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Gc  VI  y 

Gl^-cam    \f'i^ 

1925 

1638683 

^11   :: 


JSSS^cSSSh 


6c. 


ALLEN  COUNTY  PUBLIC  LIBRAR 


3  1833  01105  8010 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2010  with  funding  from 

Allen  County  Public  Library  Genealogy  Center 


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dje  Camlirtbse  ^tgtorical  ^otictp 


PUBLICATIONS 

XVIII 


PROCEEpmGS 

For  the  Year  1925 


CMIBRIDGE,  MASSACHUSETTS 

^ublisfjcii  tip  ti)c  ^ocietp 

1926 


^  •■::;.  :i' 


It38683 


By  a  recent  vote  of  the  Council,  the 
Proceedings  for  each  year,  beginning  with 
1925,  are  to  be  pubUshed  during  the  fol- 
lowing year,  and  the  volumes  now  in  ar- 
rears (1920  to  1924  inclusive)  are  to  be 
published  as  opportunity  permits.  Since 
many  of  the  programs  for  those  years  con- 
sisted of  informal  addresses  not  preserved, 
the  reading  of  extracts  from  books,  the 
exhibition  of  various  collections,  and  other 
matters  not  available  for  printing,  the 
Proceedings  for  1920  and  1921  will  even- 
tually be  published  together  as  Volume 
XV,  those  for  1922  as  Volume  XVI,  and 
those  for  1923  and  1924  as  Volume  XVII. 
The  present  volume  for  1925  therefore 
becomes  Volume  XVIII. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


.  Page 

PROCEEDINGS 

Sixty-ninth  Meeting 5 

Seventieth  Meeting 7 

Sev'entt-first  I^Ieeting 8 

Se\tentt-second  Meeting 9 

PAPERS 

Historical  Sketch  of  Charitable  Societies  in  Cambridge  11 
By  Edwin  Herbert  Hall 

QuiNCY  Street  in  the  Fifties 27 

By  Lillian  Horsford  Farlow 

The  Washington  Elm  Tradition 46 

By  SAMi:rEL  Franqs  Batchelder 

ANNUAL  REPORTS  '  f     '    '        ' 

Secretary  and  Council 76 

Treasurer 81 

OFFICERS 82 

MEMBERS 83 

BY-LAWS 87 


1.'  ::'Ay.k 


PROCEEDINGS 


OF 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 


SIXTY-NINTH  MEETING 

Twentieth  Annual  Meeting 

rpHE  Sixty-ninth  jNIeeting  of  the  Cambridge  Historical 
-■-  Society,  being  the  twentieth  annual  meeting,  was  held  27 
January,  1925,  at  the  residence  of  the  Reverend  John  Simpson 
Penman,  146  Brattle  Street,  Cambridge.  A  bitter  snowstorm 
was  responsible  for  a  small  attendance. 

President  Emerton  called  the  meeting  to  order.  The  minutes 
of  the  last  meeting  were  read  and  allowed. 

The  Secretary  read  his  annual  report,  with  which  by  custom 
was  incorporated  the  annual  report  of  the  Council. 

Voted  to  accept  the  report  and  refer  to  the  Editor  for  publica- 
tion.   (Printed,  pp.  76-80,  post.) 

The  Curator  made  his  annual  report,  reading  a  hst  of  the 
unusually  large  number  of  objects  presented  to  the  Society  dur- 
ing the  year,  some  of  which  he  exhibited. 

Voted  to  accept  the  report  and  refer  as  above. 
In  the  absence  of  the  Treasurer,  his  annual  report  was  read  by 
Mr.  Stoughtou  Bell,  together  with  the  report  of  the  Auditors. 

Voted  to  accept  the  same  and  refer  as  above.  (Printed,  p. 
81,  post.) 

The  President  stated  that  he  had  appointed  in  advance  a 
nominating  committee  consisting  of  Messrs.  Beale  and  Poor. 


6-  CA^        THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 

For  this  committee  Mr.  Poor  reported  the  following  nomina- 
tions: 

Presidenl Ephbaim  Emerton 

Mary  Isabeix-'^.  Gozzaij)i 

Viee-Presidenis ■  William  Cooudge  Lane 

Robert  Walcott 

Secretary Samuel  Frakcts  Batcheldeh 

Treasurer George  Grier  Wright 

Curator Walter  Benjamin  Briggs 

Council 

Samttel  Francis  Batcueldeb  Edward  Waldo  Forbes 

Joseph  Henry  Beale  Mary  Isabella  Gozzaldi 

Stotjghton  Bell  William  Cooltdge  Lane 

Walter  Benjamin  Briggs  Clarence  Henry  Poor,  Jr. 

Frank  Gaylord  Cook  Robert  Walcott 

Ephraim  Emerton  John  William  Wood,  Jr. 
George  Grier  Wright 

Ballots  were  distributed  and  the  above  were  duly  elected  as 
the  officers  of  the  Society  for  1925. 

For  the  committee  on  the  Old  Burj'ing  Ground,  the  Secretary 
announced  that  the  City  Engineer  had  at  length  completed, 
without  cost  to  the  Society,  the  detailed  plot  of  the  ground  show- 
ing every  stone  and  tomb  to  the  number  of  over  1200,  and  pre- 
pared a  finding  hst  for  the  same.  A  blue  print  of  this  plan  was 
exhibited. 

Voted  that  Lewis  M.  Hastings,  Esquire,  City  Engineer,  be 
extended  the  grateful  thanks  of  this  Society  for  his  valuable 
contribution  to  the  history  of  Cambridge. 

After  a  few  preliminary  remarks,  the  President  introduced  as 
the  speaker  of  the  evening.  Professor  EDW^N  Herbert  Hall, 
President  of  the  Cambridge  Welfare  Union,  who  read  a  paper  on 
"The  History  of  Charitable  Societies  in  Cambridge,"  including 
a  sketch  of  James  Huntington,  f oimder  of  the  Avon  Place  Home. 
(Prmted,  pp.  11-26,  post.) 

The  meeting  then  adjourned  and  the  hght  refreshments  were 
enjoyed. 


c>  ■' 


IM  ■--.-' 


5     :-    . 


SEVENTIETH  MEETING 

nnHE  Seventieth  jMeeting  of  the  Society  was  held  28 
A  April  1925,  at  the  residence  of  Horatio  Stevens  White, 
29  Reservoir  Street,  Cambridge.    About  twenty-five  persons 
were  present. 

The  President  called  the  meeting  to  order.  The  minutes  of 
the  last  meeting  were  read  and  allowed. 

For  the  committee  on  the  Old  Burjing  Ground,  the  Secretary- 
reported  that  a  cross  set  of  finding  Usts  —  numerical,  alpha- 
betical and  chronological  —  had  been  prepared  in  conformity 
with  the  engineer's  plot. 

Mrs.  Farlow  announced  that  the  Society  had  been  offered, 
through  her,  some  of  the  wood  of  the  historic  "Village  Smithy" 
formerly  standing  at  the  corner  of  Brattle  and  Story  Streets, 
together  with  a  chair  made  from  the  same.  The  President 
stated  that  objects  of  this  kind  would  be  greatly  appreciated  for 
the  Society's  collections. 

The  speaker  of  the  evening,  the  Hon.  Robert  Walcott,  then 
gave  an  extempore  address  on  ''Charles  Pollen,"  and  exhibited 
various  books,  pictures,  manuscripts,  etc.,  relating  to  him.^ 

The  meeting  then  adjourned  for  refreshments. 

»See  E.  L.  Pollen's  Life  of  Charles  Follen  (Boston,  1841);  T.  Parker's  "Life 
f*^ i5'^^^^^*^''  "^  ^^-   ^'<^^^P"'"  in  tiis  Amencan  Scholar  (1907);  K.  Prancke's 
Follen  and  the  German  Liberal  Movement,  1815-19,"  in  American  Historical 
Association  Papers,  vol.  5  (1S91),  etc. 


i^t:.'  ;'W.'-r/T. 


'  b 


SEVENTY-FIRST  MEETING 

THE  Se\'enty-first  Meeting  of  the  Society  took  the  form 
of  a  lawn  party,  for  members  and  friends,  on  the  afternoon 
of  12  Jmie  1925,  at  the  residence  of  Stoughton  Bell,  Esq.,  121 
Brattle  Street,  Cambridge.  The  weather  was  ideal  and  the 
flowers  and  foliage  at  their  best.  Over  sixty  persons  were 
present.  Tea  was  served  under  the  trees  at  4.30  p.m. 

