two and three years
in attendance on the hospitals in Europe. In
1835 he returned to Boston, rejoined the medical
school of Harvard University, and in 1836
received his degree of M.D. In 1838 he became
professor of anatomy and physiology in Dart-
mouth College, and on the resignation of Dr.
John C. Warren in 1847, was elected his suc-
cessor to the chair of anatomy in the medical
department of Harvard University.
BIOGRAPHIES
211
In 1849 he retired from general practice, and
although holding his professorship, he devoted
himself now more especially to the pursuit of
letters. He was professionally distinguished
as an acctirate anatomist and skillful micro-
scopist and auscultator.
But the widest fame of Oliver Wendell Holmes
was as a poet, wit, and man of letters. From
boyhood the Muse had been his constant at-
tendant, and while the sun of prosperity wooed
him to enjoy the genius of his life, the love
of the beautiful led him on to accomplish.
Many of his most charming effusions have never
been embalmed, save in the memory of his
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
friends; but his best-known works are : "Terpsi-
chore," "Urania," "Astrasa," "Autocrat of
the Breakfast Table," "Professor at the Break-
fast Table," "Elsie Venner," "The Guardian
Angel," "Songs of Many Seasons," "Memoirs
of John L. Motley, Ralph Waldo Emerson," etc.
He was married June 15, 1840, to Amelia
Lee, daughter of Hon. Charles Jackson, of
Boston. Of this union were bom three children :
Oliver Wendell, Jr., associate justice of the
United States Supreme Court ; Amelia Jackson,
widow of the late Turner Sargent ; and Edward
Jackson Holmes. Dr. Holmes died October 7,
1894.
JOHN HOPEWELL
Hopewell, John, is a notable example of
Yankee push and industry. Bom in Green-
field, Febraary 2, 1845, the son of John and
Catherine Hopewell, his early education was
obtained in the public schools at Shelbume
Falls, whither his parents moved when he was
but a year old. He attended school until he
was fourteen, and then entered the cutlery
establishment of Lamson, Goodwin & Co., to
learn the trade. During a part of this time he
attended night school, and subsequently studied
some time in a private academy. In 1861, he
went to Springfield, and was employed in the
armory there during the war, being dropped
at its close in accordance with the order dis-
JOHX HOPEWELL
charging all single men. While at the armory
he attended night school and learned book-
keeping, afterwards securing a position as
accountant, which he soon relinquished, how-
ever, for more active pursuits. For a while
he carried on a publishing business in Albany,
N.Y. He then engaged in the sale of the
products of L. C. Chase & Co., manufacturers
of plushes, robes, blankets, etc., on the road,
and afterwards located in Boston as their
representative. The business of the concern
increased rapidly, and in 1888 Mr. Hopewell
succeeded the Chases, becoming the head of
the firm, L. C. Chase & Co., and treasurer of
the Sanford Mills. Though always taking an
active part in public affairs, Mr. Hopewell was
212
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
not politically active until 1S87. In 1889 he
was elected president of the Cambridge Repub-
lican Club, which office he held till he went
abroad, in 1892. In 1891 he was elected to
the State Legislature, but was obliged to decline
re-election, and also strong solicitation for the
use of his name as candidate for Congress, on
account of ill health. He is a strong Protec-
tionist, and was a director of the Home Market
Club a number of years; and of numerous
corporations. Mr. Hopewell, is also largely
engaged in the raising of Guernsey cattle on
the Maple Ranch stock farm, at Natick. He
was a director of the Boston Merchants Associa-
tion in 1892, and is a member of the Colonial,
Cambridge, and the Boston Art Club.
He married, in 1870, Sarah W. Blake, of
Springfield. They have three sons and two
daughters.
Mr. Hopewell now resides in Newton, Mass.
HENRY OSCAR HOUGHTON
Houghton, Henry Oscar, was bom in
Sutton, Vt., April 30, 1823, being the son of
"William and Morilla (Clay) Houghton. His
ancestors were among the early New England
colonists, the Houghtons first coming to this
countr}' in 1630, settling in Lancaster. When
he was about ten years of age his parents moved
to Bradford, on the Connecticut River, and
after a few terms at the local academy, he
became apprentice in the office of the Burling-
ton Free Press. He afterwards worked at
the printer's trade in Nunda, N.Y. Ambitious
for an education, young Houghton devoted his
evenings and spare moments to study, and at the
age of nineteen entered the University of Ver-
mont. After graduating in 1846, he came to
Boston and worked at proof reading and
reporting on the Traveller for about two years.
He first began business as a master printer in
1849, when with Mr. BoUes, of the firm of
Freeman & Bolles, he established an office on
Remington Street. In 1864, Mr. Houghton
entered the publishing business, forming a
partnership with Melancthon M. Hurd, of
New York, under the name of Hurd & Hough-
ton. The firm existed under the same name
until 1878, when it was succeeded by that
of Houghton, Osgood & Co., which came into
possession of privileges covering the works of
Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson, Hawthorne,
Holmes and other prominent American writers,
collected during a long period by other firms.
Mr. Osgood retired in 1880, and was succeeded
by Lawson Valentine, of New York. The
house then took its present name, Mr. MifHin
having been admitted to partnership in 1872.
His election to the office of mayor, in 1872, gave
evidence of the esteem in which he was held
by his fellow townsmen. Mr. Houghton's
death occurred August 25, 1895.
GEORGE H. HOWARD
The surname "Howard" originated in Eng-
land during the thirteenth century and was
derived from Hayward, Harward and Here-
ward. The first to adopt the present form of
spelling was, undoubtedly, William Howard,
a learned and honored jurist in the reign of
Edward I. That monarch married for his
second consort Margaret, daughter of Philip
the Hardy of France, and his eldest son by this
marriage was Thomas Plantagenet, sumamed
De Brotherton. The latter's great-grand-
daughter, Margaret, who was the eldest daugh-
ter of Thomas De Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk,
became the wife of Sir Robert Howard, a
descendant of William Howard, the jurist, just
mentioned. Howard was the family name of
several dukes of Norfolk. The Howards oi
America, in common with those of the mother
country, are the posterity of William the Jurist.
The Howard family now being considered is
thought to be the progeny of Robert and Mary
Howard, who came from England and were
early settlers in Dorchester, Mass., where
Robert was made a freeman in 1635. Their
children were Jonathan, Robert, Hannah,
Jeremiah, Bethia, Mary Temperance and
perhaps others. Robert (2) Howard, second
son and child of Robert and Mary Howard,
was admitted a freeman in Boston in 1683.
By his wife Elizabeth he had Sarah, Robert
and Samuel. Thomas Howard, probably a
grandson of Robert and Elizabeth Howard,
resided in Boston. He was the father of
Thomas Benjamin, Joseph and Mary. Joseph
married and reared two children, Joseph and
BIOGRAPHIES
Mary. Thomas (2) Howard, eldest son of
Thomas, was^bom in 1749, probably in Boston.
He settled in Hingham, Mass., where he fol-
lowed thejtrade of cooper, and his death oc-
curred^there, August 29, 1S29, at the age of
seventy-nine years. He was married in Hing-
ham, November 14, 1776, to Sarah Mansfield,
bom in that" town October 9, 1734, daughter
Sarah, Thomas, Benjamin, Molly, Ned (who
died in infancy), another Ned, Waters (died
at the age of one year), Charles, Edward and a
second Waters. Thomas (3) Howard, second
child and eldest son of Thomas and Sarah
(Mansfield) Howard, was bom in Hingham,
Mass., September 30, 1779. On January 7, 1807
he married Hannah Wilder, and in 1810 he
GEORGE H. HOWARD
of Joseph and Sarah (Waters) Mansfield, and
died August 19, 1817. She was a descendant
in the fifth generation of John and Elizabeth
(Famsworth) Mansfield, the former of whom
was made a freeman at Hingham, in 1684, and
his wife was of Dorchester. The line of descent
from John and Elizabeth is through John (2),
Joseph (3), and Joseph (4). The children of
Thomas and Sarah (Mansfield) Howard were
removed to a farm in Ashbumham, Mass.,
residing there for the rest of his life, which
terminated November 3, 1861. His wife, who
died November 14, 1870, was a daughter of
Samuel and Hannah (Lasell) Wilder, and a
descendant in the sixth generation through
Samuel (4), Thomas (3), and Isaac (2) of
Edward Wilder, the emigrant ancestor of all
of that name who have resided in Hingham.
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
The latter was granted land in Hingham in
1637, and admitted a freeman in 1644. Mrs.
Hannah Howard was the mother of seven
children, Hannah, Thomas, Samuel W., Lewis,
George H., Mar>' W. and Lucy M. Thomas
(4) Howard, second child and eldest son of
Thomas and Hannah (Wilder) Howard, was
bom in Hingham, October 28, 1809. When a
young man he settled in East Cambridge,
where he was a dealer in coal, and later worked
in the New England Glass Works. He died
November 17, 1850. December 3, 1835 he
married Hannah Elizabeth, daughter of Joel S.
Wright, who was at one time town clerk of
Acton, Mass., and his maternal grandfather was
Captain David Brown, who commanded a com-
pany of minute men at the North Bridge, Con-
cord, April 19, 1775. Thomas and Hannah E.
(Wright) Howard were the parents of three
sons: Frank Edson, bom March 12, 1837
(died January 14, 1863), George H., who will
he again referred to, and Thomas Melville,
bom November 26, 1844. The latter, who
married Mary Elizabeth Mattell, died in Somer-
ville, October 12, 1900. George Henry Howard,
second son of Thomas and Hannah E. (Wright)
Howard, was bom in East Cambridge, Novem-
ber 13, 1838. He attended school in Pepperell
and Cambridge, and at the conclusion of his
studies he found employment at the New
England Glass Works in East Cambridge.
In April, 1861, he enlisted for service in the
Civil War, in a companj^ raised in Cambridge,
which was assigned to the Sixteenth Regiment,
Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, as Company
A, and proceeding to the front joined the forces
under the command of General Wool. In the
fall of 1861 he was promoted to the first-lieu-
tenancy of Company C, of Groton, which was
ordered to Baltimore for the purpose of pro-
tecting troops passing through the city; and
his regiment subsequently joined the command
of General McClellan at Fortress Monroe, where
he witnessed the famous action between the
Merrimac and the Monitor. He afterwards
served in the Army of the Potomac, partici-
pating in the battle of Seven Pines and several
other important engagements, including the
second battle of Bull Run.
As his elder brother had been stricken with
a fatal illness, and his younger brother was
also serving his country in the Army, he was
obliged to resign his commission in order to
care for his family, and he reluctantly withdrew
from the service for that purpose.
Accepting a position at the Portland (Me.)
Glass Works, he had charge of the mould
department there for four years, at the expira-
tion of which time he resigned in order to accept
a more lucrative position that had been offered
to him by the management of the newly estab-
lished glass works in Montreal, Province of
Quebec, and he remained in that city some
eighteen months. Returning to Cambridge
he pursued a special course at Bryant and
Stratton's Business College, at the conclusion
of which he accepted an appointment as a
constable on the state police force under Major
Jones, and retained it until 1871. In the latter
year he entered as a bookkeeper the employ
of W. L. Lockhart, manufacturer of and whole-
sale dealer in undertakers' supplies, and was
admitted to partnership in 1893, and is still
engaged in that business.
In politics Mr. Howard is a Republican, and
during the past thirty-eight years has fre-
quently been elected to public office. For
the years 1873, 1874, 1881, 1882, 1883 and 1884,
he served in the Cambridge common council,
being president of that body for three years;
was a member of the board of aldermen in
1875 and 1876; was appointed one of the
sinking fund commissioners in 1887, and a
member of the water board in 1888, retaining
both of these important trusts for a number
of years.
He was trustee and is now vice-president
of the Wildley Savings Bank and was formerly
a director of the East Cambridge Savings Bank.
He was made a Master Mason in Portland,
Lodge No. 1, from which he was demitted to
Putnam Lodge, Cambridge, entered the chapter
of Roj'al Arch Masons in 1882, and is a charter
member of Cambridge Commandery, Knights
Templar. He is also affiliated with New Eng-
land Lodge, I.O.O.F., and P. Steams Davis,
Post 57, G.A.R., the Knights of Honor and
the Knights and Ladies of Honor; is one of
the original members of the New England
Order of Protection, in which he has occupied
all of the important chairs; is a comrade of
Post No. 57, G.A.R., of which he served as
BIOGRAPHIES
215
commander for twelve terms or until declining
further election; and is a member of the
Cambridge and Colonial Clubs.
For twenty-five consecutive years prior to
1896 he was superintendent of the Sunday
school connected with the Second Baptist
church, and was at one time a director of the
Young Men's Christian Association. April
28, 1861, Mr. Howard married Miss Charlotte
Bruce Wickens, who was bom in Shelbum,
N.S., June 23, 1840, daughter of Joseph and
Isabella Wickens. Of this union there are
two daughters, Lottie Evangeline, bom March
14, 1862, and Lillie Belle, bom March 10, 1865.
Lillie Belle is now the wife of Hubert W. Pierce,
of Newton, Mass., and their children areEarle
Howard, bom February 3, 1888, and Ruth
Evangeline, bom January 2, 1898. Earle
Howard Pierce graduated from Dartmouth
in 1910, and took the Thayer course in 1911.
ARCHIBALD MURRAY HOWE
Howe, Archibald Murray, eldest son of
James M. and Harriet B. (Clarke) Howe, was
bom in Northampton, Mass., May 20, 1848.
He acquired his early education in the public
schools of Brookline, including the High School,
and from the latter entered Harvard University,
taking his bachelor's degree with the Class of
1869. Among his classmates were Frank D.
Millet, Francis G. Peabody and Henry Marion
Howe, son of Dr. Samuel G. and Julia Ward
Howe, and now professor of metallurgy at Co-
limibia University. Having pursued the regular
course at the Harvard Law School and obtained
the necessary practical experience in the office
of George S. Hillard, he was admitted to prac-
tice in the covuts of Massachusetts, in June,
1872. Possessing a taste and capacity for
political life and being desirous of obtaining a
practical knowledge of the scheme of federal
government, he accepted the position of private
secretary to the Hon. Henry L. Pierce, and
retained it dtuing the sessions of the Forty-
third Congress, residing at the national Capital
for a period of eleven months. In 1875 he
became associated in the practice of law with
Henry F. Buswell and Charles H. Walcott, and
'has ever since been actively connected with the
legal profession of Boston and Cambridge, in
which latter city he has resided for many years.
Although well versed in the general practice
of law, he devotes his attention chiefly to the
administration of estates and the care of trust
fimds, and in this special field of usefulness he
has been eminently successful.
Mr. Howe is widely and favorably known,
both for his fine legal attainments and his
numerous commendable personal characteris-
tics, prominent among which is his patriotism
and impHcit faith in the integrity and justice
of our state and national political institutions,
and on more than one occasion he has forcibly
demonstrated the wisdom of his advanced views
relative to their improvement. In politics he
acts independently and takes a lively interest
in all important issues — municipal, state and
national. In 1877 he served in the Cambridge
Council, was in 1890 chosen representative tO'
the legislature on a combined Democratic and
Independent ticket, and in various other ways
has rendered valuable pubHc services, being an
earnest advocate of civil service reform. In
his religious behef he is a Unitarian, being a
member of the First Parish Church, Cambridge,
and a life member of the American Unitarian
Association. He is also a member of the St.
Botolph Club, Boston, and was vice-president
of the Massachusetts Reform Club.
On June 4, 1881, Mr. Howe was united in
marriage with Arria Sargent Dixwell, daughter
of Eps Sargent and Mary IngersoU (Bowditch)
Dixwell, of Cambridge.
THEODORE C. HURD
HuRD, Theodore C, well known to the
public as Clerk of the Middlesex County Courts,
having held this office since 1872, was bom in
Newton, January 19, 1837, and was the son of
Sarah B. and William Hurd. He received his
education at Framingham Academy and Union
College, and later graduated from the Harvard
Law School. He was admitted to the Middle-
sex Bar in 1860, and served as district attorney
for six years. He was a lieutenant in the
Forty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, and acted
as judge advocate for the department of North
CaroUna. He was a member of the Loyal Legion
and the G.A.R., and a prominent member of
several social clubs. He was a representative
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
to the General Court in 1867, 1869, 1870 and
1871, serving on important committees, and
was a member of the aldermanic board of 1873.
Few men have a larger circle of friends than
Mr. Hurd, and his abilitj- and courtesy in
filling his official position have met with merited
recDgnition.
Theodore C. Hurd was married twice. His
first marriage, to Mary Elizabeth Piatt, took
placo at Newark, Del., May 1, 1862. By this
marriage he had four children: George Piatt,
THEODORE C. HURD
born May 9, 1863; Kate Gemmill, born Decem-
ber 23, 1864; Sarah Hooker, bom July 8, 1866;
Jenny Lindsay, bom October 13, 1867. He
was married to his second wife, Alice May
Howard, at Watertown, September 23, 1879.
The children bom of this marriage are: Roger
Howard (April 13, 1881), WiUiam Minot (Feb-
ruary 2, 1883), and Theodore Chester (Febm-
ary 25, 1885).
Theodore C. Hurd died May 25, 1911.
Cotmty, was born in Cambridge, April 13, 1881,
being a son of Theodore Hurd. The family
moved to Winchester in 1888, and Roger Hurd
attended the public schools there. He left the
High School in 1898 and entered the Boston
Art School that fall.
Since the summer of 1899 he has been em-
ployed in the office of the Clerk of Coiurts. He
was appointed Fourth Assistant Clerk, March
27, 1903, and Second Assistant, January 5, 1912.
He was married on May 25, 1906, to Miss
Elsie May Dean. They have one daughter,
Virginia Alice, bom March 11, 1907.
Mr. Hurd served one enlistment in the First
Corps Cadets, M.V.M. He is a member of
the Winchester Country Club.
EDWIN HENRY JOSE
Jose, Edwin Henry, bom in Hollis, Me.,
April 27, 1847, is a son of Benjamin Berry and
Harriet Jose. He received his preliminary
education in the schools of his native town,
Biddeford High School, Limerick Academy,
and Waterville Classical Institute. He grad-
uated from the Harvard Law School in 1873
with the degree of Bachelor of Law, and began
the practice of law in Cambridge in November
of that year. In the course of his professional
duties he has ser\'ed as counsel for various large
corporations. Mr. Jose has lived in Cambridge
since beginning to practice in 1873. He married,
in 1867, Emma E. Parlin.
ROGER H. HURD
Hurd, Roger Howard, of Winchester, Sec-
ond Assistant Clerk of Courts, Middlesex
STILLMAN FRANCIS KELLEY
Kelley, Stillman Francis, has had a career
which is one of the notable examples of the
success so frequently achieved by Cape Cod
boys in mercantile life. He was bom at East
Dennis, Mass., Febmary 28, 1851. His parents
were Stillman and Olive (Howes) Kelley; his
father was bom in Harwich, Mass., February
16, 1816, and his mother in East Dennis, Mass.
His early education was received in the schools
of his native town, and later he prepared himself
for business in the Boston schools. He was
formerly a member of the firm of Stillman F.
Kelley & Co. This firm did the largest business
in the importation and jobbing of sugar and
molasses in the country.
Mrs. Edward H. Kendall
BIOGRAPHIES
217
Mr. Kelley is a director in several important
companies and corporations, and for several
years had an active interest in the management
of the Faneuil Hall National Bank.
As a member of the Cambridge Water Board
he has excellently served the city, devoting
much time and energy to the important under-
takings of that body. On October 13, 1875,
he married Chloe C. Sears, bom in East Dennis,
daughter of Nathan and Sarah C. Sears, both
of whom were bom and always Hved in East
Dennis. Two children were bom of this mar-
riage: StUlman Randolph KeUey, bom Decem-
ber 17, 1878, who died May 24, 1911; and
Edmund Sears KeUey, bom December 16, 1886.
EDWARD KENDALL
Kendall, Edward, was bom in Holden,
Mass., December 3, 1821, being the son of
Caleb and Dolly (Sawyer) Kendall. His boy-
hood was spent on his father's farm (in farm
work) and study in the village school. When
he became of age he made his first business
venture, embarking in the lumber trade. In
1847, removing to Boston, he became an ap-
prentice in the West Boston Machine Shop.
Here he made rapid progress, being transferred
to the boiler department after nine months'
service, and soon after becoming superintendent
of that department, which position he held for
eleven years. In 1860 he entered business on
his own account, establishing the firm of
Kendall & Davis, at Cambridgeport, and giving
special attention to the making of boilers.
In 1865 the firm name was changed to Kendall
& Roberts, and subsequently, upon the admis-
sion of Mr. Kendall's sons, it became Edward
Kendall & Sons. During his long and suc-
cessful career Mr. Kendall has made numerous
improvements and inventions in boiler manu-
facture, and has become widely known in his
trade. He has been a life-long advocate of
temperance, and few men have been more
devoted to the cause. In 1886 he was the
Prohibition candidate for Congress from the
Fifth District, and was candidate for governor
on that ticket in 1893. He has been a director
of the Massachusetts Temperance Alliance
since 1888, and was for two years president of
the Cambridge Temperance Reform Associa-
tion. He has always taken a deep interest
in city affairs, having served his city in the
General Courts of 1875 and 1876, and in the
board of aldermen in 1871, 1872, 1873. He was
one of the founders, and is senior deacon, of the
Pilgrim Congregational church, and is promi-
nent in the work of the denomination. Since
EDW.\RD KENDALL
1890 he has been a director of the Cambridge-
port National Bank. Mr. Kendall is a member
of the Congregational Club, of Boston, and the
Cambridge Club. He married, December 16,
1847, Miss Reliance Crocker, of Paxton, Mass.
CHESTER WARD KINGSLEY
KiNGSLEY, Chester Ward, was bom and
educated in Brighton, Mass., now a part of
Boston. He passed the greater part of his life
in Cambridge, and in all schemes for the city's
good he was found in the fore. Bom June 9,
1824, the son of Moses and Mary (Montague)
Kingsley, he was left fatherless at the age
of four years, and thrown upon his own
resources at the age of ten. For the next five
years he worked in the then wilds of Michigan.
Returning to Brighton, he resumed his studies,
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
and graduated from the high school. He soon
found a place as messenger in the old Brighton
Bank, and was successively made clerk and
teller, and in 1851, he became cashier of the
Cambridge Market Bank, which position he
held for five years. In 1856 he entered the
wholesale provision business, and was very
prosperous. Retiring in 1865, he became
treasurer of an anthracite coal-mining company.
foresight as president of the board that inaugu-
rated the present magnificent water system
of the city caused him to be known as the
"Father of the Cambridge Water Works."
Politically, he has been a life-long Republican
Prohibitionist. He was a trustee of the Newton
Theological Institute, Colby University, and
Worcester Academy. He was president of the
American Baptist Society, and of the Massa-
CHESTER WARD KIXGSLEY
He was for eight years president of the Brighton
National Bank, the successor of the old bank
where he had begun his career. Mr. Kingsley
served his city in the board of aldermen and
school board; also in the House of Representa-
tives in 1882, 1883, 1884, and in the Senate in
1888 and 1889. He was for thirty years a
member of the water board, and for a number
of years president of that body. His zeal and
chusetts Baptist Convention, and] he was
for some years one of the executive committee
of the American Baptist Missionary Union,
and president of the Boston Baptist Social
Union. He was a member of the Cambridge,
Colonial and Massachusetts Clubs.
He married in Ma}', 1846, Mary Jane Todd,
daughter of Daniel and Hannah Todd, of
Brighton, Mass. Mrs. Kingsley died December
BIOGRAPHIES
219
28, 1904. Mr. Kingsley passed away just
five days after the death of his wife, January 1,
1904. They had seven children, but only one,
Mrs. Ella J. Bacon, widow of CHnton Bacon,
survives.
Mr. Kingsley was truly a noble and a good
man. His interest was always keen in all good
causes, and not a few educational and religious
institutions felt, while he lived, the quickening
impulse of his great liberality. Endowed with
rare gifts as a business man, he amassed a large
property, but always felt the duty of using it,
to as great an extent as possible, for the good
of his fellowmen. This trait was marked in
his life, and he will long be remembered for it.
Mr. Kingsley's service to the city of Cambridge,
which he loved, was as great as it was unselfish.
City and suburbs quartering their horses and
fine carriages here, certain that they will secure
the best possible attention. In keeping pace
with modem changes and conditions, Mr. Lake
not long ago installed a service of toiuing cars
and auto cabs, which today is one of the appre-
ciated features of the social and business life
of Cambridge. Of course, Mr. Lake also main-
tains the same high standard in his carriage
CHARLES H. LAKE
Lake, Charles H., is perhaps one of the
best-known business men and citizens of Cam-
bridge. Notwithstanding his activities in the
business world, he has found time to devote
to the service of both country and city. He is
a member of the First Regiment Veteran Asso-
ciation, and at one time served in the state
militia, retiring with the rank of captain. He
stands high in Masonic circles, and is a Mystic
Shriner. During his thirty years' residence
in Cambridge he has been several times elected
to the Common Council and the Board of Alder-
men, serving most acceptably in both branches
of the City Government. He was in the Council
two years and in the Board of Aldermen three
years. He was president of the Board the last
two years, where he performed the duties of
the office most efficiently. In social circles
Mr. Lake is also well known, being an active
supporter of the Newtowne club, where he is
on one of the bowling teams. In addition he
takes a most active interest in the Harvard
Square Business Men's Association and the
Citizens' Trade Association.
Mr. Lake is treasurer and manager of the
Cambridge Coach Co., which was incorporated
in 1902, being originally established in 1835, by
Royal Simpson. Its headquarters are at 35
and 38 Church Street. The Company has for
many years enjoyed a most select boarding
patronage, horse owners from all parts of the
CHARLES H. LAKE
and coach service. Carriages or touring cars,
of large or small seating capacity, may be hired
at any hour of the day or night at most reason-
able rates. Furthermore, the concern's corps
of drivers and chauffeurs are the most gentle-
manly, careful and thoroughly experienced of
any to be procured. They are familiar with
all parts of the country which they are likely
to cover. Vehicles may be rented for balls,
parties, weddings, for shopping, for funerals, or
for pleasure driving, and a prompt and efficient
service is assured.
ERASMUS DARWIN LEAVITT
Leavitt, Erasmus Darwin, of Cambridge,
son of Erasmus Darwin and Almira (Fay)
220
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Leavitt, was bom in Lowell, Mass., October 27,
1836. He was educated in the Lowell public
schools and entered the machine shop of the
Lowell Manufacturing Company in April, 1852,
where he served three years as an apprentice,
at the close of which time he worked under
instruction for a year at the works of Corliss &
Nightingale, Providence, R.I., the birthplace
of the Corliss engine. From 1856 to 1858 he
was engaged in developing some inventions
in steam engineering, for which a patent had
been granted to him in 1855. In 1858 and
1859 he was assistant foreman at the City
Point Works, South Boston, and had charge
of building the engines for the flagship Hart-
ford. From 1859 to 1861 he was chief draughts-
man for Thurston, Gardner & Company, of
Providence, R.I., leaving there to enter the
United States navy in the summer of 1861
as third assistant engineer. He served through
the war of the rebellion, and during his term
of service was detailed to the Naval Academy
at Annapolis as instructor in steam engineer-
ing. Resigning in 1867, he resumed the prac-
tice of mechanical engineering, making a
specialty of pumping and mining machinery.
In 1872 Mr. Leavitt designed and patented
a novel pumping engine which was first used
at Lynn, Mass. ; and on account of its remark-
able performance it became celebrated in
Europe as well as in this country; similar
engines were subsequently erected at Lawrence
Mass., Louisville, Ky., and at the sewage station
of the city of Boston.
In 1874 he became connected with the famous
Calumet and Hecla Copper Mine as an adviser
of mechanical matters, and was consvilting
engineer of the company until 1904, when he
retired from active practice. During his term
of service with the company, he furnished the
designs and plans for its huge equipment, which
so materially reduced the cost of mining. He
has also acted as consulting engineer to the
cities of Boston and Louisville, and to the firm
of Henr>' R. Worthington, of New York, the
celebrated builders of pumps. He is a member
of the American Society of Civil Engineers,
American Institute of Mining Engineers, Ameri-
can Society of Mechanical Engineers (and past
president of same), Boston Society of Ci\'il
Engineers, American Society of Naval Engi-
neers, life member of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
Institution of Civil Engineers and the Insti-
tution of Mechanical Engineers of Great
Britain. In 1884 he received the honorary
degree of Doctor of Engineering from the
Stevens Institute of Technology, of Hoboken,
N.J. He is a member of the Union and Com-
mercial Clubs of Boston, and the Colonial
Club of Cambridge.
Mr. Leavitt was married, June 5, 1867, to
Annie Elizabeth, daughter of William Pettit,
of Philadelphia, who was the pioneer in loco-
motive building in the United States, and long
connected with the Baldwin Locomotive
Works. Mrs. Leavitt died December 28, 1889.
Their children were Mary Alford, Hart Hooker,
Margaret Almira, Harriet Sherman and Annie
Louise. Of these, three are living: Mary A.,
Margaret A. and Annie L.
Mr. Leavitt's life has been one of close appli-
cation to his chosen profession, and today he
occupies a leading position among the most
eminent engineers of this country and of Europe,
his ability being recognized by all his contem-
poraries. During his several trips abroad he
has received marked attention from engineers,
and from the various engineering societies. He
was a warm personal friend of the late Herr
Krupp, of Essen, who frequently consulted
him concerning engineering matters.
WILLIAM L. LOCKHART
LocKHART, William L., a prominent mortu-
ary supply manvtfacturer of Boston for over
fifty years, was bom at Horton, N.S., July 20,
1827, and died at his home in Belmont, Mass.,
February 21, 1902. He came to Boston at
the age of fifteen years, from his native place,
and being unable to pay for his passage he
worked his way as cook on board a vessel —
an experience which he would often mention
when sailing out of the harbor on the steam
yacht which he afterward owned, and on which
he spent much of his time. After walking
the streets endeavoring to find employment,
he started to walk to the city of Salem, to
answer an advertisement for an apprentice,
in order to save what little money he had, he
BIOGRAPHIES
paid his fare over the toll-bridge with a lead
pencil; he failed to secure the position he
wanted, but fell in with a sea captain, an old
friend, who took him to Nova Scotia. For
the next two years he went to sea, and then
came to Boston again, being full of pluck and
determination to succeed this time. After a
hard struggle he apprenticed himself to a
stair builder, receiving for his first year's
service, fifty dollars, of which he saved twenty-
five (at the present time there are not many
boys that possess the same pluck and energy).
He then visited Nova Scotia and returned to
Boston to finish his apprenticeship of three
years at stair-building, proving himself so
competent and skilful that he was rapidly
pushed ahead. A few years later he went to
work for John Peak, casket manufacturer of
Boston. He remained there six years, at first
doing piece work, and later as a contractor
hiring his own help. At the end of six years
he went into business for himself in the manu-
facture of caskets and robes, building a small
wooden factory on Cambridge Street, East
Cambridge. As he only had three hundred
dollars, he obtained the lumber on credit for
his factory from a lumber merchant who had
faith enough in his business ability to tell him
he could have all the lumber he wanted. Not
long afterward his factory was burned, with
only an insurance of one thousand four hundred
dollars, although the property was worth five
thousand dollars. It was characteristic of
him, that on hearing through a friend that
the insurance agent said to a friend he expected
to save a couple of hundred dollars by settling
the loss immediately, at less than its actual
value, he refused to accept as much as one
cent less than the full amount, which he finally
received, though he was obliged to wait six
months for it. He subsequently bought a
brick factory on Bridge Street, East Cambridge,
being backed financially by the same lumber
merchant who helped him before. He after-
ward bought considerable more land adjoining
his factory and put up a number of wooden
buildings, including a stable for thirty horses.
By his energy and perseverance he succeeded
in increasing his business, and in 1887, bought
the lot of land at the comer of Staniford and
Causeway Streets, Boston, and erected a large
brick building, containing offices and ware-
rooms. A few years later, his two brothers,
Albert E. and C. H. Lockhart, and George H.
Howard, who had been with him for twenty-
six years, were taken into partnership. At
the time of his death, the concern employed
over one hundred hands. Always fond of the
sea it was one of his earliest ambitions to own
a boat. When his circumstances enabled him
to realize this ambition, his first venture was
the sloop yacht Tartar; next came the Nautilus,
also a sloop; later on he bought the Alice, a
schooner, and still later the Troubador of the
same rig, but larger. His latest purchase was
the steam yacht Starling, a one hundred and
twenty-five foot over all, which he owned at
the time of his death. With the Troubador
he once defeated the America in a cup race
against Ben Butler. He also won a number of
races with the Alice. He was a member of
the Massachusetts, Hull and Boston Yacht
Clubs, and of the St. Augustine Yacht Club of
Florida; and was a familiar figure in yachting
circles. He was a member of the Ancient and
Honorable Artillery Company, and a former
member of the Lancers, having been four days
in the saddle doing escort duty at the time of
the visit of the Prince of Wales to Boston.
About the year 1880, he bought the house in
Belmont, surrounded by considerable land,
where he resided up to the time of his death.
He was quite largely interested in real estate
in Cambridge. An injury to his skull, caused
by being thrown from his carriage some time
in 1887, brought on an illness from which he
never fully recovered, being troubled at inter-
vals for the remainder of his life; his death, in
fact, being traceable to this cause. During
the last four years of his life he relinquished
the more active oversight of his business to
others, though taking a keen interest in it up
to the time of his death. He passed most of
the winter in travel, either in this country or
Europe, having spent twenty consecutive
winters in Florida, with the exception of one,
which he spent in California.
Mr. Lockhart was married in 1851, to Miss
Lucy O. Smith, of Kennebunk, Me. Mrs.
Lockhart died December 6, 1912, being survived
by an adopted daughter, wife of Dr. Joseph S.
Lockhart of Cambridge.
222
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Among business men he was kno%vn as a man
of the highest credit and of strict business in-
tegrity, while his genial and affable manner and
generous heart made for him a host of friends,
among whom he was most deservedly popular.
His funeral was attended by his old patrons
and business associates. The manufacturers
were represented by the Miller Bros., Geo. E.
Holbrook, The National Casket Co.; by P. B.
Heintz and Edward J. Parmelee, Domtee Co.;
by H. A. Stone, Hollings & Co., Samuel Silver,
and newspaper representatives of Boston and
Cambridge; the Ancient and Honorable Artil-
lery Company, and employees at the factory.
The floral offerings were many and of various
appropriate designs, being given by the family,
relatives and business associates, and The
Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, was bom
in Portland, Me., February 27, 1807. He
attended Bowdoin College, and graduated there
in 1825. His father, Hon. Stephen Longfellow,
was a lawyer, and it was in his office that young
Longfellow began to study law. Upon receiv-
ing, a little later, the appointment of professor
of modern languages at Bowdoin, he gave up
the study of law, and devoted himself to teach-
ing and Hterature. To prepare himself better
for this career, he spent three years traveling
in Europe. The studies that he pursued while
abroad were such as to increase his qualifica-
tions for educational work. Having returned
to America, he gave a course of lectures at the
college, the subjects being modem languages
and literature. At the same time he occasion-
ally contributed to the North American Review,
and other periodicals. In 1833 he issued his
first volxmne — "An Essay on the Moral and
Devotional Poetry of Spain;" it now forms
part of "Outre-Mer," and is no longer published
as an independent work. When George Ticknor
retired from the position of professor of modem
languages and literature at Harvard College,
Longfellow was asked to succeed him. He
accepted the offer, and, as before, went to Europe
for the purpose of additional study. This time
he included Switzerland and the Scandina\'ian
coimtries in his itinerary. His connection with
Harvard College lasted till 1854, and he resided
in Cambridge not only during that period, but
for the remaining years of his life. The house
he lived in is variously known as the Craigie
House, Washington's headquarters, and the
home of Everett, Sparks and Worcester, the
lexicographer. Most of Longfellow's works
were written there, and there he died on March
24, 1882.
In addition to "Outre-Mer," which has al-
ready been mentioned, and which contained
the results of the poet's delving into the riches
of Old World life, there appeared in 1839 another
work of the same character, but in form more
narrative — "Hyperion, a Romance." A small
book entitled "Voices of the Night," a collection
of poems and translations printed at divers
times in periodicals, came from the press the
same year; "The Psalm of Life," "The Be-
leaguered City," and "Footsteps of Angels,"
were in this volimie. "Ballads, and other
Poems," and "Poems on Slaver}'," were pub-
hshed in 1842; "The Spanish Student," a play,
in 1843; "The Belfry of Bmges and other
Poems," in 1846; "Evangeline," in 1847, and
"Kavanagh, a Tale," in prose, in 1849. Among
the best known works of Longfellow, may be
mentioned "The Golden Legend," "The Song
of Hiawatha," "The Courtship of Miles Stand-
ish," "Tales of a Wayside Inn," "The New
England Tragedies," and the translation of
Dante's "Divine Comedy."
Longfellow is considered the leading minor
poet. That England, as well as America, appre-
ciates his ser\'ices to literature is e\-ident from
the fact that his bust occupies a prominent
place in Westminster Abbey.
ABBOTT LAWRENCE LOWELL
Lowell, Abbott Lawrence, twenty-fourth
President of Hansard University, was bom in
Boston, Mass., December 13, 1856, son of
Augustus and Katherine Bigelow (LawTence)
Lowell. He was graduated at Harvard Uni-
versity in the class of 1877. He was especially
proficient in mathematics, and also distinguished
himself in athletics, ha\ing won on one occasion
both the mile and three-mile race in the same
afternoon. After two years at Harvard Law
School and one year in the law office of Messrs.
Russell and Putnam of Boston, he received the
BIOGRAPHIES
degree of LL.B. in 1880. He was immediately
admitted to the Bar, and for seventeen years
practised law in partnership with his kinsman
Francis Cabot Lowell; Frederick Jesup Stimson
being a member of the firm dtaring the last six
years. Retiring from the bar in 1897, he became
lecturer at Harvard University, and two years
later was appointed professor of the science of
government. He filled this chair so acceptably,
and displayed such qualities of business ability,
tact and executive force, that, when President
EUot resigned in 1909, he was selected by the
ABBOTT LAWRENCE LOWELL
corporation to succeed him. In his inaugural
address on October 6, 1909, President Lowell
said: "A discussion of the ideal college training
would apparently lead to the conclusion that
the best type of liberal education in our complex
modern world aims at producing men who know
a little of everything and something well."
Soon after taking office, he introduced a radical
change in Harvard's elective system by aban-
doning the plan of unlimited electives, and pro-
viding for a considerable amount of work by
the student in some one field, and the general
distribution of other subjects under the direc-
tion and advice of the faculty. His writings
have won him international recognition as one
of the few high authorities on the history and
science of government in the English-speaking
world. They are: "Transfer of Stock in Cor-
porations," in collaboration with Judge Francis
C. Lowell (1884); "Essays on Government"
(1889), "Governments and Parties in Conti-
nental Europe" (1896), "Colonial Civil Ser-
vice," in collaboration with Prof. H. Morse
Stevens (1900); "The Influence of Party upon
Legislation in England and America" (1902),
and "The Government of England" (1908).
From the moment President Lowell began his
teaching at Harvard he impressed both students
and colleagues with his forceful personality.
His elementary course in government was con-
sidered the most stimulating line of instruction,
as well as the most popular, given to imder-
graduates. He was at one time a member of
the Boston School Committee and of the execu-
tive committee of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, and is now a member of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Phi
Beta Kappa Fraternity. President Lowell has
been trustee of the Lowell Institute of Boston
since 1900. In that capacity he has the full
financial management of the trust, selects the
lectvirers and in all ways carries on the affairs
of the Institute in the service of public education.
He was married, June 19, 1879, to Anna Parker,
daughter of George G. Lowell of Boston, and
a descendant of Judge John Lowell.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Lowell, James Russell, son of Rev. Charles
Lowell, D.D., and Harriet, daughter of Robert
T. Spence of Portsmouth, N.H., was bom in
Elmwood, Plymouth County, Mass., February
22, 1819. Perhaps no family in the Common-
wealth has attained greater distinction in both
the republic of letters and beneficent public
service. The first American ancestor was Perci-
val Lowell, who came from Bristol, England,
settling in Newbury, Mass., in 1639.
The greatgrandfather of the poet was Rev.
John Lowell, minister of Newburyport, num-
bered by historians among the special nota-
bilities of the American pulpit . His grandfather,
Hon. John Lowell (Chief -Justice of the Court of
224
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Appeals, and United States District Judge) was
a poet of ability, but is chiefly remembered for
philanthropic action as a member of the con-
vention which framed the constitution of Massa-
chusetts, as he introduced the clause which
effected the abolition of slaver],- in the State.
John Lowell, LL.D., uncle of James Russell,
was a noted writer on poUtics. theology-, eco-
nomics, agriculture, etc.
To Francis Cabot Lowell, brother of John
Lowell, is to be attributed the introduction of
the cotton maniifacture into the United States,
at Waltham, and the founding of the city of
Lowell, which was named for him. To his son,
John Lowell, Jr., is due the gratitude of a Com-
monwealth for his founding of the Lowell Insti-
tute of Boston, where he was bom May 11, 1799.
Robert Traill Spence Lowell, brother of the
poet is remembered as ha\-uig, with other mem-
bers of the family, achieved hterarj- celebrity;
but to none of them has come such versatile
and \-igorous power as to the poet himself —
power lo3"ally used for the good of his country,
as well as universal man.
James Russell Lowell was graduated from
Har\-ard College in the class of 1838. He read
law in the law department of Har\-ard Uni-
versity, was admitted to the bar in 1S40, and
opened an office in Boston. But love of letters
was stronger than ambition for legal rewards.
He soon left the profession he had chosen, for
the opportunity and leisure of indulging his
tastes in realms more congenial.
His first collection of poems, "A Year's Life"
(1841) was severelj- criticised, though the genius
slumbering was noticed by Judge Storj-, who
wrote kindlj' of it at the time. In January",
1843, he with a co-partner issued "The Pioneer,
A Literarj' and Critical Magazine," Boston.
This was not a financial success. The years
following were spent in giving to the world his
inimitable prose sketches, his poems, that one
after another took the hterarj- world by storm,
his contributions to the leading magazines of
the world, his editions of the poems of Keats,
Wordsworth, Shelly and Mar\-ell, in the "British
Poets" series, and in his extensive fore;ign
travels.
The works of the "poet laureate" are too
well known to reqiure scheduled citation. His
is too fa m ilia r , and his public record too
thoroughly engrafted into the national life to
need other than a brief mention.
In 1844 Mr. Lowell was married to Maria,
daughter of Abijah and Anna Maria (Howard)
WTiite. Her death, at Cambridge, eUcited one
of Longfellow's most exqviisite compositions:
"Two Angels." In 1857 he was married to
his second wife, Frances Ehmlap, niece of Ex-
Governor Dimlap of Portland, Me. She died
in England, Februar}-, 1885. Of the four chil-
dren by the first marriage, only one sur\'ives —
Mabel, wife of Edward Bxunett.
In 1887, Mr. Lowell was appointed by Presi-
dent Haj'es to represent the national govern-
ment at the court of Spain, from which in 1880
he was transferred to the coiut of St. James.
His administration of the delicate and respon-
sible duties of his high mission in London was
characterized hv tact, marked ability-, and was
a most pronounced diplomatic and social suc-
cess. During his residence in England he was
chosen rector of the viniversity of St. Andrew.
Mr. LoweU died in 1891.
JOHN J. MAHOXEY
^LvHOXEY, John- J., assistant superintendent
of schools, was bom in Lawrence. Mass., Decem-
JOHN J. M.\HO.\EV
BIOGRAPHIES
ber 2, 1880. His early education was received
in St. Mary's Parochial School. From this
school, in 1896, he entered Phillips Andover
Academy, where for three j-ears he led his class,
graduating in 1899, with several prizes to his
credit for special excellence in Latin and Greek.
Mr. Mahoney's course at Har\'ard (1899-
1903) was a brilliant one. He excelled both in
scholarship and as a debater, and graduated, a
Phi Beta Kappa man, very near the head of a
large class. His first teaching, immediately
on leaving college, was in the Lawrence High
School, where he sensed one year. From 1904
to 1912 he was a successful grammar school
master. During the same time he directed the
evening school system of Lawrence, one of the
largest, proportionately, in the country, and
did some valuable pioneer work along the Hnes
of the education of the immigrant. In the
strmmer of 1912, he was elected Assistant Super-
intendent of Schools in Cambridge.
Mr. Mahoney is kno'WTi as an educational
lectiorer and writer. In 1906 he was sent
abroad xmder the auspices of the National Ci\'ic
Federation, to study the schools of the British
Isles.
CHARLES JOHN McINTIRE
McIntire, Charles John, "First Judge of
the Probate Court and the Court of Insolvenc}^
for Middlesex County," son of Ebenezer and
Amelia Augustine (Landais) McIntire, was
bom in Cambridge. Through his mother he
is seventh in descent from John Talcot, who
came over with the Rev. Thomas Hooker's
Braintree company in 1632, built his residence
upon Brattle Street, was one of the first board
of selectmen, a deputy in 1634-16.36, and in
1637 accompanied Hooker to Hartford, and
became a prominent figure in the Connecticut
Colon}'. Both of Judge McIntire' s parents
have the distinction of being lineally descended
from original settlers of Cambridge; his mother
from John Talcot, and his father from Nathaniel
Sparhawk, John Cooper and "U'alter Hastings.
On his paternal side Judge McIntire is also the
^sixth in descent from Philip Mackintire, who
came a youth from Scotland about 1650,
settled at Reading, Mass., became a freeholder
in that town before 1666, and died there in 1720.
While yet a student in Cambridge, in
1862, Mr. McIntire enlisted as a private in the
Forty-fourth Regiment, Massachusetts Volun-
teers. He took part in all the engagements
of his regiment, including the famous defense
of the besieged town of Washington, N.C.,
and returned to his law studies when his term
of service had expired. At the age of twenty-
three years he was admitted to the Bar by the
Supreme Judicial Court, and soon built up a
good practice. From 1871 to 1S74, he was
CH.\RLES JOHN McIXTIRE
the Assistant District Attorney of Middlesex;
and when Judge Hammond was appointed to
the Bench of the Superior Court, in March, 1SS6,
Mr. McIntire was elected by the City Council
to fill the position of Cit}' Solicitor. He per-
formed the work of that office so satisfactorily
that he was annually re-elected, always by
unanimous votes, untU, on October 26, 1893,
Governor Russell appointed him to his present
position on the Bench, to fill the vacancy caused
by the death of Judge George M. Brooks. On
September 1, 1894, by legislative enactment,
he became "First Judge" of the two courts.
Previously, in 1893, he had been appointed by
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
in 1840, and began business life as bookkeeper
in the house of Hayward & Morse, who were
engaged in the Provincial and West India trade.
He soon commenced business in that line on
his own account, employing a large force of
men, and was eminently successful.
Mr. Morse was married July 13, 1845, to
Dorcas Louisa, bom August 28, 1822 and died
February 24, 1864, daughter of Thomas Wise
and Elizabeth White Short, and they moved to
Cambridgeport, where he resided up to the
time of his death, which occurred March 18th,
1906. Shortly after taking up his residence
in Cambridge, he became interested in real
estate operations, and was for a long time an
extensive builder. He was for some time con-
nected with the Cambridge Fire Insurance
Company, as director; the Cambridge Hospital
as trustee, and other charitable institutions,
and for about thirty-five years director of the
Cambridgeport National Bank, and for a
number of years its president; also vice-presi-
dent of the Cambridgeport Savings Bank. He
was for sixteen years a member of the school
board, was alderman in 1866, and a member
of the legislature in 1869, and in 1872 he was
again elected. He declined re-election. The
Republicans of the "Third Middlesex Senato-
rial District," in the campaign of 1878, selected
Mr. Morse as the candidate for senator, and he
was elected by a handsome majority. The bill
for the establishment of a reformity for men,
which resulted in the establishment of the
Concord Reformatory, passed the Senate
largely through the efforts of Mr. Morse. He
was re-elected to the Senate of 1880 by a large
majority. He was again placed at the head
of the committee on prisons, and also on the
committee on education and expenditures.
He was a life member of the "New England
Historic Genealogical Society," and also life
member of the "Webster Historical Society."
Mr. Morse's children were Marj' Louisa, who
married Charles Willis Jones, formerly presi-
dent of the New England National Bank of
Boston, Mass.; Velma Maria and Arthur
Porter (deceased).
W. and Hannah F. (Adams) Munroe, who
were also bom in the University town. He
was educated in the Cambridge schools and
at Harvard, graduating in the Class of 1864.
He was in the Law School during 1866 and
1867, and entered the office of Chandler,
Shattuck & Thayer, Boston. He was admitted
to the Suffolk Bar in 1868, and subsequently
became a member of the Bar of the United States
WILLIAM ADAMS MUNROE
Munroe, William Adams, was bom in Cam-
bridge, November 9, 1843, the son of William
WILLIAM ADAMS MUXROE
Supreme Coiu-t. He began practice in 1869,
and in Februar}', 1870, formed a partner-
ship with George O. Shattuck of the old firm,
which had been dissolved. Judge Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes was a partner from 1873 until his
appointment to the Bench in 1882, the firm
name being Shattuck, Holmes & Munroe. Mr.
Munroe was never active politically, but always
took a keen interest in the educational and
social development of the city. He was for
several years a prominent member of the
School Board; was one of the commission to
revise the City Charter in 1890; was president
of the Cambridge Club in 1890; and a member
and one of the incorporators of the Cambridge
Club, and a trustee of the Avon Home. He
was an active member of the First Baptist
Church, and prominent in the denomination,
Asa p. Morse
BIOGRAPHIES
having been president of the Boston Baptist
Social Union in 1882. He was a trustee of the
Newton Theological Seminary. Mr. Munroe
was married, November 22, 1871, to Sarah D.
Whiting, of Salem.
Mr. Munroe died August 26, 1905, being
survived by his wife, and his daughter, Helen
W. Munroe.
JAMES JEFFERSON MYERS
Myers, James Jefferson, lawyer, was bom
at Frewsburg, N.Y., November 20, 1842, the
son of Robert and Sabra (Tracy) Myers. He
prepared for college at Western, N.Y. He
graduated from Harvard in 1869, with the degree
of A.B., receiving his A.M. later. He studied
at the Harvard Law School, and was given his
LL.B. in 1872. After a year in Europe he spent
another in a- New York law office.
In the fall of 1874, having been admitted to
the Suffolk Bar, Mr. Myers, with Mr. J. B.
Warner of Cambridge, formed the firm of Myers
& Warner, and has since practised law continu-
ously in Boston.
From 1893 to 1903 he represented Cambridge
in the Legislature, and was Speaker of the House
from 1900 to 1903. He has taken a lively inter-
est in matters of education and good govern-
ment. He has served as president of the Library
Hall Association of Cambridge, and was treas-
urer of the Citizens' Committee, which raised
the fimds for the Public Library.
Mr. Myers is a director of the Cambridge
Trust Company, the Walworth Manufactioring
Company, and various other similar enter-
prises. He is a member of the American Bar
Association, the Civil Service Reform Associa-
tion, the Economic Club of Boston, the Prospect
Union, the Cambridge Historical Society, and
numerous clubs. His home is in Cambridge.
Dr. J. T. G. NICHOLS
Nichols, J. T. G., Dr., for many years a
resident of Cambridge and particularly well
known as president of the Cambridge Savings
•Bank, was bom in Portland, Me., in 1837, and
died August 26, 1911, at his summer home.
Boar's Head, N.H.
He attended Harvard College and the Law-
rence Scientific School, and received his M.D.
degree. The outbreak of the Civil War,
soon after, led to his appointment as a
surgeon in the Northern Army; and later in the
struggle he was a member of one of the un-
attached companies in this State. He was at
one time a member of John A. Logan Post 186,
G.A.R., but resigned his membership some
years ago.
T, G. XICHOLS
Dr. Nichols was one of the best-known and
most skilled practitioners in Cambridge, and
his fame, gained from a practice here of more
than sixty years, spread far beyond the borders
of the city. At the Cambridge Hospital, too,
he had an excellent record. When the hospital
was opened, he became one of the visiting
physicians and he continued to hold this posi-
tion until he resigned, owing to his age. There-
upon he became one of the consulting physicians,
in which capacity he continued until his death.
Apart from his professional life. Dr. Nichols
was perhaps best known through his connection
with the Cambridge Savings Bank, to which
he gave freely of his business acumen. He had
been connected with the Bank for more than
thirty-seven years, for it was on Febmary 11,
1874, that he was chosen a member of the cor-
poration. Two years later, February 9, 1876,
he was elected a trustee.
230
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
On the death of president Charles W. Sever,
Dr. Nichols was, on July 7, 1904, elected vice-
president of the Bank; and he also served as
acting president until February 8 of the follow-
ing year, when he was chosen president, holding
this office until his resignation on June 19,
1911.
Dr. Nichols was a member of the Massachu-
setts Medical Society; the Cambridge Society
for Medical Improvement; the Boston Society
of the same name; the Harvard Medical Alumni
Association and the Boston Medical Library-.
He was also a member of the First Parish Church,
and for many years had served as chairman of
its standing committee.
Dr. Nichols is survived by his widow. His
two sons are Henry A. Nichols, receiving teller
at the Cambridge Savings Bank, and J. T. G.
Nichols, Jr., of Newburyport.
JOHN NOLEN
NoLEN, John, landscape architect, city plan-
ner, ci-\'ic lecturer, writer, observant traveler
in old worlds and new, is, in the thoughts of
many, now occupying the desirable position in
public estimation which those who knew best
the lamented Charles Eliot, son of Ex-President
Eliot, expected him one day to have.
Mr. Nolen's career has been unusual. He was
bom in 1869, was graduated in 1893 from the
University of Permsylvania, studied at Oxford,
Munich and Har\'ard, which gave him its A.M.
in 1905.
Practice and theory have found in his life
the blending which invariably spells out success.
Before college he had a fruitful business career;
after college — in fact, till 1903— he combined
lecturing and administrative work for the Uni-
versity Extension Society in Philadelphia. He
thus became a fluent and effective speaker, and
at the same time learned to organize men, direct
acti\'ities, and deal with multitudinous details.
He acquired the art of influencing minds in the
mass and also one by one. He developed the
habit, whether in a crowd or in the quiet of an
office conversation, of stating unwholesome
truth without dilution and also without hurt
to the most sensitive. When as city planner
or re-planner he is to speak about the city's
needs before the citizens en masse, he makes
his diagnosis as carefully as any doctor called
to a sickbed, and then reports exactly what he
finds.
Mr. Nolen has written many articles, pub-
lished many reports, given many addresses, and
advised in the formation of many organizations
for the betterment and beautifying of our cities.
His attitude toward practically ever\' civic prob-
lem wdth which he has had to deal, is clearly
indicated in his latest book. "Replanning Small
JOHX XOLE.V
Cities," perhaps the most important single
contribution to city improvement literatiu-e
ever made by an American. In reading it one
sees that Mr. Nolen always has in mind in his
writing and work the three essentials: (1) The
influence of comprehensive city planning on
the civic spirit; (2) the relationship of the
specific plan to better housing, proper schooling,
well-planned playgrounds, spacious parks, grade
crossings, waterfronts, a true wage-sj'stem,
and better li\dng; (3) and the lu-gent necessity
that American cities, like Diisseldorf and other
German cities, should be able to borrow large
sums to make their plans effective.
As one reads the list of Mr. Nolen's acti\'ities,
creations and publications, most of which belong
BIOGRAPHIES
231
within the last decade, one is amazed at both
the quality and quantity of his good work.
Fellow of the American Society of Landscape
Architects, first vice-president of the American
Civic Association, member of the Executive
Board of the National Conference on City
Planning and of the Boston Metropolitan Plan
Commission, and of such clubs as the Boston
City Club, the New York Harvard Club, and
the Appalachian Mountain Club, Mr. Nolen
has been counsellor to more than a score of
representative American cities, many more
educational and philanthropic institutions and
private estates, and official landscape architect
to such municipalities as Madison, Wis., Mont-
clair, N.J., Reading, Pa., Roanoke, Va., San
Diego, Cal., New London, Conn., Savannah, Ga.,
and Schenectady, N.Y. In Massachusetts alone
ten cities are the better and the fairer for his touch.
It is evermore the man behind the guns that
wins the victory. Back of all of Mr. Nolen's
intelligent, artistic and amazingly abundant
work is a simple, qmet, tactful, friendly but
extremely forceful personaHty, gathering in-
spiration all along the way of life, from chance
acquaintances, from friends whose name is
legion, and most of all from a happy home made
possible by his marriage in 1896 to Miss Barbara
Schatte of Philadelphia.
Mr. Nolen lives in Cambridge, but his main
professional fields have been South and West.
His strong preference for public work has been
expressed oftenest perhaps in the case of the
small city, sometimes regardless of compensa-
tion. He has kept the standard of his com-
paratively new profession ever far ahead of
mediocrity and mercenary interests, and his
motto ever is "The beautiful is as useful as the
useful."
FORRIS W. NORRIS
NoRRis, FoRRis W., real estate operator,
was born at Dimkin, Quebec, June 25, 1885,
being the son of Anson 0. and Emma A. Norris.
His early education was received in the district
schools of Canada, and he afterwards attended
North Troy Academy, North Troy, Vt.
At the age of twenty he became associated
with Mr. G. A. Giles in the real estate business.
He was so successful that about four years later
he opened an office for himself. Since that time
Mr. Norris has been one of the men most active
in furthering the growth of Cambridge. The
the remarkable industrial development of the
city in recent years is in no small measure due
to his energy and enterprise. It was he who
organized the Riverbank Trust, and he has been
identified with numerous other similar projects.
I'lU'^IS W. NORRIS
Mr. Norris is at present a director of the
Guaranty Trust Company, director and treas-
urer of the Cambridge Realty Company, trustee
of the Riverbank Trust, a member of the Cam-
bridge Board of Trade and the Massachusetts
Real Estate Exchange. He also belongs to the
Cambridge Lodge of Elks. In politics he is a
Republican, and served in the Common Council
for three years— 1909, 1910 and 1911. Mr.
Norris's religious affiliations are with the Protes-
tant Church.
Mr. Norris was married to Bessie E. Griffin
on March 7, 1907. They have two sons —
Forris W. Norris, Jr., and Jackson Morton
Norris.
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
Norton, Charles Eliot, was bom in Cam-
bridge, November 16, 1827, and graduated in
1846 from Harvard University, which three
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
years later conferred upon him the degree of
A.M. Subsequent honors were given him by-
Cambridge University, England, which gave
him the degree of Litt.D., in 1884; Columbia,
L.H.D., in 1885; Har\-ard, LL.D., in 1887, and
Yale in 1901; O.-dord, D.C.L.. in 1900. He
went to India when twenty-two years old, and
then came home through Europe.
In 1855 he made a second \-isit to Europe,
and remained there two vears.
CH.\RLES ELIOT XORTOX
During the Ci\-il War he edited at Boston the
papers issued by the Loyal Publication Society,
and from 1864 to 1868 he was associated with
James Russell Lowell in editing the North
American Rrdeu.'.
Before this, in 1857, Longfellow told Norton
of his ambition to write in poetic form a trans-
lation of Dante's "Divina Commedia," and
turned to him for aid in the work. The work
progressed, Longfellow being assisted by Norton
and Lowell, and from frequent conferences
grew the Dante Club, with Norton as president.
Professor Norton was a university lecturer
at Har\-ard in 1863-1864 and 1874-1875. In
1875 was he appointed professor of the history-
of art; he resigned in 1898, being retained as
professor emeritus.
He was first president of the American In-
stitute of Archaeology founded in 1879; first
president of the Arts and Crafts Society ; mem-
ber of the Massachusetts Historical Society;
fellow of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences; member of the Imperial German
Archaeological Society and was for some time
president of the Har\-ard Musical Association.
Professor Norton published a prose trans-
lation of Dante's "Di\-ine Comedy," "Consid-
eration of Some Recent Social Theories," "His-
torical Studies of Chiu-ch Building in the Middle
Ages" and "Notes of Travel and Study in
Italy"; contributed to an American edition of
Scott; edited the letters of Goethe, the poems
of Arthur Hugh Clough and John Downe, the
philosophical discussions of Chauncy Wright
and several other works.
Professor Norton's wife, to whom he was
married in 1862, died ten years later, in Ger-
many. His three sons and three daughters are
li\ing. Professor Norton died October 21,
1908, at Cambridge.
EDMUND MORLEY PARKER
Parker, Edmund Morley, counsellor at
law, was bom in Cambridge on August 15,
1856, being the son of Joel and Marj- (Morse)
Parker. His father was Chief- Justice of New
Hampshire and RoyaU Professor of Law at
Har\"ard Law School. Edmund M. Parker,
EDMUND MORLEV P.ARKER
y
BIOGRAPHIES
233
after receiving his early education in private
schools, attended the Reading High School
(1869-1870) and the Cambridge High School
(1870-1873). He graduated from Harvard
College in 1877 with the degree of A.B., traveled
and studied in Europe (1877-1879), and was
given his degree of LL.B. by Harvard Law
School in 1882.
Mr. Parker was admitted to the Suffolk Bar
in 1882, and has engaged in the practice of law
ever since, acting as trustee of many real estate
trusts and various private estates. In 1890
and 1891 he served on the commission that
revised the Cambridge Charter, and in 1903 and
1904, was Chairman of the special commission
on the law of eminent domain in the State of
Massachusetts. From 1905 to 1910 he lectured
at Harvard College on comparative adminis-
trative law.
Mr. Parker is a member of the Union and the
Exchange Club of Boston, the Oakley Country
Club, the Jamestown Golf and Country Club,
the Conanicut Yacht Club, and others.
He was married to Miss Alice Gray on April
8, 1891.
LEWIS PARKHURST
Parkhurst, Lewis, a native of Dunstable,
Mass., was bom July 26, 1856, being the son
of the late Thomas H. and Sarah Newton
(Wright) Parkhurst. His father was a farmer
and lumberman, noted for honesty, good judg-
ment and a happy disposition. Joel Parkh\u-st,
an ancestor, was a Lieutenant in the War of the
Revolution. His immigrant ancestor, George
Parkhurst, was bom in Guilford, England, and
settled in Watertown, Mass., where he died in
1648.
Lewis Parkhurst was obUged to begin a life
of hard work when eleven years of age, by labor-
ing on a farm at eight dollars a month and his
board, and although his parents did what they
could to help him get an education, he had
mainly to work his way through the academy
and college, aided by a friendly loan of five
hundred dollars, which he repaid during his
fir^t year after graduation. His preparatory
study was at the Green Mountain Academy in
South Woodstock, Vt., and he was graduated
from Dartmouth College in 1878, receiving the
degree of A.M. from the same institution in
1908. His eminent success in life was largely
aided by the influences and associations of his
years in school and college, and continued con-
tact with the men with whom he formed friend-
ships in those days. He served successively as
principal of the grammar school in Fitchburg,
and of the high schools in Athol and Winchester.
In 1886 he entered into the employment of
Ginn and Company, pubUshers of school and
college text-books, and became a member of
the same firm in 1889, and its business manager.
In 1897 Mr. Parkhiurst built and has since
managed the Athenaeum Press, of Cambridge.
He organized and was first president of the
Middlesex County Bank, in Winchester, Massa-
chusetts, and for many years was a tmstee of
the Winchester Savings Bank. In the same
locaHty he served for seven years on the Water
Board, was a member of the School Committee,
and a trustee of the Public Library. He was
chairman of the committee that built the Win-
chester High School building, and held the same
position on the building committee of the Win-
chester Unitarian Church, with which he was
affiliated. In 1908 Mr. Parkhurst was elected
as a member of the Massachusetts House of
Representatives; and served as a member of
the Railroad committee; and in that same year
was made a trustee of Dartmouth College, and
president of the Dartmouth Alimmi Association
in Boston.
While at college Mr. Parkhurst was a member
of the Greek fraternity known as "Delta Kappa
Epsilon," and now belongs to the University
Club of Boston. He is a member of the Chamber
of Commerce, where he is chairman of its library
committee. A loyal Repubhcan, Mr. Park-
hurst has seen no reason for changing his party
allegiance. At intervals in his remarkably
busy life he has found recreation in fishing,
hunting, golf and travehng. He married in
Weston, Vt., November 18, 1880, Emma,
daughter of John and Sarah (Cragin) Wilder,
whose ancestors Hved at Hingham, Mass. Two
children were bom of this marriage, one of whom
now living is Richard Parkhurst, bom in 1894.
No one can fail to perceive, from even a brief
sketch of such a career as that led by Mr. Park-
hurst, that his main aim all along has been to
"do the duty next to him," whether as a boy
234
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
on the farm, a lad at school, a student in college,
a teacher, a trustee, a banker, a publisher, or
a member of the legislature of his native state.
He served with remarkable pubHc spirit the
town where his home is made, and rejoiced to
make its buildings more commodious and its
streets more attractive. People have trusted
him with weighty responsibilities, and he has
borne faithfully, evidently seeking as his best
reward the satisfaction of knowing that by
his diligence and intelligence others have been
made happier, wiser and better.
ical Society; Unitarian Club; Cambridge Club
(\-ice-president, 1906, president, 1907); Union
Club of Boston and the Oakley Country Club.
Mr. Piper was married at Yellow Springs, O.,
July 10, 1879, to Anne Palfrey, daughter of
the Rev. William F. Bridge, Harvard, 1846.
Mr. Piper died at his home in Cambridge, being
survived by four children: William Bridge,
Har\'ard, 1903; E. Elizabeth Bridge, RadclifEe,
1906; Anne Taggard (now Mrs. Matthew Hale,
Harvard, 1903); and Ralph Crosby Piper.
WILLIAM TAGGARD PIPER
Piper, William Taggard, trustee, was bom
in Boston, Mass., August 9, 1853, son of Solomon
and Mary EUzabeth (Taggard) Piper. His
first American ancestor was Nathaniel Piper,
-who came from Devonshire, England; first
definite date about 1653, and settled at Ipswich,
Mass., before 1665, bought land in 1662. The
line of descent is traced through his son Jona-
than, who married Alice Darby; their son Joseph
who married Esther Wright, and their son
Soloman who married Susannah Pratt and was
the grandfather of the subject of this sketch.
Mr. Piper attended the Boston public schools,
including the Latin School, and was graduated
at Har\'ard College in 1874, receiving" the degrees
of M.A. in 1881 and Ph.D. in 1883. During
1875-1876 he attended Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, England. He was a member of the
Cambridge Common Council dviring 1888-1889,
and Alderman during 1890. He had been a
member of the School Committee since 1891,
and president since 1892, retiring in 1909. The
latter year he also became trustee of the Cam-
bridge Public Library, and was president of
that body during the years 1896-1903.
Mr. Piper was director and secretary of the As-
sociated Charities of Cambridge during 1881-
1902, and since 1886 was trustee and president of
the Avon Home for Children in Cambridge. He
was also trustee of the Massachusetts Home-
opathic Hospital and the Boston State Hospital;
director of the Cambridge Trust Company;
member of the New England Historic Gene-
alogical Society (Councillor) during 1898-1901
and 1904-1907; Colonial Society of Massa-
chusetts; Bostonian Society; Cambridge Histor-
DAVID PROUDFOOT
Proudfoot, David, coal merchant, was bom
in Cambridge on August 7, 1840. His parents
were William and Jane Proudfoot. He at-
tended the pubhc schools of the city until he
was sixteen years old, and then went to work
on a farm. He afterwards obtained employ-
ment with the Boston & Lowell Railroad. He
was connected with this company for twenty-
two years, and during the greater part of the
time was ticket-master at the Boston terminus.