At  5.15  P.M.  the  guests  assembled  indoors,  and  the  President 
gave  a  few  words  of  greetmg.  Miss  Hopkinson,  a  member  of  the 
pageant  committee  of  the  150th  anniversary  celebration  by  the 
city  on  July  3,  urged  the  members  of  the  Society  to  cooperate 
on  that  occasion.  A  list  prepared  by  ]Mrs.  Gozzaldi  was  read  of 
the  historical  buildings  and  sites  in  Cambridge  to  be  marked 
with  large  placards  during  that  celebration. 

The  speaker  of  the  afternoon,  Mrs.  William  Gilson  Farlow, 
then  read  a  paper  on  her  early  recollections,  entitled  "Quincy 
Street  in  the  Fifties."  (Prmted,  pp.  27-45,  post.)  In  connection 
with  this  paper  Mr.  Lane  exhibited  a  number  of  appropriate 
photographs  from  the  collection  in  the  University  Library. 

■   At  6.15  P.M.  the  meeting  adjourned. 


•n-K 


I' 


■■t     :      .^0     i^ 


SE^^NTY-SECOND  MEETING 

THE  Se\'enty-second  Meeting  of  the  Society  was  held 
on  the  evening  of  27  October,  1925,  at  the  residence  of  Mr. 
James  Leonard  Paine,  9  Waterhouse  Street,  Cambridge.  About 
fifty  members  were  present. 

President  Emerton  called  the  meeting  to  order.  The  minutes 
of  the  last  meeting  were  read  and  allowed. 

The  Curator  exliibited  a  number  of  new  gifts  to  the  Society, 
especially  several  large  scrapbooks,  containing  local  historical 
material  collected  bj'  the  late  William  Augustus  Saunders  and 
presented  by  the  widow  of  our  former  member,  Herbert  Alden 
Saunders. 

On  the  recommendation  of  the  Council  (due  notice  having 
been  given  in  the  call  for  the  meeting)  it  was 

Voted  that  the  first  sentence  of  Article  III  of  the  By-Laws  be 
amended  to  read  as  follows: 

"Any  resident  of,  or  person  having  a  usual  place  of  business 
in,  the  City  of  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  shall  be  ehgible  for 
regular  mcmbersliip  in  this  Society." 

And  in  conformity  with  this  change,  that  the  first  sentence  of 
Article  VI  be  amended  to  read  as  follows: 

"Any  person  who  is  neither  a  resident  of,  nor  has  a  usual 
place  of  business  in,  the  City  of  Cambridge,  Massachusetts, 
but  is  either  a  native,  or  formerly  had  a  residence  or  a  usual 
place  of  business  there  for  at  least  five  years,  shall  be  eligible  to 
associate  membership  in  the  Society." 

Voted  that  the  present  Article  XVIII  of  the  By-Laws  (as  to 
amendments)  be  numbered  Article  XX,  and  be  preceded  by 
two  new  articles,  as  follows: 

"  Article  XVIII.   Dissolution 

"If  at  any  time  the  active  membership  falls  below  ten,  this 
Society  may  be  dissolved  at  the  written  request  of  three  mem- 
bers, according  to  the  laws  and  statutes  of  this  Commonwealth. 


.1.        ■         i  '       :l 


10  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 

"Article  XIX.  Disposition  of  Property  upon  Dissolution 

"Upon  dissolution  of  the  Society,  all  its  collections  and  other 
property  shall  pass  to  the  President  and  Fellows  of  Harvard 
College,  in  trust  for  the  following  purposes,  to  wit: 

"1.  To  place  all  the  books  and  manuscripts  of  the  Society  in 
the  University  Library  so  that  they  shall  at  all  times  be  acces- 
sible for  consultation  and  study. 

"2.  To  place  the  other  collections  of  the  Society  m  some 
buildmg  where  they  will  be  safe  and  accessible,  so  far  as  possible; 
or  if  they  cannot  do  so,  to  transfer  such  other  collections  to  the 
Cambridge  Pubhc  Library,  the  jNIassachusetts  Historical  So- 
ciety, or  such  other  fit  educational  institution  as  w^ill  hold  them 
in  trust  for  the  citizens  of  Cambridge. 

"If  the  President  and  Fellows  of  Harvard  College  shall  de- 
cline this  trust,  then  the  property  of  the  Society  upon  its  dis- 
solution shall  pass  on  the  same  terms  to  the  City  of  Cambridge, 
to  be  administered  by  the  trustees  of  the  Cambridge  Public 
Library." 

The  President  stated  that  a  fresh  supply  of  "ancestors' 
papers"  was  ready,  and  requested  members  having  Cambridge 
ancestry  to  fill  them  out  for  permanent  record. 

The  Secretary  then  spoke  on  "The  Washington  Elm  Tradi- 
tion" in  connection  with  the  recent  celebration  held  by  the  city. 
(Printed,  pp.  46-75,  post.) 

The  meeting  then  adjourned. 


w 


>'      ^i  "'     ')  \      /  ;r         ?') 


hi,''  ', 


afJT 


HALL:  CHARITABLE  SOCIETIES  11 


HISTORICAL  SIvETCH  OF  CH.ARITABLE 
SOCIETIES  IN  CAMBRIDGE 

.   i  By  Edwin  H.  Hall 

Read  27  January  1925 

We  cannot  duly  appreciate  the  charitable  institutions  of  our 
c^vTi  time  and  place,  without  a  considerable  historical  back- 
ground ;  and,  in  view  of  the  great  influence  which  the  Bible  had 
on  the  lives  of  our  New  England  forefathers,  it  is  not  unfitting 
to  begin  an  account  of  Cambridge  charities  by  reference  to  the 
Old  Testament. 

In  the  ten  commandments,  which  first  appear  in  the  twen- 
tieth chapter  of  Exodus,  there  is  nothing  said  about  caring  for 
the  poor.  These  laws  command  justice  but  not  generosity.  In 
fact,  according  to  the  bible  story,  the  commandments  were  de- 
livered to  the  Israelites  only  a  few  months  after  their  departure 
from  Egj^pt,  at  the  beginning  of  their  long  sojourn  in  the  wilder- 
ness, while  they  were  subject  to  attack  from  dangerous  enemies 
and  dependent  for  their  daily  bread  on  the  manna  miraculously 
provided  for  them.  Injunctions  regarding  the  care  of  the  poor 
would  apparently  have  been  premature  at  this  time. 

In  the  twenty-third  chapter  of  Exodus,  however,  which  evi- 
dently refers  to  a  considerably  later  time  and  a  condition  of 
estabUshed  habitation,  we  find  this  passage:  ''And  six  years 
thou  shalt  sow  thy  land,  and  shalt  gather  in  the  fruits  thereof; 
but  the  seventh  year  thou  shalt  let  it  rest  and  lie  still ;  that  the 
poor  of  thy  people  may  eat.  ...  In  like  manner  thou  shalt  deal 
with  thy  vineyard  and  with  thy  ohve  yard."  In  the  fifteenth 
chapter  of  Deuteronomy  we  read,  "At  the  end  of  every  seven 
years  thou  shalt  make  a  release,"  that  is,  of  debts,  "save  when 
there  shall  be  no  poor  among  you."  Indeed,  it  seems  not  too 
much  to  say  that  among  the  early  Jews,  almsgiving,  care  for 
the  poor,  was  a  kind  of  religious  ritual,  performed  in  part,  of 
course,  from  the  instinct  of  humanity  but  with  a  very  definite 
view  of  profit  to  the  giver.   In  the  same  chapter  from  which  I 


■^    .llJJimXjr'UI 


ri  vl?.a: 


* 


12  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 

have  just  quoted  we  find  this  verse:  "Thou  shalt  surely  give 
him  [the  poor  man]  and  thine  heart  shall  not  be  grieved  when 
thou  givest  unto  him;  because  that  for  this  thing  the  Lord  thy 
God  shall  bless  thee  in  all  thy  works,  and  in  all  that  thou  puttest 
thine  hand  to  do." 

In  the  nineteenth  chapter  of  Proberbs  we  read,  ''He  that  hath 
pity  upon  the  poor  lendeth  unto  the  Lord;  and  that  which  he 
hath  given  will  He  pay  him  again." 

But  this  conception  of  almsgiving  as  a  good  personal  invest- 
ment was  and  is  by  no  means  confined  to  the  Jews.  Apparently 
it  prevails  widely  in  the  Orient  to  the  present  day.  I  have  heard 
my  colleague,  Professor  Fenn,  say  that  the  early  Christians  be- 
lieved the  prayers  of  the  poor  to  be  especially  efTectual  in  saving 
their  benefactors  from  dire  experiences  in  the  future  life.  It 
seems  probable  that  the  indiscriminate  giving  of  food  to 
"ragged,  bestial  beggars"  at  the  gates  of  monasteries  during 
the  Middle  Ages  was  prompted  largely  by  a  hke  consideration. 
It  is  a  commonplace  that  giving  of  this  sort,  primarily  for  the 
benefit  or  satisfaction  of  the  giver,  promotes  beggary,  and  in 
countries  where  it  prevails  mendicancy  is  an  established  pro- 
fession, often  hereditary. 