In 1881 he decided to go into business for
himself, and in August of that year procured
an office and wharv^es at East Cambridge for
the retailing of coal. The venture proved suc-
cessful, and iMr. Proudfoot had soon built up
a large trade. He is still actively occupied in
the management of the affairs of the concern of
Da\'id Proudfoot and Company.
Mr. Proudfoot was married on September 10,
1866, to Augusta IM. Smith of Hammond, St.
Lawrence County, N.Y. He is a member of the
Colonial Club, Putnam Lodge of Masons, Royal
Arch Chapter and Cambridge Commander>',
K.T., and has been treasurer of the last two
organizations. He resides in Cambridge.
FREDERICK B. PULLEN
PuLLEN, Frederick B., chief of the police
department of Cambridge, has served forty
continuous years on the force. He was ap-
pointed January 2, 1871, as a patrolman,
during the administration of Mayor Harding,
and since that time he has done duty in every
part of the city. His ability and efficiency
as a patrolman were soon manifested, and, in
BIOGRAPHIES
235
the fall of 1880, he took the position of de-
tective in the chief's office in place of Barret
Jones, who had died. As a result of his good
work in this position, Mayor Fox promoted
him to a sergeant. Mayor Bancroft promoted
him to a captaincy, made vacant by the death
FREDERICK
of Captain Thomas H. Lucy. As captain he
served three years at Station 3, three years
at Station 2, and one year at Station 1.
During the time he was on the force, he
always proved to be a faithful, energetic, and
efficient officer, and he had on numerous occa-
sions received the commendation of his superiors
for his remarkable ability in the performance
of his duty.
Chief Pullen served with distinction in the
Civil War. He enlisted in 1862, when but
sixteen years old, joining the First Massachu-
setts Regiment. He was in all the battles of
the regiment in Louisiana, during the campaign
of the Bay of Tesche, under General Banks.
He served in the Shenandoah campaign under
Sheridan. He received his discharge May 20,
1S65, at Falls Church, Va. Chief Pullen died
in 1913.
GEORGE J. RAYMOND
Raymond, George J., son of Cadwallader
M. and Judith A. (Squirers) Raymond, was
bom in Woodstock, New Brunswick, July 31,
1852. He attended school three months in
his native town, and when eight years old went
to work on a farm at Wicklow, New Brunswick.
He remained there until he was seventeen years
of age when he came to Boston and found em-
ployment wdth S. S. Houghton. After several
years' service with him, Mr. Ra>Tnond (1883)
went into business for himself, and is now man-
ager of The Raj^mond Syndicate, at 352 to 358
Washington Street, Boston. A recounting of
the struggles and efforts of the young man from
the period of his coming to Boston until the
time when his name became known throughout
the city would not be without interest. There
is a peculiar fascination to the life of a man
who succeeds in spite of apparent insurmount-
GEORGE J. RAYMOND
able obstacles, and one takes a kind of personal
glory in the achievements of another — a glad-
to-know feeling that somebody has made good.
That's the way one takes to Raymond, par-
ticularly after you have seen him. There is
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A HEnORY Cr CAMBRIDGE. XIAfSACHTSETT^
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BIOGRAPHIES
His next service was in the West G-alf Sqiiad-
ron. Here one expedition and engagement
followed another, and he had his place in them
all for many months; during the last two years
of the war, his vessel taking part in many
contests, and also doing blockade dut}- oS the
Louisiana and Texas coasts. He was in the
battle of Sabine Pass, where the Union forces
men* in rebel prisons. In May, ISdi, during
an engagement at Calcasien Pass, La., he was
captured by the rebels. For eight months he
was confined in the stockade prison-camps in
Texas, sufiering hardships and
terrible that only thirty-two of the one 1
and eleven men who were capttued in May
were li^nng when release cam
met with disaster and great slaughter. He
also was in all the engagements of the occupa-
tion of the Texas coast by General "Washburn,
ai the winter of 1S63, and took part in the
capruie of Corpus Chiisti, Arkansas Pass and
Matagorda.
But an experience even more severe than
that of battle awaited him. — that c: incrls-:--
exposure without shelter and insnffident food
having ended the lives of seventy-nine of his
comrades. This rate of mortality put the
Texas swamp piison-camps among the ■worst
in the entire South, equalling in thear horror,
the terrible records of AndersonviUe and libby.
Only thirty-two ack and wasted men remained
in the camp which had held seven irmired
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
brave Union soldiers; and, as these were too
sick to cook their own rations or care for them-
selves, the Confederates closed the camp, and
sent them to the Union lines. But for this
the entire company would soon have been
obliterated. In the whole war there was no
greater suffering or larger percentage of mor-
tality than in the Texas swamp prison-camps.
In spite of all that he had suffered, he essayed
to do further duty, and was assigned to the
United States sloop of war Kearsarge, but the
privations and suffering of his previous service
had broken his health, and near the close of
the war he resigned.
Mr. Read is a member of Post No. 56, G.A.R. ;
of the militar}- order of the Loj'al Legion of
the United States; of the Kearsarge Naval
Veterans; and of the Association of Survivors
of Rebel Prisons.
After his return from the war Mr. Read
became a partner of William Read & Sons,
but also found time for public service. He was
a member of the common council in the years
1880 and 1881; of the board of aldermen in
1882 and 1883; of the Massachusetts House
of Representatives in 1SS8, and was promi-
nently mentioned for speaker of the House;
of the Massachusetts Senate in 1892 and 1S93.
He was on important committees in the
Legislature, being chairman of committees
of military affairs, water supply, and federal
relations, and also a member of banks and
banking, education and prisons. As a legis-
lator he has always been found on the right
side of the great questions. He has been
much interested in the improvement of the
public service, and gave his support to the
Australian ballot law. No temperance meas-
ure failed to receive his vote.
He was recognized by his fellow-members
as a clear-headed, practical business man,
with an excellent capacity for stating his views
clearly and forciblj^ in the debates, in many
of which he took part. The modification of
the bill in relation to truant schools for Middle-
sex County, so that small institutions may
be established instead of one large one, was
due quite largely to Mr. Read's management.
He introduced and carried through the
Senate the petition for authority to issue five
hundred thousand dollars additional water
bonds for Cambridge; also the petition for
authority to make a loan for public parks,
securing an amendment providing for the
appointment of park commissioners. He also
secured passage of an act for taking land in
Belmont for a high service reservoir for Cam-
bridge, in spite of strong opposition from
Belmont. He also had charge of and was
instrumental in passing the bill for the increase
of the Massachusetts naval militia. This arm
of the service was originally created by a bill
presented by Mr. Read when he was in the
Legislature in 1888.
But his most important work was upon the
annexation of Cambridge to Boston. There
was in the Senate a combination of circum-
stances which made it seem probable at one
time that the decision might be adverse to
Cambridge. The committee on cities recom-
mended that the matter be "referred to the
next General Court." Senator Read was not
satisfied with this semi-approval, and was
unwilling that the subject should lie open to
the next Legislature to be again taken up,
and therefore determined to kill it. His prin-
cipal opponent was confident of success, having
with him the committee on cities, backed by
the advocates of annexation. Against both
these elements he alone made the fight, with
the motion that the whole question be "in-
definitely postponed." After a long and hot
debate Mr. Read carried the Senate in favor
of this motion. A re-consideration was at-
tempted at a later day by the advocates of
annexation, but Senator Read again carried
the day, and the proposition was thus killed
and thrown out of the Legislature for good.
These facts are mentioned as showing Mr.
Read's ability as a legislator and his influence
in the Senate. He has many times been urged
to accept the candidacy for mayor of the city
but declined.
Mr. Read has always been a Republican
in state and national politics. In city poli-
tics he has been a hearty supporter of the
Cambridge non-partisan methods of selecting
officers. He is greatly interested in all public
matters, and the spirit which prompted him
to offer his life to the nation in the days of
peril has never ceased to control him when there
was opportunity to promote the public interest.
BIOGRAPHIES
In the fiftieth anniversay Cambridge cele-
bration, in 1896, Mr. Read was chief marshal,
and was in a large measure responsible for
its notable success. He was also chief marshal
of the naval procession in Boston at the Grand
Army encampment of 1904. At present, he
is commander of the Massachusetts Command-
ery of the " Naval Order" of the United States;
commander of the Association of Union Ex-
Prisoners of War; trustee of the National
Sailors' Home ; member of the National Coun-
cil of the Civil Service Reform League of
United States; president of the Cambridge
Civil Service Association; a state commis-
sioner of the Massachusetts Nautical Training
School. He delivered the memorial address
at Harvard in 1900.
WILLIAM J. ROLFE
RoLFE, William J., was bom in Newbtory-
port, Mass., December 10, 1827, and died July
7, 1910. After graduating at Amherst College
in 1849, he taught in Maryland (Kirkwood
Academy); at Wrentham, Mass., (Day's Acad-
emy) ; and later as head-master of high schools
in Dorchester, Lawrence, Salem and Cambridge.
In 1867 he edited Craik's "English of Shake-
speare," and in 1868 a series of text-books in
Physics, Chemistry and Astronomy, in con-
junction with Mr. J. A. Gillet; also selections
from Ovid, Virgil and Horace, with Mr. J. H.
Hanson. In 1870-1883 he edited the complete
works of Shakespeare. He has also edited
selections from Gray (1875), Goldsmith (1876),
Tennyson (1884-1896), and the complete poems
of Tennyson (10 volumes, 1898); two volumes
of selections from Browning (1887); Scott's
"Lady of the Lake," "Marmion," and "Lay
of the Last Minstrel," with a complete edition
of Scott's Poems (1882-1887); Byron's "Childe
Harold" (1887); "Minor Poems of Milton"
(1887); Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome"
(1888); Selections from Wordsworth (1888);
and a series of "Elementary English Classics"
(six volumes, 1888-1890). Other of his books
are "Shakespeare the Boy" (1896); "The Ele-
mentary Study of English" (1896); "Life of
Shakespeare" (1901), and "A Satchel Guide
to Europe" (1872, revised annually to 1907),
which was published anonymously for twenty-
seven years.
He received the honorary degree of A.M. from
Harvard in 1859, the same from Amherst in
1865, and that of Doctor of Letters (Litt.D.)
from Amherst in 1887.
WILLIAM J. ROLFE
He married (1856) Eliza Jane Carew, who
died in 1900. He had three sons: John Carew
Rolfe, George William Rolfe and Charles Joseph
Rolfe (died in 1911), all graduates of Harvard;
the first being professor of Latin in the University
of Pennsylvania ; the second, an instructor in the
Institute of Technology; and the third, a lawyer.
Dr. Rolfe came to Cambridge in 1862, when he
became head-master of the High School, which
was not divided into English and Latin Schools
until after he left in 1868.
W. G. ROSEBERY
For more than twenty years President Rose-
bery has been an unusually successful teacher,
principal and president in literary and com-
240
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
mercial colleges. For sixteen years he has been
principal and president of successful schools.
For more than twent}' years, before establishing
the Cambridge Commercial College, he was with
the largest commercial school organization in
the world — about thirty schools with an annual
attendance of more than 10,000 — first as teacher,
then principal and finally as superintendent of^a
group of the schools.
W. G. ROSEBERY
The president of that great organization,
Mr. G. W. Brown, also the manager of the Ameri-
can Business Educational Exhibit at World's
Fair, Chicago, 1893, said, "Mr. Rosebery's
work is characterized by that strength, thor-
oughness and skill which denote the clear head
and the master hand."
Mr. Roseberj' holds a handsome diploma
issued to him by the Chicago World's Fair, for
"imusual skiU as teacher of Bookkeeping and
Penmanship," and a solid silver medal from the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904,
for skill as teacher of bookkeeping, penmanship
and rapid calcxilation, both the diploma and
the medal having been won for him by his pupils
in Competitive Examinations.
Mr. Rosebery has made a specialty of pre-
paring young men and young women for con-
fidential positions and has become so skiUfvil
in "fitting the right person into the right place,"
that many successful and prominent business
and professional men rely entirely on his judg-
ment and recommendations and sometimes have
him make a selection several months ahead so
as to be certain to secure someone trained under
his super\'ision. His wide experience as teacher
and business manager has given him a thorough
knowledge of what business men want, and the
pupils trained under his personal direction are
fortunate. The pupils of the Cambridge Com-
mercial College have his personal attention and
the benefit of his successful experience.
JOSEPH HENRY RUSSELL
Russell, Joseph Henry, was bom in Cam-
bridge, February 21, 1855. He received his
education in the pubHc schools of Cambridge
and in special schools in Boston. Mr. Russell
has always been active in mimicipal matters,
and was a member of the Common Coimcil
during the years 1890, 1891, 1892 and 1893,
the' last year being president of that Board.
JOSEPH HEXRY RUSSELL
^uJUdu^ 7y-. V diA/Jj<^Aly,
BIOGRAPHIES
241
He is the General Manager for a firm of Boston
gentlemen whose special business is the manage-
ment of estates in trust. This business calls
for the closest personal attention, experience
and most careful judgment, and Mr. Russell's
long connection with the firm, which extends
over a period of more than thirty-five years,
speaks volimies for his business foresight and
sagacity. He is also a Director of the Cam-
bridge Electric Light Company. Mr. Russell
is a member of the Cambridge and Colonial
Clubs, of Amicable Lodge of Masons, and
Harvard CovmcU Royal Arcanum.
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL
Russell, William Eustis, the youngest
man ever raised to the Commonwealth, and
who was one of the remarkable figures, politi-
cally, in this country, was bom in Cambridge,
January 6, 1857, and died in August, 1896. He
was the son of Charles Theodore and Sarah
Elizabeth (Ballister) Russell, and was educated
in the Cambridge schools and Harvard College,
graduating in the class of '77. He studied
law at the Boston University Law School,
received the first degree of Bachelor of Law?
from that university in 1879, entered the law
office of his father, and was admitted to the
Suffolk Bar in 1880. He was elected to the
common council of his native city in 1881, and
served the two following years in the board
of aldermen. He was chosen mayor in 1884,
and was re-elected the three succeeding years,
twice without opposition.
In 1888, in response to a popular request,
he accepted the nomination of his party as
candidate for governor. Although he was
defeated, he led the ticket. In 1889 he again
led a brilliant but unsuccessful campaign, and
so increased his vote that hopes were enter-
tained of his election if again nominated. He
again received the nomination in 1890, and
was triumphantly elected. He was re-elected
in 1891 and 1892, at both times in the face of
strong opposition. His administration was
conducted on sound business principles, and
as governor he showed the capacity to grasp
the popular demands in the way of legislation,
and at all times upheld the interests and honor
of the state. As an orator, he was one of the
most brilliant in the state.
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL
DUDLEY ALLEN SARGENT
Sargent, Dudley Allen, professor of
physical training and director of Hemenway
Gymnasium, Harvard University, was bom
in Belfast, Waldo County, Me., September 28,
1849. His father, Benjamin Sargent, son of
Samuel and Lucy Sargent, and a descendant
from William Sargent "second," son of William
and Mary (Epes) Sargent, of Exeter, England
and Bridgeton, Barbadoes. William "second"
built a home on Eastern Point, Gloucester.
Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1678. He
married Mary, daughter of Peter Duncan, and
they had fourteen children. Benjamin Sar-
gent married Caroline Jane, daughter of Martin
and Sally (Grinnell) Rogers, of Belfast, Me.,
who was a descendant from John Rogers of
Marshfield, Plymouth Colony, who came to
America about 1641. He was a ship carpenter
and spar maker, and died in 1855.
Dudley Allen Sargent was large for his age
and very active; he was fond of drawing boats
242
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
and ships and constructing toy machines. He
was brought up in the town of Belfast, on a
farm owned by his uncle, and he assisted him in
the work on the farm. He attended school but
part of each year, being obliged to work most
of the time. His helpful books when young,
were: Smile's "Self Help," and Emerson's
" Conduct of Life," while Cutler's " Physiology"
first turned his attention to the importance
of physical exercise and habits of right living.
His school training was received at the Belfast
public schools and the Brunswick high school.
physical culture. He invented gymnastic
games, exercises, apparatus and developing
appliances as used in most of the American
schools, colleges, athletic clubs and Y.M.C.A.
gymnasiums. He strongly advocated physical
training as a regular part of the school and
college curriculum. He had two life-size
statues made in 1893 of the typical American
student, a man and a woman. These were
made from measurements furnished by about
ten thousand students of both sexes from the
leading American colleges and universities.
Dr. S.\RGENT'S SCHOOL
He was director of the g}-mnasium at Bowdoin
College, Brunswick, Me., from September, 1S69
to 1S75, and was graduated at Bowdoin College,
A.B., 1875. He then pursued a course in
medicine at Yale University medical school,
where he was instructor in gymnastics, 1876-
1879, and was graduated M.D., 1878. He also
attended medical lectures in the schools and
hospitals of New York City during the spring
of 1878. He was assistant professor of physi-
cal training at Harvard University, 1879-1889,
and director of Hemenway Gymnasium from
1879, and of the Harvard Summer School for
physical culture from 1887. He started the
Sargent "Winter Normal School for physical
education in 1881. An inborn love for activity
for its own sake, and a feeling of well-doing,
resulting therefrom, prompted him to teach
He also constructed twenty-two anthropo-
metric charts the same year, showing the dis-
tribution of any American community as to
physical power and proportions; also the rela-
tion of the individual, in size, strength, sym-
metry and development, to the normal standard
of the same age. He did not patent his gym-
nastic apparatus and developing appliances,
but gave them freely to the public, thinking
that was the best way to serve the cause of
physical education. He came, however, to
regard this as a mistaken idea, as the profits
derived from a roj-alt}' on the extensive sale
made of patented apparatus would have
enabled him to carr^^ en his work of research
and investigation with more comfort and better
results, and the public woiild not have been
taxed any moreforthemanufactured appliances.
BIOGRAPHIES
243
He received the honorarj' degree of A.M. from
Bowdoin in 1SS7, and Sc.D. in 1894. His
college fraternity was the Alpha Delta Phi, and
the following learned societies have admitted
him to membership : American Association for
the Advancement of Science; American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Physical Edu-
cation, of which he was president for several
years; American Academy of Medicine; Ameri-
can Statistical Association; American PubHc
Health Association; National Educational
Association; Boston Society of Medical Science;
Boston Natural History Society; Boston
Physical Education Society; and his club asso-
ciation is with the Boston Athletic and Cam-
bridge Clubs. He was originally a Republican,
but voted for Cleveland, and from that time has
been independent in politics, both national and
local. His religious affiliation is with the
Universalist denomination. He is the author of
"Handbook of Developing Exercises" (1SS2);
"In Case of Accident" (18S4); "Universal
Test for Strength and Endurance" (1902);
" Health, Strength and Power" (1904) ; " Physi-
cal Education" (1906); and of various papers
read or published by societies and asso-
ciations and articles for current magazines.
His investigations include: "The Physical
Characteristics of Athletics" (1887); "The
Height and Weight of Cuban Teachers Com-
pared with American" (1900); "The Physique
of Scholarship Men, Athletes, and the Average
Students" (1907). He enjoys and finds
recreation for his own body in swimming,
bicycling, dancing and walking and in change
of employment.
He was married April 7, 1881, to Ella Eraser,
daughter of William and Frances (Worthington)
Ledyard, of Brooklyn, N.Y., and one child,
Ledyard, was bom of the marriage.
MOSES
Sawin, Moses
was born in
Southborough,
Mass., May 5,
1835. He was
a farmer and
miller, having a
grist mill in his
native town.
He worked in
his father's grist
mill until 1860,
attending the
common schools
of his native
town in his boy-
hood. He left
home and re-
moved to Cam-
bridge, Mass.,
August 14, 1860,
buying out what
was then known
as Buck's Ex-
press. He con-
ducted this
business several
years under its
old name, then
MORSE SAWIN
Morse, son of Moses Sawin,
changed it to Sawin's Express, which became
one of the best known and most flourishing
of the suburban
express lines
about Boston.
His business was
in transporting
baggage and
merchandise be-
tween Boston
and Cambridge.
He continued in
business until
1905, when he
sold out to the
Boston & Sub-
urban Express
Company, and
retired from ac-
tive business.
He has resided
since 1866, in
Cambridge, at
No. 73 Brattle
Street, his pres-
ent home. He
is a well-known
and highly es-
teemed citizen.
Moses M.
MOSES MORSE SAWIN
244
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Sawin married, January 18, 1859, in Aug-
usta, N.Y., Susan Olive Kendall, daughter
of Leonard Jarvis and Olive Kendall.
Leonard Jarvis Kendall was a son of David
and Susan Kendall, of Cambridge, descendant
of Francis Kendall, the immigrant settler and
founder of Wobum, Mass. Children: Jennie
Olive, bom March 1, 1861, married Henry
Carleton Piper, a son of Henry A. Piper, of
Cambridge. Henr\- Carleton Piper resides in
Australia, representative of the banking firm
of Henry W. Peabody & Company, of New
York City. Children; Margaret Piper, bom
May 25, 1892; Warren Piper, bom February S,
1898. Charles Austin, bom March 5, 18(53,
assistant cashier of the First National Bank of
Boston; married Carrie Howland Allen, a
direct descendant of John Howland, who came
in the Mayflower; resides in Newton, Mass.;
no children. Susan Kendall, bom May 17,
1867, resides at home with her parents. Her-
bert Edward, bom February 23, 1869, pro-
prietor of H. E. Sawin's Express, Cambridge;
married Edith Adams, of Cambridge; child,
Edward Adams, bom January 21, 1903. Alice
L., bom January 17, 1872, resides with her
parents. George Alfred, bom October 12,
1878, is with the General Electric Company,
Lynn, Mass. ; married Grace A. Schofield, whose
father bought out the firm of Henry *Plympton
& Company, furniture dealers, Boston; child,
George A., bom March 21, 1907.
and vice-president of the Boston Elevated Rail-
way, and has served as president of the American
Street Railway Association.
Mr. Sergeant is a practical man who has come
along to success, first, because he knows and
enjoys the details of street railroading, and,
second, because of his capacity for work. He
has seen the Boston Elevated grow into one of
the great systems of the country, and he has
CHARLES SPENCER SERGEANT
Sergeant, Charles Spencer, \'ice-president
of the Boston Elevated Street Railway, was
bom in Northampton, Mass., April 30, 1852,
the son of George and Lydia A. (Clark) Ser-
geant. He was graduated from the North-
ampton High School and entered a bank at
Easthampton, where he remained for four years,
when he went to Michigan and spent the years
from 1872 to 1876 in railroad work. He then
accepted a position mth the Eastern Railroad
as chief clerk and auditor, settling in Boston,
where in 1880 he was married to Elizabeth
Shepley. Since 1888 he has been successively
auditor, general manager, second vice-president
CHARLES SPEN'CER SERGEANT
had no small share in its success. With his
associates he has believed in a policy of co-
operation wnth the public in giving ser\4ce
creditable alike to Boston and to the men behind
the corporation.
He resides in Brookline and is a member of
the Algonqviin, St. Botolph, Exchange and
Country Clubs.
He has traveled much abroad, at one time
spending six months in London, having been
called there as an expert to consult in the con-
struction of the underground railway, one of the
notable English enterprises.
BIOGRAPHIES
245
CHARLES WILLIAM SEVER
Sever, Charles William, was bom in
Plymouth, Mass., July 1, 1834. As a boy he
came to Cambridge, in 1849, and entered the
employ of John Bartlett, proprietor of the Uni-
versity Book Store, then located at the comer
of Holyoke Street and Harvard Street (now
Massachusetts Avenue). Some years later,
Mr. Bartlett went into the firm of Little, Brown
& Co., disposing of the book store to a firm
which formed for the purpose, and which was
composed of Mr. Sever, Mr. Allyn and Mr.
Francis.
About that time, the concern moved to the
comer of Boylston Street, and located where
the grocery store of J. H. Wyeth & Co. now
stands. A few years later, Mr. Francis died,
and Mr. Allyn withdrew to take up a branch of
the business which had been developed in Bos-
ton. This left the business entirely to Mr.
Sever. In 1872, he again removed, this time
to the store stiU occupied by the firm. From
then tin about 1894, Mr. Sever conducted the
business alone, finally forming a partnership
with George H. Kent.
Mr. Sever also conducted an extensive in-
surance business, and had charge of much valu-
able real estate in the Harvard Square district,
notably that owned by the Little estate.
Mr. Sever's connection with the Cambridge
Savings Bank extended over a period of thirty
years. In 1874, he was elected a trustee, and
four years later, on March 18, 1878, he was
elected president, holding the office tiU his death.
He had been a member of several organiza-
tions at various times in his life, but at the time
of his death belonged only to the Order of Cin-
cinnati. Mr. Sever died July 19, 1904. He is
survived by a widow and five children.
WILLIAM BALDWIN SMITH
Smith, William Baldwin, for many years
a resident of Cambridge, and prominent in
Boston business circles, came of an old Maine
family. He was bom in the city of Bath in
1844. He spent the early part of his life in his
native State, and received his education there.
While stiU a young man he went to Boston for
the purpose of obtaining emploj^nent. It was
about forty-seven years ago that he started to
work for the concem of which he afterwards
became a member.
The firm of Braman, Dow and Company, with
which he seciu-ed a position, was then and stUl
continues to be one of the most important com-
panies engaged in this part of the country in the
manufacture of steam pipes and steam fitting
supplies. Mr. Smith was an energetic and
ambitious young man, having an unusual
amoimt of business acumen for one of his age.
WILLIAM BALDWIN SMITH
He set out to master every detail, and it was not
long before his value to the company was recog-
nized. Promotion followed promotion^ rapidly,
untn finally he was asked to become a partner.
Mr. Smith accepted the offer.
As a member of the firm, Mr. Smith did not
relax his activity. His mind was fertile in ideas,
and he was continually watching for oppor-
tunities to improve the methods in use by the
company. Furthermore, he was always ready
to Usten to the suggestions of others and to
adopt them if they had merit. The business
of Braman, Dow and Company increased re-
markably under his direction.
In addition to his connection with Braman,
Dow and Company, Mr. Smith had for some
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
time prior to his death been vice-president of
the Pioritan Trust Company, of Boston. His
clear understanding of financial and business
questions was highly esteemed by the directors
and other ofificers of that institution. His long
experience in dealing with men and things had
furnished him with a large fund of information;
hence his decisions were prompt. Men engaged
in important enterprises often came to him for
ad\'ice, and the success of many undertakings
might be traced to his counsel.
Mr. Smith never sought or accepted public
office from his fellow-citizens. He was affiliated
with the Masonic fraternity, and was a member
of Coeur de Lion Commandery and of Aleppo
Temple, Mystic Shrine. His benefactions,
though unostentatious, were mmierous.
Mr. Smith died February 3, 1912, at his home,
^4 Linnaean Street. He was sixty-seven years
of age.
By sound judgment and signal business suc-
cess, William Baldwin Smith achieved the
highest standing in the Boston manufacturing
and financial world. By a long and consistently
upright life he showed himself to be one of the
State's best men. Such men — modest, faithful
to all trusts, and advanced and liberal in thought
— make the prosperity of their localities and
insure the stability of the Commonwealth.
and is at present a trustee of the Public Librar}^
of this city. His political affiliations arc with
the Democratic Partv.
JOHN E. SOMERS
SoMERS, John E., physician, was born in
Nova Scotia. He obtained his early education
in the schools of his native place, and then
matriculated at the Saint Francis Xa^^er Uni-
versity. After leaving the University with the
degree of LL.D., he began the study of medicine
at the Harvard Medical School, and continued
it at the Bellevue Hospital Medical College.
He graduated and received the degree of M.D.
from the latter institution. A year and a half
in Vienna he devoted to further studies.
Dr. Somers commenced his professional career
in Cambridge, and has ever since continued to
practise here. He is now at the head of the
visiting medical staff of the Holy Ghost hospital,
and was formerly president of the Cambridge
Medical Society. He is also a member of the
Massachusetts Medical Society, the American
Medical Association and numerous clubs. He
has served on the Cambridge School Committee,
JOHX E. SOMERS
Dr. Somers is a member of the Roman Catho-
lic Church. His home and office are in North
Cambridge.
ALVIN FOYE SORTWELL
SoRTWELL, Alvin Foye, banker and rail-
road president, was bom in Boston, July 21,
1854, son of Daniel R. and Sophia Augusta
(Foye) Sortwell. He was educated in the
Chavmcy Hall School, and at PhiUips (Andover)
Academy, where he was fitted for college. In-
stead of entering college, however, he engaged
actively in business, and at the age of eighteen
was a partner in the firm of Sortwell & Co.,
and had fuU charge of the business in East
Cambridge established by his father. After
a successful and prosperous career he retired
from active business in March, 1891. He had,
however, retained his interests in banking and
railroad business, and in other corporations,
and at the time was president of the Cambridge
National Bank, of which he had been a director
£''
BIOGRAPHIES
for twelve years; and a member of the invest-
ment committee of the East Cambridge Savings
Bank; president of the Cambridge Trust Com-
pany; president of the Montpelier & Wells
River Railroad, of Vermont; vice-president of
the Barre Railroad; president of the Colonial
Mining Corporation of New Mexico; director
in the B. and R. Rubber Company, and National
Binding Company; and treasurer of the Co-
lumbia Water Power Company, of Columbia.
He was prominent in Cambridge affairs for
many years and served for a long period in
the city government; first elected to the com-
mon council in 1878, he served during the year
1879; then, moving into another ward, he was
again chosen in 1885, and returned in 1886,
1887 and 1888. The last year he served as
president of the body. He was next elected
an alderman for 1889, and re-elected for 1890,
the latter year being chosen unanimously presi-
dent of the board. During five years of this
long ser\'ice he was a member of the committee
on finance, and chairman both on the part of
the council and of the aldermen; five years also
on the committee on roads and bridges, and
its chairman on the part of both branches; a
member of the committee on the Harvard
Bridge; chairman of the committee on ordi-
nances dioring their revision in 1889; and a
member of the committee on purchase of a
site for the new city hall. He was a member of
the Cambridge water board for a number of
years, and was chairman of the board at the
time of his death. He was a member of the
committee on the revision of the city charter;
and served as a trustee of the Cambridge public
hbrary for six years, treasurer of the board,
resigning the latter position on the first of
January, 1895. In 1897 and 1898 he was
mayor of the city of Cambridge. Mr. Sort-
weU was a very bright and able man. His
administration of the city's affairs was a task
well accomplished, one of the best since Cam-
bridge became a city. He was a member of
lodge, chapter and commandery of Free Masons;
and a member of the Algonquin and Athletic
Clubs of Boston; of the Eastern Yacht Club;
the Oakley Club; of the Coimtry Club of
'Brookline, and of the Union, Colonial, and
Cambridge Clubs of Cambridge, of the latter a
charter member. He was married December
31, 1879, to Miss Gertrude Winship Dailey,
daughter of William and Mary Elizabeth
(Winship) Dailey, of Cambridge. They have
sLx children: Clara, Frances Augusta, Daniel
R., Marion, Edward Carter and Alvin F. Sort-
well. Mr. SortweU died March 21, 1910. He
is stirvived by his wife and the above-named
children. Mr. Sortwell will be greatly missed
in the community to which he has been boimd
by peculiar bonds of tenderness. He leaves
to his family that choicest of all legacies — an
honored name and a reputation for uprightness,
integrity, gentleness and courtesy. Daniel R.
Sortwell, the eldest son has succeeded his father
in the various positions which he occupied.
DANIEL ROBINSON SORTWELL
Sortwell, Daniel Robinson, of Cambridge,
manufacturer and railroad president, was bom
in Barton, Vt., July 10, 1820; died in Mont-
pelier, Vt., October 4, 1894= His father was
John Sortwell, of Barton, who was for many-
years selectman of the town. His maternal
grandfather, Jonathan Robinson, was a soldier
of the Revolution. His mother was Percy
(Robinson) Sortwell. His boyhood was spent
on the farm and in the local public schools ; and
at the age of seventeen he started out to seek his
fortune. Gathering his wordly goods in a
bundle, he worked his way to Boston by assist-
ing a cattle drover, doing the entire distance on
foot, and there began his business career in a
small position in the produce trade. From this
humble beginning, through unflagging industry,
perseverance and economy, he so advanced that
within a few years he was enabled to enter busi-
ness on his own account; and at the time of his
death he was reported to be worth upward of
two millions. His first venture was a produce
store in Faneuil Hall market, in which he con-
ducted a flourishing trade. In 1848 he formed
the firm of SortweU & Co., commission merchants,
with the late Thomas L. Smith as partner, which
firm continued until 1856. Then he sold out
this business, and established the "Sortwell
Distillery" in East Cambridge, in which he
prospered from the start. Later he became a
stockholder in the Connecticut & Passumpsic
River Railroad; and subsequently, through this
connection, a bond-holder in the Montpelier &
Wells River Railroad at its inception. In
January, 1877, he was elected president of the
latter road, which position he held at the time
248
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
of his death. He was. also the promoter of the
Barre Railroad, Vt., the line known as the "Sky
Route " to the well-known Barre granite quarries,
which was begun in July, 1888, and a length of
five miles completed in 1889. In the construc-
tion of this road Mr. Sortwell took much interest ;
and he was chiefly instrumental in building the
branch from Montpelier to Barre, giving the
Railroad, Mr. Sortwell, at the time of his death,
held the positions of president of the Cambridge
National Bank, trustee of the East Cambridge
Five Cents Savings Bank, and treasurer of the
Columbia (S.C.) Water Power Company. In
Cambridge he served for five years as a member
of the Board of Aldermen. He was connected
with the Masonic order.
^-s^
SORTWELL
Barre road direct connection with the Mont-
peUer & Wells River Railroad. He was a large
stockholder in both of the Barre railroads, and
also owned nearly ninety-eight per cent, of the
stock of the Montpelier & Wells River Railroad,
besides being a large real estate o\\Tier in Barre.