In  early  New  England  this  habit  of  ritualistic  giving,  as  a 
prescribed  rehgious  duty,  probably  never  existed,  and  the 
reasons  are  fairly  obvious.  The  early  New  England  type  of 
reUgion  was  severel}'  subjective,  and  external  acts  had  com- 
paratively little  to  do  with  it.  Every  man's  relations  with  his 
God  were  of  a  strictly  personal  character,  and  altogether  too 
serious  to  be  affected  materially  by  anj'  benevolent  deahngs 
with  a  third  party,  especially  any  unthrifty  and  probably  sinful 
member  of  the  conmaunity.  Furthermore,  in  old  England,  the 
traditions  of  which  were  doubtless  strong  in  the  new  country, 
the  civil  authorities  had  been  trying  for  some  centuries  to  con- 
trol the  recognized  evils  of  vagrancy  and  mendicancy  which 
ecclesiastical  bounty  had  fostered.  Finally,  the  early  settlers  of 
New  England  were  in  a  condition  strongly  resembling  in  im- 
portant respects  that  of  the  Israelites  when  recently  come  out 
from  Egj^t  —  in  a  strange,  barren  and  hostile  country  —  and 
we  have  seen  that  no  conamandment  of  charity  was  laid  upon 
the  followers  of  Moses  at  that  time. 


A  "••■•;• 


1925.]  HALL:  CHARITABLE  SOCIETIES  13 

Indeed,  from  many  records  quoted  or  cited  in  Mr.  Robert 
Kelso's  History  of  Public  Poor  Relief  in  Massach  usetts,  one  might 
easily  get  the  impression,  erroneous  I  believe,  that  New 
Englanders  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  were 
lacking  in  that  instinct  of  compassion  for  the  needy  and  sufTer- 
ing  which  is  an  attribute  of  ordinarj*  human  nature.  These 
records  illustrate  over  and  over  again  the  fact  that  each  New 
England  community  took  zealous  care  to  prevent  the  settlement 
within  its  borders  of  anyone  likely  to  become  an  object  of  public 
expense.  Thus,  from  the  Boston  Records  of  ]\Iarch  29,  1G47: 
"It  is  ordered  that  no  inliabitant  shall  entertaine  man  or  woman 
from  any  other  towne  or  count  rye  as  a  sojourner  or  inmate  with 
an  intent  to  reside  here,  but  shall  give  notice  thereof  to  the 
selectmen  of  the  towne  for  their  approbation  within  8  days  after 
their  cominge  to  the  towne  upon  penaltj^  of  twenty  shillings."  ' 
The  householder  introducing  a  stranger  into  a  conmaunity  was 
required  ''to  give  a  bond  to  save  the  town  harmless  in  case  the 
newcomer  should  fall  into  distress  and  need  support."  If 
parents  did  not  support  their  children,  the  children  could  be 
indentured  ''for  some  term  of  years,  according  to  their  ages  and 
capacities,"  and  the  parents  could  be  "putt  forth  to  service."  ^ 

In  fact,  Mr.  Kelso  appears  to  have  ample  warrant  for  the 
statement  which  he  makes  in  the  following  paragraph  (page 
100):  "From  the  stern  measures  taken  by  the  watchful  select- 
men, first  to  avoid  the  burden,  and  second,  when  finally  charged 
to  carry  as  little  of  it  as  possible,  it  resulted  that  the  lot  of  the 
town's  poor  was  hard.  To  be  relieved  at  all,  the  needy  must 
have  been  in  direct  want  for  the  necessaries  of  life;  and  rehef 
when  given  was  such  merely  as  to  sustain  fife." 

And  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  such  a  condition  of  things 
existed  in  early  colonial  times  only.  Our  author  says:  "In  the 
two  hundred  years  [from  1683]  that  followed  these  primitive 
times,  the  people  of  Massachusetts  passed  through  five  wars, 
»two  of  them  great  conflicts  upon  the  issue  of  hberty,  yet,  deeply 
as  men's  hearts  must  have  been  stirred,  and  strengthened  as  the 
impulse  of  sympathy  must  have  been  for  the  unfortunate, 
'out-relief  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  differed  Httle 

» Kelso,  p.  47. 
» Ibid.,  p.  %. 


)    -  il"  'Of'-'     '  ''        ■  I  .  ''l/i  :     -l'.'    .■I 


1-,1:»>I 


.{  :/iv-v... ,'.. 


..'.:■•.-]: 


14  THE  CAIVIBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 

if  at  all  from  the  meagre  shelter,  the  coarse  food,  and  the  pine 
box  of  the  seventeenth.  Such  differences  as  did  come  about 
arose  more  through  economic  change  than  from  any  variance  in 
the  attitude  of  the  overseers  of  the  poor.  Poverty  was  not 
differentiated  from  chronic  pauperism  and  pauperL>?m  was  akin 
to  crime.  The  sturdy  beggar,  the  idiot,  the  drunkard,  and  the 
widow  who  was  only  poor,  were  herded  together  under  the  same 
roof,  the  chief  soiu-ce  of  anxiety  being  the  net  cost  of  the  estab- 
lishment."  (Page  101.) 

But  there  is  another  aspect  of  these  unhappy  matters  that 
may  easily  be  overlooked,  though  it  is  significant  and  important. 
Behind  the  obvdous  penuriousness  and  apparent  hard-hearted- 
ness  of  the  pubhc  authorities  in  dealing  with  the  poor  there  was 
a  stern  sense  of  public  responsibility  and  of  personal  duty. 
Towns  warned  away  the  stranger  because  each  community 
recognized  the  obligation  it  assumed  toward  him  if  he  once 
acquired  a  legal  "settlement"  within  its  borders.  It  was  not 
simpl}^  a  question  of  relief  or  no  relief  for  the  poor;  it  was  a 
question  of  equity  or  of  responsibility  as  between  towns.  Even 
to  this  day  of  great  public  expenditure  for  all  sorts  of  purposes, 
even  great  expenditure  for  the  care  of  the  poor,  no  community, 
large  or  small,  is  willing  to  pay  a  bill  which  it  thinks  some  other 
community  ought  to  pay,  or  can  be  induced  to  pay.  Even  now 
any  citizen  of  Massachusetts  who  encourages  an  indigent  family 
to  settle  in  his  town  is  hable  to  a  considerable  fine  —  one  hun- 
dred dollars,  I  beUeve. 

Moreover,  like  conscientious  men  of  all  times.  New  England 
selectmen  and  overseers  of  the  poor  have  doubtless  in  many 
cases  been  more  strict  and  frugal  in  the  use  of  pubUc  money 
than  in  the  use  of  their  own.  They  were  responsible  officials, 
subject  to  the  criticism  of  their  fellow-townsmen,  dealing  with 
a  dependent  class  of  people  whose  misfortimes  were,  in  many 
cases  at  least,  the  results  of  their  misbehavior;  and  it  doubtless 
would  have  seemed  to  them  injurious  to  the  morals  of  the 
community  to  make  the  dependent  poor  really  comfortable, 
even  according  to  the  very  moderate  standards  of  physical 
comfort  which  prevailed  in  their  time.  The  sad,  often  cruelly 
sad,  fate  of  those  who  "came  on  the  town,"  involving  not  only 
hard  conditions  of  living  but  a  desolating  loss  of  self-respect, 


J  A 


1925.]  HALL:  CHARITABLE  SOCIETIES  15 

was  enough  to  maintain  in  the  community  generally  a  most 
vivid  and  wholesome  dread  of  such  dependency.  To  abohsh 
this  dread  by  taking  tender  care  of  the  lazy  and  improvident 
would  be  to  take  something  potentially  heroic  out  of  common 
life. 

Finally,  I  cannot  doubt  that,  in  a  time  when  belief  in  a 
future  life  of  infinite  happiness  or  of  infinite  misery  was  far 
more  general  and  more  confident  than  it  is  now,  the  earthly 
sufTermg  of  men  and  women  seemed  of  far  less  importance  than 
it  does  in  our  own  day.  There  is,  I  suspect,  some  relation  be- 
yond mere  coincidence  in  time,  between  the  increase  of  chari- 
table activity  and  the  decrease  in  zeal  for  foreign  missionary 
work  which  the  last  fifty  years  have  witnessed  in  America. 

Striking  evidence  of  the  rate  at  which  pubUc  expenditure  for 
charity  has  increased  during  the  last  two  or  three  generations  is 
found  in  the  following  data  which  I  have  obtained  from  official 
reports  kept  at  the  office  of  the  Cambridge  *' Department  of 
Public  Welfare"  (formerly  ''Overseers  of  the  Poor"): 

For  the  year  ending  December  1,  1857,  the  "total  net  ex- 
penditure for  supporting  the  poor  [of  Cambridge]  in  and  out  of 
the  Almshouse,  exclusive  of  fuel,"  was  $789.25.  The  tax  rate 
for  this  year  was  S8  on  $1,000.  The  population  of  Cambridge 
according  to  a  census  of  1855  was  20,473. 

For  the  year  ending  November  30, 1894,  the  net  cost  of  caring 
for  the  poor  was  853,233.15,  the  population,  according  to  the 
census  of  1890,  being  70,028. 

For  the  year  ending  March  31,  1922,  the  expenditures  of  the 
Overseers  of  the  Poor  were  §262,360.40,  of  which  amount 
$62,962.18  was  repaid,  mainly  by  the  Commonwealth,  making 
the  net  cost,  to  Cambridge,  §199,398.22,  the  population  at  that 
time  being  about  110,000. 

Mr.  Kelso,  from  whose  book  I  have  taken  evidence  of  the 
stern,^  sometimes  harsh,  methods  of  early  New  England  officials 
in  dealing  with  the  poor,  celebrates  the  achievements  of  the 
successors  of  these  officials  as  represented  by  the  work  of  the 
unpaid  Massachusetts  State  Board  of  Charity,  established  in 

*  In  one  respect  our  ancestors  were  more  liberal  than  we  are.  Kelso  gives  from 
the  towTi  records  of  Easton,  for  May,  1799,  the  following:  "  Voted  to  Abiel  Kinsley, 
nine  pounds,  four  shillings,  for  shoger  and  rum  for  David  Randall's  family." 


16  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 

1863,  and  usually  made  up  in  the  main  of  men  with  a  long  New 
England  ancestry.  He  speaks  of  "the  preeminence  of  ]\Iassa- 
chusetts  in  the  field  of  social  service,"  which  preeminence,  "be- 
ginning with  the  thorough  analyses  of  Samuel  Gridley  Howe, 
has  been  built  up  by  the  unremitting  efforts  of  his  successors." 
j\Iy  limited  reading  has  found  comparatively  little  about 
private  or  church  charity  in  early  ^Massachusetts  times,  but  it 
would  be  quite  unfair  to  assume  that  it  was  unknown  or  even 
unconmion.  Thus,  Kelso,  on  page  105,  speaking  of  the  seven- 
teenth centiu-y,  says,  "  Many  towns  owned  milch  cows,  acquired 
usually  by  gift  from  citizens  to  the  use  of  the  poor;  and  it  was 
not  unusual  to  help  a  struggling  family  by  assigning  to  them  a 
town  cow  for  a  certain  period." 

Sharpies,  on  page  n  of  the  preface  to  his  edition  of  the  Cam- 
bridge Church  Records,  speaks  of  a  book  containing  the 
deacons'  accounts,  beginning  with  the  year  163S  and  ending 
in  1716,  and  says,  "This  book  gives  the  amount  of  money  col- 
lected each  Sabbath It  also  contains  a  record  of  how  the 

money  was  spent,  and  gives  the  special  collections  made  on 
Thanksgiving  days  for  the  rehef  of  the  poor." 

The  first  reference  to  charity  that  I  have  foimd  in  the  body 
of  this  book  occm's  on  page  267:  "Voted  [May  31,  1784]  that 
the  Committee  last  chosen  be  directed  to  enquire  into  the  state 
of  monies  given  to  the  poor  of  the  Chh.";  but  after  this,  refer- 
ences of  this  character  are  frequent.  It  appears  from  a  record 
of  July  29,  1785,  that  such  "monies"  amounted  on  this  date  to 
£62  and  2d,  £40  of  which  had  been  given  by  the  late  Rev.  Dr. 
Appleton,  pastor  of  the  church,  recently  deceased.  On  Sep- 
tember 23,  1785,  various  rules  governing  the  use  of  these  funds 
were  adopted,  among  them  the  following: 

"3.  That  one  third  of  the  sums  contributed  at  the  annual 
Thanksgi\'ings  for  the  use  of  the  poor  shall  with  leave  of  the 
contributors  be  added  yearly  to  the  principal  of  this  fund." 

In  the  record  for  the  year  ending  June  30,  1792,  is  the  first 
definite  mention  I  have  found  of  expenditure  from  this  fund: 
"Money  contributed  to  certain  widows  £3,  3.s,  Oc?."  In  the 
next  year  the  amount  "distributed  to  simdry  widow^s"  was  £4, 
19s.  In  the  next  year  the  "money  distributed"  was  12s  only. 
In  the  year  ending  June  30,  1795,  the  "sundry  widows"  re- 


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V.ft    :'''i^k^}]l    ■ft  A: 


1925.]  HALL:  CHARITABLE  SOCIETIES  17 

appear  and  receive  £6,  3s,  lOd.  For  the  next  year  the  ''cash 
distributed  to  sundry  persons"  was  $12.25.  Change  to  the 
decimal  system  of  money  was  now  in  progress,  £1  being  taken 
as  the  equivalent  of  .$3.33i. 

From  the  date  last  mentioned  to  1830,  when  the  pubhshed 
record  ends,  small  amounts  were  given  from  this  Poor's  Fund 
nearly  every  year,  usually  to  widows,  sometimes  described  as 
"indigent,"  but  their  names  are  never  mentioned.  The  largest 
annual  distribution  recorded,  after  the  year  1795,  was  S16.08 
in  1798-99,  the  average  amount  being  about  S12.i  Apparently 
the  recipients  were  in  all  cases  members  of  the  church. 

As  I  find  no  mention  of  Thanksgiving  day  collections  after 
the  record  of  September  23,  1785,  quoted  above,  and  as  the 
yearly  interest  on  the  Poor's  Fund  was  considerably  larger  than 
the  recorded  annual  distribution  from  this  fund,  I  conclude  that 
the  practice  of  taking  Thanksgi\dng  day  collections  for  the 
benefit  of  the  poor  was  discontinued  soon  after  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Appleton's  bequest  added  £40  to  the  fund  in  question.  At  the 
end  of  the  record,  in  1830,  this  fund  amounted  to  about  S68O.2 

^  According  to  Paige's  History  of  Cambridge,  the  population  of  the  town  was 
2,453  in  1800,  2.323  in  1810,  3,295  in  1820,  and  6,072  in  1830. 

*  At  Chri'=t  Church  there  was  also  a  regular  poor  fund,  for  which  money  was  col- 
lected "at  the  Communion  and  at  other  times."  From  the  gathering  of  this  S.P.G. 
mission  in  1759  to  the  dispersal  of  the  congregation  in  1775rat  least  £132  had  been 
expended  for  the  support  of  the  poor,  besides  a  special  collection  of  about  £12  for 
the  relief  of  "the  Sufferers  at  Canada"  in  the  great  fire  at  Montreal  in  1768  —  a 
rather  surprising  liberality  towards  the  Roman  Catholics.  As  the  congregation  was 
very  aristocratic  and  included  few  poor  people  the  fund  seems  to  have  been  admin- 
istered on  a  somewhat  generous  scale  —  perhaps  not  always  confined  to  parish- 
ioners. Some  of  the  entries  are: 

By  pd.  Thomas  Sherren  [the  clerk  and  sexton],  gave  him,  his 

family  having  been  sick,  £1  16s. 

,      Cash  given  to  Sherren  by  the  desire  of  the  Church  16s,  3|d. 

By  Cash  pd  Mr.  Bacon  a  Poor  man  19s.  4d. 

To  sundry  disbursements  to  the  poor  &  for  wine  and  charcoal,    £2    10s,  8d. 
Pd  Dolley  out  of  poor  money  7s.  8d. 

William  Dolley  was  a  typical  pauper.  He  and  his  wife  both  died  in  December 
of  1775,  and  from  the  selectmen's  records  it  appears  that  Deacon  Samuel  WTiitte- 
more  was  paid  £1  6s.  8d.  for  the  previous  year's  rent  of  a  house  for  him  —  that  his 
child  of  a  year  and  a  half  old  was  farmed  out  to  "Widow  Cook  in  Mcnottemy 
[Arlington] "  at  2s.  per  week,  the  selectmen  of  that  precinct  being  "desired  to  pro- 
vide a  carnage  for  her  to  come  and  fetch  sd.  child"  —  and  that  William  Darling 
was  paid  "for  burj'ing  Dolley  and  his  wife  and  the  negro  of  Thos.  Ohver  at  6/-  d. 
peace,  18s." 