He did much in upbuilding that towTi and for the
advancement of MontpeUer. In addition to the
presidency of the Montpelier & Wells River
Mr. Sortwell was married May 19, 1850, to
Miss Sophia Augusta Foye, of Wiscasset, Me.,
daughter of Moses and Sophia A. Foye. They
had one daughter and one son : Frances Augusta
(bom June 8, 1851; died August 19, 1857) and
Al\-in Foye Sortwell (born July 21, 1854; died
March 21, 1910). Sophia A., wife of Daniel R.
Sortwell, died on September 26, 1890, at Cam-
bridge.
BIOGRAPHIES
CHARLES WINTHROP SPENCER
Spencer, Charles Winthrop, lawyer, was
bom at Cambridge, May 13, 1868, his parents
being Charles H. and Clara M. (Palmer)
Spencer. He graduated from the Cambridge
Latin School in 1886; from Harvard College,
with the degree of A.B., in 1890; and from
Harvard Law School, with the degree of LL.B.,
in 1892. From 1894 to 1901 he was assistant
clerk of the Superior Court, Suffolk County.
CHARLES WINTHROP SPENCER
His law offices are in Barrister's Hall, Boston,
but much of his time is spent with the T. E.
Moseley Company, 160 Tremont Street, of
which he is president and treasurer.
He was married to Ethel M. Wheeler, April
28, 1896. They have four children: Winthrop
W., Henry W., Ethel Beatrice and Robert
Palmer.
JOHN P. SQUIRE
Squire, John P., who died January 7, 1893,
was a son of Peter and Esther Squire, and was
bom in the town of Weathersfield, Windsor
County, Vt., on the 8th day of May, 1819. His
father was a farmer. The years of his boyhood
were spent at his home, attending the public
sphools and working on the farm.
On the first day of May, 1835, he entered the
employment of a Mr. Orvis, the village store-
keeper, at West Windsor, Vt., and remained
with him until the winter of 1837, when he
attended the academy at Unity, N.H., of which
the Rev. A. A. Miner was then principal. He
taught school at Cavendish during a part of
the winter of 1837-1838. On the 19th of March,
1838, he came to Boston; entered the employ
of Nathan Robbins, in Faneuil Hall Market,
and continued with him until April 30, 1842,
when he formed a co-partnership with Francis
RusseU, and carried on the provision business
at No. 25 Faneuil Hall Market, under the style
of Russell & Squire, until the year 1847, when
the co-partnership was dissolved.
Mr. Squire continued the business alone at
the same place until the year 1855, when he
formed a new co-partnership with Hiland Lock-
wood and Edward Kimball, under the name of
John P. Squire & Company Corporation. The
changes in the partners have been as foUows:
the retirement of Edward Kimball in the year
1866; , the admission of W. W. Kimball in the
same year, and his retirement in 1873; the ad-
mission of Mr. Squire's sons, George W. and
Frank 0. Sqiaire, in the year 1873; the death
of Hiland Lockwood in the year 1874; the
retirement of George W. Squire in the year 1876;
the admission of Fred F. Squire, Mr. Squire's
youngest son, January 1, 1884, and the death
of the founder of the house in 1893.
In 1855 Mr. Squire bought a small tract of
land in East Cambridge and built a slaughter
house. Since that time the business has grown
to such an extent that the corporation of John
P. Squire & Co. has today one of the largest
and best equipped packing houses in the country,
and stands third in the list of hog packers in
the United States.
On October 5, 1891, a fire partially destroyed
the large refrigerator of this corporation. This
necessitated rebuilding. A system of artificial
refrigeration has been adopted in place of the
old method of refrigerating with ice, whereby
the capacity of their packing house has been
increased about double its capacity before the
fire. The melting capacity of the ice machines
used is one hundred and fifty tons of ice per
day. A new chimney two hundred and twenty-
five feet high, with a flue nine feet across at the
base, and with walls four feet thick, has been
built to run the refrigerating machines. With
250
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
these alterations and improvements, their plant,
as far as equipments and conveniences are con-
cerned, is second to none in the country.
In the year 1843 Mr. Squire married Kate
Green Or\'is, daughter of his old employer.
Eleven children were born of the marriage,
eight of whom are now living, as follows: George
W., Jennie C, Minnie E., John A., Kate I.,
Nannie K., Fred F., and Bessie E. Squire. One
son, Charles, died in infancy, and a daughter,
Nellie G., died October 13, 1890.
In 1848 he moved to West Cambridge, now
called Arlington, where he lived up to the time
of his death.
Mr. Squire joined the Mercantile Library
Association when he first came to Boston, and
spent a great deal of his leisure time in reading,
of which he was very fond. The high position
which he held in commercial circles was due to
his untiring industry, undaunted courage and
marked ability.
HENRY C. STETSON
Stetson, Henry C, president of the Com-
mon Council of Cambridge, in 1907, and who
died April 16 of that year, was born in Bangor,
Me., in 1869 and spent his early life in the Pine
Tree State. He attended PhiUips Academy,
in Andover, and then entered Yale College,
graduating in 1893. He came to Cambridge
and entered the Harvard Law School, from which
he took his degree in 1896. Three years later
he received the degree of A.M. at Yale. He
was admitted to the Maine bar and subse-
quently to the Suffolk bar.
He took up his residence in Cambridge in 1894,
and lived here practically all of the time up to
his death. He took an active interest in Cam-
bridge public affairs. From the start he was
with the Non-Partisan movement. He was
chosen a member of the original committee of
one hundred which formed the Non-Partisan
Municipal Party. He was president of the
Ward Nine Non-Partisan Club and performed
a great deal of service in connection with regis-
tration. He was a member of the Oakley Club,
the University Club and the Economy Club; a
director of the Y.M.C.A., and a member of the
executive committee of St. John's Chapel.
In 1904, Mr. Stetson received the nomination
of the Non-Partisan party to the Common
Council from Ward Nine, being unopposed in
the primaries. He was again elected in 1906
and once more in 1907, being the only member
of the council of this year having two years'
experience. This fact and the fact that he had
endeared himself to his fellow members won for
him the presidency of that body, the election
being unanimous.
In 1907, Mr. Stetson was chosen treasurer of
the Non-Partisan City Committee. He was
an incorporator of the Cambridge Savings Bank.
He is survived by a wife.
EDMUND HORACE STEVENS
Stevens, Edmund Horace, surgeon, was
bom at Stansted, Canada, January' 2, 1846,
being the son of Horace and Louisa J. Stevens.
He decided to follow the profession of his father,
who was a physician. In 1864, when the Civil
War was raging, he proffered his services to
the country-, which stood in need of men that
had knowledge of surgery. As medical cadet
in the United States Navy he was under fire
with Farragut at Mobile Bay. Later in the
year he was made medical officer in charge of
the United States Steamship Philippa. Hon-
orably discharged from the Navy, he obtained
the appointment of acting stu-geon in the Army,
and was afterwards promoted to be assistant
surgeon. This was in 1865, and he was attached
to the Army of the Potomac. The experience
gained in both branches was invaluable.
After the war his studies were completed at
the Harvard Medical School, from which he
received the degree of M.D., in 1867. In 1871
he came to Cambridge, and has practised here
ever since. The city owes much to him on
account of his conscientious work at the Cam-
bridge Hospital, where he is surgeon.
Among the organizations of which he is a
member are the American Medical Association,
the Boston Society for Medical Improvement,
the Boston Obstetrical Society and the Cam-
bridge Society for Medical Improvement.
He was married in Boston, in 1867, to Melissa
E. Paine. His home is at 79 Raymond Street
in this city.
^^;;;p^'^^ c/Jc^^^te-
BIOGRAPHIES
251
ENSIGN— STRATTON
Stratton, Samuel, the immigrant ancestor
of the Strattons of Cambridge, Mass., was bom
in England, in 1592, and married his first wife
there; she probably died soon after her hus-
band, herself and their two sons arrived in
America. Samuel Stratton appeared as a
surveyor of town lots in Watertown, Massa-
chusetts Bay Colony, in 1647, and took the
freeman's oath. May 18, 1653. He married,
as his second wife, August 28, 1657, Margaret,
widow of William Parker, of Boston. He
resided in that part of the town of Watertown
subsequently set off to the town of Cambridge,
in the neighborhood of the present Lowell
Park, and contiguous to land that became the
estate of James Russell Lowell. Samuel and
Margaret Parker Stratton had three sons:
Samuel, John and Richard. Richard, son of
Richard last named, settled in Easthampton,
Long Island, N.Y., where both his uncle John
and his father Richard lived for several j^ears.
Samuel Stratton the immigrant, died Decem-
ber 18, 1676, aged eighty-one years.
John (2), son of Samuel and Margaret
(Parker) Stratton, was bom in England, 1633,
and settled with his father in Watertown, Mass.,
in 1647. He became a freeman of the town
of Watertown, May 27, 1663, and married,
March 10, 1659, Elizabeth Traine, and their
children were: Elizabeth, bom in Watertown,
died in infancy, 1659; John, bom August 24,
1661; Elizabeth, bom July 2, 1664; Joseph,
bom January 13, 1666; Samuel, bom Sep-
tember 18, 1669; Rebecca, bom May 16, 1672;
Ebenezer, bom November 2, 1677, died in
infancy; Ebenezer, bom October 2, 1678;
Jonathan, bom March 6, 1679. John Stratton,
the father, died in Watertown, April 7, 1691;
and his widow died May 7, 1708.
Joseph (3), second son of John and Eliza-
beth (Traine) Stratton, was bom in Watertown,
January 13, 1666, and married Sarah How,
November 14, 1695.
Jonathan (4), son of Joseph and Sarah (How)
Stratton, was bom in Weston, Mass., 1714, and
was married November 1, 1738, to Dinah Bemis,
of Waltham. He served as a private in Colonel
Lamson's company, and marched to Lexing-
ton on receiving the alarm, April 19, 1775, and
served for three days, when he was discharged.
Jonathan (5), son of Jonathan and Dinah
(Bemis) Stratton, was bom in Weston, March
8, 1746, and was married September 20, 1768,
to Sarah Childs. He served as a private,
according to the muster and pay rolls of Cap-
tain Jonathan Fiske, of Weston, in Colonel
Brook's company, called out March 4, 1776,
for five days' service, and was stationed at
Dorchester Heights, and also performed vari-
ous other military service.
Shubael C. (6), son of Sarah (Childs) Strat-
ton, was born in Weston, Mass., December 6,
176S. He married Betsey Cook.
Ira (7), son of Shubael C. and Betsey (Cook)
Stratton, was bom in New Salem, Mass.,
January 6, 1804. He attended the common
schools in his native town, leaving it when
fourteen j-ears old to go west. At the age
of sixteen he returned home and worked in a
brush factory in Boston until he had learned
the trade. Flavel Coolidge (1775-1848) op-
erated a brush factory in Cambridgeport,
Mass., and he made Ira Stratton his foreman
as soon as he had completed his apprentice-
ship in the Boston establishment. Mr. Strat-
ton continued in that position up to the time
of the death of his father-in-law, in 1848, when
he became sole owner of the factory. He
subsequently opened a brush shop on Exchange
Street, Boston, in co-partnership with Sheriff
and Eastham, and the enterprise was very
successful, enabling him to acquire a compe-
tence. His next business venture was in the
manufacture of glass, in partnership with
Amory Houghton, the factory being located
in Somerville. The business proved to be
uncongenial to Mr. Stratton, and he sold out
to his partner, and gave the remainder of his
life to the care of his estate.
He was married, November 6, 1835, to
Martha Ann, daughter of Flavel and Anna
(Wilds) Coolidge, and in this way became
owner of the brush factory of Mr. Coolidge.
Flavel Coolidge, father of Mrs. Ira Stratton,
was the son of EHsha S. CooUdge, of Ashbum-
ham, Worcester County, Mass., and the young-
est of eleven children. He was bom in 1775,
and in 1786 his father, with his entire family,
joined the Shaker community at Shirley,
Mass. This remarkable society, inaugurated
in America by Ann Lee, who with eight of her
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
followers embarked at Liverpool, England,
May 19, 1774, and arrived in New York,
August 6, following, purchased land in the
woods of Watervliet, N.Y., in 1776, and while
the colonists were engaged in the war of the
there was a religious awakening at New Leba-
non, Columbian County, N.Y., thirty miles
distant, and many of the subjects of the revival
there, visited "Mother Ann," at Watervliet,
and became converts to the new faith. Ann
J', ^ , J0/l^Zcy{yti;^yr.
Revolution, these frugal and industrious people
were building up a society that took within
its fold the spirits of religious unrest wherever
a religious awakening arose. After the society
at Watervliet had been successfully planted,
Lee and her elders and friends became mission-
aries, and after establishing what proved to be
their most successful settlement at New Leba-
non, they held forth in Hancock, Tyringham,
Howard and Shirley, in Massachusetts, and
«,/'^^^2>z-^^^«. c7/ T^^^^cz^^^^-Z'*—
BIOGRAPHIES
253
Enfield, in Connecticut, and societies were
planted which gathered many followers and
each became models of industrial communism
that attracted the attention of idealists not
alone in America, but abroad also. After
little more than two years of missionary work
"Mother Ann" returned to Watervliet, where
she received inquirers, and after a ministry
of fourteen years, she died, September 8, 1784.
It was three years after her death before regu-
larly organized communities were established.
The society at New Lebanon, N.Y., was organ-
ized in September, 1787, and furnished the
model for the others. It grew to six hundred
members, and the community owned six
thousand acres of land. Watervliet grew to
three hundred members; Groveland, Living-
stone County, N.Y., to one hundred and fifty;
Hancock, Berkshire County, Mass., to two
hundred; Tyringham, Berkshire County, Mass.,
to one hundred; Harvard, Worcester County,
to two hundred; Shirley, Mass., to one hun-
dred; Enfield, Hartford County, Conn., to
two hundred; Canterbury, Merrimac County,
N.H., to three hundred; Enfield, Grafton
County, N.H., to three hundred; Alfred, York
County, Me., to one hundred and fifty; and
New Gloucester, York County, Me., to one
hundred and fifty members. These societies
were formed between 1787 and 1792, and it
was not until 1805, that Ohio and Kentucky
were invaded by the disciples of Ann Lee ; like
the Salem Witches and the Roman CathoHcs,
the Shakers did not escape persecution from the
Puritans of New England, and the society
at Shirley, when "Mother Ann" was preaching
there, was subjected to mob violence, not only
from the outside world, but from dissenting
members of the society, notably on March 3,
1802.
Flavel Coolidge left the community after
he had learned the trade of brush-making, and
attained his majority, in 1796. He journeyed
to Cambridgeport, where he engaged as a
carpenter with Josiah and Thomas Mason, and
while thus engaged built a house of five rooms
for himself, preparatory to his contemplated
marriage, and in January, 1806, he married
Anna, daughter of EHjah, Jr., and Eunice
(Safford) Wilds, and granddaughter of Elijah
(1718-1791) and Anna (Hovey) Wilds, all
converts to the Shaker faith under the preach-
ing of Ann Lee, and by so doing severed all
family ties, and they with their children were
merged in the Shaker community, and Elijah
Wilds, Jr., was appointed an elder at the organ-
ization of the society in Shirley, and continued
in office up to the time of his death, March 14,
1829, at the age of eighty-three years. Anna
Wilds was bom February 15, 1779, and with
her parents and grandparents became members
of the Shaker community at Shirley. Here,
she met Flavel Coolidge, son of Elisha Coolidge,
who was bom January 19, 1775, died February
1, 1848. He was one of the founders of the
First Universalist church of Cambridge, and
a deacon for many years. Elisha Coolidge
was bom July 20, 1720; died August 18, 1807.
Flavel Coolidge was also a convert to the faith.
When he left the community in 1796, Anna
Wilds also deserted it, and went to live with
relatives in Lancaster, Mass., and it was there
that her lover found her and they were married.
Flavel and Anna (Wilds) Coolidge had three
children bom at their home at Cambridgeport,
where the mother died, June 28, 1874, aged
ninety-five years and four months. The
children were: Merrick, bom October 6, 1806;
married Sarah Ann Tucker, November, 1831;
died, 1850; he had two children, Helen and
Anna. Martha Ann, bom January 19, 1814;
died, January 2, 1890. She married Ira Strat-
ton, and their children were: Flavel Coolidge,
bom in Cambridge, Mass., October 4, 1836;
died February 15, 1840. Flavel Coohdge (2),
bom in Cambridge, Mass., February 14, 1840.
He prepared for college at the New Salem
Academy, entered Harvard University 1858,
and was graduated from there with the degree
of Bachelor of Arts in 1861, the year in which
he attained his majority. He studied law
and then went abroad, visiting England, where
he engaged in the banking business with B eld-
ing, Keith & Co. After retuming to Cambridge
he removed to Erie, Pa., where he engaged in
the dry goods business. Upon the death of
his father, August, 1873, he retired from busi-
ness and resided with his mother in Cambridge,
where he died suddenly of heart failure, July
23, 1906. He was a member of the Masonic
Fraternity. He was unmarried. A friend
speaking of Flavel C. Stratton, said, "he was
254
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
learned yet unpretentious, thoughtful yet not
effusive in speech. Tender as a woman in
his sympathies, yet lion-hearted for the right."
Anna Maria, bom in Cambridge, February 4,
1848, died September 23, 1850. Martha
Louise, bom in Cambridge, February 4, 1851,
received her education in the public schools,
completing the high school course. She mar-
ried, November 20, 1889, Dwight W. Ensign
(sketch follows). Flavel, Jr., (3) bom August
8, 1816, died in Cambridgeport, Febmary 28,
1891. He married Betsey Perkins, and (second)
Almira Pierce.
Dwight W. Ensign, above mentioned, was
bom in Sheridan, Chautauqua County, N.Y.,
August 2, 1839. He is the son of Seymour P.
and Diantha (Holmes) Ensign, grandson of
Otis Ensign, Jr., who enHsted in the Conti-
nental army when sixteen years old, and served
five j-ears, being one of the guard at the hanging
of Major Andre, and was with General Wash-
ington at Valley Forge, when he received a
scolding and apolog}^ from Washington when
circumstances were explained; great-grandson
of Otis Ensign, Sr., who was killed in the mas-
sacre of Wyoming, and a decendant of James
Ensign, who settled in Brattle Street, Cam-
bridge, Mass., about 1632. He is a member of
the Sons of the American Revolution, Union
Club of Boston, Cambridge, and the Boston
Art Club. His wife, Martha Louise (Stratton)
Ensign, has traveled extensively in Europe.
She is a member of the Vermont Society of
Colonial Dames; Old South Chapter, Daugh-
ters of the American Revolution, Daughters of
the Revolution; The Daughters of Massachu-
setts; New England's Women's Club; Canta-
brigia Club of Cambridge; Peabody Home for
Aged People, and other societies and organiza-
tions. Mrs. Ensign takes a deep interest in
charitable and religious work. She is a member
of the Second Church (Unitarian), of Copley
Square, Boston.
WILLIAM P. SUTTON
Sutton, William P., prominent Cambridge
business man and proprietor of the Mansion
House Ice Cream Company, was bom on June
16, 1865. He received a good education in the
public schools of Cambridge. His first inde-
pendent business venture was a grocerj^ and
provision store. Mr. Sutton continued to
conduct it for sixteen years, and in addition,
about twenty-eight years ago, began in a small
way to manufacture and retail ice cream. The
excellence of his product becoming generally
known soon resulted in such a demand that,
in 1902, he was finally compelled to give all
his time to an enterprise which had originally
been subordinate.
WILLL\M P. SUTTOX
The Mansion House Ice Cream Company,
which this year ceased to be a retail concern, is
one of the most important wholesale ice cream
companies in this part of the countrj'. The
plant covers an area of 4,800 feet; the operating
power is electricity, and the modem brine system
of freezing is used. The maximum daily output
is 1,500 gallons; thirty-one people are employed,
and the delivery sendee consists of twelve wagons
and two motor tmcks.
Mr. Sutton is an ardent advocate of pure
food; furthermore, he has demonstrated that
his theories are practicable. Not content mth
merely living up to the regulations of the Board
of Health, he has adopted a higher standard of
his own. From the moment that the raw
BIOGRAPHIES
material leaves the dairy until the ice cream is
delivered at the consumer's door, no precaution
is neglected. The ice cream is made, not in a
basement — as is often the case — but on the
ground floor, where there is plenty of fresh air
and sunshine. In an article on pure food,
published in a recent issue of the Boston Ameri-
can, the Mansion House Ice Cream Company
was mentioned as being among the firms which
produce and distribute their goods under the
most sanitary conditions.
On January 8, 1890, Mr. Sutton was married
to Matilda J. Schlitter. They have two daugh-
ters — Esther V. and Alice M., the former at
present a student at Radcliffe College.
Mr. Sutton is a Mason, being a member of
Putnam Blue Lodge, Cambridge Royal Arch
Chapter, Cambridge Commandery, Naphthali
Council and Aleppo Temple of the Mystic
Shrine. He is also a member of New England
Lodge, I.O.O.F., Cambridge Lodge, B.P.O.E.,
Lechmere Council, R.A., and the Cambridge
Board of Trade. He is one of the Trustees of
the East Cambridge Five Cent Savings Bank.
Mr. Sutton's home is in Cambridge.
WILLIAM DONNISON SWAN, M.D.
Swan, William Donnison, M.D., of Cam-
bridge, was bom in Kennebunk, Me., January
1, 1859, son of Rev. Joshua A. Swan, Unitarian
minister at Kennebunk for eighteen years, and
Sarah, his wife, daughter of the Rev. Richard
M. Hodges, Unitarian minister at Bridgewater,
Mass. His mother's maternal grandfather,
William Donnison, was an officer in the Revo-
lution, and afterwards adjutant-general to
Governor Hancock and judge of the Coiut of
Common Pleas. He was fitted for college at
the Cambridge High School; entered Harvard,
and graduated in the class of 188L His pro-
fessional training followed at the Harvard Medi-
cal School, from which he graduated M.D. in
1885. After two years of study in the hospitals
of Boston and one year in Vienna and Frankfort-
on-the-Main, he began practice in Cambridge
in 1888. Three years later he was appointed
medical examiner for the First District of
Middlesex County (Cambridge, Belmont and
Arlington) by Governor Brackett. He is now
also visiting physician to the Cambridge Hos-
pital and to the Avon Home of Cambridge.
He is a member of the Massachusetts Medical
Society, and of the Massachusetts Medico-
Legal Society. His club connections are with
the Union Club of Boston, and the Oakley Club.
WILLIAM DONNISON SWAN. M.D.
Dr. Swan was married April 30, 1890, to Miss
Mary Winthrop Hubbard, daughter of Samuel
Hubbard, of Oakland, Cal. They have two
children: Marian Hubbard (born February 22,
1891) and WilHam Donnison Swan, Jr. (born
October 9, 1894).
BENJAMIN TILTON
TiLTON, Benjamin, son of Captain Benjamin
Tilton, was bom in the State of Maine, August
25, 1805. He came to Boston in a sailing vessel
in the year 1821 and there became a clerk in a
dry goods store. He was married in 1828 to
Lucinda, daughter of Ebenezer and Anna
(Whiting) Newell, and granddaughter of Colonel
Daniel Whiting (1732-1807), of Natick, Mass.,
an officer in the French and Indian War and in
the Patriot Army during the American Revolu-
tion. Mr. Tilton and his wife lived first in
Boston, then removed to Brookhne, and in 1837
256
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
made their permanent home in Cambridge.
Besides being a director in the Cambridgeport
Bank, he was instrumental in founding and
organizing the Har\'ard Bank, in 1860, which
became the First National Bank of Cambridge
in 1864, which, in turn, became the Harvard
Trust Company in 1904. Mr. Tilton was its
president from its organization, March, 1864,
to the time of his death in November, 1882. He
was also president of the Cambridgeport Savings
Bank, 1854-1882. Under his presidency the
Har\'ard Bank, with its capital of $200,000, paid
annual dividends of from six to twelve percent.
He was also associated with large business inter-
ests in Boston, and was always ver>^ successful
in his investments. He left three sons: Henry
Newell, bom in Boston, May 18, 1829; died
February 11, 1904, in Cambridge. He was a
member of the of the Cambridge School Board
for many years, director of the First National
Bank of Cambridge and trustee of the Cam-
bridgeport Savings Bank. (2) Benjamin Rad-
cliS, was bom in Boston, August 22, 1831;
died in January, 1892. He was a member of
the Cambridge City Council, trustee and member
of the investment committee of the Cambridge-
port Savings Bank, the Cambridge Club, and
was an active member of the Prospect Street
Church. (3) Frederick William Tilton, was
bom in Cambridge, May 14, 1839, was educated
in the Cambridge Schools, and graduated from
Harvard University, A.B., 1862, and received
the degree of A.M., 1865. He took a post-
graduate course in the University of Gottingen,
Germany, 1863-1864. He returned to this coun-
try in 1864, and taught three years in the High-
land Military Academy, Worcester, Mass., and in
1867 was elected superintendent of the public
schools of Newport, R.I. He became principal
of PhiUips Academy, Andover, Mass., in 1871;
in 1873, he was appointed head master of Rogers
High School, Newport, R.I., and held that posi-
tion until 1890. He visited Europe, returned
in 1894, and took up his residence in Cambridge,
Mass., where he became a director in the Har-
vard Trust Company, and a trustee and a mem-
ber of the investment committee of the Cam-
bridgeport Sa\'ings Bank; he has served as
\ace-president of the Bank since 1904. He was
married July, 1864, to Ellen, daughter of John
Howe and Adaline (Richardson) Trowbridge,
granddaughter of John and Sally (Howe) Trow-
bridge, and of James and Elizabeth Richardson
and a descendant from Chief -Justice Trowbridge
of Cambridge Colony under George III. Mrs.
Tilton died in Cambridge, Januarj' 5, 1910, being
survived by her husband and four children,
namely: William F. Tilton, born February 24,
1867, educated at Harvard and in Germany;
BE\7AMIX TILTOX
has German degree Ph.D.; writer on historical
subjects. Benjamin T. TUton, bom July 17,
1868; A.B. Hansard, 1890; M.D. Germany,
1893 ; surgeon in New York City. Ellen Maud,
bom Febmar>' 29, 1872, now Mrs. Frederic
Atherton, Boston. Newell Whiting Tilton,
bom October 26, 1878, A.B. Har\'ard, 1900;
of the firm Harding, TUton & Co., Boston, New
York and Philadelphia.
BENJAMIN VAUGHAN
Vaughan, Benjamin, was the son of William
Manning Vaughan and Anne Warren Vaughan,
who was a great-niece of General Joseph Warren
of Revolutionarj' fame. He was bom in Hallo-
well, Maine, the 3d of November, 1837, and died
in Cambridge, Mass., on the 2d of July, 1912.
BIOGRAPHIES
257
He was married on the 8th day of May, 1864,
in Philadelphia, to Anna Harriet Goodwin,
daughter of Rev. Daniel R. Goodwin, who was
then Provost of the University of Pennsylvania
and who had been President of Trinity College.
He attended school at the old Hallowell Acad-
emy, which was quite a famous institution of
learning in those days. He moved to Cambridge
in 1857, and went into the office of Jerome G.
Kidder in Boston, who was doing a commission
BENJAMIN VAUGHAN
business in oil and coal. He worked under
Mr. Kidder and then in partnership with him,
and finally established the Beacon Oil Company,
of which he was president and the sole and active
head. This Company became the Oil Company
for New England, but in the eighties Mr.
Vaughan sold it out to the Standard Oil Com-
pany of New Jersey. After this, Mr. Vaughan
took no active part in any oil business, but
still continued to do business as a coal commis-
sion merchant. He kept up this business until
the 1st of January, 1912, when he retired, dis-
solving the partnership with Henry S. Mann,
with whom he had been associated during the
later years under the firm name of Vaughan &
Mann. He, however, retained his office until
the 1st of July, 1912, which was practically the
date of his death. He thus was in business for
over fifty-four years, and, at the date of his
retirement, was the oldest coal commission
merchant in Boston.
In 1863, Mr. Vaughan joined the "Home
Guards" in Cambridge, and received a com-
mission as 1st Lieutenant under Col. Charles F.
Walcott in the 61st Massachusetts Regiment.
He went to the Front, and was dangerously
wounded at the battle of Petersburg in 1865;
he was brevetted Captain, though his woimd
prevented his seeing any more service at the
Front.
Mr. Vaughan was interested in several Cam-
bridge institutions. At the time of his death
he was a director in the Cambridge Trust Com-
pany, and had been, since its formation and
until a short time before he died, the treasurer
of the Longfellow Memorial Association. He
was one of the promoters in the estabHshment
of the Cambridge Coffee House Association,
which was organized and existed for a few years
when the city first became no-license.
He was an Episcopalian and had been a con-
stant worshipper at St. John's Memorial Chapel
for more than forty years, and was the last sur-
vivor of the original group which organized the
Association of the Congregation in January,
1871. He served for many years as Vice-
Chairman and subsequently as Chairman of the
Committee of this Association; and, in the words
of the report from the present Committee of
the Association, "his loss has removed a land-
mark in our history as a Congregation."
He was one of the originators and active in
the management of the old Cambridge Dramatic
Club, which, during the beginning of its ex-
istence, gave its plays in one of the buildings
of the old State Arsenal, which was situated
on Arsenal Square between Chauncey and
FoUen Streets.
He found his chief recreation in out-of-door
life, particularly in shooting and on the water,
yachting or canoeing while camping in Maine.
Of late years he regularly went for some weeks
every winter to the South for shooting. Part
of the summer he always spent in yachting along
the Maine coast and part at Hallowell in the old
homestead where he was bom and in which five
generations of the family have lived.
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Mr. Vaughan was a member of the Com-
mercial and Union Clubs of Boston; the Brook-
line Countr}^ Club; the Eastern, Massachusetts
and Portland Yacht Clubs; the Oakley Country
Club; Colonial Club of Cambridge and several
shooting clubs. He was, also, a member of a
Dining Club in Cambridge composed of a dozen
well-known Cambridge men. He was, however,
not at all a clubman in the usual sense of the
word, but spent most of his time with and for
his family.
He was a support and an ad\'iser for many
people and helped many, but always most
unostentatiously, so that even members of
his immediate family did not know until after
his death how much he did for others. His
quiet modesty and unselfishness were excep-
tional, and he was pre-eminently endowed with
common sense and ability to diagnose and judge
rightly intricate business problems and, also,
public questions. In his later years, particu-
larly, he followed the complications and evolu-
tions in business and politics with close interest,
and his sane judgment and wise conclusions
impressed all who came in contact with him.
Many men prominent in affairs at home and
in the South — where reconstruction and the up-
building of industries are still going on — with
whom he talked or came in contact, were openly
impressed by his broad and sound views and
felt his influence. He was a valuable citizen
who stood for the right and for conservative
advancement, with a broad-minded view of
affairs which made him of benefit to the com-
munity in which he lived.
HENRY PICKERING WALCOTT, M.D.
Walcott, Henry Pickering, physician, was
bom at Salem, Mass., December 23, 1838, being
the son of Samuel Baker and Martha (Pickman)
Walcott. He graduated from Harvard in 1858,
studied medicine at the Harvard Medical School
and Bowdoin College, and received his degree
of M.D. from the latter in 1861. He spent two
years in Vienna and Beriin. From 1867 to 1881,
he was engaged in the active practice of medicine
in Cambridge. Since 1881, however, he has
devoted his time to the State Board of Health,
and has been chairman of it since 1886. Por-
tions of the reports of that board have been
written by him, and he is also the author of
various reports upon the water supply and the
drainage of Massachusetts. Dr. Walcott has
been prominent in movements promoting public
health. He is a member of the Massachusetts
Medical Society, Massachusetts Historical So-
ciety, Massachusetts Horticultural Society,
American Public Health Association, American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Board of Presi-
dent and Fellows of Harvard University, and
an honorary fellow of the Royal Sanitar>- In-
stitute of Great Britain.
ROBERT WALCOTT
Walcott, Robert, is the son of Dr. Henry
P. Walcott, LL.D., president of the Massa-
chusetts General Hospital and of the Cambridge
Hospital, chairman of the State Board of Health,
and a member of the Ivletropolitan Water Board.
He is associated in the practice of law with
Hon. Herbert Parker, formerly Attorney-Gen-
eral; James F. Jackson, ex-chairman of the
Board of Railway Commissioners; and Lieu-
tenant-Governor Frothingham, having offices
at Barristers' Hall, Boston.
He has continued to live in Cambridge, where
he was bom, since his marriage, in 1899, to the
daughter of Dr. Maurice H. Richardson.
He graduated from Har\'ard College in 1895,
and, after spending a ^^ear travelling in India
and China, from the Har\^ard Law School in
1899.
He is a member of the Union Club, Tennis
and Racquet Club, Oakley Country Club, and
of the Cambridge Club; secretary of the Cam-
bridge Boat Club; secretary of the Longfellow
Memorial Association; director of the Cam-
bridge Homes for Aged People; director of the
Prospect Union; member of the corporation
of the Cambridge Sa\'ings Bank, and president
of the Cambridge Neighborhood House.
He was appointed, in 1904, by Governor
Douglas, special justice of the Third District
Court, which includes Cambridge, Belmont
and Arlington.
Judge Walcott's recreations are swimming,
canoeing, yachting and travel, he having accom-
panied Mr. WiUiam Brooks Cabot in his ex-
ploration of the Assawaban River district in
Labrador, in 1904, and ha\'ing been a member
BIOGRAPHIES
of the party that made the first ascent of Mount
Mummery in the Canadian Rockies in 1906.
He is an officer of the Harvard Travelers'
Club. He has a record swim of ten miles across
Buzzards Bay.
WALTER C. WARDWELL
Wardwell, Walter C, ex-Mayor of Cam-
bridge, Mass., and a Deputy Sheriff of Middle-
sex County, was bom in Richmond, Va., Janu-
ary 27, 1859. His father, the late Bumham
WALTER C. WARDWELL
Wardwell, was a native of Maine, went to Vir-
ginia previous to the Civil War, and, refusing
to take the oath of allegiance to the Southern
Confederacy, was pressed into service in 1861.