The  idea  of  a  poor  fund  at  Christ  Church  was  revived  and  officially  recognized 
when  the  reconstituted  parish  was  incorporated  in  1815.  By  Section  7  of  the  Act 
the  society  was  "empowered  to  raise  and  establish  a  fund  ...  the  income  of  which 
they  may  from  time  to  time  appropriate  to  the  support  of  the  minister  ...  or  to 


18  THE  CAIVIBRIDGE  HISTORICVL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 

The  first  purely  charitable  Cambridge  association  of  which 
I  have  found  mention  is  the  Cambridge  Humane  Society, 
founded  in  1814.  In  1857,  according  to  the  Cambridge  Direc- 
tory of  that  date,  Rev.  John  G.  Palfrey  was  its  president.  I  am 
told  that  there  were  at  one  time  a  Female  Hmnane  Society  and 
a  INIale  Humane  Society  in  Cambridge,  but  I  do  not  know  of 
which  one  IMr.  Palfrey  was  president.  In  an  account  of  the 
Paine  Fund  pubUshed  in  1912  by  the  First  Parish  in  Cambridge, 
mention  is  made  of  the  Female  Humane  Society,  of  which  Mrs. 
J.  P.  Cooke  had  been  president  for  many  years.  This  associa- 
tion went  out  of  existence  soon  after  the  Paine  Fund  became 
active  in  1905.^ 

The  Cambridge  Directory  of  1857,  aheady  referred  to,  men- 
tions two  other  charitable  societies,  as  follows : 

"Howard  Benevolent  Society:  This  Society  was  founded  in 
1851.  Its  object  is  to  reUeve  the  sufferings  of  the  poor  and 
unfortunate.  Its  labors  are  at  present  confined  to  the  Second 
Ward.2 . .  .  AppUcations  for  aid  to  be  made  to  one  of  the 
Managers." 

"Walker  Benevolent  Society:  This  Society  was  instituted  in 
North  Cambridge,  October  1,  1855.  It  has  for  its  object,  etc., 
the  amelioration  of  the  condition  of  the  poor  of  North  Cam- 
bridge and  Somerville,  and  the  prevention  of  fraud." 

The  Howard  Benevolent  Society  is  still  in  existence,  dis- 
pensing the  proceeds  of  a  permanent  fund  of  moderate  size. 

The  Walker  Benevolent  Society,  as  described  above,  is  inter- 
esting because  of  its  twofold  object,  to  relieve  poverty  and  to 

the  relief  of  the  poor  of  the  society."  The  position  of  Christ  Church,  as  Professor 
Joseph  H.  Beale  has  pointed  out,  is  therefore  beheved  to  be  unique  in  New  England, 
as  that  of  a  corporation  which  is  at  once  a  business  and  a  "rehgious  and  charitable" 
organization. —  Ed. 

^  The  Humane  Society  has  been  a  rather  favorite  theme  with  Cambridge  writers. 
See  for  instance  the  article  by  Arthur  Oilman,  "An  Old-Time  Society,"  in  The 
Cambridge  oj  1S96,  the  paper  by  P^dward  H.  Hall,  "The  Cambridge  Humane  So- 
ciety," in  these  Proceedings,  vi,  27,  and  the  paper  by  Mrs.  R.  H.  Dana  (Edith 
Longfellow),  "The  Female  Humane  Society,"  in  the  same,  ix,  62.  Upon  its  disso- 
lution in  1914  the  records  of  this  century-old  organization  were  pre.sented  to  the 
Cambridge  HLstorical  Society.  The  first  annual  report  gives  a  striking  picture  of 
the  sturdy  independence  of  the  native  population  of  those  days:  "Such  has  been 
the  general  state  of  health,  and  such  the  comfortable  circumstances  of  most  of  the 
inhabitants  of  Cambridge,  that  but  very  few  cases  have  occurred  that  required 
much  aid  from  the  Society."  —  Ed. 

*  Not  the  present  Second  Ward,  but  a  region  near  Magazine  Street. 


^-.' 


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't'-'r1  :;nii:.;?;o 


1925.]  HALL:  CH.\RITABLE  SOCIETIES  19 

prevent  fraud.  This  association  apparently  ended  its  labors, 
whether  in  triumph  or  in  despair  we  can  only  guess,  about  1859, 
for  its  name  does  not  appear  in  the  Directory  of  1860. 

In  this  Directory  for  ISGO  Catholic  charitable  societies  begin 
to  appear  —  the  St.  John's  Charitable  Society  and  the  St.  John^s 
Female  Relief  Society.  Their  names  did  not  stay  in  the  Directory 
many  years. 

In  the  Directory  of  1863  there  is  mention  of  the  ''East  Cam- 
bridge Female  Charitable  Society, —  formed  in  1824.  Composed 
of  ladies  from  the  several  rehgious  Societies."  This  society 
ceased  to  appear  in  the  City  Directory  about  1889. 

The  Ladies'  Samaritan  Society,  East  Cambridge,  organized  in 
1861,  was  mentioned  for  many  successive  years  in  the  Directory, 
Mrs.  Joel  Robinson  being  its  president.  I  have  found  no  men- 
tion of  its  existence  after  1883. 

The  Cambridge  Social  Union,  organized  in  1871,  appears  in 
the  Directory  for  1872,  with  William  H.  Vaughan  as  president. 
Its  rooms  were  said  to  be  on  Brattle  Street,  corner  of  Palmer 
Street,  second  floor.  With  a  change  of  location  to  its  own  build- 
ing at  42  Brattle  Street,  this  Union  has  continued  its  activities 
to  the  present  time. 

The  Directory  of  1874  is  the  first  to  mention  the  Cambridge 
Dispensary.  Its  location  was  in  the  City  Building,  now  housing 
the  Pohce  Department  and  the  Department  of  Public  Welfare, 
on  Western  Avenue  at  the  corner  of  Green  Street.  The  presi- 
dent was  William  L.  \Miitney.  Apparently  this  institution  came 
to  an  end  about  1882,  possibly  in  consequence  of  the  formation 
of  the  Associated  Charities. 

The  present  East  End  Union  is  the  outcome  of  a  "Lower  Port 
Union  Mission  Sunday  School,"  opened  in  1876,  at  7  Burleigh 
Street,  near  the  present  Kendall  Square.  Social  service  work, 
with  children  of  both  sexes,  began  early  in  this  mission,  and  the 
original,  somewhat  militant,  religious  purpose  of  the  institution 
long  since  disappeared.  In  1889  the  association  was  incorporated 
as  the  East  End  Christian  Union.  Industrial  development  of 
the  region  about  7  Burleigh  Street  forced  the  Union  to  leave  this 
location  in  1921.  It  found  temporary  quarters  in  a  small  house, 
No.  17  Fifth  Street,  at  that  time  owned  and  partly  occupied  by 
the  Associated  Charities  (now  the  Cambridge  Welfare  Union), 


■'■'.:  J    ..l-'/- 


"J'i 


20  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 

The  next  year  it  was  reincorporated  as  the  East  End  Union  and 
established  itseK  at  105-107  Spring  Street,  East  Cambridge. 
Its  building  was  destroj-ed  by  fire  in  1923;  but  with  great  energy 
the  Union  has  rebuilt,  continuing  its  work  meanwhile  as  best  it 
could.  In  a  region  where  manj-  of  the  inhabitants  are  foreign- 
born,  this  Union  combines  much  Americanization  work  with  the 
usual  activities  of  a  community  social  center. 

The  Duectory  for  1S7G  is  the  first  that  mentions  a  Conference 
of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul.^  This  Conference  was  connected  with 
St.  John's  Church,  East  Cambridge.  In  18S4  there  was  also  a 
Conference  of  the  same  society  in  Cambridgeport.  It  would 
appear  from  the  Directory  that  in  1889  there  was  only  one  such 
Conference  in  Cambridge,  this  one  being  connected  with  the 
Church  of  the  Sacred  Heart.  The  1922  Duectory  of  Social 
Agencies  for  Cambridge  names  seven  Conferences,  connected 
with  as  many  diiTerent  churches. 

The  Avo7i  Home,  first  called  the  Avon  Place  Home,  was  estab- 
lished in  1874,  though  it  does  not  appear  in  the  Directory  before 
1877.  The  first  location  was  in  a  house  now  the  residence  of 
Dr.  Ezra  Taft.  ]Mrs.  Henry  W.  Paine  was  the  first  president  of 
its  trustees.  After  some  years  the  Home  was  removed  to  a  large 
new  building,  especially  constructed  for  its  uses,  on  Mt.  Auburn 
Street,  nearly  opposite  the  Cambridge  Hospital  and  the  Homes 
for  Aged  People.  Later  the  poUcy  of  putting  out  dependent 
children  individually  with  approved  families  was  adopted,  and 
this  building  was  pulled  down,  after  being  injured  by  fire.  I 
shall  give  presently,  in  this  paper,  a  sketch  of  the  life  and 
personality  of  the  founder  of  the  Avon  Home,  Mr.  James 
Huntington. 