With much peril he made his escape to the Union
lines, and, joining the Northern army, served
under General Butler at Fortress Monroe and
Dutch Gap. He served upon the grand jury
which indicted Jefferson Davis for high treason;
and after the close of the war he was appointed
by General Schofield warden of a penitentiary.
Tlirough his efforts the whipping-post was
banished from nearly every locality where it
had previously been used, and his successful
work in that field of philanthropy gained for
him much distinction throughout the United
States.
Walter C. Wardwell began his education in
the South, and completed it in the public schools
of Cambridge. He was employed for twelve
years in the civil engineer's department of the
city of Boston, and in 1893 was appointed
Deputy Sheriff of Cambridge. He served in the
Cambridge City Council in 1894 and 1895, and
then as alderman for four years, the last two as
president. He was mayor from January, 1907,
to April, 1909, serving the extra three months
on account of a change in the fiscal year.
In 1878 he enlisted in the Cambridge City
Guard, Company B, Fifth Regiment, under
Captain William A. Bancroft (now major gen-
eral), and afterward served in Battery C, First
Light Artillery, later being sergeant, major,
adjutant and quartermaster of the First Bat-
talion of Cavalry. He is at present president
of the newly-formed Cambridge City Guard
Veteran Corps.
Besides being connected with the Board of
Trade and other institutions, Mr. Wardwell is
prominent in Masonic circles. He is a past
member of Mount Olivet Lodge, and is a mem-
ber of Cambridge Chapter, and Cambridge
Commandery, K.T. He is a past district
deputy grand master in the " Blue Lodge."
Mr. Wardwell was married in Cambridge,
in January, 1898, to the daughter of Austin
Kingsley Jones, the old bell ringer at Harvard
College. For many years the Wardwell home
has been at 465 Broadway. There are two
daughters. Misses Grace and Georgianna, and
one son, Austin.
FISHER— WELLINGTON
E George Fisher, eldest child of Jabez and
Sarah (Livermore) Fisher, was bom in Cam-
bridge, Febmary 15, 1820. He took the full
course in the public and high schools of Cam-
bridge, and a partial law course at Harvard
University Law School, and was made a mem-
ber of the Law School Association. He suc-
ceeded his father in the coal and wood business
in 1845, and after carrying it on for several
years sold it out and became a partner in the
firm of Simmons & Fisher, organ builders in
Charles Street, Boston. On March 30, 1859,
he purchased the Cambridge Chronicle, and
made the paper a profitable investment, and
in 1859-1866 it had no competition in Cam-
bridge. In 1873 he sold the newspaper plant
260
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
to Linn Boyd Porter. In the Chronicle he
advocated anti-slavery, temperance and Ameri-
canism as opposed to the "perilous encroach-
ments" of the Roman Catholic church. He
represented his district in the General Court
in 1885. He founded the Cambridge Con-
servatory of Music in 1873, and with the assist-
ance of his daughter and other instructors,
taught music to large classes for several years.
He was a well-known expert performer on the
organ, and held positions at various times in
the largest churches in Cambridge. He made
a discriminating collection of music, both
printed and in manuscript, and was one of the
earliest members of the Handel and Haydn
Society of Boston, and a member of the govern-
ing board. The large Cambridge chorus that
attracted so much notice at the World's Peace
Jubilee was organized and trained by Mr.
Fisher. He was a friend and benefactor to
Elias Howe in his struggle to introduce the
sewing machine, and gave his financial aid at
a time when Mr. Howe appeared to him hope-
lessly in debt, and while the application for a
patent was pending he accompanied Mr. Howe
to Washington, and they each wore a smt of
clothes made upon the machine which was
the patent office model. "He was married
March 16, 1840, to Hannah Cordelia, third
child of Samuel P. and Eunice S. Teele, who
was bom in Charlestown, October 9, 1818, and
died July 3, 1S94. She was a member of the
Austin Street Unitarian church, Cambridge.
George Fisher died in Cambridge, September
1 2, 1 898. Their children were : Sarah Cordelia,
born 1841, married, November 29, 1887, to
Colonel Austin C. Wellington. Caroline Louise,
bom 1843, married Colonel Austin C. Well-
ington, as his first wife, June 30, 1869, and
she died November 23, 1879. George, bom
in 1845, died in 1846. Anna Josephine, bom in
1847; died in 1851. Harriet Ellen, bom in
1849; died in 1850. Lizzie Livemiore, bom
in 1850; died in 1853. Eliza Bennett, bom in
1853; died in 1875. George, bom in 1855;
died in 1860. George William, bom in 1858;
died in 1876. George Fisher outlived all his
children except Sarah Cordelia. He had no
grandchildren. A scholarship in Harvard
Law School has been contributed by his
daughter in memoriam of George Fisher.
Sarah Cordelia (Fisher) Wellington,
eldest child of George and Hannah Cordelia
(Teele) Fisher, and the last surviving member
of a large family, was bom in Cambridge,
Mass., October 10, 1841. She was graduated
at the Cambridge high school, attended Pro-
fessor Louis Agassiz's school and received
musical instruction in London, England, from
Senor Randegger and Madam Rudersdorf,
and while in Europe in 1876, attended the
first performance of Wagner's " Niebelungen-
leid," at Bayreuth. She married her brother-
in-law. Colonel Austin Clarke Wellington,
November 29, 1887, eight years after the death
of his first wife, CaroHne Louise (Fisher)
Wellington. Colonel Wellington had no chil-
dren b}^ either wife. He was a son of Jonas
Clarke and Harriet Eliza (Bosworth) Welling-
ton, and was bom in Lexington, July 17, 1840,
where he attended school up to 1856, when his
parents removed to Cambridge, and he became
a bookkeeper in the establishment of S. G.
Bowdlear & Company, of Boston, and left
the firm in August, 1862, to enlist in Company
F, Thirty-eighth Massachusetts Regiment,
and accompanied the regiment to Baltimore,
New Orleans, and on the Red River expedition
under General N. P. Banks. In July, 1864,
he was transferred to Washington, D.C., and
was in the arm}^ of General Sheridan during
the closing period of the Civil War. He was
acting adjutant of his regiment, with the rank
of lieutenant, and later was appointed adju-
tant. His battles were: Bisland, Siege of Port
Hudson, Cane River Ford, Mansura in Louisi-
ana, and with Sheridan in Opequan, Fisher's
Hill and Cedar Creek, Virginia. He was
mustered out of the volunteer service, June 30,
1865. Upon returning to Massachusetts he
engaged in the coal business, and formed the
corporation of the Austin C. Wellington Coal
Company, of which he was treasurer and
manager, and this grew into one of the largest
concerns in its time, in New England. He
continued his interest in military affairs, and
May 2, 1870, entered the Massachusetts State
Militia as captain of the Boston Light Infantrj',
known as the "Tigers," Company A, Seventh
Regiment. He was elected major of the
Fourth Battalion in 1873, and colonel of the
First Regiment, Febmary 24, 1SS2. His
BIOGRAPHIES
261
patriotic spirit was kept alive by membership
in the Grand Army of the RepubUc, his com-
radeship dating from 1867 in Post 15. In
1874, he was chosen commander of Post No. 30,
which post he helped to organize, and of which
he was a charter member. He became com-
mander of Post No. 113, in 1887, holding the
position at the time of his death. He was a
member of the Ancient and Honorable Artil-
lery Company, and a trustee of the Soldier's
Home at Chelsea. His business association
was with the Boston Coal Exchange, of which
he was chairman, and the Charles River Towing
Company, of which he was president. He was
president of the Boston Mercantile Library
Association, and a member of the New England
Club, Handel and Haydn Society, and Cecilia
Society. His service to his state in a civic
capacity was as a member of the General Court
of Massachusetts, in 1875 and 1876. Colonel
Wellington died at his home, 871 Massachusetts
Avenue, Cambridge, September 23, 1888. His
widow, Mrs. Sarah Cordelia (Fisher) WeUing-
ton, siu-vived him. She was president of the
Ladies' Aid Association, auxiliary to the Soldier's
Home at Chelsea; a director of the Cambridge
Conservatory of Music, founded by her father,
and alHed with other philanthropic, religious
and musical associations. Her musical talent
was an inheritance from both her parents.
She early sang in the choir in Cambridge and
Boston. Her voice was heard for repeated
seasons at Trinity Church, New Old South,
Immanuel, and for nine seasons at the Park
Street Church. She was a member of the
Handel and Haydn Oratorio Society and of
the Cecilia Society, and represented both
societies at various times as soloist at their
concerts in Music Hall, Boston. She was
president of the Austin Street Unitarian Alli-
ance, the largest in the United States, and of
the South Middlesex Alliance, which met in
Charming HaU, Boston. She was made a
director of the National Alliance board; a
member of the council of the Cantabrigia Club ;
and vice-president; a member of the Woman
Stiffrage League; of the Cambridge Shakes-
peare Club, and of the Browning Society, of
Boston. She served as secretary and treasurer
of the Rovindabout Club; as president of the
Wednesday Club, and as a director and vice-
president of the Young Women's Christian
Association. She was made a life member of the
New England Woman's Club, of the Woman's
Educational and Industrial Union, and of the
American Unitarian Association; an associ-
ate member of the Cambridge Conferences,
and vice-president-at-large of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union; for several years
president of the Daughters of Massachusetts.
Her interest in the Cambridge Conservatory
of Music on Lee Street, began in 1873, when
with her father she founded the enterprise.
She was a member of the faculty of Wellesley
College and of the Tourjee Conservatory of
Music in Boston. She sang by request in one
of the Montreal cathedrals; appeared as accom-
panist with Camilla Urso, the celebrated vio-
linist, and was always a willing volunteer on
occasions for charity, given in opera, concerts,
or at society functions. Her home in Cam-
bridge became a mecca for musical enthusiasts
visiting Boston, who had heard her in pubUc
or learned of her work as teacher, through her
pupils scattered over the entire United States,
who had been fortimate in receiving her in-
struction and advice.
WILLIAM WILLIAMSON WELLINGTON
Wellington, William Williamson, was
bom in West Cambridge, now known as Arling-
ton, July 29, 1814. His parents were Timothy
and Maria Eunice (Lord) Wellington, and he
was educated at home under the personal in-
struction of his father; at the academy of John
Anglers in Medford, and at Harvard University.
He began the practice of medicine in 1838, and
had continued it successfully up to the time of
his death. Dr. Wellington was a member of sev-
eral medical and scientific societies, among them
being the Obstetrical Society of Boston and the
Medical Improvement Society of Cambridge.
Dr. Wellington had always taken an active
interest in educational matters, and was prom-
inent in the social circles of his city. He
served for forty years on the School Committee.
He married, September 30, 1841, Lucy Eliza-
beth Carter, of Lancaster, and October 5, 1857,
Martha Bond Carter, of Lancaster.
262
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
HENRY JACKSON WELLS
Wells, Henry Jackson, was bom in Charles-
town, Mass., November 16, 1823, died November
24, 1912, son of Gideon Parker and Susannah
(Wellington) Wells, and was educated in the
public schools. Previous to the commence-
ment of the study of his profession, he engaged
'^^%
^ ^
HENRY JACKSON WELLS
in mercantile pursuits in Boston and vicinity,
and in 1848 and 1849 he lived in New Orleans.
Going to California in 1849, he at once found
employinent as a clerk in the courts, and when
the state government was established, was
retained in that position for a number of years,
during which time he studied law and was
admitted to the bar. He practised his profession
until 1863, when he was elected as judge of
one of the courts of San Francisco. Pre\'ious to
this he was a member of the board of education,
president of the common council, and police
commissioner. Through the trying times of
President Lincoln's administration he held the
position of chairman of the Republican com-
mittee of the city and county of San Francisco.
Returning to Massachusetts in 1866, he resided
in Arhngton, and served as a member of the
school committee. He removed to Cambridge,
in 1877, and since that time was engaged in the
practice of law in Boston. He was a member
of the House of Representatives in 1880, 1881,
and 1882, and was in the State Senate in 1883
and 1885, establishing a reputation as a legis-
lator, and an authority on parliamentary pro-
cedure. Mr. Wells had been active in political
life, having been chairman of the Republican
City Committee of Cambridge for a number of
years, and a member of the state committee
for eleven years, and for seven years of that
time its treasurer. He was a member of the
Massachusetts, Middlesex, and Cambridge Clubs
and of the Society of California Pioneers of
San Francisco, and president of the Society
of California Pioneers of New England. Judge
WeUs was married, in 1856, to Miss Maria
Adelaide Goodnow, of Boston, Mass., daughter
of Lyman and Rebecca D. Goodnow. Mrs.
Wells died in 1904, but their five children sur-
\nve: Harrison G. Wells, of Chicago; Mrs. A.
W. Cross, who kept house for her father in
Cambridge; Mrs. Mary W. Stickney, of Arling-
ton; Mrs. Henrietta W. Liverpool, of New York;
and Welhngton Wells, of Boston. As one of
the California Pioneers of 1849, it was his privi-
lege to have a part in laying the foundations
of the State.
WILLIAM LAMBERT WHITNEY
Whitney, William Lambert, was born in
Cambridge, March 11, 1811 ; died in Cambridge,
May, 1900. He was the son of Abel and Susanna
WILLIAM LAMI
BIOGRAPHIES
263
Whitney, and received his education in the
Cambridge schools and at Bradford Academy,
Bradford, Mass. Mr. Whitney was for many
years active in mercantile pursuits but retired
from business in 1850. He always lived in
Cambridge, and always took a lively interest
in the material and social well-being of the
city. He was one of the original members of
the first city council of Cambridge. At the
semi-centennial celebration of our city in 1S96,
Mr. Whitney was invited to take part in the
celebration as the honored guest of his native
city, but was obliged to decline, on account
of feeble health and advanced years. He was
treasurer of the Cambridge Savings Bank for
several years, and director of the American
Unitarian Association for about ten years,
resigning in 1888.
Mr. Whitney was married, October IS, 1836,
to Lucy A. Jones, of the city of Cambridge,
and on July 28, 1840, to Rebecca R. Brackett,
of Quincy, Mass. He died in Cambridge,
May 29, 1900, being survived by Lucy A.
Whitney, W^illiam L. Whitney, Jr., and Mrs.
Julia A. Wright.
WILLIAM HASKELL WOOD
Wood, William Haskell, for a nvm:iber of
years a leading lumber merchant of Cambridge,
was bom in Hudson, Mass., January 18, 1847,
a son of Alonzo Wood of that town. The
family of which he was a representative has been
established in Middlesex County more than
two hundred years, the records of Concord
showing that Jacob Wood, son of Michael, was
bom there in 1662. Jacob's son Ephraim was
the father of Peter Wood, a native of Concord,
who settled in Marlboro. Jedediah Wood, son
of Peter and Sybil (Howe) Wood, was born in
Marlboro, May 16, 1777. His business was
cloth-dressing; and he lived for twenty years
at "The Mills," where he was one of the earliest
settlers. He died in 1867. Jedediah Wood
married, in 1801, Miss Betsey Wilkins, and had
seven children, one of his sons being Colonel
William H. Wood, and another Alonzo, the
father of the above-named, who was bom in
Hudson, Mass. Alonzo Wood devoted his
energies to the limiber business. He married,
and had three children: Frank J., EHza Ann
and William Haskell.
William Haskell Wood spent his boyhood
days in Hudson, attending school and working
in his father's lumber mill. When he was about
seventeen years of age he went to Boston, with
the hope of improving his prospects; but an
attack of illness caused him to return to Hudson
within a year, and he remained in his native
town until he was twenty. He then secured
employment in Cambridge with Gale Dudley
& Co. , and after five years he formed a partner-
ship with George W. Gale, a son of his employer,
WILLIAM HASKELL WOOD
and with him succeeded to the business. In
1881 they dissolved partnership, and Mr. Wood
bought out Burrage Brothers, whose wharf,
at the junction of Broadway, Third and Main
Streets, was enlarged under his ownership.
It now comprises the Fisk Wharf on Main Street
and the Day and Collins Wharf adjoining. Mr.
Wood was the senior member of the firm of
Wood & Baker, who were owners of large lumber
mills in Tennessee and North Carolina.
In September, 1874, Mr. Wood was united
in marriage to Miss Anna M., daughter of
Samuel and Lucy Dudley. They had five
children, two of whom are now living.
Mr. Wood was well advanced in Masonry,
belonging to Mizpah Lodge, F.&A.M.; Cam-
bridge Arch Chapter; and Boston Commandery,
Knights Templar. He was an attendant at
the First Universalist Church.
Mr. Wood died at Florida, March, 1912, being
survived by his widow, one son and one daughter.
264
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
JAMES ADAMS WOOLSON
WooLSON, James Adams, a leading citizen
of Cambridge, was bom in Hopkinton, Middle-
sex County, Mass. He was the elder son of
James Rix and Eda (Adams) Woolson. He
was fitted for college at the Old Gates Academy,
in Mariboro, of which the noted 0. W. Albee
was the preceptor. Mr. Albee afterwards
entered public life as a member for several
years of the House of Representatives and the
Senate. In consequence of circumstances en-
tirely beyond his control, young Woolson was
obliged to abandon entering Harvard Univer-
sity, as was his desire, and as had been the
purpose and intention of his parents.
About this time, in 1846, his uncle, Hon.
Lee Claflin, and his son, ex-govemor William
Claflin, gave him a position as boy in their
store in Boston. Not many years after this,
Lee Claflin retired from active business alto-
gether, devoting his time thereafter to the
care of his large property, and to charitable,
benevolent and philanthropic work. From
that time, Mr. Woolson had been associated
in business with ex-Governor Claflin as boy,
clerk and partner for upwards of fifty years —
which length of time is something very remark-
able in these days of frequent changes. He
was, at the time of his death, a stockholder
in the corporation of H. Brigham & Gregory-
Co. This company succeeded Y. Brigham &
Co., and Gregory, Shaw & Co. The latter
firm followed William Claflin, Cobum & Co.
and William Claflin & Co., who were the direct
successors of the original house established by
Hon. George Claflin in 1815. Until a few
years ago, the firms occupied the store built
for them at 136 Summer Street, opposite South
Street, Boston, which was the site of Daniel
Webster's home. He was also one of the in-
corporators of the Suffolk Savings Bank, of
Boston.
Mr. Woolson was a member of the firm of
Loring, Tolmant Tripp, bankers, Boston, and
their predecessors. He contributed generously
in many ways in the time of the Civil War, was
drafted, but could not pass examination, and
sent a substitute in his place, in the meantime
caring materially for his family while he was
in the field, and afterwards. He was a member
of the Eastern Yacht Club, Massachusetts,
Cambridge, Colonial and Union Clubs, and some
fifteen or more other organizations, though
not really regarding himself as a club man in
the ordinary acceptation of that term. He
was a director in the North Bank of Redemp-
tion, and previously in the Shoe and Leather
Bank and the Revere. He was vice-president
of the Boston Five Cent Savings Bank, a
JAMES ADAMS WOOLSOX
director of the First National Bank of Cam-
bridge, and was identified with the Cambridge-
port Savings Bank. He had steadily refused
to accept offers of poHtical preferment, think-
ing he had not the time to attend to public
duties properly, and always feeling that there
were man}^ others of his fellow-citizens who
were much better fitted for such positions than
he was; as a matter of duty, however, he
served in the city government.
Mr. Woolson, when a clerk, was librarian,
director, treasurer, vice-president and presi-
dent of the Old Mercantile Librarj^ Associa-
tion, and gave cheerfully much good, solid
hard work to help it obtain the influence and
BIOGRAPHIES
265
prosperity which it certainly enjoyed in an
eminent degree throughout the city in its day.
At the time he was president, 1853 and 1854,
the association numbered two thousand five
hundred of the merchants' clerks of the city
of Boston. This was before the days of the
public library, Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion and Union, and when the merchants and
their clerks lived in town, and not in the
suburbs, as now. "The Old M.L.A." was a
great power for good in those days, say between
the years 1840 and 1860.
In 1859, Mr. Woolson was married to Miss
Annie Williston Dickinson, of Boston. Her
grandfather, John Williston, was an officer
in the custom house under General Benjamin
Lincoln, the first collector of the port of
Boston, who was appointed by President
George Washington. Mr. Williston died young,
from the effects of a severe cold caused by
exposure at the time of the Embargo. Her
father was Daniel Dickinson, of Old Hadley,
Mass., who was of the Dickinson family and
ancestry of Amherst, Hadley and that vicinity.
Her family on both sides took an active part
in the Colonial Wars, the War of the Revolu-
tion, War of 1812, and in the War of the Rebel-
lion; her only brother, Lieutenant Dickinson,
gave his life for his country. His name is
on the soldiers' monument on Cambridge
Common. A number of Mr. Woolson's an-
cestors did duty in the Revolutionary War,
and several of his relatives on both sides of
the house gave their services, and some their
lives, in the War of the Rebellion.
Mr. Woolson died at his home in Cambridge,
at the age of seventy-four years, January 25,
1904, and is survived by a widow, and also by
two daughters, Mrs. James L. Paine and Mrs.
Byron S. Hurlburt.
BENJAMIN F. WYETH
Wyeth, Benjamin Franklin, was born
in Cambridge, December, 1845; died, August
7, 1909, and had always lived here. His
, ancestors settling in Cambridge in 1645. He
attended the Cambridge schools, graduating
from the old Washington Grammar School.
For a number of years Mr. Wyeth was employed
in the store of James H. Wyeth. In 1890, his
father, Benjamin Francis Wyeth, died. He had
established, in 1850, an undertaking business
in Harvard Square, which is believed to be the
oldest in the city today. Upon his death, the
business was taken up by Mr. Wyeth, in com-
pany with his brother, Henry A. Wyeth, as
Wyeth Bros. This continued until 1904, when
his brother died. Mr. Wyeth then carried on
the business alone for about a year, when his
son, Benjamin F. Wyeth, Jr., became a member
BENJAMI.X F. WYETH
of the firm, and has continued same until the
present time. He will hereafter carry on the
business, assisted by his brother Henry D.
Wyeth, at 33 Brattle Street, where the office
has been located since it was moved from
Harvard Square. Mr. Wyeth was well known
in a two-fold capacity — as a Harvard Square
business man and as sexton of the First Church,
Congregational. His father was for thirty-
nine years the church sexton and upon his
death, in 1890, Mr. Wyeth succeeded him in
the position, holding it up to the time of his
death. He was regarded as a fixture in this
old, conservative church, and, when he talked
of resigning, the church prevailed upon him
to remain, and voted to give him an assistant.
266
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
and in this manner the work had gone on since
that time.
Mr. Wyeth married in 1876, Caroline E.,
daughter of Joseph Bird, of Watertown, who
survives him. His sons and daughter are:
Marion B., Herbert F., Benjamin F., Jr., and
Henry D. His three sisters all live in Cam-
bridge: Mrs. L. F. West, Miss Zoa A. Wyeth,
and Miss Alice A. Wyeth. His brother, John
B. Wyeth, lives in Philadelphia.
Mr. Wyeth was a veteran of the Civil War,
having served as a member of the Twelfth
Unattached Company, M.V.M., and going into
the service in place of his father, who was a
member of the organization. This was a
Cambridge company, raised by Dr. S. W. Driver
and others. Mr. Wyeth was also a member
of Harvard Council, Royal Arcanum. In
previous years he had been a Mason and an
Odd Fellow, but he had not kept up his mem-
bership in either order for some time. He was
a member of the Massachusetts Undertakers'
Association, and of the Massachusetts Social
Club of Undertakers.
did consent, however, to serx^e as a member of
the city government in 1860. During his term
he gave evidence of having a thorough vmder-
standing of public questions.
JAMES HICKS WYETH
Wyeth, James Hicks, merchant, was bom
at Watertown, Mass., on the 24th of July, 1830,
being the son of Jonas and EHzabeth N. (Flagg)
Wyeth. The family moved to Cambridge, and
the boy received his education in the public
schools of this city. Immediately after leaving
school he went to work.
About 1853 Mr. Wyeth, in partnership with
Thomas Hayes, opened a grocery store on Boyls-
ton Street, Harvard Square. Afterwards quar-
ters directly opposite were occupied. Here
for many years the business was carried on by
the firm of J. H. Wyeth and Company. The
constantly increasing volume of trade led to the
organizing of a corporation, the J. H. Wyeth
Company. This has enabled Mr. Wyeth to
leave the active management to others; but
he shows that he still has an interest in the
welfare of the concern, for he may be frequently
found at his desk there.
While always willing and ready to help in
furthering the progress of Cambridge, Mr.
Wyeth has been averse to holding office. He
J.\MES HICKS WYETH
By his marriage to Maria C. Warland, he
has had three children: James D., who died in
May, 1912; Elizabeth F. and Walter F. His
home is in Cambridge.
JOHN PALMER WYMAN
Wyman, John Palmer, lawyer, was bom
at West Cambridge, now Arlington, Mass.,
March 7, 1852. He is the son of John P.
Wyman, bom July 31, 1815, who died Jidy 1,
1891, and Margaret Richardson, bom January
26, 1823, who died August 29, 1911. The sub-
ject of this sketch was graduated from the Boston
Latin School in June, 1870, being a Franklin
Medal Scholar; from Harvard College, A.B.,
in 1874, and Harvard Law School, LL.B., in
1876.
On October 10, 1877, he was married to Emma,
daughter of John P. Squire, and went to live
at 23 Lafayette Street, Cambridge, which is
BIOGRAPHIES
267
still his home. Four children were bom
of this marriage: Mary Squire, bom August 5,
1881, who is now the wife of Owen Eugene
Pomeroy and lives in New York ; John Palmer,
Jr., bom July 15, 1884; Samuel Edwin, 2d, bom
Febmary 17, 1887, who died March 6, 1890;
Margaret Gwendolen, bom June 20, 1898. The
elder daughter, Mrs. Pomeroy, graduated from
the Cambridge Latin School in 1900, and from
JOHN PALMER WYMAN
Radcliffe in 1903, with the degree of A.B.,
receiving that of A.M. in 1905. His son John
attended the Cambridge Latin School, graduated
in 1903, matriculated at Harvard, but left in
the middle of his freshman year to engage in
business.
Mr. Wyman himself on leaving college had
not immediately begun the practice of law.
Business and travel had occupied him largely
up to the fall of 1880. In November of that
year he was admitted to the Suffolk Bar. Since
then he has been at 30 Court Street, Boston,
wh'ere he has taken care of the interests of a
large number of clients, quietly but efficiently.
Mr. Wyman has been a member of the Old
Cambridge Baptist Church since 1878, and has
served on the board of directors since about
1884. He belongs to no clubs, preferring to
spend his leisure hours with his family.
Mr. Wyman's first wife died January 2, 1910.
Mr. Wyman's second marriage, to Miss Leila
C. Wood, took place October 16, 1912.
His twin brother, Samuel Edwin, practised
medicine in this city, and resided at the comer
of Mount Auburn Street and Putnam Avenue.
He married Annie Goodale Gooch. He died
May 15, 1896, survived by his wife. He had
no children.
LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS
Briggs, Le Baron Russell, educator, was
bom at Salem, Mass., December 11, 1855. He
graduated from Harvard in 1875, receiving his
degree of A.M. in 1882. The honorary degree
of LL.D. was given him by that institution in
1900, and by Western Reserve College in 1906.
From 1885 to 1890 he was assistant professor,
and since 1890 has been professor of English at
Harvard. He was dean of the college from 1891
to 1902. He has been dean of the Faculty of
Arts and Sciences since 1902, and Boylston
professor of Rhetoric and Oratory since 1904.
He was elected president of Radcliffe College
in 1903, and still holds that office. He was
married to Mary Frances De Quedville, Sep-
tember 5. 1883.
JOHN J. CARTY
Carty, John J., was bom in Cambridge,
Mass., April 14, 1861. His early education
was obtained in the schools of Cambridge. At
the time he had about finished his preparatory
studies for college he was obliged, on account
of a serious trouble with his eye-sight, to abandon
his school work indefinitely.
The telephone having just been invented and
being one of the first to appreciate its possi-
bilities, Mr. Carty entered the service of the
Bell Telephone Company, for which concern
he has been at work ever since, having to his
credit more than thirty-two years of continuous
service in its behalf.
His first work was at Boston, and while there
he made a ntimber of contributions to the art
of telephony which were of unusual value, and
have since become a permanent part of the art.
268
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Under his direction was installed the first mul-
tiple switchboard at Boston, which was at that
time the largest ever put into use. For the
"express" telephone system, peculiar to that
city, he designed and installed a switchboard
which was the first metallic circuit multiple
board to go into service. The fundamental
features of this board are at present in all the
boards of today.
In 1887 Mr. Carty took charge of the cable
department of the Western Electric Company
in the East, with headquarters at New York.
In this capacity he studied cable manufacture
and laying, and introduced a number of im-
provements, having charge of all the important
cable-laying projects which were carried on for
some time in the East. One of his engineering
developments resulted in cutting in half the
•cost of cable manufacture. He then took
charge of the switchboard department of the
Western Electric Company for the East, and
tmder his direction were installed most of the
large switchboards of that period, among which
was the original Cortland Street multiple board.
During this time he made a number of important
improvements in switchboards, which have
since become standard practice.
He was the first to practically demonstrate
how to operate two or more telephone circuits
connected directly with a common battery,
and about 1888 installed, for the supply of
operators' telephones, common battery systems
in a niunber of central offices. From these
early experiments has grown the modern system
now generally employed.
Although charged with serious practical en-
gineering problems, Mr. Carty has fotmd time
to follow to some extent his strong natural
inclination for original research. He made an
exhaustive investigation into the nature of the
disttubances to which telephone lines are sub-
jected and gave the first public account of his
work in a paper entitled, "A New View of Tele-
phone Induction," read before the Electric Club
on November 21, 1889. The \'iew put forth in
the paper was revolutionary, but, nevertheless,
after being checked by numbers of experiments
in this country and Europe received universal
acceptance, and is the one now adopted in all
works dealing with the subject. In this paper
he showed the o\-erwhelming preponderance
of electrostatic induction as a factor in producing
cross-talk, and proved that there is in a tele-
phone line a particvdar point in the circuit at
which, if a telephone is inserted, no cross-talk
will be heard. The paper gave directions for
determining this silent or neutral point, and
described original experiments showing how to
distinguish between electrostatic and electro-
magnetic induction in telephone lines.
On March 17, 1891, Mr. Carty made addi-
tional contributions to the knowledge of this
subject in a paper before the American Institute
of Electrical Engineers, entitled "Inductive
Disturbances in Telephone Circuits." This
paper might better have been called "The The-
ory of Transpositions," because in it was first
made known precisely why twisting or trans-
posing telephone Hnes renders them free from
inductive disturbances.
In 1889 he entered the service of the Metro-
poUtan Telephone and Telegraph Company,
now the New York Telephone Company, for
the purpose of organizing all of the technical
departments, building up its staff, and recon-
structing the entire plant of the company —
converting it from grounded circuits overhead
and series switchboards to metallic circuits
placed tmderground and to the then new bridg-
ing switchboards. In carrjdng out this work
he selected and trained a large stafE of young
men fresh from college, many of whom have
since attained positions of prominence in the
telephone field. In the development of the
personnel of his department, Mr. Carty has
taken a particular pride, looking to the welfare
of those already engaged, and through his touch
with prominent technical educators, adding
each year to his staff, from the graduating
classes of our principal technical schools.
Mr. Carty's work in connection with the de-
velopment of the plant of the New York Tele-
phone Company has been most successful and
far-reaching in its consequences. Based upon
his plans and under his direction, there has been
constructed a telephone system which, according
to the foremost authorities in the world, is with-
out a parallel in its efficiency and scope. His
work has been studied and approved by all of
the technical administrations of Europe and
even of Asia, and to a large extent what he has
done for the telephone art in the United States;
John J. Carty
BIOGRAPHIES
has contributed to the pre-eminent standing
which the American telephone industry holds
in all foreign countries.
In recognition of his achievements as an en-
gineer and in view of the services which he
rendered to the Japanese Government in con-
nection with electrical engineering, he was deco-
rated with the Order of the Rising Sun by the
late Emperor of Japan, who, shortly before his
death, again decorated Mr. Carty, conferring
upon him the Order of the Sacred Treasure, for
valuable services rendered to Japan and her
people. In China, where a commission has
recently investigated the telephone systems of
the world, that of New York was selected as
the model for Pekin, and as a consequence the
first great order for a telephone system in China
was given to American manufacturers.
While for many years Mr. Carty's work was
more particularly directed to the extraordinary
problems of telephony presented by the great
centers of population, it remained for him to
accomplish a revolution in telephony of the
greatest social and economic value to rural com-
munities in all parts of the world. Prior to
this work upon the subject, the nimiber of tele-
phone stations which could be operated upon
one line was limited and the service was im-
perfect. As a result of his solution of a problem
presented by the New York Central Railroad
in the city of New York, he devised a mechanism
known as the "bridging bell," whereby any
number of stations, even as many as a hundred,
might be placed upon a line without in any way
impairing the transmission of speech. This
made possible the farmers' line, which is found
by the hundreds of thousands in farmers' houses
in America, and is now being extended abroad.
For this achievement there was conferred upon
him by the Franklin Institute the Edward
Longstreth Medal of Merit.
Mr. Carty is chief engineer of the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company, in which
capacity he is responsible for the standardizing
of methods of construction and operation of its
vast plant, which extends into every community
in the United States, and which, through its
long-distance wires, extends into Canada and
Mexico.
He has been active in matters pertaining to
the improvement of engineering education in
its higher branches, and is a member of the
Society for the Promotion of Engineering Educa-
tion. In connection with the technical or what
might be called the "trade school" feature of
educational work, he has taken a lively interest
and is an active member of the Society for the
Promotion of Industrial Education, and is a
member of the Millbum Board of Education
in New Jersey.
Mr. Carty has been prominent in the affairs
of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers,
of which he is vice-president and director. He
is the past president of the New York Electrical
Society; member of the Society of Arts, and
honorary member of the American Electro-
Therapeutic Association, the Telephone Society
of Pennsylvania, the Telephone Society of New
England, and the Telephone Society of New
York.