The  Cambridge  Neighborhood  House,  at  79  Moore  Street, 
Cambridgeport,  was  opened  as  a  social  center  by  Mrs.  Quincy 
Shaw,  a  daughter  of  Professor  Louis  Agassiz,  in  1878,  and  it 
was  for  very  many  years  supported  entirely  by  her  and  directed 
by  her  or  by  her  agents.  It  is  probably  the  only  charitable  insti- 
tution in  Cambridge,  open  to  all  nationahties,  which  was  estab- 
lished by  a  person  of  foreign  birth.  It  was  incorporated  in  1909, 

1  St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  who  lived  from  1576  to  1660.  founded  associations  {con- 
Sreries)  of  Catholic  lay  women  to  care  for  the  poor  and  the  sick.    The  present 

f general  Society  of  .St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  also  a  lay  association,  dates  from  1833;  its 
ocal  branches  or  Conferences  are  very  numerous. 


\ 


■iPIT  «? 


'!  , ': '":        '■  r:. 


1925.]  HALL:  CH.\RITABLE  SOCIETIES  21 

while  remaining  largely  under  the  control  of  Mrs.  Shaw.  In 
1920,  after  her  death,  it  was  reincorporated  and  it  is  now  de- 
pendent on  the  general  public  for  its  support. 

The  Margaret  Fuller  House  is  another  social  service  center  in 
Cambridgeport,  at  71  Cherry  Street.  It  is  not  incorporated, 
being  maintained  as  a  branch  of  the  Young  Women's  Christian 
Association. 

The  Cambridge  Welfare  Union,  incorporated  under  its  present 
name  in  1920,  is  the  successor  of  the  Associated  Charities  of 
Cambridge,  which  society  was  organized  in  1881  and  incorpo- 
rated in  1883.  The  first  office  of  the  original  organization  was 
in  the  old  City  Building  on  Western  Avenue.  The  first  staff 
officer,  called  the  Registrar,  was  Miss  Sarah  A.  Pear.  Joseph 
B.  Warner  was  the  first  chairman  of  the  executive  committee, 
and  Ephraim  Emerton,  soon  succeeded  by  William  T.  Piper, 
was  the  first  secretary  of  this  committee.  Later,  Miss  J\lary 
Birtwell  became  head  of  the  office  staff,  serving  with  great  de- 
votion and  efficiency  for  many  years  until  her  death  in  1919. 

Like  the  comparatively  short-lived  Walker  Benevolent  So- 
ciety, already  mentioned,  which  was  formed  nearly  a  generation 
earlier,  the  Associated  Charities  had  a  double  purpose,  to  help 
those  in  need  and  to  suppress  fraudulent  ^  or  needless  beggary. 
Its  early  policy  was  based  on  the  theory  that  most  difficulties  of 
the  poor  could  be  overcome  by  the  help  of  good  advice  and 
steadfast  encouragement,  very  little  money  being  used  for  direct 
"rehef."  In  fact,  the  society  appears  to  have  had  for  many 
years  no  sustained  relief  fund,  except  what  came  from  the 
North  Cambridge  Relief  .Association,  an  organization  for  the 
benefit  of  the  needy  in  Wards  10  and  11,  which  in  1920  made 
over  its  fund  to  the  keeping  of  the  Cambridge  Welfare  Union. 
But  during  the  hard  times  about  1907  the  practice  of  keeping  a 
ready  relief  fund  was  begun,  and  it  has  continued  ever  since, 
with  a  tendency  toward  more  hberal  use  of  money  year  by  year 
for  direct  reUef  purposes.  A  hke  change  of  poficy  has  occurred 
simultaneously  in  similar  associations  the  country  over.  This 
is  undoubtedly  a  popular  development,  among  both  the  bene- 
ficiaries and  the  financial  supporters  of  charitable  work;  but  in 

.  ^  One  of  its  early  reports  tells  of  a  woman  who  had  persuaded  each  of  eight 
persons  to  pay  the  whole  of  her  rent. 


■*> 


«>■ 


"2:,v-Jv  •;■:;.)  1  ,--.-u 


i::'^^ 


22  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [J.vn. 

my  opinion  it  may  go  too  far.  If  John  Boyle  O'Reilly  could 
re\dsit  this  community,  he  would  not,  I  feel  sure,  speak  now, 
as  he  did  some  forty  years  ago,  of 

Organized  chanty,  measured  and  iced. 

In  the  name  of  a  cautious,  statistical  Christ. 

It  would  be  impracticable  to  deal  in  this  paper  with  all  the 
charitable  or  benevolent  associations,  some  religious,  some 
medical,  some  racial,  which  have  grown  up  in  Cambridge  during 
the  past  forty  years.  The  mere  Directory  of  Social  Agencies  in 
Cambridge,  issued  in  1922  by  the  Cambridge  Union  of  Social 
Workers,  is  a  pamphlet  of  31  pages.  I  shall  mention  only  a  very 
few  of  these,  certain  ones  that  I  happen  to  have  some  direct 
knowledge  of. 

The  Anti-Tuberculosis  Association  was  founded  in  1903  and 
incorporated  in  1912.  The  estabhshment  of  organizations  like 
this  is  a  natural  consequence  of  comparatively  recent  recogni- 
tion of  tuberculosis  as  both  a  contagious  and  a  curable  disease. 
The  Association  opened  a  free  dispensary  in  1905,  to  deal  with 
individual  cases  of  illness  among  those  too  poor  to  afford  ade- 
quate care  at  their  o-^ti  expense,  and  it  maintained  a  vigorous 
agitation  in  favor  of  the  recognition  and  observance  of  health 
rules  by  the  pubhc  at  large.  After  the  city,  in  1916,  assumed 
charge  of  all  charity  cases  of  tuberculosis,  the  work  of  the 
Association  was  for  some  years  almost  exclusively  educational. 
Of  late  it  has  cooperated  with  the  Visiting  Nursing  Association 
in  maintaining  a  health  center  in  East  Cambridge,  and  with  the 
city  authorities  in  supporting  a  summer  open  air  school,  or 
camp,  for  children,  near  Fresh  Pond. 

The  Paine  Fund  was  established  by  the  will  of  Miss  Jeannie 
Warren  Paine  of  Cambridge,  who  died  in  1903.  She  was  the 
daughter  of  a  well-known  lawyer,  Henry  W.  Paine,  and  her 
mother  had  been  active  in  charitable  work,  being,  for  example, 
the  first  president  of  the  Avon  Home  trustees.  Miss  Paine's 
will  gave  her  property  to  the  "First  Parish  Church  of  Cam- 
bridge, otherwise  called  the  Unitarian  Society  of  Old  Cam- 
bridge, to  form  a  permanent  charity  fund,  of  which  the  income 
shall  be  regarded  as  an  extension  of  the  so-called  Sanders  Fund 
income,  and  used  as  said  Sanders  Fund  income  has  been  used 


r^  ■,  )a  JA  .; :-    yr':  ^  ,  ^'KiimK/O  aHT  ii!^- 


.j   c  '.       -rrr--    V:    n^*/a!.itn   ■■'; 


■•■,c.u  ^'.^i  /jn; 


1925.]  HALL:  CH.\RITABLE  SOCIETIES  23 

by  Mrs.  J.  P.  Cooke,  President  of  the  Cambridge  Female 
Humane  Society,"  etc. 

This  document,  ambiguous  in  more  than  one  respect,  has 
been  wisely  and  generously  interpreted,  and  in  the  able  hands 
of  Mrs.  Annie  L.  Chesley,  who  has  been  from  the  first  secretary 
of  the  committee  controlling  the  Paine  Fund,  this  fund  has  done 
a  very  great  amount  of  good  in  a  very  quiet  and  considerate 
way. 

Cambridge  pays  a  large  amount  of  money  every  year  for 
charitable  purposes,  in  addition  to  that  raised  by  taxes  and  dis- 
pensed by  the  pubUc  authorities.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  no 
one,  even  among  those  who  give  most  largely,  is  rimning  any 
serious  risk  of  financial  ruin  through  his  benefactions;  but  the 
multiplicity  of  rather  insistent  calls  upon  one's  benevolence  is 
trying,  and  often  seems,  even  to  the  most  generous,  as  unreason- 
able. So  the  Community  Chest,  an  institution  which  appears  to 
work  well  in  certain  places,  especially  at  first,  has  often  been 
proposed  for  our  city.  Two  or  three  years  ago  a  committee  of 
three  men,  Mr.  Walter  Earle,  Mr.  Thomas  Hadley  and  Rev. 
Angus  Dun,  the  best  committee  of  three,  I  think,  that  could 
have  been  selected,  considered  at  length  the  pros  and  cons  of 
this  proposition  and  then  laid  the  question  before  the  various 
charitable  societies  that  might  be  expected  to  take  an  interest 
in  the  matter.  Little  encouragement  for  the  project,  if  the  idea 
can  be  said  to  have  attained  sufficient  positiveness  to  be  called 
a  project,  was  given  by  the  various  bodies  of  directors,  and  the 
committee  quite  justly  ceased  its  labors. 