He is a member of the Friendly Sons of St.
Patrick and the American-Irish Historical
Society; belongs to the Baltusrol and the Casino
Clubs of Short Hills, and to the Engineers',
Electric and Railroad Clubs of New York.
In 1891 he married Miss Marion Mount
Russell, of the Irish family of Russells and the
the English Mounts, which has been distin-
guished in the annals of the stage, the only
present representative of which now upon the
stage is Miss Annie Russell. He lives at Short
Hills, N.J., and has one son, John Russell Carty,
a youth of twenty-one years.
FREDERICK SIMPSON DEITRICK
Deitrick, Frederick Simpson, lawyer and
member of Congress, was bom at -New Brighton,
Pa., on April 9, 1875, being the son of Frederick
A. and Louisa (McKnight) . Deitrick. His
father was in the railroad business. Frederick
Simpson Deitrick attended Geneva College,
from which he received the degree of B.S. He
then began the study of law at the Harvard
Law School, graduated with the class of 1897
and was given the degree of LL.B. Admitted
to the Suffolk Bar in 1899, he has since engaged
in general practice, becoming also a member of
the United States District and Circuit Court Bar.
Mr. Deitrick represented Cambridge in the
State Legislature for three terms, 1903, 1904
and 1905. He was the Democratic candidate
for Congress in 1906. Although defeated, he
270
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
polled an unusually large vote, when it is re-
membered that normally the district is strongly
Republican. In 1912, however, he was suc-
cessful in his contest with Frederick Dallinger,
the Republican candidate, and was elected to
Congress.
Congressman Deitrick's home in Cambridge
is on Massachusetts Avenue. His law offices are
on State Street, Boston. He is a member of
the Bar Association of Boston.
CHARLES R. GRECO
Greco, Charles R., architect, was bom in
Cambridge on the 15th of October, 1873, being
the son of Letterio and Catherine (Raggio)
Greco. He attended the pubHc schools of this
CH.-^RLES R. GRECO
city, and then studied architecture at the Law-
rence Scientific School. After this he entered
the employ of Messrs. Wait and Cutter, with
whom he remained from 1893 to 1899. In the
latter year he became connected with Messrs.
Peabody and Steams. He stayed in their office
until 1907, when he began to practice for himself.
Mr. Greco has made a special study of public
buildings. Among those he has planned might
be mentioned the following, which architectural
critics declare to have been successfully designed,
showing both individuality and practicabiUty :
Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Cambridge;
St. Patrick's Church, Brockton; Church of the
Blessed Sacrament, Jamaica Plain; Thomdike
School, Cambridge; Charles Bulfinch School,
Boston; Cambridge Theatre; Elks' Temple,
Cambridge; Nautical Garden, Revere; Wyeth
Square Fire Station, Cambridge.
RESIDENCE OF CH.\RLES R. GRECO
The professional and social organizations of
which he is a member include the Boston Society
of Architects, Boston Rotar>' Club, CathoHc
Union, Knights of Columbus, Cambridge Board
of Trade and Cambridge Lodge of Elks.
On the 16th of April, 1902, Mr. Greco was
married to Miss Gertmde L. Hennessy. Their
home is at 36 Fresh Pond Parkway in this city,
and Mr. Greco's offices are in Boston, at 8
Beacon Street.
EDWIN BLAISDELL HALE
Hale, Edwin Blaisdell, la\vyer, was bom
at Orford, N.H., on the 16th of June, 1839.
His parents were Aaron and Mary Hale. He
graduated from Dartmouth College with the
degree of A.B. in 1865. He attended the Har-
vard Law School, and in 1875 graduated from
that institution, recei\'ing his degree of LL.B.
Mr. Hale was admitted to the bar on September
15, 1875. Since then, with the exception of a
few years when he was superintendent of schools
^-a-yyo-i^x^ ^Jo-f^K
BIOGRAPHIES
271
in Cambridge, Mr. Hale has been engaged in
the practice of his profession. He is the senior
member of the law firm of Hale and Dickerman,
of Boston. Mr. Hale served in the lower branch
of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1878-1879.
GEORGE HODGES
Hodges, George, dean of the Episcopal Theo-
logical School, was bom at Rome, N.Y., October
6, 1856. He is the son of George Frederick and
Hannah (Bullard) Hodges. He graduated in
1877, and received the degree of A.M. in 1882
from Hamilton College. Western University
gave him the degree of D.D. in 1892, and Hobart
College that of D.C.L. in 1902. He was or-
dained deacon in 1881, and priest in 1882. He
was assistant rector of Calvary Church, Pitts-
burg, from 1881 to 1889, and rector from 1889
to 1894. Dr. Hodges has been dean of the
Theological School since 1894. He is president
of the Associated Charities and the Cambridge
South End House. Dr. Hodges has written
many books and articles dealing with religion
and ethics.
ROBERT NOXON TOPPAN
ToppAN, Robert Noxon, writer on histor-
ical, economic and monetary subjects, was bom
in Philadelphia, Pa., October 17, 1836, being the
son of Charles and Laura Ann Toppan. His
early education was received in his native city
and in New York, whither the family had re-
moved when he was twelve years old. He
graduated from Harvard in 1858, and from the
Columbia Law School in 1861. He entered a
New York law office, but never practised. The
following years, until 1880, were spent in Europe
with his family. He came back to America
that year, and on October 6th married Miss
Sarah Moody Cushing of Newburyport. They
went abroad, and after their return settled in
Cambridge in 1882. Of the marriage four
children were bom: Laura N., November 17,
1881; Fanny Cushing (now Mrs. Benjamin
Hurd of New Jersey), August 26, 1883 ; Cushing,
November 25, 1886; and Charies Frederick,
May 28, 1889.
Mr. Toppan devoted his time to the study of
history and economics, taking an especial inter-
est in civil service reform and international
coinage. Besides many pamphlets on monetary
questions, his works include an extensive biog-
raphy of Edward Randolph and a collection
of biographies of natives of Newburyport. He
was a member of the Numismatic and Anti-
quarian Society of Philadelphia. Among the
other organizations to which he belonged are the
Massachusetts Historical Society, the American
Antiquarian Society, the Colonial Society of
Massachusetts, and the Century Club of New
York.
In order to further the study of PoUtical
Science, a subject which engaged much of his
attention, he gave Harvard College one hundred
and fifty dollars annually from 1880 to 1894,
when he made a gift of three thousand dollars,
the income from which is used for the Toppan
Prize.
Mr. Toppan died May 10, 1901.
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
JOSEPH GOODNOW
GooDNOw, Joseph, lumber merchant, son of
Luther and Sally (Abbott) Goodnow, was born
in vSudbury, Mass., June 16, 1814, and attended
the district school there. He left his home in
Sudbury in 1835, on reaching his majority, and
engaged in the lumber business, becoming the
senior member of the firm of Joseph Goodnow
& Co., Boston. He was married in Boston,
November 30, 1842, to Lucia M., daughter of
Nathaniel and Hannah (Maynard) Rice, of
Sudbury, Mass.
Mr. Goodnow was a member of the Central
Square Baptist Church in Cambridge, and in
1871 was elected a deacon of the society, and
was re-elected in 1881. He served as trustee
of Tremont Temple of Boston for many years,
JOSEPH GOODNOW
and in his home church. At the close of Sunday
School service on January 29, 1882, a stroke
of apoplexy caused his death. The Central
Square Baptist Church Society lost a servant
who had worked faithfully for a generation.
He is survived by Ella Josephine Boggs, born
August 8, 1847; she was married January 12,
1875, to Edwin P. Boggs.
EDWIN P. BOGGS
Boggs, Edwin P., a prominent resident of
this city, was bom in Philadelphia. His father,
Francis P. Boggs, a captain in the merchant
marine, afterwards came to Cambridge to live.
Edwin decided on a mercantile career. Engaged
in the wholesale ,L,'roccry trade, Mr. Boggs was
EDWIN P. BOGGS
also interested in lumber and shipping; four
or five schooners belonged to him. He was
connected with Richardson & Bacon until that
firm was absorbed by the Bay State Fuel Com-
pany, of which he then became a member. At
the time of his death, Mr. Boggs was the owner
of the concern of Joseph Goodnow & Company.
Well known as a yachtsman, Mr. Boggs had
been commodore of the Massachusetts Yacht
Club, and when it was consolidated with the
Hull Yacht Club, he was elected to the same
office in the latter organization. He was a
member of the Oak Bluffs and the New Bedford
Yachting Association ; the Oakley Country Club
and the Boston Athletic Association; and the
old Union, the Colonial and the Cambridge
Clubs, of this city.
Mr. Boggs died at Falmouth, August 12, 1910,
being survived by his wife, son and daughter.
THE HARRY ELKINS WIDENER LIBRARY
Gore Hall was disgracefvilly inadequate for
the needs of America's oldest and greatest uni-
versity. This old building, since 1841 the college
library, has been demolished, and the Harry
Elkins Widener Memorial Library will supersede
it.
Harvard gets this gift through the generosity
of the mother of Harry Elkins Widener. She
lost her husband and her son in the wreck of
the Titanic. The husband, George D. Widener,
was the son of P. A. B. Widener, whose gener-
osity has been shown in many ways in and about
course of a few years was to become one of the
finest collections of rare books in the world.
Harry Elkins Widener, with his father, George
D. Widener, was a passenger on the Titanic, of
fateful memory. The young bibliophile had
been pursuing his favorite quest in Europe —
the search for books of sufficient value to have
a place in his Hbrary. Among the rarities he
had acquired was a first edition of Bacon's
Essays. He prized the little volume so highly
that he refused to entrust it to the mails, and
carried it in his pocket on that trip across the
FRONT ELEVATION
Philadelphia, the home city of the Widener
family. Mrs. Widener is the daughter of the
late William Elkins.
^ Harry Elkins Widener was bom in Phila-
delphia in 1885, prepared for college at the High
School at Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and was
graduated from Harvard with the class of 1907.
He was well-known at college and became a
member of the Institute of 1770, the Delta
Kappa Epsilon, the Phi Delta Psi, the Hasty
Pudding Club and other student organizations.
The Harvard librarians knew that this under-
graduate was interested in books, but they did
not realize that this youth just starting the
twenties was already beginning what in the
Atlantic which ended in the disaster of April,
1912. The copy of the famous Essays went
down with this lover of books to his grave in
the sea.
There is a certain poetic fitness in the asso-
ciation of books and collector even in death;
for Harry Elkins Widener lived with his books
as few men have ever done. His library was
his bedroom, and his waking gaze fell upon his
cherished companions.
After his death it became known that he had
bequeathed his collection to Harvard College.
What are the books which made his collection
famous? To list them all would be impossible.
In 1910 he issued privately a handsome catalogue
274
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
of which one hundred and two copies were
printed. Harvard has the copy numbered
twenty-five. Since that Hst was made the col-
lector had acqiiired many very valuable works,
one of which is said to have cost him $25,000.
A turning of the pages of the catalogue shows,
however, that his library contained rare first
editions, "association books" (volumes valuable
because of the authors who have owned them,
the inscriptions they contain, or the history of
came from Watts-Dtmton, the literary executor
of Swinburne.
There are large collections of drawings by
Cruikshank, a volume of unpublished sketches
by Aubrey Beardsley, and, not to mention any
others, a book which the collector used to show
with laughter to his friends. This was a presen-
tation copy of the Ingoldsby Legends from the
author to his friend, E. R. Moran. It happened
that one of the pages had been left blank, and
^ ^ r r rTf"" r r r r If r
IDE ELEVATIUX, MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE
their vicissitudes), extra-illustrated books, and a
certain nuinber of manuscripts. He owned the
four folios of Shakespeare, first editions of the
"Fairie Queene," of Ben Johnson's works, of
"Robinson Crusoe," of "Gulliver's Travels,"
of "The Vicar of Wakefield," of the "Elegy in
a Country Churchyard," and others almost as
famous. There were first editions and presenta-
tion copies of Dickens, Thackeray, Browning,
Tennyson and Stevenson, and many manuscripts
from the period to which these writers belonged.
The assembly of books by and about "R. L. S."
was probably unique. Here is all that Steven-
son ever wrote toward his autobiography, the
original manuscript in a quarto blank book.
There are autograph manuscripts of Swin-
burne, including the pamphlet of 1872, in reply
to Robert Buchanan's "The Fleshly School of
Poetry," on one page of which appears the
famous passage attacking Tennyson — a passage
which was at once suppressed. Only three
copies of the original leaf are known; this one
here in the author's autograph appear these lines
of clever verse:
"By a blunder for which I have only to thank
Myself, here's a page has been somehow left
blank.
Aha! My friend Moran, I have you. You'll
look
In vain for a fault in ONE page of my book."
THOS. INGOLDSBY.
These books make many times over the most
valuable bequest the Harvard Library has re-
ceived since 1638, when it was established by
the modest bequest of three hundred and seventy
books from John Harvard, for whom the uni-
versity was named.
The Widener bequest called attention once
more to the insufficiencies of Gore Hall. Mrs.
Widener immediately proposed to erect a suitable
building or wing in which to shelter her son's
books. Then she was shown the opporttmity
which had come to her for rendering a vast
service to scholarship and education, and she
EDUCATIONAL
275
notified President Lowell that she would like
to provide Harvard with the long-awaited
library, a building to contain all the books of
the college and to afford room for growth.
The new building will have a capacity for
2,500,000 volumes, almost five times the number
which could be stored in Gore Hall. Thus the
stack space will be about the same as that in
the new Fifth Avenue building of the New York
Public Library. The building will cover a little
more groimd space than the Public Library in
Copley Square, Boston, and the reading room
will contain about one hundred more square feet
than the Bates Hall Reading Room in the Boston
building.
At the very heart of the great fire-proof struct-
ure of brick and limestone which is to be erected
immediately in the Harvard College yard will
be the large room in which will be installed the
Widener collection, the library of rare volimies
which had given Harry Elkins Widener his
honorable place among the great bibliophiles
of the world. Access to the collection will be
through the Widener Memorial Hall, a room
forty by thirty-two feet, and lighted on each
side by a court. Then on each side of the Wid-
ener collection will be rooms in which are to be
placed the large accimiulation of precious manu-
scripts and priceless volumes which already
belong to Harvard, and which for years were
sheltered in Gore Hall in what was called the
Treasure Room.
Briefly, these are the dimensions and the ar-
rangements of the new structure. It wiU face
the interior of the college yard and the main
entrance will be directly south of Appleton
Chapel, the college church. The ground cov-
ered measures two hundred and six by two hun-
dred and seventy-five feet, the longest dimension
being north and south. Outside of this dimen-
sion of two hundred and seventy-five feet come
the imposing flight of steps, descending from
the first floor to the yard, and the Corinthian
colonnade.
The principal facade is to be most impressive.
Twelve Corinthian colvmins, each forty feet
high, rest on a portico of one hundred and
twenty-eight feet, which extends along the front
of the building, reached by the steps from the
ground twelve feet below. On each side of the
porlico are one large and several small windows,
and back of it are the main entrance doors to
the library. The long facades also are most
handsome, with porticoes carrying four columns
surmounted by well-proportioned pediments at
each end. The rear or Massachusetts Avenue
front will also be attractive and dignified and
will have an entrance.
The lowest or basement floor of the building
rises from the ground to the level of the portico.
There are on this floor large special reading
rooms for the departments of history, govern-
ment and economics, accommodating about
one hundred and fifty students. Also, here are
work-rooms for the staff, a rest room and a
limch room for the women employes of the
library, together with apartments designed for
dupHcate books, the archives of the university,
the quinquennial catalogues, and a large news-
paper room.
Now comes the first or main floor, on the level
of the portico and main entrance. Here the
memorial feature has its most imposing illus-
tration. The visitor will pass through the doors
into a vestibule, which opens into a great en-
trance haU, and this in turn leads to the
Widener Memorial HaU. There is an intima-
tion in one of the blueprint drawings that
a bust of Harry Elkins Widener will have a
place here.
Beyond is the room for the Widener collec-
tion, flanked by the rooms for the reception of
the contents of the present Gore Hall treasure
room. Further back comes a great open court,
fifty-two feet by one himdred and twelve feet,
which will provide light for the interior of the
building. At the right and left of the main
entrance are the offices of the chiefs of the
library staff, and in the northeast comer a group
of rooms for cataloguing and other work of the
library.
At the head of the stairs, on the second floor,
will be the card catalogue room, and back of it
the delivery room where books will be given out,
this much after the manner of the Boston and
New York Public Libraries. Then on the north
side, facing the college yard, extending from east
to west one hundred and thirty-six feet, and
going up through three stories of the building,
is the main reading room, with seats for three
hundred and seventy-five students. At each
end of this large room will be a special reading
276
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
room, and there are other smaller reading rooms
scattered about the building.
The next or mezzanine floor contains a large
art and archaeology room and a map room.
On the top floor are the bindery, a photographing
room, special quarters for the Classical Ubrary,
the English library, the library of the Romance
department, and other collections, and, running
around three sides of the building, a series of
twenty or more rooms of various sizes for semi-
naries where instructors can meet their classes
and have their reference books near at hand.
These rooms come above the book stacks, which
stop at the level of this floor.
These "stacks," the cases in which the books
of all great libraries are kept, extend, roughly
speaking, around the east, south and west sides
of the building. They will be Hghted by win-
dows on the outside and on the three open
coiu-ts in the interior of the building. Expected
to hold about two millions and a half of books,
they would make, laid down on one level, about
fifty-nine miles of shelves. The stacks are about
thirty feet in width. They run from the base-
ment to the third floor, but for convenience of
access are themselves divided into seven floors.
Thus, at last Harvard's library is to take the
place in the eyes of the world which long it has
held in the estimation of those who have expert
information about books. There are but three
Ubraries in the United States which contain
more volumes than Harvard's, namely, the
Congressional Library in Washington, the Public
Library of New York City, and the Boston
PubHc Library.
A word should be said about the treasiires
which Harvard wiU deposit in the rooms that
are to flank, at each side, the room which will
contain the Widener collection. In the fire-
proof quarters built in Gore Hall for the keep-
ing of these precious things were to be seen
beautiful specimens of early printing, many
examples of the work of the famous presses of
the Middle Ages, books printed on velltim and
on parchment, illviminated books, rare Bibles
and office books, and such splendid rarities as
Racine's New Testament — fit companion to
Samuel Johnson's New Testament which comes
to Harvard with the Widener gift — Milton's
Pindar and Bunyan's Bible; a quantity of
Carlyle books with his blunt notes and com-
ments all over their pages; a copy of the Aphor-
isms of Hippocrates in the Greek character,
worth, perhaps, $7,000; such priceless original
manuscripts as that of Bvuns' "Scots Who Hae
wi' Wallace Bled," and Shelley's "Ode to a
Skylark " ; nature books covered with the dainty
drawings of the poet Thomas Gray; an auto-
graph book containing a Milton signatvue and
"sentiment," and himdreds more.
Now Harvard's treasures will have their fitting
home. But not all the books owned by the
university will go into this new building: the
Harvard libraries contain about 1,000,000 books
and 500,000 pamphlets, and many of these are
in the libraries of the law school, the medical
school, the divinity school, and the other de-
partments that combine to make the university.
There were in Gore HaU about 500,000 volumes;
about 150,000 additional volumes are scattered
about in various buildings belonging to the col-
lege. These 650,000 volumes and some 400,000
pamphlets, which make up the college library
proper, wiU be placed in the Widener building.
Thus the new structiire will take care of the
library needs for many years. The special
libraries of the departments will remain where
they are.
EDUCATIONAL
277
RADCLIFFE COLLEGE
In 1879, the Society for the Collegiate Instruc-
tion oj Women was organized for the purpose
of providing systematic instruction for women
by professors and other instructors in Harvard
University. The work thus begun was carried
on with increasing success, but in no official
relation with the University, untU 1894, when
the name of the Society was changed, by act of
the General Court of Massachusetts, to Radclife
College. By the same act Radcliffe College is
authorized "to furnish instruction and the op-
portimities of collegiate life to women, and to
Radcliffe College may deem it wise to confer,
and the said President and Fellows of Harvard
College may consent to assume."
Under this provision, and with the consent
of the Board of Overseers, the President and
Fellows of Harvard College have been constituted
the Board of Visitors of Radcliffe College; and
they have authorized the President to counter-
sign the diplomas of Radcliffe College and to
affix to them the seal of Harvard University.
The administration of the affairs of Radcliffe
College and the powers and functions of all its
EXTERIOR OF NEW LIBRARY
promote their higher education"; and "to con-
fer on women all honors and degrees as fully as
any vmiversity or college in this Commonwealth
is now so empowered respecting men or women,
— provided, however, that no degree shall be so
conferred by the said Radcliffe College except
with the approval of the President and Fellows
of Harvard College, given on satisfactory evi-
dence of such qualification as is accepted for
the same degree when conferred by Harvard
University." Further, "it may confer at any
time upon the President and Fellows of Harvard
College such powers of visitation and of direc-
tion and control over its management as the said
officers are subject to the direction and control
of the Board of Visitors, and no instructor or
examiner can be appointed, employed, or re-
tained, without their approval.
The immediate government of the College
is vested in a Council and an Academic Board.
The Council, consisting of the President, the
Dean, and the Chairman of the Academic Board,
with seven other members chosen by the Asso-
ciates, each for the term of seven years, has gen-
eral control of all the affairs of the College, in-
cluding the educational work, the government
of the students, and the conferring of degrees.
The Chairman of the Academic Board must be
278
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
a member of the Factdty of Arts and Sciences
of Harvard University, and his election is sub-
ing members are appointed annually by the
Associates, subject to the express approval of
FAY HOUSE FROM YARD
ject to the express approval of the Board of
Visitors. The President and Dean are ex-officio
members of the Academic Board. The remain-
the Board of Visitors, from the teachers or Asso-
ciates of RadclifCe College who are also members
of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard.
EDUCATIONAL
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
THE BROWNE AND NICHOLS SCHOOL
Impressed with the necessity for a thorough
and progressive school for boys in Cambridge,
Prof. Child, Prof. Norton, and others, in the
fall of 1882, gave their encouragement and
patronage to a small private class formed with
a, view to the estabhshment of such a school.
With the co-operation of the late Edgar H.
Nichols, the result was the organization the
next year, at No. 11 Appian Way, of the Browne
and Nichols School. The school was imme-
diately successful, and in September, 1885,
moved to more commodious quarters at No. 8
Garden Street, opposite the playground on the
t^%
Wii>
A
iiii%.'
m
^
1
B mi
m
~
.. _^ . .
Common. In 1887 the gymnasium was built
and equipped by Dr. Sargent. A new building,
now owned and used by RadclifEe College, was
built in the rear. Experience satisfactorily
tested the superior Hghting, heating, and venti-
lating of this building, and proved that in every
detail it was admirably adapted to the growing
needs of the School. Accordingly, in 1897,
when the School moved to its present site, on
the corner of Berkeley Street (then Phillips
Place), the main features of this building were
reproduced in the present substantial brick
building. The gymnasium is in the basement;
and the hall on the third story has the best
dancing floor in Cambridge.
The School was originally called a "Fitting
and Developing School for Boys." It was
designed, however, not to be a mere fitting
school, but to be a school in which the pupils
should be trained to think for themselves. The
founders believed that a school, to accomplish
this end, must be kept small enough to enable
the teachers to do a great deal of individual
work with the pupils. They also believed that
the work of the different departments should
be more evenly divided than had been custom-
ary, and consequently adopted at the start a
course of study that gave to science, history,
English and other modem languages, as much
time as to classics and mathematics.
They soon found that great economy of time
and effort would result from beginning with
younger boys, and they formed a preparatory
department, which, while kept as distinct as
may be from the upper school, has enabled the
teachers to plan continuous work for the whole
course. This department is now tmder the
supervision of Mr. William C. Gerrish. He is
ably assisted by Mr. Augustus H. Smith, who
directs the physical activities of the junior de-
partment on Nichols Field, the new playground
adjoining the Metropolitan Park, on the river,
opposite Soldiers' Field.
This ideally situated playground, only a few
minutes' walk from the School, provides not
only home-grounds for football and baseball
games, but an afternoon rallying place for the
whole School, with ample facilities; also for
tennis, basketball, running, jumping, and other
field sports. The river offers opportunities for
boating and other water and ice sports. The
locker building, equipped with the latest and
best appliances, provides room for indoor games
and exercises in inclement weather, and also
study-rooms for all-day pupils. In fact, this
Nichols Memorial is not a mere arena for com-
petitive sports, but an attractive outdoor center,
EDUCATIONAL
in winter as well as in spring and fall, for the
natural development of those physical and social
activities that are such an important adjunct
to the more intellectual training of the class-
room.
In 1912 the School was incorporated with the
follov/ing Board of Directors: Prof. F. Lowell
Kennedy, president; George H. Browne, clerk;
Rev. Willard Reed, treasurer; Dr. Joseph L.
Goodale, and Lawrence G. Brooks, Esq. Mr.
Reed, joint-principal, an old teacher in the
School, whose experience in dealing with things
and men in business and in church, in addition
to his resourceful educational activities, fits him
exceptionally for administrative school service,
has introduced up-to-date business methods
to the increased prosperity of the new School.
Though the School now offers the advantages
of a country day-school, it is still true to its old
traditions, which set inteUectual and moral
considerations above athletic and social; and
consequently it still maintains the aims that
have hitherto distinguished it for thirty years:
sound methods, high standards, permanent in-
terest in work.
The Staff, 1912-1913.— Principals: George
H. Browne (A.M. Harvard), 23 Chaimcy St.,
English, Latin; Rev. Willard Reed (A.M. Har-
vard), 103 Walker St., History, Greek, Latin.
Masters: Frederick Phillips Smith (A.B. Har-
vard), 3 Walker Terrace, French, Latin; Harry
Davis Gaylord (S.B. Harvard), 98 Hemenway
St., Boston, Mathematics, Physics; George
Courtright Greener (E.M. in CER., Ohio State
University, '07), 39 North Bennett St., or 198
Clarendon St., Boston, Arts and Crafts, Sloyd;
William Churchill Gerrish (A.B. Harvard),
Winthrop Hall, Junior Department and History;
Augustus Henry Smith (A.B. Harvard), 1 West
St., Arlington Heights, Natural Science and
Physical Training in the Junior Department,
German, and Faculty Director of Athletics; Alton
Lombard Miller (A.B. Harvard), 36 Dana St.,
Chemistry; Edwin Martin Chamberlin, Jr.,
2 Avon St., Assistant in the Junior Department;
Miss Bertha C. Eaton, Registrar and Secretary.
WYETH SQUARE FIRE STATION
282
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
FINANCIAL
Cambridge has long been fortunate in the
character and financial standing of its banks.
While a considerable number of its citizens do
business in Boston, and naturally make use of
financial institutions of that city, there is still
a large volume of local business which the
Cambridge banks are called upon to handle.
It is gratifying to be able to state that these
institutions have done far more than merely
await the business that might be brought them
by the merchants and manufacturers of the city.
They have in many instances shown an inclina-
tion to aid actively in the development of the
city by offering accommodations for intending
borrowers and other facilities that are necessary
to the upbuilding of a modem community.
No factor is more potent in the life of a twentieth
century city than its banks. Large enterprises
are dependent to no small extent upon their
good-will, and they frequently have the making
or breaking of a city in their hands. In Cam-
bridge this power has been exercised wisely
and with a keen appreciation of the duty owed by
the bank to the community of which it is a part.
The banking facilities of Cambridge include
four trust companies, two national banks and
four savings banks. These institutions are all
favorably located in the business centers of their
respective sections. They have all attained
that degree of stability which comes with long
years of successful business life. Their deposits
total far into the millions, and their resources
are much more than sufficient to meet their
liabilities. Their money is loaned ver\' largely
on Cambridge securities, and they are closely
interwoven with the life of the citv.
The organization of the Harvard Bank was
first suggested by Benjamin Tilton, who had
been for some years a director in the Cambridge
Bank and president of the Cambridgeport
Savings Bank. The desired capital of $200,000
was soon subscribed, and the first meeting of the
stockholders was held at the City Hall, Novem-
ber 3d, 1860. The largest subscribers were
Benjamin Tilton and Wilkinson, Stetson & Co.
for one hundred shares each. Other large sub-
scribers were Harvard College, Cambridgeport
Savings Bank, New England Mutual Life In-
surance Company, Isaac Livermore, George
Livermore, Edward Hyde, Newell Bent, Alanson
Bigelow, John Sargent, Charles Wood, Daniel
U. Chamberlin, Z. L. Raymond, Lewis Colby,
William A. Saunders, Charles Theodore Russell,
George P. Carter, George Fisher, A. E. Hildreth,
John Livermore, J. Warren Merrill, Ira Stratton,
Rev. William A. Stearns, Emerj^ Willard and
Robert Waterson.
After ratifying the Articles of Agreement,
the stockholders elected the first Board of
Directors, twelve in nvmiber, as follows: Ben-
jamin Tilton, Z. L. Raymond, Lewis Colby,
George Livermore, John Sargent, Estes Howe,
William A. Saunders, Alanson Bigelow, Newell
Bent, Edward Hyde, Daniel U. Chamberlin and
Charles Wood.
This Board of Directors met November 7th,
1860, when Benjamin Tilton was elected Presi-
dent. It was decided to secure banking rooms
in the Dowse Building, so called, on the comer
of Main and Prospect Streets.
At a meeting of the Directors held December
17th, Willard A. Bullard was unanimously
elected cashier and Edward G. Dyke messenger
and bookkeeper.
On January 14th, 1861, the Directors voted
to open the bank for business on March 1st.
President Lincoln's inauguration was to take
place March 4th. Predictions were freely made
that he would never hold office. Threats of
secession were rife, business was unsettled, the
country was in a condition of intense excitement.
In view of this, it was thought wise to postpone
the opening of the bank. The morning of
March 5th was selected, if a government were
then in existence. The President having been
peacefully inaugurated, the Bank was opened
for business the next morning. On the day
preceding, the special Commissioners appointed
FINANCIAL
hy the Governor came to Cambridge with specie
scales and satisfied themselves, in the presence
of the Directors, that the entire capital, $200,000
had been paid in, and was lying before them in
gold coins of standard weight. This formality
was then reqiiired by law.
The Harvard Bank was among the first to
offer a loan to the State. This was done im-
mediately after^news came of the attack upon
Commonwealth of Massachusetts,
Treasiu-er's Office,
Boston, April 24th, 1861.
Benj. Tilton, Esq.,
Prisident Harvard Bank, Cambridgeport
Dear Sir: Your communication of the 22d
inst., containing the offer of your Bank of a loan
of $50,000, has been placed in my hands by His
Excellency, Gov. Andrew, for reply. He desires
THE HARVARD TRUST COMPANY
Fort Sumter. The correspondence was as
follows :
Harvard Bank, Cambridgeport, Mass.
April 22d, 1861.
To His Excellency, John A. Andrew,
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Sir: At a meeting of the Directors of the
Harvard Bank, held this evening, a fuU Board
being present, it was unanimously voted that,
in consideration of the present condition of the
covmtry and the necessity for prompt action,
the President be authorized to tender a loan of
fifty thousand dollars to the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts. In compHance with said
vote, I have the pleasure to notify Your Ex-
cellency that the Harvard Bank will hold itself
ready to respond in that amount to the call of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
I am, sir, very respectfully,
Benj. Tilton,
President Harvard Bank.
me to express to your Board of Directors his
sincere gratitude for the intelligent patriotism
which has prompted yoiu" liberality.
No immediate necessity existing for its instant
acceptance, I am directed to say, as has already
been done in the case of other similar offers,
that, with your permission, he will hold your
offer in reserve for such future emergency as
may arise.
Very truly yours,
Henry K. Oliver,
Treasurer and Receiver General.
A dividend of three per cent, was paid on
October 1st, 1861, less than seven months from
the opening of the bank ; and from that time to
the present, dividends have been maintained
varying in amount from six to twelve per cent,
per annum. The amoimt of money thus dis-
bursed to the stockholders to the present time
has been, in dividends and profits, $997,000,
or nearly five times the capital.
On March 10th, 1864, the Directors appointed
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
a Committee to consider the expediency of
seeking a charter under the National banking
law. Four days later this Committee reported,
closing its report with these words:
If the Directors are of the opinion that it is
best to make the change and wish to be the First
National Bank of Cambridge, your Committee
recommend immediate action with regard to it.
Benj. Tilton,
Signed, Charles Wood, Committee.
Alanson Bigelow.
This prompt action secured for the Bank all
the advantages accruing from becoming "The
First National Bank of Cambridge."
On April 25th, 1864, the stockholders voted
that "The Harvard Bank do become an asso-
ciation for carrying on the business of banking
under the laws of the United States."
The bank began business as The First National
Bank of Cambridge, June 1st, 1864, under a
charter expiring February 25th, 1883. Although
the deposits in the Harvard Bank had seldom
exceeded $75,000, the profit and loss accoimt
at the date of changing to a National Bank
showed net profits of $67,971, $41,000 of which
had been paid to the stockholders in dividends
of from six to eight per cent, per anmmi.
About this time the bank was made a deposi-
tory for U.S. Government fimds.
In December, 1875, the bank removed, across
Prospect Street, to its second home, comer of
Main and Prospect Streets.
The first of the original Board of Directors
of the Harvard Bank to be removed by death
was George Livermore, who died in 1865. Ben-
jamin Tilton, who had served as President from
the beginning, died November 23d, 1882. His
administration of nearly twenty-two years had
been eminently successfvd, and his loss was
severely felt by his associates in the Board of
Directors. At a meeting of the Directors held
November 27th, the vacancy in the Board of
Directors caused by Mr. Tilton's death was
filled by the election of his oldest son, Henry N.
Tilton. He did faithful and valuable service
until his death in 1904. He was a member of
the Board the same length of time as his father,
between twenty-one and twenty-two years.
Daniel U. Chamberlin was elected successor
to Benjamin Tilton, as president, January 9th,
1883. Mr. Chamberlin discharged his duties
as president with marked ability until his death
June 14th, 1898.
Willard A. Bullard, who had held office as
cashier from the opening of the Harvard Bank,
was elected president June 21st, 1898, and Walter
F. Earle, who had been for some years an efficient
officer of the bank, was elected successor to Mr.
Bullard, as cashier.
For several years before action was taken,
the advisability of becoming a Trust Company
under the laws of this Commonwealth had been
discussed from time to time. It was finally
decided to apply to the Savings Bank Commis-
sioner for a charter to do business as a Trust
Company. It was resolved to revive the original
name "Harvard," and to call the new corpora-
tion the Harvard Trust Company. This peti-
tion was granted. On July 8th, 1904, at a
meeting of the stockholders. By-laws were
adopted and officers of the Harvard Trust Com-
pany elected as follows:
Directors: Henry Endicott, Erasmus D.
Leavitt, Frederick W. Tilton, Willard A. Bullard,
William W. Dallinger, Albert M. Barnes, Frank
A. Kennedy. President — Willard A. Bullard;
Vice-president, Erasmus D. Leavitt; Clerk,
Walter F. Earle.
The Directors then elected Walter F. Earle
treasurer. On July 14th, 1904, the charter was
issued.
At a meeting of the stockholders of the First
National Bank, held August 5th, 1904, it was
resolved, two-thirds of the capital stock of the
Association being represented, that the First
National Bank of Cambridge be placed in volun-
tary liquidation, under the provision of Sections
5220 and 5221 U.S. Revised Statutes, to take
effect August 6th, 1904.
Caleb Wood served as a Director of the First
National Bank from 1870 to 1877, having suc-
ceeded Charles Wood. Dana W. Hyde served
as Director more than twenty-five years, having
succeeded Caleb Wood in that office. He died
in June, 1903. Edward Hyde died in 1885, and
Joseph A. Holmes held office, as his successor,
till his own death in 1893.
The Harvard Trust Company opened for
business on August 8th, 1904, in the old rooms.
It had already been decided to lease suitable
banking rooms from the Cambridgeport Sa\dngs
FINANCIAL
285
Bank in its new building, then in process of
erection.
On July 29th, 1904, it was definitely decided
to establish and maintain Safety Deposit Vaults.
As the result of the liquidation of the First
National Bank by the Harvard Trust Company,
its liquidating agent, the stockholders received
the par value of their stock and sixty-five per
cent, in addition. Semi-annual dividends had
been paid regularly during the life of the Bank.
Almost without exception the old stockholders
transferred their interest to the Harvard Trust
Company, taking the new stock at $150 per
share. This enabled the new company to begin
business with a surplus of $100,000, or fifty per
cent, of its capital.
The business was transferred to the present
commodious and well appointed banking rooms
in the Savings Bank Building on Satvirday,
August 1 1th, 1906. On the opening of the doors
at eight o'clock that morning, several customers
were in waiting, each desiring to make the first
deposit. This distinction fell to G. C. W. Fuller,
who had been a depositor for more than forty
years, having had an account in the Harvard
Bank. The Safety Vault Department was opened
at this time, many renters having selected boxes
before the removal. The demand for boxes since
that time has far exceeded expectations and has
necessitated the addition of two nests of boxes,
each nearly as large as that originally provided.
In addition to its regular banking business,
the Harvard Trust Company acts as adminis-
trator, executor, trustee, guardian, etc., and
already has in its care trust property to the value
of more than $400,000.
It is of interest to mention that the outlay
for adequate vault and safe accommodations
with fittings, etc., when the Harvard Bank com-
menced business was $675.
Corresponding conveniences for the Harvard
Trust Company, including its safety vaults,
involved the expenditure of $50,000.
It is worthy of note that from the beginning
in 1861 only four persons have held the office
of president, the change in each case being
caused by the death of the incumbent ; and only
three persons have held the office of cashier or
treasurer, the changes being caused by the
promotion of the incumbent.
The following table may be of interest as an
indication of the growth of Cambridge and of
the business of the Bank:
The amount on deposit in
Harvard Bank, October, 1861, $33,000
First National Bank, October, 1870, 152,000
1880, 534,000
1890, 769,000
" • " " 1900, 1,060,000
Harvard Trust Company, October,
1910, 2,055,000
The record of the Company during the half-
century is an honorable one. Devotion, loyalty
and strict honesty have been marked charac-
teristics of its officers and employees in the past,
and are equally so, we think, today. It has
been and still is the aim, so far as prudence will
allow, to use the resources of the Company
locally, helping those who need and deserve aid
from time to time in carrying on and developing
business in Cambridge. The Company enjoys
the confidence of the community and will make
every effort to administer its affairs in such a
way as to retain this confidence.
The present officers are: Walter F. Earle,
president; Erasmus D. Leavitt, vice-president;
Herbert H. Dyer, treasurer. The Directors are:
Walter F. Earle, Henry Endicott, William W.
Dallinger, Erasmus D. Leavitt, Frederick W.
Tilton, Albert M. Barnes, Frank A. Kennedy,
Edward D. Whitford, Warren H. Dunning,
John H. Corcoran.
Mr. Bullard died November 12, 1912, and
was succeeded by Walter F. Earle, November
19, 1912.
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MAvSSACHUSETTS
The Cambridge Sa\'ings Bank, the oldest
savings bank in this city, and indeed one of the
oldest in this section of the State, was incorpo-
rated in 1834, beginning business in 1835. The
bank occupies a handsome building at 15 Dun-
ster Street, a few steps from Harvard Square,
in the center of a very large business, and whose
assets total $7,449,404 . 09. During its existence
the institution has enjoyed a period of uninter-
rupted prosperity and has done splendid work
in inculcating and encouraging the habit of
saving in the community. During its existence
assistant treasurer, Arthur H. Boardman, has
likewise had a long and honorable service,
having been connected with the bank twenty-
five years. The receiving teller, Henry A.
Nichols, has seen fourteen years of service.
During the past six years the bank has paid
interest at the rate of four per cent, per year,
which rate has been exceeded only by a few of
the well-conducted savings banks in Massa-
chusetts. It has a total of 17,254 depositors.
Its accommodations for the expeditious transac-
tion of business are not excelled by any bank in
ilil iSKi El# '■' -^' *■
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CAMBRIDGE SAVINGS BANK
IS DUNSTER STREET. HARVARD SQUARE
it has enjoyed the services of some of the leading
men in the community and has had specially
good fortune in the length of time in which its
capable officials have held office. The first
president of the bank was Asahel Steams, who
was followed in turn by Levi Farwell, Simon
Greenleaf, Sidney Willard, Jacob H. Bates,
Charles C. Little, Charles Beck, Stephen T.
Farwell, John B. Dana, Charles W. Sever, Dr.
John T. G. Nichols and Dr. Edward R. Cogs-
well, the present (1913) head of the institution.
The treasurer, Oscar F. Allen, has been connected
with the bank for thirty-six years, holding the
present position during thirty years. The
this city. Its present officers are president,
Edward R. Cogswell; treasurer, Oscar P. AUen;
assistant treasurer, Arthur H. Boardman; teller,
Henry A. Nichols; vice-presidents, Enoch
Beane and Harrie E. Mason; with the following
board of trustees: Edwin Dresser, Franklin
Perrin, Stephen W. Driver, John H. Hubbard,
Frederick Worcester, James F. Pennell, Leslie
N. Brock, Oscar F. Allen, John C. Dow, Ekner
W. Billings, Arthur H. Boardman, George W.
Claflin, Parker F. Soule, William B. Reid, John
Amee, Thomas Hadley, Joseph H. Beale, Fred
W. Dallinger, Wm. B. M'Coy.
FINANCIAL
One of the gems in the setting of notable
North Cambridge btdldings, is the handsome
home of the North Avenue Savings Bank, at
the comer of Massachusetts Avenue and Porter
Road. The new building occupied by this
bank, which was completed in 1908, is practi-
cally on the site of the original home that the
institution occupied for so many years, and which
was torn down to make way for the new Ma-
sonic Temple.
The North Avenue Savings Bank Building
is a one-story structure of limestone and buff-
faced brick. The banking room is handsomely
finished in mahogany, with a mosaic marble
paid by any savings bank in the State. Interest
is computed quarterly and is payable on Janu-
ary 10th and July 10th of each year.
The North Avenue Savings Bank was in-
corporated in 1872, and was the fourth institu-
tion for savings to be started in the city of
Cambridge. The first officers of the bank were
as follows: President, Samuel F. Woodbridge;
vice-presidents, Jonas C. Wellington, Cornelius.
Dow, W. Fox Richardson, Chandler R. Ransom r.
treasurer, Milton L. Walton; clerk, George W.
Park; trustees, Chester W. Kingsley, Warren
Sanger, Daniel W. Shaw, Person Davis, Henry J.
Melendy, Daniel Fobe, Henry C. Rand, Horatio
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NORTH AVENUE SAVINGS BANK
floor. There is a well-appointed waiting room
for ladies. The security of the institution is
enhanced by new burglar-proof vatdts.
The bank is open for deposits and drafts from
8.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily, and for the special
convenience of customers is open on Saturday
evenings from 6 to 8 p.m.
The North Avenue Savings Bank has pursued
a uniform policy of encouraging savings among
its patrons, and has been as liberal and accom-
modating as any institution of its kind. Its
growth has more than paralleled the growth of
the locality, its deposits having increased from
$49,228 in 1875 to $2,480,766 in January, 1912.
The deposits have stUl further increased during
the year just passed, and on January 1st, 1913,
■ there were 8,270 depositors with total deposits
of $2,619,664.58. The bank pays interest at
the rate of four percent — as high a rate as is
Locke, John Da\'is, John J. Henderson, John
Holman and James H. Collins.
The present officers of the bank are the fol-
lowing: President, Charles F. Stratton; -aice-
president, Warren L. Hooper; treasurer, Milton
L. Walton; clerk, William H. Goodnow. Its
trustees are Charles F. Stratton, Warren L.
Hooper, Milton L. Walton, William E. Hut-
chins, Edward L. Grueby, Phineas Hubbard,
Byron T. Thayer, William J. Mandell, Hon.
Arthur P. Stone, Frank E. Sands, Edward B.
Stratton, Samuel Usher, Henry O. Cutter,
George B. Wason, Charles D. Rice and Charles
F. Hathaway.
It is a matter worthy of note that the present
treasurer, Milton L. Walton, has been the
treasurer of the bank since its incorporation in
1872, a period of forty years.
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
CAMBRIDGE INDUSTRIES
For almost three centuries, her influence
has been exercised throughout the land in the
arts and literature, education and the higher
sciences, and in these opening years of the
twentieth century, Cambridge bids fair to rival
the greatest mantifacturing and industrial com-
munities. Every one knows of her part in the
crises of our country's existence, but many do
not realize the tremendous strides in business
activities and that the city ranks today as a
leader in Massachusetts in value of manufac-
tured products. Cambridge is a city of homes,
an abiding place for education, but has an ex-
panding manufactvuing and industrial section.
It will be of advantage to glance over the
following pages on which are recorded some
pertinent facts. During the last four years the
total building operations have amounted to
nearly six million dollars. In the year 1912
alone the building operations showed a gain of
eighty-seven percent over the preceding year,
which is only exceeded by one other city in
United States, namely, Tacoma, Wash. This
great gain was due largely to the number of new
manufacturing structures. The year 1913 bids
fair to show an equal gain, due in great measure
to the erection of fine apartment houses and
private residences.
Cambridge, Mass., deserves the considera-
tion of the modem manufacturer. "With its
proximity to the Atlantic seaboard, its admirable
rail and water transportation facilities, its in-
\agorating climate, its abundance of skilled and
imskiUed labor, its close relation to the great
city of Boston, the natural purchasing center
for New England's 6,500,000 population, its
opportunities for comfortable homes; — with
these advantages it affords an unrivalled location
for industrial plants of all descriptions. Labor
strikes and disagreements are practically vm-
known in Cambridge.
Along the Charles River front and contiguous,
to the lines of railroads are acres of most desirable
land which are immediately available for manu-
facturing purposes.
The Boston and Albany Railroad runs across
the eastern portion of the city, and the Boston
and Maine Railroad, in its southern and western
division, affords easy means of handling any
quantity of inbound or outbound freight. By
these railroads direct and rapid coruiection is
made with the great docks on the sea front, thus
providing advantageously for the quick dis-
tribution of the manufactured products among
the markets of the world.
The large and flourishing industries already
established in Cambridge have an annual output
of nearly $45,000,000 . 00. Many of these manu-
facturing plants were located in Cambridge after
a thorough examination and exhaustive study
of conditions, and the proprietor of one of the
largest plants has said: "Of the suburbs of
Boston, beginning at East Boston, and following
the raUroad through Chelsea, Everett, Charles-
town, SomerviUe and Cambridge, and examining
all vacant lands on railroads entering Boston,
not too remote for oui purpose, the resxilt of
this carefvd examination was the choice of the
present location of the works. The price was
found very reasonable compared with any other
land so near Boston. We have at times made
three round trips daily to different parts of
Boston with heavily loaded teams. We have
never regretted our choice of location.
The manufacturing district, too, is surrounded
by the public park system. The workmen in
the factories and the toilers in the shops thus
have places easy of access, where throughout
the hot summer months they can find necessary
and welcome relief from the dusty streets and
crowded tenements of a city in the green lawns,
the trees and fresh air.
Every manufacturer at once appreciates the
value and effect of such parks and open places
upon the health, happiness and morality of
employees.
There is an exceptional diversity in the manu-
facturing interests of Cambridge. They include
founderies and machine shops, food preparatory
establishments with an annual output of
INDUSTRIES
twenty million dollars (the largest industry
and in this respect leading the cities of Massa-
chusetts), meat packing, printing and publish-
ing, the manufacture of confectionery, furniture,
soap, structvu-al iron work, pianos, organs and
other musical instruments, marble and stone,
carriages, men's clothing, lumber, brick, under-
takers' goods, druggists' preparations, auto-
mobiles, shoes, rubber goods, bithulithic pave-
ment, etc. The annual product of musical
instruments aggregates two and a half millions
($2,500,000.00), machinery, four millions ($4,-
000,000.00), and printing and publishing three
and a half millions ($3,500,000.00).
Cambridge has confectionery factories enough
to supply the demands of many thousands.
Candies by the ton; candies of all grades
and all quantities; candies for old and for
young; fashionable, stylish, high-priced candies,
in fancy boxes — sweet things in every conceiv-
able form are made in Cambridge, and sold
everywhere. Think of candies to the value of
$1,700,180.00 made in one city in one year.
Think of an average of eight hundred persons
making candy (in the Christmas season nearly
two hundred more). There was a time when
candy was counted a luxury, but today it is
believed to be a necessary of life, and Cam-
bridge is supplying a large share of the demand
for it.
Cambridge soap-making is one of the oldest
industries of the city, and the latest figures
show an annual product of $1,183,765 .00 worth.
The bulk of the business is done by three great
concerns, with a capital of about $2,000,000.00
and pay rolls of about $100,000.00 a year.
Cambridge furniture is well-known, not only
in Boston, but in places far remote. Some of
it is of a very high grade, and the product in-
cludes artistic specialties and order work requir-
ing more than common skill.
The musical instruments made in this city
are sold everywhere. The makers are old, well-
established concerns, with long experience and
a reputation based upon merit. There are
about eight hundred employees on the pay rolls,
and they earn about $300,000 a year, produc-
ing pianos and organs, and material for musical
instnunents to the amount of nearly $800,000 . 00
a year.
There are a half-dozen establishments engaged
in work upon lumber, producing house finish,
sash, doors, blinds and other material used by
the builders of Cambridge and other places.
The Cambridge business of making structural
iron work was established many years ago by
a few large concerns, which have a standing
among the best in New England. They pay
out more than $100,000 a year in wages, and
their products sell for more than a half million
dollars.
Nearly 1,200 retail establishments supply
the wants of Cambridge, paying wages approach-
ing $2,250.00 a year, and having sales of more
than $15,000,000.00.
The building up of Cambridge of late years
has followed two separate and distinct channels.
In the industrial sections of the Lower Port and
East Cambridge there has been a steady influx
of new industries. Acre after acre of vacant
land has been utilized for the construction of
high-class factory properties, adding to the value
of the surrounding land, besides bringing in a
great amount of personality for taxation in
Cambridge. The land in the vicinity of the
Grand Junction Railroad has seen a particularly
favorable development along these lines.
From the neighboring city of Boston, manu-
facturing Cambridge is distant only ten minutes
by trolley lines, and connecting routes afford
a quick trip to all points of interest in the great
Metropolitan District.
The new Subway, now makes it possible to
reach the great retail district in three minutes
from the factory and not more than ten minutes
from Harvard Square.
290
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
The firm of Giiin and Company, Publishers
of School and College Textbooks, was estab-
lished in 1867, by Edwin Ginn. For six years
the firm carried on business under the name of
Ginn Brothers, as Fred B. Ginn during that
time was his brother's only partner. The name
was changed in 1876 to Ginn and Heath, upon
the occasion of the admission to the firm of Mr.
Ginn and Company manufacture the many
textbooks that are daily shipped all over the
United States and into foreign countries for use
in the thousands of schools and institutions
which are a part of the vast educational system
of today.
The environment of the Boston office at 29
Beacon Street is ideal for a business like that
HOME OFFICE OF GINN AND COMPANY, 29 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
Heath, and it remained so for nine years, until
in 1885 it became Ginn and Company, the name
by which the firm has been known ever since.
The home office of Ginn and Company is in
Boston, beautifully situated on Beacon Street
two doors west of the State House, on the site
of the John Hancock mansion. Just across the
Charles River, on First Street, in East Cam-
bridge, is situated the Athenaeum Press where
of Ginn and Company. The quiet of the Com-
mon with its beautiful elms, its inviting shaded
walks, and the historical Frog Pond are emi-
nently suitable and appropriate surroundings
for the office of a publishing house, being re-
moved from the noisy traffic of the busier streets
without being far away from the business center
of the city.
These quarters have been the home of Ginn
INDUSTRIES
291
and Company since 1901. For more than a
quarter of a century prior to that their offices
were in another place almost, if not quite, as
much honored by time and tradition. This was
the "Old Brick Row," 13 Tremont Place, over-
looking the Granary Burying Ground. About
this building there was an Old-World air as
unusual as it was attractive. The high ivy-
mantled stone frame of the gateway to the
burying ground, the graceful spire of the Park
Street Church, and the picturesque nooks and
comers of the burying ground itself were all
easily visible from almost every window. No
more quiet and restful spot could be found in aU
The business of Ginn and Company demands
that they also have offices in other cities, as their
selling organization extends all over the United
States as well as into foreign countries. The
branch offices of the firm are situated in New
York, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Columbus, San
Francisco and London.
All of the books which are distributed through
these offices are manufactured at the Athenaeum
Press. This is one of the most imposing manu-
facturing establishments in New England. It
is a building of 200 feet frontage, and a width of
400 feet. With its simple brick facade, crowned
by a giant statue of the goddess Athena (by
ATHENAEUM PRESS
Boston. But the old brick structure at last
gave way to a huge steel office building, and the
publishers were obliged to seek another home
where, if possible, the same sort of mellow tradi-
tions to which they were accustomed could be
sectired. Fortunately, the site of the old John
Hancock house was offered for sale, and Messrs.
Ginn and Company were soon established on
this favored spot.
Siligardi of Florence), it presents an exterior
obviously appropriate for a great press. The
building consists of four floors and a basement,
which provide over two hundred thousand square
feet of available surface, fully occupied by the
departments engaged in the several processes
of book-making. Ten thousand additional feet
of floor space afforded by a frame building, are
given up to a well-established restatirant, a
292
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
carpenter shop and a paint shop. The Press
itself is very substantially constructed of brick
and steel, its proof against fire being made
doubly certain by automatic sprinklers, fire
hose and sliding metal doors.
It has been the aim of Ginn and Company to
furnish for their employees the most comfortable
accommodations possible. Light and fresh air
are abundant in practically every part of the
building. Individual lockers, a rest room, an
emergency room, and reading rooms are among
the conveniences provided.
Every process of book-making — composition,
engraving, electrotyping, printing and binding —
is admirably represented at the Athenaeum
Press. The most modem machinery, the best
methods and the highest type of workmanship
have won for Messrs. Ginn and Company the
enviable reputation of publishing books that
are as superior in mechanical execution as they
are in content.
In the manufactvure of the many thousand
books which are daily completed at the Press,
over five hundred skilled men and women are
regularly employed.
A brief description of the most important
departments and an outline of the processes car-
ried on therein are given in the following pages.
COMPOSING ROOM
The composing room, located on the fourth
floor of the building, is the department where
the mechanical process of making a book begins.
The size of page, the size and style of types, and
other details having been settled, the manuscript
(or "copy") of the book is divided among vari-
ous compositors, and the work of type setting
commences. The matter is first set in long
strips or galleys, from which "proofs" are taken.
Needed corrections are then indicated on the
proof by the proof-reader and by the author, and
made in the type. The galley is then divided
into pages of the desired size. Further proofs
are taken and further corrections and changes
made until the matter is finally approved, when
it is locked up in strong steel frames (or
"chases") and sent to the electrotype depart-
ment. After the electrotype plate has been
made, the type is returned to the composing
room and distributed, each letter to its proper
compartment, and is ready for use in other work.
At the Athenaeum Press all books are printed
from electrotype plates, which are much lighter
than pages of type, much more easily handled
and stored away for later impressions, and much
more durable.
ELECTROTYPE DEPARTMENT
The electrotype department is on the fourth
floor of the building, adjoining the composing
room, and consists of two rooms — a molding
room and a finishing room. The process of
making an electrotype plate is essentially as
follows : An impression of the type page is taken
in a sheet of wax under heavy pressure. The
mold, which faithfully reproduces the face of
the type, is covered, by dusting with black lead
and afterward polishing, with a thin film, which
is to serve as conductor for the electricity in
the plating process. The mold is then suspended
from the negative pole of the electric battery
in a bath containing an acid solution of copper,
in close proximity to a large sheet of pure copper
hung from the positive pole. By the action of
the electric current the bath is decomposed;
copper from the bath is deposited evenly over
the surface of the mold, a fresh supply of copper
being dissolved from the positive pole by the
free acid thus formed. When copper has been
deposited to the desired thickness, the mold is
taken from the bath and the copper shell stripped
off. After thorough cleaning, the shell is laid
on its face, and upon its back is povu-ed melted
lead to the thickness of a quarter of an inch.
The plate thus made then goes through the
various processes of planing, beveling and testing
for defects and is ultimately packed with others
in wooden boxes and delivered to the press room.
PRESS ROOM
The press room occupies space on the first
and second floors of the building, for machinery ;
a portion of the basement, for storage of paper;
and two fireproof vaults, for the storage of
electrotype plates. On the first floor are the
office of the press room, several presses (biiilt
especially for illustrated work) known as stop-
cylinder presses, and many fast-running two-
revolution presses for general work. Nearly
all of the cylinder presses are fitted with auto-
matic feeders for feeding paper sheet by sheet.
At the further extremity of the room are three
INDUSTRIES
293
large presses capable of printing a sheet 46 x 60
inches, btiilt especially for the printing of Frye's
geographies. On this floor also are presses
(known as perfecting presses) which print on
both sides of a sheet of paper at one impression;
also powerful hydraulic presses for removing
indentations in paper which occur in the process
of printing.
On the second press-room floor are several
large double presses so arranged as to print two
different colors at each impression, these presses
being devoted principally to printing maps for
geographies, histories, etc. On this floor also
are many other presses for general work, small
presses for printing stationery, circulars, etc.,
and a well-equipped machine shop with powerful
lathes, planers and drills.
In the fireproof vaults in the basement are
stored the electrotype plates of over two thou-
sand publications. For use in case of accident
or excessive wear of the plates there are also
extra sets of plates of several hundred of these
books.
This department occupies most of the third
and fourth floors of the building and also a
portion of the basement. On the fourth floor
are performed the operations of folding, pasting,
gathering and sewing or stitching. The folding
machines take the printed sheets as they come
from the presses and fold them, sixty-fovir pages
at a time, making four folds (or signatures) of
sixteen pages each, In their proper places are
pasted the fly-leaves and any inserted maps,
portraits, or diagrams.
In the gathering department the signatures
are placed in piles in numerical order in a gather-
ing machine, an ingenious device for arranging
the signatirres in the proper order to form a book.
From sixteen thousand to eighteen thousand
books are made up by one of these machines
in a day. Only a few years ago all this work was
done by hand. The books are next sewed on
machines operated by women. Geographies
and many books designed for primary schools
are fastened by another method, known as
stitching, which, though less flexible than sewing,
is much stronger.
The sewed or stitched books are then sent to
the floor below, where they go through the
various processes known as forwarding. The
edges are trimmed in powerful cutting machines,
the backs are rounded by machines built for this
purpose, several thicknesses of cloth and paper
are glued on the backs for reinforcement, and
the books made ready to put into the covers.
Meanwhile the covers are being made in other
departments. The cloth, leather and board are
cut to the proper size, and a special machine
assembles the various pieces and forms them
into a cover. The title of the book and the
cover design are stamped upon this cover by
means of an engraved brass plate or die, which
in many cases must be hot. When gold or silver
effects are desired the metal is laid on in sheets
and the design stamped with the hot die. The
process of putting the books into covers is done
either by a clever invention called a casing
machine, or by hand.
The books are then arranged between boards
having projecting edges of brass, and are put
under pressure for from four to twelve hours,
when they are taken out and carefully examined.
After the defective copies have been thrown
out, the perfect books are packed in large trucks
and carried to the storeroom.
SHIPPING DEPARTMENT
For the convenience of the shipping depart-
ment a special railroad track runs to a door of
the Press. Over this supplies are received in
carloads and books are shipped out in large
quantities to the branch offices of Ginn and
Company in New York, Chicago, Atlanta,
Dallas, Columbus, San Francisco and London.
POWER HOUSE
In the power house there are four steam
engines with a combined force of 670 horse
power. Each drives a separate electric genera-
tor. The plant is complete in dupHcate so that
in case of a breakdown no delay occurs. These
engines furnish all the power and Ught for the
Press. The two hundred and fifty machines
in the building are driven by individual motors,
thus doing away with all shafting and belting.
A fire pump with a capacity of a thousand
gallons a minute is connected with the sprinkling
system and standpipes throughout the building.
In the power house is also a twelve foot fan which
constantly forces fresh air throughout the
building.
294
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
No great business house in Cambridge has a
more interesting history than the John P. Squire
Company. When John P. Squire started in
business in 1842 he was the entire concern and his
plant was a wheelbarrow. Today the company
employs one thousand men in its plant at
East Cambridge alone. This means that fully
five thousand people, or a large-sized town, are
dependent upon this concern. This does not
include the great chain of wholesale houses
throughout New England and the millions of
dollars that are paid annually to farmers through-
out Iowa, Illinois and in sections of Ohio for
hogs. The success of the John P. Squire Com-
pany from its humble beginning to the great
success of today is a romance in business that
has no rival in fiction.
When John P. Sqtiire started to kill hogs for
the Boston market he chose a site along what
was then the Miller river, a section that is now
the busy manufacturing section of Cambridge
and Somerville. He chose this site because he
could dispose of the garbage of his plant in the
creek. Here he started lolling hogs and carted
them along the turnpike to Harvard Square
and into Boston via what is now Allston and
the Back Bay. This was the only way he could
get to Boston in those days. The carcass was
taken to North Street, Boston, where it was
cut up for the trade. Up to within a few years
the little shed or shanty where Mr. Squire did
his work stood in the center of the present plant,
but it was torn down to make room for another
large building of the plant.
Success met Mr. Squire's efforts from the
start. He worked hard and prospered.
The packing industry of this coimtry had its
origin at the Squire plant. He was the origina-
tor of the packing system as it is now carried on
throughout the country. The work up to this
time had been done by butchers. Through the
original efforts of Mr. Squire the packing busi-
ness has developed in this countr>' as in no other
nation in the world.
As Mr. Squire's business increased he found
that he must butcher in the summer time if he
wished to keep pace with his trade. Animal
food to be cured must be kept at a temperature
of thirty-eight degrees or less until the process
is completed. This necessitated his butchering
only in the winter time. Mr. Squire built a
large ice-house with a room in the center. He
found that by packing ice all around this room
he could maintain a temperature so that he could
kill hogs during the summer months. This was
an immense task, however, as hundreds of men
had to be employed winters to gather an ice
supply sufficient to last during the simimer
months. The freshly-killed carcasses coming
into this chilled room, added to the presence of
a large force of workmen, consimied immense
quantities of ice. For a number of years he
could not secure an ice supply to carry him
through the simimer months with his constantly
increasing business. Finally over one thousand
men were employed to cut ice from ponds
throughout this section of the State during
the winter months to supply ice for the great
icehouse which he built. Candle light was used
inside the packing house and this consvuned large
quantities of ice. Finally a gas plant was in-
stalled to take the place of the candle light. Mr.
Squire manufactured his own gas and sold the
coke. One of the old coke pits is still a part of
the present works and is used as a storage place
for chemicals.
Even with the iced refrigerating rooms the
products of the plant could not all be properly
ctu-ed during the summer months. There was
yearly a heavy loss caused by some of the meat
spoiling because it coiild not be kept at the right
temperature.
Another great difficulty was in the employ-
ment of men. While one thousand men were
engaged in the winter in harvesting ice, jobs
could not be found for them during the siunmer
months. Most of the help that worked for
Mr. Squire in the winter time had to find other
employment during the summer months.
It was about twenty-five years ago that the
present system of artificial refrigeration was
discovered. This solved the problem of the
meat packers, and the tremendous business of
the present Squire Company came as a result
of modem refrigeration. Modem refrigeration
caused other packing companies to spring into
existence, but they came without the struggle
and romance of beginning that had been the
story of the John P. Squire Company.
Under the old system of refrigeration the
INDUSTRIES
295
packing year was divided into two
One was the summer and the other the winter
packing season. The simimer season was from
March to November and the winter period from
November to March. These terms of winter
and siommer packing are still used in the trade,
although packing is carried on just as much in
the hottest of the stimmer months as in the
■winter time. But the trade papers and even
the government reports stiU cling to the old
system of dividing the packing season into sum-
mer and winter si. ismis ind ^nm^' the statistics
panic of 1907, when money was so scarce that
but very few industries were able to pay off
their help in cash. One of the great exceptions
to this rule was the John P. Squire Company.
Every man in its employ received cash during
the panic. The company's daily receipts in
cash from its local business was enough for its
weekly payroll, and when banks could not take
care of their payroll the management used its
own cash supply. The present Squire Company
plant covers nineteen acres of land and one
million feet of floor sjjace. There are seven
of the two seasons in all their reports and quo-
tations.
The present Squire plant is a marvel in its
size, cleanliness and modem equipment.
It is a man's industry. There is but one
woman and fifteen girls employed in the plant.
The woman and girls are employed in the pack-
ing room. All the other work of the great plant
is done by over one thousand men, who are
constantly upon the pay roll.
' The stability and soimdness of the Squire
Company as a New England institution was
well illustrated during the disastrous financial
acres used for artificialXrefrigeration. Four
enormous ice machines have a capacity of seven
hundred and fifty tons a day. What is known
as packer town, the three great concerns in the
neighborhood of the Squire plant, have an ice
capacity sufficient to supply the whole city of
Boston, if its ice men should go on strike and
refuse to supply ice.
The John P. Squire Company is complete in
itself. It maintains its own machine, carpenter,
paint, blacksmith and electrical shops and a
box mill with a capacity of turning out one
million feet of lumber a month. It has its own
296
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
cooper shop, its own masons and plumbers and
does all its own repair work. There is a dupli-
cate of every part of every machine used in the
plant constantly on hand in case of accident.
The plant is run night and day, and Sunday is
the only time that the huge plant is idle.
The plant has a capacity of killing and dressing
six thousand hogs a day, but the usual run is from
twenty-five hundred to three thousand hogs a day.
The selection of hogs for the John P. Squire
Company is one of the features that have
made its products notable for their excellence.
Throughout the great hog-raising districts of the
Middle West there is a brand of hogs known as
the "Squire kind," and this means that they
are the best that a farmer raises. He picks out
of his herd of hogs the "Squire kind," and sends
the rest to the great packing houses in Chicago
in one lot. For the "Squire kind" he is paid
a better price than he gets for other hogs, which
are usually sold as a whole. The Company
maintains stations along the Mississippi River
for the collection of these hogs, which are taken
by the train load and shipped to its plant in
East Cambridge.
All along the route the company maintains
feeding and watering stations so that the hogs
arrive at the plant prime and healthy.
The Company distributes its products along
the entire Atlantic Coast and the New England
States and the Provinces. It maintains branch
packing houses equipped with cold storage
plants in all the large New England cities. The
Company also does a large export business,
sending its products to the British Isles, Norway
and Sweden, Russia and Germany, Italy and
Spain. On account of a high protective tariff
none are sent to France.
Mr. Squire introduced the first "Pure Food
Bill" ever written as a law in the State of Ver-
mont. He found that other packers had been
adulterating their lard. He used only the pure
leaf and he scorned adulteration. He tried to
have his "Pure Food Bill" passed in Massa-
chusetts, but the opposition of other packers
was so strong that he did not succeed. He
finally had the bill passed in Vermont, thereby
giving that State the honor of passing the first
"Pure Food Law." Mr. Squire spent a large
fortune in trying to get Congress to pass a pure
food bill in 1895, but was unsuccessful. Mr.
Squire always insisted upon only the most pure
of products being sent from his factory. This
high standard has always been maintained. It
was conspicuous how little change was necessary
at this plant when the recent pure food law was
passed. The only changes the company had
to make was in a few cases where the law called
for the percentages of different materials used.
Its labels of "pure" were made years ago and
had always stood.
The John P. Squire Company is the largest
manufacturer of sausages east of Chicago. Its
goods are sold strictly fresh to the retail trade,
and New England is one of the greatest sausage
consuming communities in the world. By its
chain of branch houses the company puts on
the market only goods that are strictly fresh
and perfect in every respect.