Bemg  for  the  present  commissioned  as  a  historian,  not  as  a 
prophet,  I  shall  make  no  prediction  as  to  the  developments  of 
the  next  decade  in  the  charity  undertakings  of  Cambridge. 

I  said  above  that  I  proposed  to  say  something  further  regard- 
ing Mr.  James  Huntington,  sole  projector  and  founder  of  per- 
haps the  most  popular  of  all  Cambridge  charities,  the  Avon 
Home.  He  was  born  in  Vergennes,  Vermont,  in  1822,  of  a  good 
family,  Samuel  Himtington  of  Connecticut,  signer  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  being  his  great  uncle.  Appren- 
ticed to  an  older  brother,  he  learned  the  watchmaker's  trade  and 
learned  it  well.  Then,  supporting  himseK  from  this  time  forward 


f.:V' 


^    ■^w  i 


'.,  )' 


24  THE  CAJSIBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 

by  this  craft,  at  which  he  personally  worked  till  he  was  more 
than  seventy  years  old,  he  set  out  to  gain  a  liberal  education. 
Studying  first  in  a  school  taught  by  another  of  his  several 
brothers,  and  later  at  Phillips  .\ndover  Academy,  he  prepared 
for  Harvard  College,  where  he  graduated  in  1852,  when  he  was 
in  his  thirtieth  j'ear.  He  must  have  shown  good  quahties  there, 
for  he  was  made  a  member  of  the  Institute  of  1770  and  was  an 
intimate  friend  of  his  classmate  Gurney,  afterward  dean  of  the 
college. 

After  graduation  he  occupied  in  succession  two  shops  in  or 
near  Harvard  Square,  but  finally  took  possession  of  a  little 
triangular  space,  now  1432  Massachusetts  Avenue,  under  Col- 
lege House.  His  business  grew,  for  he  was  widely  known  as  a 
skilful  and  honorable  workman,  till  he  had  employment  for  a 
number  of  assistants  or  apprentices.  "WTien  his  cramped  quarters 
would  no  longer  suffice,  he  took  a  larger  shop  under  Holyoke 
House,  instalhng  there  one  of  the  men  he  had  trained,  but  con- 
tinued his  own  labors  in  his  old  place. 

In  1874  he  opened,  entii'ely  at  his  own  expense  and  on  his  own 
initiative,  the  small  Avon  Place  Home,  aheady  mentioned,  "for 
children  found  destitute  within  the  limits  of  Cambridge."  The 
reason  for  doing  this  he  gave  in  these  words:  ''I  thought  I  owed 
somethmg  to  the  world." 

About  this  time  he  was  hard  hit  by  financial  losses,  through 
no  fault  of  his  own,  and  it  was  doubtless  for  this  reason  that  he 
almost  immediately  made  over  the  Home,  valued  with  its 
furnishings  at  810,000,  to  a  board  of  trustees,  whom  he  selected; 
and  I  believe  he  never  afterward  had  any  official  connection 
with  the  institution  he  had,  with  such  nobility  and  simplicity 
of  purpose,  established. 

In  1893  failing  health  compelled  him  to  retire  from  active  life. 
During  the  forty  years  of  his  professional  occupation  in  Cam- 
bridge no  sign  had  ever  borne  his  name  or  advertised  his  busi- 
ness. In  1900  he  removed  with  his  family  to  Newton,  where  he 
died  May  19,  1901.  His  last  expressed  wish  was  that  SIOOO 
should  be  given  from  his  estate  to  found  a  scholarship  at 
PhilUps  Andover  Academy,  and  this  wish  was  carried  out. 

Mr.  Huntington  was  an  interesting  and  picturesque  person- 
ality.   He  was  somewhat  below  medium  height  and  of  slight 


'■(  ■  ■    :i 


!.".\   > 


^   rv,:f.i:.j., 


1925.]  H.\LL:  CHARITABLE  SOCIETIES  25 

figure.  His  hair,  which  he  kept  rather  long,  his  beard,  and  his 
eyes  were  dark;  his  nose  was  somewhat  aquiline.  In  his  shop, 
as  out  of  doors,  he  wore  a  longish,  loose,  black  coat,  not  ob- 
viously new,  and  a  soft  black  hat.  .As  he  went  along  the  street 
between  his  place  of  business  and  his  house,  with  his  head  bent 
forward,  his  eyes  fixed  unconsciously  upon  the  ground,  his  hands 
thrust  each  into  the  opposite  sleeve  as  into  a  muff,  he  was 
plainly  a  man  walking  in  a  world  of  his  own,  a  figure  about 
whom  the  imagmation  of  Hawthorne  might  have  woven  a 
sombre  romance. 

In  speech  he  was  deliberate,  low-voiced  and  whimsical.  He 
had  a  bent  for  moralizing  and  philosopliizing  in  a  serious  fashion 
and  a  habit  of  putting  his  reflections  into  verse,  which  he  wrote 
with  facility,  but  not  as  a  rule  for  publication.  He  was  gentle, 
shy  and  proud,  and,  naturally  enough,  he  had  with  this  tem- 
perament a  Dantesciue  capacity  for  bitter  and  continuing  wrath, 
when  he  felt  himself  to  be  intentionally  and  deliberately  \\Tonged. 
This  wrath  too  he,  Uke  the  great  Florentine,  vented  in  verse, 
though,  again,  not  for  publication. 

In  consequence  of  the  financial  losses  to  which  reference  has 
already  been  made,  he  instituted  legal  proceedings  against  the 
man  by  whom  he,  whether  justly  we  need  not  here  inquire,  be- 
lieved himself  betrayed;  and  with  stern  resolution  he  pressed 
this  action  through  yesivs  of  tedious  litigation  to  a  successful 
issue  m  the  Federal  Supreme  Court.  His  antagonist  refusing,  on 
the  plea  of  illness,  to  appear  in  court,  remained  virtually  a 
prisoner  in  hLs  own  house  to  the  end  of  his  days. 

Though  Mr.  Huntington's  outward  habit  of  life  gave  httle 
evidence  that  he  had  ever  entered  the  College  Yard  across  the 
street  from  his  shop,  his  college  associations  meant  a  great  deal 
to  him.  The  only  portrait  of  him  ever  taken,  so  far  as  is  known, 
was  his  class  daguerreotype.  I  have  said  that,  as  an  under- 
graduate, he  was  a  close  friend  of  his  classmate,  E.  W.  Gurney. 
I  remember  reading,  or  hearing  read,  about  forty  years  ago,  a 
letter  from  Gurney  expressing  genuine  appreciation,  together 
with  kindly  criticism,  of  some  verses  Huntington  had  sent  him. 
Gurney  died  in  1886  and  was  buried  near  the  sea  at  Beverly. 
On  this  occasion  Huntington  v.Tote  a  poem  of  seventy-two 
lines  which,  with  the  title  II  Passato  e  Passaio,  was  printed 


-«i''i'' ;-;,;; 


26  THE  CAIMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 

anonymously  in  the  Boston  Advertiser.    One  of  the  stanzas  ran 
thus : 

A  heart  so  full  to  overflowing 

With  grace  and  help  for  all 
Still  there  must  beat,  to  Nature's  boundless  throbbing, 

With  love  perennial; 
While  the  wide  wave-fields  as  they  rise  and  fall 

To  fields  forever  ^ider  sound  the  call. 


ipl,y;-.T.i     -.-;,l 


'  *   i   . 


1925.]      FARLOW:  QUINCY  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES  27 


QUINCY  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES 
By  Mrs.  William  G.  Farlow 

Read  12  June  1925 

[Editor's  Note. —  Quincy  Street  was  begun  about  1811,  as  a  part  of 
the  development  of  the  Foxcroft  property.  According  to  information 
kindly  furnished  by  Lewis  M.  Hastings,  City  Engineer,  it  started  from 
Kirkland  Street,  and  was  originally  a  cul-de-sac,  ending  abruptly  at  the 
Foxcroft  line,  about  opposite  the  present  Sever  Hall,  and  is  so  shown  on  a 
map  of  1813.  Eight  or  ten  years  later  it  was  extended  to  its  full  length 
through  the  land  of  Edmund  Dana,  and  appears  on  a  map  of  1S30  as 
*'Dana  Street."  On  a  map  of  1841  it  is  called  "College  Street";  but  at  or 
before  the  time  when  it  was  formally  accepted  by  the  city  in  1S53  its 
name  was  again  changed  to  Quincy  Street  in  honor  of  Josiah  Quincy, 
president  of  Harvard  College  from  1829  to  1845. 