The purity of the Squire products is open to
any who care to see. There are no secret rooms
in the Squire plant. In the hands of accommo-
dating guides, men and women throughout the
east daily visit the plant in East Cambridge and
marvel at the care and cleanliness wdth which
the products are produced.
INDUSTRIES
One of the most notable manufacturing insti-
tutions in Cambridge is the factory of Mason &
Hamlin Co., located at 162 Broadway, where
are made the celebrated Mason & Hamlin
pianos. It is visited by manufactiirers and
musicians from all over the world, and has been
called an atelier rather than a factory, owing
to the artistic atmosphere which envelops the
place.
It has often been said that an organization,
corporation or institution, just as a family.
returned to this country in the early fifties. He
was casting about for some pursuit and fell in
with a yovmg man by the name of Emmons
Hamlin, who had been at work in Buffalo
making melodeons. Hamlin, with a spark of
genius had made a rich discovery, namely the
art of voicing reeds, and by this discovery
opened up an El Dorado of tone quality for
the instrument. With small capital Henry
Mason and Emmons Hamlin joined forces and
started, in 1854, under the firm name of Mason
MASON & HAMLIN, ORGAN AND PIANO FACTORY
receives its color or characteristics from its
head. This is strongly apparent in the case
of the Mason & Hamlin Co. Since its inception
in 1854, the ideals of this eminent house have
been high and lofty.
The founder of the House, Henry Mason,
was a son of Dr. Lowell Mason, one of the most
illustrious educators and pioneers in the building
up of music in this country. Having graduated
from a German University, yoimg Henry Mason
& Hamlin, the mantifacture of melodeons.
Before long they developed the instrument into
what has since been known as the American
Cabinet organ, a name which they coined and
copyrighted. In all great world expositions
in this country and abroad wherever these
instruments have been exhibited, they have
invariably received the highest possible awards
and honors, a fact made doubly noteworthy
when it is considered that no other American
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
instrument of similar kind ever received the
highest award at any great foreign exposition.
In 1882, imbued still with the same lofty ideals
as to quality, they added the manufacture of
pianos to their industry. The Mason & Hamlin
piano sprang by leaps and bounds into public
favor. It was greeted by musical associations,
by the world's greatest musicians, by the most
eminent virtuosi of the day, as an artistic in-
stnmient par excellence.
In the meantime the third generation of
Masons, bom and reared under the same shib-
boleth which had served their father and their
grandfather, worked unremittingly for the
maintenance of the highest quality in the in-
struments produced by the Mason & Hamlin
Co. Associated with this third generation has
been a remarkable man, Richard W. Gertz, an
expert in piano construction, recognized through-
out the world as one of the greatest of all times.
Together they have worked for a common end,
the highest possible acme in pianoforte con-
struction. A new system of piano construction
was evolved, overcoming the inherent weak-
nesses in the old systems and resulting in what
is admittedly the finest piano the world has
ever seen.
In 1900 the Mason & Hamlin Tension Reso-
nator was introduced in all Mason & Hamlin
Grand Pianos, a device which is justly regarded
as one of the three great epoch-making discov-
eries in pianoforte construction, the first being
the French action, introduced in 1821, the second
the full iron frame and overstrung scale intro-
duced in 1859, and the third the Mason & Ham-
lin Tension Resonator, introduced in 1900, the
most important of the three, as it pertains to
tone production and permanency. Without it
a piano gradually loses its tone; with it, its tone
is maintained permanently with its pristine
beauty and sonority.
A visit to the great plant of Mason & Hamlin
Co. will show conclusively why the Mason &
Hamlin piano is today the highest-priced piano
in the world, and why it is conceded to have
gone ahead of what the world has heretofore
seen in piano construction.
The same principle which was in evidence
at the inception of the Company is today at
work with splendid energy and ceaseless activity.
There is but one real end in view, and that is to
make a contribution to the world's artistic in-
struments which shall ever and ever set its
standard higher and higher. At the head of
the Company are men who are abreast of the
times in matters artistic and scientific, as well
as financial, men whose moral structures are
such that they could not rest easy were they
not producing results in advance of their
fellows.
The Fresh Pond Ice Company and Cambridge
people are indeed fortunate in the source of
supply at their command. The Company took
its name from Fresh Pond in this city, the origi-
nal source of the city's water supply. When
ice cutting was forced off this pond the Fresh
Pond Ice Company was compelled to seek
another place to obtain its supply. More for-
tunate stUl were the people of this city when the
company secured rights on Lake Muscatanapus
at Brookline, N.H., for here was found a supply
fully equal if not better than that of Fresh Pond.
This New Hampshire lake is situated among
the rocks and woodlands of the Old Granite
State, about sixty-five miles from Boston, in
the little town of Brookline, secluded, peaceful
and picturesque. This lake, itself fed by two
mountain streams and innumerable crystal
springs, gets its name from the Indians, who,
pleased with the clearness and purity of its
waters, called it in their language, Muscatanapus
—The Great Mirror.
On the eastern shore, surrounded by taU pines
are the big white buildings of soHd and enduring
construction comprising the extensive plant of
the Fresh Pond Ice Company. The ice is stored
in the houses thirty tiers high, and the capacity
of these houses is from 65,000 to 75,000 tons.
The lake yields during an average season 150.000
tons.
The Company's New Hampshire plant is a
most complete one. Order and neatness every-
Gkay iS: Davis Compaxy Buildixg
Young Men's Christian Association Building
A. H. HEWS & CO.. Inc.
MANUFACTURERS OF POTTERY
The insert shows the original building, erected in 1765. The large picture gives a fairly accurate
idea of the present group of buildings, though since it was made there have
been several additions.
INDUSTRIES
299
where prevail. The grounds and surroundings
are in keeping with the rest of the plant and it
would seem as though the sanitary and hygienic
conditions had been the point always in the
minds of the promoters of this vast enterprise.
The Company owns and controls the land on
all sides of the lake and along the banks of the
streams which have their source in the mountains
beyond. No mills or hamlets are allowed any-
where near the banks, and every possible pre-
caution is taken to insure the pvuity of the water.
In fact, the Company now owns several hundred
acres of land adjacent to the lake and rivers.
The Company has the reputation of cutting
the purest ice in the coimtry, and this fact is
admitted by experts who have analyzed and
scientifically examined it.
The main yards for the distribution of the
ice and the general offices are situated on the
Fitchburg division of the Boston & Maine Rail-
road, a short distance above the Union Square
Station, Somerville. While the principal end
of the retail business is carried on from the
Somerville yard, the Company's property on
Crescent Avenue, North Cambridge, aids ma-
terially in expediting the deHvery of ice in that
vicinity.
The Fresh Pond Ice Company, organized in
1882, is the outgrowth of the business established
by Jacob Hittinger, one of the pioneers in the
ice business of this country. He was among
the first shippers of ice to Calcutta and the West
Indies, but after the ice-shipping trade was
largely transferred to other ports or supplanted
by the ice machine, he developed an extensive
local trade. Upon the death of Mr. Hittinger
in 1880, his son, Thomas S. Hittinger, succeeded
to the business. When the company was in-
corporated in 1887, T. S. Hittinger became its
superintendent, a position which he held until
his death, October 26, 1904. Mr. Hittinger's
inventive faculty and great experience in the
harvesting and storage of ice placed him at the
head of his profession and the Company's plant
at Brookline, N.H., which was designed and
perfected by him, will be a lasting evidence of
his ability. The present officers of the Company
are Josiah Q. Bennett, president; E. A. Daven-
port, treasurer; H. H. Davenport, assistant
treasurer; and E. L. Hadley, superintendent.
With the development of modem civilization,
articles which at one time were looked upon as
luxuries, if in fact they were known at all, have
come to be ranked among the necessities of life.
Ice is a typical illustration of this development,
for ice has come to be one of the primary comforts
of the people and is regarded as a necessity not
only in warm seasons, but throughout the entire
year. In a large city like Cambridge the sup-
plying of ice to its inhabitants is a no unimpor-
tant industry. The Cambridge Ice Company
is one of the larger concerns engaged in the ice
business in this city and adjacent territory.
The Company has been in existence under one
name or another since 1847, when the business
was established as the Durgin Ice Company.
It was incorporated under its present style in
1896, with a paid-up capital of $40,000.00. J.
E. -Kimball, who is very familiar with the ice
business, has been treasurer and manager of
the Company since its incorporation. The
Company's office and distributing plant, stables
and storage house are located on Cottage Park
Avenue, North Cambridge, where there is a
storehouse with a capacity of 40,000 tons, prac-
tically every inch of which is made use of by
the Company for its business. A considerable
quantity of ice is shipped to outside points, as
the storehouse is connected with the main line
of the Boston & Maine Railroad by a spiu: track.
The principal part of the business of the Com-
pany is done in Cambridge and vicinity, where
thirty-three wagons are called into requisition.
From seventy-five to one htmdred employees
are carried on the pay roll.
The ice houses of the Company are located at
Spy Pond, in Arlington, and its annual crop is
from 30,000 to 40,000 tons.
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
One of the notable modem buildings of Cam-
bridge is the Shoe and Leather Exposition
Bmlding, which lends picturesqueness to the
Cambridge bank of the Charles River. It is a
source of self-congratulation to all progressive
citizens that this structure has been allowed to
remain one of the permanent landmarks of the
city. This biiilding is now the home of the J.
Frank Cutter automobile industry. For about
twenty-five years Mr. Cutter has been identified
with the carriage and automobile business, first
with Hugh Stewart & Company. This firm
now is J. Frank Cutter, having been so the past
five years. The firm has been located in the
Shoe and Leather Exposition building since
the first of February, 1911. The firm is one
of the most extensive builders of Limousines
and Landaulet bodies, automobile tops and
slip covers, and also paints and upholsters
cars.
The Warren Brothers Company, the origi-
nators of the bituHthic pavement, with its head-
quarters in Boston, has a large manttfacturing
plant and laboratory located on Potter Street,
this city, and employs many citizens of Cam-
bridge, both at its plant and in its street work
here and in Boston.
pavements which have been laid are all in good
condition and are a credit to both the Company
and the City.
Bitulithic pavement was laid on Temple
Street in Cambridge, in 1901, and its use has
been continued in increasing quantities since
then. The city should be congratulated in
PLANT OF WARREN BROTHERS CO.MPANY
In the past eleven years the citizens of Cam-
bridge have seen a number of different forms of
pavement used on its streets, many of which
have not been satisfactory, while the bitulithic
having the bitulithic pavement for a number of
its prominent streets, and the policy recom-
mended by the pa\'ing commission of continuing
the work along main thoroughfares is sure to
INDUSTRIES
meet with the hearty approval of the citizens.
The bitulithic pavement in this city is laid on a
concrete base, the excavation and concrete work
being done by the city with municipal labor.
Upon the fomidation is spread the wearing
surface which is compressed with a heavy road
roller to a thickness of two inches. The surface
is made of the best stone obtainable, varying
in size from a maximum of one-quarter inch to
dust. The proportion of the different size of
stone being so arranged that the finer fit into
the interstices of the coarser, so as to reduce
the air spaces or voids between the stones. The
proportion used of the various sizes of mineral
are predetermined by physical tests, with a view
to obtain the smallest percentage of air spaces
or voids in the mineral mixture and vary with
the character and shape of particles of the stone
in each particvdar case.
After the proportions have been determined,
the mineral material is passed through a rotary
dryer, from which it is carried by an elevator
and through a rotary screen which separates
the mineral material in several different sizes.
The proper proportions by weight of each of
these sizes is secured by the use of a "multi-
beam scale," and the exact required amount
being weighed out into a twin pug rotary miser,
where it is combined with the bituminous ce-
ment accurately weighed in proper proportions.
The mixture is then dumped while hot into carts
and hauled to the streets, spread and thoroughly
rolled with a heavy steam roller. Upon this
is spread a flush coat of special bittmiinous
cement, thoroughly sealing and waterproofing
the surface. There is then applied a thin layer
of finely crushed stone, which is rolled into the
surface, making it rough, and thereby affording
a good foothold for horses and a surface upon
which automobiles will not skid.
Cambridge was one of the pioneer cities to
adopt this kind of construction for its streets
in 1901, when it was first introduced, and it
now has eighteen streets aggregating one hun-
dred and thirty-five thousand square yards of
bitulithic pavement. While Cambridge has
largely increased its area of bitulithic pave-
ment, its development in this city is much
less in proportion than the increase of its use
throughout the United States and Canada, as is
shown by the following table:
DEVELOPMENT OF BITULITHIC PAVEMENT
Year
1901.
1902.
1903.
1904.
1905.
1906.
1907.
1908.
1909.
1910.
1911.
1912.,
Cities Square Yards
...7 16,400
..S3 400,831
..40 915,630
..45 1,041,724
..42 1,041,327
..57 1,508,095
..66 1,924,222
..62 1,676,433
..74 2,071,987
..97 3,047,276
..99 4,189,182
.103 4,785,327
(Laid and under contract July 31, 1912)
1,285 miles roadway, 30 ft. wide be-
tween ciu-bs 22,618,434
Laid and under contract July
31, 1911 4,540,473
Increase 1912 over 1911 5.4%
Some twenty-six years ago a partnership was
formed in Cambridge between George W.
Rawson and John G. Morrison, for the manu-
facture of hoisting engines, fertilizer dryers and
plate iron work. At about the same time there
was formed in Boston a company, known as the
Automatic Coal Handling Company, which
controlled the Newell & Ladd Patent steam
shovel, this being a coal -handling shovel whose
operation was something like that of the Rawson
shovel, the patent of which was controlled by the
firm of Rawson & Morrison.
The Automatic Coal Handling Company was
succeeded by John A. Mead & Company, of
New York City and Rutland, Vt. A working
agreement was formed between Rawson &
Morrison and John A. Mead & Company, con-
trolling the patents of these two grabs, and out
of the development of these grabs there has
emanated the large business of the Mead-Morri-
302
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
son Manufacturing Company. Up to the time
of the formation of these two companies coal
had been handled by the crudest methods, but
these automatic grabs changed the entire con-
dition of labor in the discharging of coal from
vessels. When the first Newell & Ladd grab
was installed at Bums Brothers, in New York
City, it took the place of seventy men. Of
course, any machine that could save seventy
men to an employer would be in great
demand.
It was only a step from the development of
the shovel to the development of an engine that
Massachusetts. In 1904 the Mead-Morrison
Manufacturing Company was incorporated and
pvirchased the interests, in the coal handling
business, of the John A. Mead Manufacturing
Company, which had absorbed John A. Mead &
Company, and in 1906 the Mead-Morrison
Manufacturing Company pirrchased all the
interests of the Rawson & Morrison Manu-
factiiring Company. This company has been
most successful; it has a capital of $1,000,000,
and at the present time has contracts on hand
amoimting to about $2,000,000. It has shipped
its product all over the world and maintains
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MEAD-MORRISON MANUFACTURING COMPANY
wovild operate this shovel. From the engine
that operated the shovel, there naturally came
up the question of the carrying away of the coal.
This produced first, the cable road for carrying
coal from docks; later the transporter for carry-
ing coal through power houses and pockets;
the McCaslin conveyor for carrying coal to
boilers and taking the ashes away; the man
trolley for carrying coal in large imits, and other
labor-saving devices for the handling of sand,
gravel, broken stone, phosphate and other loose
materials.
In 1894 Mr. Rawson died, and in 1896 the
Rawson & Morrison Manufacturing Company
was incorporated under the laws of the State of
offices in the large cities of the United States.
Its machinery handles most of the coal for the
United States government, and it has installed
complete discharging and storage plants for
many of the large railroads operating through-
out the United States. The foreign business
of the company extends to Brazil, England,
Alaska, South Africa, and the Philippine Islands.
In addition to the manufacture and installing
of coal-handling machinery, the company manu-
factures a complete line of steam, electric and
gasoline hoists, derrick swinging machines, grab
buckets, etc., for use in the contracting and
quarrying business. Its shops and erection force
employ some five himdred men.
INDUSTRIES
The new building of the Cambridge Gas Light
Company is at the comer of Massachusetts
Avenue and Temple Street. The main entrance
opens directly into a large room thirty-two feet
by eighty-one feet and twenty-four and a half
feet high, called the appUance room, where the
various appliances by which gas is used will be
on exhibition. This room is dignified in char-
acter, the arch motive of the exterior being
carried out on all four sides and forming pene-
trations in the ceiling, which is vaulted. Large
service entrance and a shipping room, which
occupy the rear inner comer of the building
and are accessible from Temple Street by a paved
court covered at the inner end for protection in
receiving and delivering goods. This service
entrance has an opening to the appliance room.
A "lamp room," which can be darkened for
display purposes, completes the eqxiipment on
this floor.
The mezzanine story is reached by stairs from
the business office. The directors' room is on
1! II
lUILDING OF THE CAMBRIDGE GAS LIGHT COMPANY AT THE CORNER OF MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE AND-
TEMPLE STREET
show windows fill one side of the room. The
walls and ceiling are plastered, and the floor is
marble.
Aroimd this large room are grouped the offices
and work rooms of the company. The office of
the president and general manager, with a con-
sultation room, is at the right. At the rear is
the business office, with large windows and
counters, opening directly to the appliance room.
The cashiers' cages and a vault occupy the cen-
tral portion of this space. A comer room on
Temple Street, entirely shut off from the other
rooms, is arranged for stenographers and for
filing records. There are also on this floor a
this floor ; also, another business office and vault,,
as well as the stock, photometer and calorimeter
rooms. Good-sized rooms for the women em-
ployes are provided, and a rest and lunch room
which is fitted out with a gas range and other
kitchen appliances for their use.
From the appliance room on the main floor
a staircase gives access to the basement, where
it is planned to demonstrate the use of all sorts-
of gas appliances, ranges and heaters, which are
on exhibition here as well as above. A store-
room, lockers and a rest room for the men em-
ployes are arranged on this floor. Space is
provided for the heating and ventilating plant,
304
A HISTORY OF CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
with a filter chamber and fan to supply the vari-
ous offices with fresh air. The building is thor-
oughly ventilated by the most approved system.
When the Cambridge Gas Light Company
began its career, over half a century ago, the
field was limited, and great expense attended
the manufacture of gas. But diuing these years
the company has taken advantage of every new
development to give its consumers better gas
and ser\-ice at greatly reduced prices, and today
satisfactorily supplies the greater part of Somer-
ville and all of Cambridge.
The company was incorporated in 1852 by
John H. Blake (the first president of the com-
pany), Gardner G. Hubbard, Isaac Livermore,
Charies C. Little and Estes Howe. The latter
was chosen clerk and treasurer.
Since its organization in 1852, the company
has had nine presidents, viz.: John H. Blake,
elected December 31, 1852; Gardner G. Hub-
bard, elected August 10, 1864; A. E. Hildreth,
elected July 25, 1867; John M. Tyler, elected
September 3, 1877; Daniel U. Chamberlin,
elected January 27, 1886; Quincy A. Vinal,
elected April 12, 1897; Willard A. Bullard,
elected July 31, 1904; Daniel G. Tyler, elected
November, 1912, and Albert M. Barnes, elected
January 2d, 1913.
The first clerk and treasurer, Estes Howe,
filled that office for thirty-five years, and was
succeeded by Adolph Vogel in 1887. He served
until 1897, when Albert M. Barnes, now presi-
dent and general manager, was chosen. On
Mr. Barnes' election to the presidency in Janu-
ary, 1913, Mr. Vinton W. Mason became treas-
uier.
The present officers and directors are as
follows: Albert M. Barnes, president and general
manager; Vinton W. Mason, treasurer; Karl
S. Barnes, clerk and assistant manager; Daniel
G. Tyler, Stanley B. Hildreth, Renry Endicott,
George A. Sawyer, Arthvu C. Whitney and
George W. Hutchins, directors. John P. Ken-
nedy is superintendent and Theodore Erhard
assistant superintendent.
A few years ago one dollar per thousand cubic
feet was the price to which consumers might
look forward as the very lowest possible. But
dviring that time the Cambridge Gas Light Com-
pany has voluntarily reduced its rate three
times, so that today the low rate of eighty cents
per thousand cubic feet has placed gas within
the means of all householders ; not only for illum-
inating, but also for cooking, heating and many
other uses which modem invention has made
possible for gas. With this price goes the best
service and attention, for the company attends
promptly to all needs and its employes are
courteous and efficient.
One of the most important branches of the
company is that devoted to the sale of gas
apparatus of all kinds. A large department is
given up to the display of modern gas stoves,
heaters and other appliances. When Mr.
Barnes became clerk and treasurer in 1897,
there was no department of this kind. He
gave much attention to building up this par-
ticular branch of the business. Gas stoves and
kindred appHances are now in use all over the
city. Since the department was opened, over
twenty-five thousand pieces of apparatus have
been sold. The value of gas ser\'ice in increasing
the earning capacity of rented property is be-
coming more and more evident to landlords,
with the result that aU the large apartment
houses, tenements, and a munber of the private
residences in the city are now rented with gas
stoves and gas attachments aU complete.
The active management of the Cambridge
Gas Light Company devolves upon Albert M.
Barnes. It is a source of much gratification
to this gentleman to know that the company-
has more than doubled its plant and its out-
put since he asstuned office in 1897. The
present excellent service is in no small measure
due to Mr. Barnes' wise management.
Officials of the company are firm beUevers
in the ability of gas to hold its o-oti -svith elec-
tricity, and immediate return on investment is
not considered. Customers come first, and the
wisdom of this poHcy is justified by sixty years
of history.
The Cambridge Gas Light Company plant is
one of the best equipped in the United States.
In 1902 the paid-up capital was 8700,000, and
today its paid-up capital is $1,440,000.
Ingenious minds have during the past few
years invented appHances which have wonder-
fully increased the possibilities of gas for illumi-
nation, and have multiplied its other uses.
Hot-water heaters now come in aU sizes, from
a small burner that will heat the water for one
INDUSTRIES
Toom to a large affair that will heat the water
for a whole house more effectively than a stove
-or a furnace.
All the latest appliances for heating and
cooking by gas are on exhibition at the Cam-
bridge Gas Company's office, Massachusetts
Avenue, Cambridge.
Each year since 1852, when the Cambridge
■company was incorporated, has seen an increase
in the company's business, and within the last
ten years it has more than doubled. A table
for the last eight years shows the results of the
company's poUcy in promoting efficiency and
giving the best possible service to the consimier:
Cu. Ft. sold Meters in Use
1905 440,000,000 18,413
1906 468,550,000 19,988
1907 533,033,000 21,545
1908 585,144,000 22,873
1909 620,594,000 24,737
1910 669,983,000 26,560
1911 717,054,000 28,343
1912 762,630,000 30,286
The company does a large business in coke,
and has stoves especially constructed for burning
it. Coke gives much more heat than coal, and
as it is easily controlled with proper appliances,
its use is constantly increasing.
It is natural that the barrel-making industry
sho\ild center arovmd a locality where barrels
are made use of in large quantities as they are
in the various pork packing estabHshments,
the sugar refinery and elsewhere in this city.
Goepper Brothers have been making barrels
for many years. The concern of which they
are the head and front came into existence in
1870, the business being started in Charlestown.
It was transferred to Cambridge two years later.
From a small beginning the business has de-
veloped into an extensive and profitable one.
In 1895 the concern was incorporated imder
Massachusetts laws, with a capital of $30,000,
the officers being the two foimders, Gustavus
Goepper, president, and William Goepper,
treasurer. Both gentlemen are directors and
members of the investment committee of the
East Cambridge Savings Bank, and the former
is one of the oldest directors in the Cambridge
Electric Light Company. Both are, and have
been for a great many years, among the leading
citizens of Cambridge, standing for the strictest
business integrity and being regarded as men
of sound judgment.
The works of the Goepper Brothers Company
are located on Ninth Street, opposite Spring
Street. The plant has a frontage on the Grand
Junction Railroad of over three himdred feet,
giving the Company unrivalled receiving and
shipping facilities. The main building is three
stories in height and fifty by one hundred feet
in dimensions. Two large storage buildings
are two stories each, one containing 20,000 and
the other 14,000 square feet of floor space. In
addition, there are other structures, including
dry houses, storage sheds, office, etc. In the
various departments upwards of one hundred
men are employed. While the Company's
leading specialty is sugar barrels, it is in a posi-
tion to turn out aU kinds of barrels. The
capacity of the plant is 3,000 new barrels per
day, besides renovating upwards of a thousand
second-hand barrels. The Company pays out
in wages a sum exceeding $50,000 annually.
The business of the concern is not confined
to Cambridge or to this immediate vicinity,
large shipments being made outside the state
and to quite a distance away, in many cases.
The Company enjoys a splendid reputation for
the high quality of its manttfactures, and the
user of barrels who can procure his supply
from Goepper Brothers considers himself most
fortvmate.
INDEX
Abbott. Edward (Rev.) ISS
Abbott, Ezra 136
Adams, John Quincy 112
Adams, John 63, 84
Adams, Samuel 63
Adams, William R 157
Agassiz, Alexander 157
Agassiz, Louis 115, 116, 132, 158
Allen, Alexander V. G 134
Allen, Frank A 159
Allen, Oscar P 160
Allen, Thomas (Rev.) 3i
Allen, William (Rev.) 33
AUston. Washington 106
Ames, James Barr 136, 161
Andover Theological School 123
Angier, Edmund 49
Angier, Samuel 68
Antinomian Controversy 15
Anti-Tuberculosis Association 123
Appleton, Nathan 130
Appleton, Nathaniel 66, 68, 70, 73, 98
Apthrop, East (Rev.) 72. 73
Arnold. Benedict 83, 85, 86
Arrow, Street 14, 54, 71
Ash Street 13,71
Astronomical Observatory 109, 113
Athenaeum Press 121
Austin Hall 81
Austin, Jonathan, L 94, 95
Austin Street 95
Avon Home for Children 123
Back Lane 14
Badger, Walter 1 162
Bailey, Hollis Russell 162
Baker, George P 136
Bancroft, Hugh 164
Bancroft, William A 125, 165
Banking 125
Baptist Church, first 123
Barnard, John 62
Barnard. Tobias 62
Barry, J. Edward 150. 165
Bartlett. John 134
Beal. Henry W 167
Beck. Charles 115
Beck Hall 55. 115
Belcher. Andrew 48
Belcher, Andrew, Jr 48, 65
Belcher, Jonathan (Governor) 48, 62
Belknap, Henry 37
Bird, Henry M 168
Binney (now Cambridge) Field ..... 146
Bishop's Palace 73, 83, 91, 99
Blackstone, William 11
Blanchard. Marshall F 168
Blue Anchor Tavern 48. 72
Boardman, Aaron 49, 66
Boardman, Andrew 49. 66. 70
Boardman. William 3J. 49
"Body of Liberties" • 39. 44
Boggs, Edwin P 272
BoUes. Frank 136
Bond. William Cranch 113
Borland. John 72, 73, 83
Boston 11, 12, 14
Botanic Garden 91, 113, 120
Bow Street 14, 71
Bowdoin. James 63
Bowers. Benanuel 53
Boylston Hall 48. 53
Boylston Street Bridge 14
Boylston Street.. .13. 47-49. 73. 80. 102
Bradbury. William F 169
Bradish. Ebenezar 70. 73
Bradish. Isaac 73
Bradstreet. Simon 11. 12, 27, 48, 56
Braintree Company 13, 14. 21
Braintree Street 13. 21
Brandon. Edward J 171
Brattle Street 71. 75, 80, 97, 142
Brattle Square 13, 73
Brattle, Thomas 61, 65
Brattle, Thomas, the younger 83
Brattle, William (Rev.) . ..W. 60, 65, 66, 73
Brattle, William (Gen.). .70. 73. 78. 79. 81,
,84
Brattle, William Jr.
.65
Brewster. Nathaniel 37
Briggs. LeBaron R 136
Brooks. John Graham 136
Browne & Nichols School 122, 280
Buck, Silas E 171
Bulfinch. Charles 99
Bulkley. John 36
Bulkley. Peter 26, 36
Bull, Ole 130
Bullard, WiUard A 173
Bunker Hill. Battle of 84. 85
Burgoyne. General 83. 91
Butler Hall 73
Cabot. Andrew 92, 93
Cambridge 14, 16. 44
Cambridge Bridge 147
Cambridge. East, 14, 46, 57, 70, 89. 93, 96,
120. 121
Cambridge Farms 46
Cambridge Gas Co 125, 303
Cambridge Hospital 144
Cambridge Meeting House 79
Cambridgeport. . . .15. 46. 93, 95, 117. 120
Cambridge Savings Bank 286
Cambridge Village 46
Cambridge Unitarian Parish 123
Canal. 94, 95
Captain's Island 13, 88, 123. 146
Carey. Arthur A 174
Carstein. Hans L 174
Carty. John J 267
Central Square 94
Channing. Edward T H3. 136
Charles River 11. 12
Charles River Basin 115
Charies River Parkway 147
Charlestown 10. 11,13
Chauncey. Charles 53, 54. 66
Chesholm. Thomas 47. 49
Child. Francis C 132. 134
Christ Church 72. 73, 82, 123
Church, Benjamin 89
Churches 123
City Charter granted 117
City Government 142
City Hall 76, 126
City Home 144
Clark, Alvin & Son 121
Clark, Edward E 179
Clark Road 98
Clarke, Augustus P. (Dr.) 177
Close. George 180
Clough. Arthur 128
Cobble Hill 87
Coddington. William 27
Cogswell. Edward R.. (Dr.) 181
Cogswell, Francis 181
Colbum. William 19
Coleman. Benjamin 62
College Library 63. 64. 100. 120
College Yard 14. 3]. 48. 99
Commencement. The first .35. 38
Common. Cambridge 13. 15, 73, 86. 87
Comstock. Hiram M 182
Concord Avenue 73, 94
Cook. Samuel 69
Cooke. George 47.49
Cooke. Joseph 47. 49
Cooper. Benjamin 91
Cooper's Tavern 81
Copps Hill 14
Corlet. EHjah 51. 66
Cotton. John. 14. 17. 21. 22. 26. 28. 30. 42.
43. 44
Coimty Buildings ■ . 96
Coveney. J. W 182
Cox. George Howland 183
Cox. James V 183
Craddock. Matthew 19. 20
Craigie. Andrew 93. 96. 106
Craigie Bridge 93
Craigie House 93
Craigie Road 98
Creek Lane 13
Crocker. John F 183
Cromwell, Oliver. 17. 27, 35, 38, 47. 49,
54. 55
Cunningham. Henry 185
Cunningham. T. E.(Dr.) 185
Curry. S. S 187
Cutter Company 300
Cutter. John 90
Dallinger, F. W 188
Dam. The 147
Dana. Francis (Chief Justice) , 92. 93, 94.
95. 102
Dana Hill 49.73,87.92
Dana. Richard 33
Dana. Richard 70. 73
Dana. Richard Henry 97. 119. 128. 132
Dana. Richard H 189
Dana. Stephen 91
Dane Hall 52. lOV
Dana Street 73
Danforth. Nicholas 55
Danforth, Samuel (Judge).. 66, 70, 79,83
Danforth. Thomas 52. 54, 55. 55
Dankers. Jaspar 58
Davenport. John- 30
Davis. Charles H. . (Admiral) 134
Davis. WilHam M 136
Daye, Stephen 34. 49. 66
Deane. Charles 134
Deitrick. Frederick S 269
Denison. Arthur E 191
Dexter. Henry 192
Dickens. Charles 130
District Nursing Commission 144
Dodge. Theodore. (Col.) 134
Doody. M. J. (Rev.) 136
Downing. George - . " 35, 36
Dudley Family 16
Dudlev. Thomas (Governor) 11-13. 15. 17,
20. 25, 30. a. 35. 37. 39. 43. 47. 48
Dunster. Henry, 34. 35. 37. 48. 51. 53.55.66
Dunster Street. 13. 24. 29. 47. 49. 81. 83
Durant. William B 193
East End Christian Union 123
Eaton. Nathaniel ;30. 31. 33
Eighth Church of Christ 12
Elevated Railroad. Boston 125
Eliot. Charles 145
Eliot. Charles W 136. 193
Eliot. John 23.26.33.54.55
Eliot Street 13. 94
Elmwood 75. 103.130
Elmwood Street 13
Embargo Act 95
Embankment Co.. Cambridge 146
Emerson. William 87
Endicott. John 19. 39
English High School 122. 126
Ensign-Stratton 251
Episcopal Theological School 123
Eustis. William 63
Evacuation of Boston 89
Everett. Charles C 136
Everett. Edward. 92. 103. 104. 1 10. 1 12. 122
Fairbain. John R 19S
"Fair Harvard" 104
Farra. John 105
Farwell. Levi 102
Fay House 103. 12S
Faverweather. Thomas 75
Feiton, Cornelius Conway 110. 113. 130
Field. Cambridge 123
Field Lane 14
Fire Department 144
First Church 10. II, 19,36,47,123
First Parish Church 97. 123
Fiske. lohn 119. 121. 132. 134. 196
Fitch, Ja'oez 68
Fitchburg Railroad 120
Fitzgerald. Michael E 198
Fletcher. Ruel E 199
Flynt. Henry 63. 68
Fogg Art Museum 120
Folsom. Charles 136
Fort Washington 88
Fox. James A 20O
Foxcroft. Estate 56. 105
Foxcroft. Frank 201
INDEX
307
Franke, Ktmo J 36
Franklin. Benjamin 86
Franklin Street 87
Fresh Pond 122
Fresh Pond Parkway 147
Frost. Gideon 90
Fuller House 123
Fuller. Margaret 97. 106
Puller. Timothy 1 06
Gage, Thomas (Gen.) 63. 78, 79, 80, 84, 88
Gallison. Henry Hammond 202
Gannett. Caleb 104
Gannett. Ruth (Styles) 104
Gannett. Thomas (Rev.) 99
Garden Street 14. 66. 73. 75
Gardner, Richard 70
Gardner. Thomas (Captain) 77. 79. 81, 84,
90
Gates, Hor