Originally  the  street  was  somewhat  longer  than  it  is  now.  Harvard 
Street  and  Massachusetts  Avenue  then  met  at  an  acute  angle.  Quincy 
Street  crossed  Harvard  Street,  cut  through  this  point  of  land,  and  running 
along  the  westerly  side  of  the  present  Beck  Hall  debouched  into  Massa- 
chusetts Avenue.  The  triangular  plot  thus  formed  —  the  third  "  Delta" 
produced  by  the  somewhat  unusual  lay-out  of  the  street  —  was  later 
taken  by  the  city,  cleared,  paved,  and  thrown  into  Quincy  "Square." 

The  noticeable  "  hump"  in  the  southerly  portion  of  the  street  is  caused 
by  its  crossing  a  well-defined  ridge  or  spur  extending  from  Dana  Hill  and 
forming  the  natural  watershed  of  this  part  of  town.  The  gentle  northerly 
slope  formerly  ended  in  swampy  lands  at  and  near  the  location  of  Memo- 
rial Hall,  which  were  drained  by  a  little  brook  that  eventually  found  its 
way  into  "Miller's  River"  at  East  Cambridge.  The  southerly  slope, 
draining  into  Charles  River,  was  considerably  steeper,  as  may  be  seen  by 
the  retaining  wall  at  the  corner  where  Harvard  Street  was  cut  through  it, 
and  by  the  decided  drop  from  Massachusetts  Avenue  to  Arrow  Street, 
Bow  Street,  and  the  land  beyond,  ending  in  the  ancient  "ship  marsh" 
around  Grant  and  Cowperthwaite  Streets.  The  western  slope,  now  in  the 
College  Yard,  is  also  still  strongly  marked,  though  its  foot  has  been  cut 
away  to  make  room  for  the  Widener  Library.  So  pronounced  was  the 
strategic  position  of  this  hillock  in  1775  that  a  breastwork  is  said  to  have 
been  throwTi  up  along  its  crest,  as  one  of  the  secondary  defences  of  Cam- 
bridge village.  It  is  interesting  to  think  that  Quincy  Street  probably  fol- 
lows the  line  of  this  old  fortification. 

On  this  knoll  also  was  built  the  first  house  on  the  street,  the  present 
No.  11,  erected  by  Richard  H.  Dana  in  1823.  The  second  (No.  28)  was 
built  just  ten  years  later  by  Joseph  T.  Buckingham,  soon  followed  by  Dr. 


i'lT  r 


H  /.  i:      ).d:v 


,:^,U--.f. 


28  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORIC.VL  SOCIETY         [June 

Charles  Beck  and  Professor  E.  T.  Channing.  At  that  period  all  the  Har- 
vard buildings  were  in  the  old  College  Yard,  a  considerable  distance  away 
across  the  fields  to  the  westward.  In  1S35  however  the  far-seeing  Presi- 
dent Quincy  extended  the  college  property  by  purchasing  all  the  land  on 
that  side  of  the  street,  which  before  long  became  a  favorite  location  for 
professors'  houses.  In  1S60  the  first  permanent  college  building  on  the 
street  was  erected  —  the  little  octagonal  brick  gymnasium  still  standing 
at  the  northerly  end,  the  earliest  official  recognition  of  athletics  at  Har- 
vard. From  that  advanced  outpost  the  University  has  gradually  en- 
trenched itself  impregnably  on  its  new  frontier,  has  now  crossed  the 
street,  and  threatens  soon  to  engulf  it  altogether.] 

I  was  born  in  Kirkland  Street  in  1S48,  and  for  the  next  ten  or 
eleven  j'ears  was  constantly  in  Quincy  Street;  so  that,  being  a 
girl  of  some  abiUty,  more  imagination,  and  truthful  withal,  I 
find  I  can  give  an  account  of  that  far-ofT  time  which  may  be  of 
interest  to  us  as  Quincy  Street  prepares  to  become  a  part  of 
Harvard  College. 

To  illustrate  for  myself,  I  remember  a  little  incident  about 
1855,  when  an  ever-constant  and  cheerful  friend  came  in  to  see 
my  mother  wliile  I  was  sitting  with  her.  After  words  of  familiar 
greeting,  I  was  observed,  and  j\Iiss  Ajma  said,  ''T\Tiy,  here  is 
Lily  —  how  she  has  grown !  Have  you  decided  on  her  color  yet, 
Phoebe?"  I  had  never  before  heard  of  a  girl  ha\ing  a  special 
color,  and  my  interest  was  great.  "Wliat  is  it,  Lily,  blue  or 
pink?  "  Now  as  I  thought  blue  a  lovely  color,  and  did  not  hke 
pink,  I  waited  quietly  for  the  reply.  "Y^es,"  said  my  mother, 
"Lily's  is  pink,  and  Kate's  is  blue."  That  did  not  please  me  at 
all;  but  as  she  continued,  "Now  Lily  dear,  run  away  and  play 
with  Katie,"  I  did  as  requested,  wondering  all  the  time  why 
pink  was  my  color  when  I  didn't  like  it.  However,  sometime 
later,  after  the  first  snowfall,  when  our  rubber  boots  were 
brought  out,  I  found  the  reason,  for  my  rubber  boots  had  a  strip 
of  pink  velvet  around  the  top,  while  Katie's  had  a  strip  of  blue. 
That  was  the  reason,  of  course,  and  I  accepted  it  without  any 
words. 

My  earhest  memory  is  of  being  thrown  into  the  snow  with  a 
big  globe  beside  me  from  a  sleigh  which  my  father  was  driving. 
He  was  bringing  us  home  from  Bunker  Hill  Monument  where 
the  globe  had  hung  as  the  weight  of  the  pendulum  suspended 
there  to  illustrate  the  discovery  of  Galileo  in  the  Cathedral  at 


>■•  l-'-.i-! 


1925.]      FARLOW:  QUINCY  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES  29 

Pisa.  Luckily,  I  was  not  hurt,  but  the  globe  received  a  small 
dent  on  one  side,  which  for  manj^  years  I  was  in  the  habit  of 
caressing  and  saying,  "Poor  globe,  poor  globe!" 

The  proofs  of  my  intelligence  were  so  evident  that  it  was  felt 
necessary  to  send  me  to  school  at  the  early  age  of  three.  So  one 
morning  my  father  took  my  little  hand  in  his,  and,  holding  my 
little  armchair  in  the  other,  led  me  past  the  high  steps  of  the 
Baptist  Chm'ch,  helped  me  over  the  muddy  walk  by  Holmes 
'Place,  and  passing  through  the  Cambridge  Common,  stopped 
for  a  minute  by  the  Washington  Elm,  then  hale  and  hearty, 
standing  in  the  middle  of  the  road.  On  the  corner  just  beyond 
stood  an  old  colonial  house  with  three  ancient  poplar  trees  in 
front.  It  was  the  common  style  of  old  houses  in  Cambridge,  for 
there  were  two  just  beyond  it  on  Garden  Street  and  three  on 
North  Avenue  across  the  Common. 

My  father  put  me  in  the  care  of  a  very  old  woman  wearing  a 
white  dame's  cap,  placed  my  chair  in  the  room  to  the  right  of 
the  front  door  and  told  me  to  be  a  good  Uttle  girl  till  he  came  for 
me,  and,  uttering  some  soothing  words,  departed.  This  room 
has  played  an  important  part  in  my  hfe,  so  I  describe  it  as  I 
have  often  seen  it;  the  chimney-piece  to  the  left,  to  the  right 
my  dear  little  armchair  with  its  Hon  stencilled  in  gold  on  its 
back.  The  dame  took  me  to  the  chair,  where  I  sat  for  some  time 
watching  her  and  the  boys  and  girls  standing  in  front  of  her. 
They  left  their  places,  and  later  she  came  for  me  to  join  some 
five  or  six  children  now  standing  before  her,  placing  me  at  what 
I  afterward  came  to  know  was  the  foot.  Then  she  said  some- 
thing to  the  first  child,  uninteUigible  to  me,  who  promptly 
answered  her  back;  then  what  seemed  the  same  to  the  next, 
who  rephed  at  once;  then  to  the  third,  and  a  curious  feeling 
came  over  me  that  I  had  never  felt  before,  as  I  saw  the  third 
could  answer,  for  I  began  to  reahze  that  the  next  would  say 
something,  and  then,  Oh,  she  would  ask  me!  Cold  chills  ran 
down  my  back  when  the  last  child  had  said  "a-b,  ab,"  or  some- 
thing like  it,  and  she  looked  at  me !  At  once  I  gave  a  great  roar 
of  horror  and  ignorance!  That  is  all  I  remember  of  the  day. 
But  if  I  see  a  possible  accident  either  in  carriage  or  by  rail, 
when  two  cars  approach  in  one  of  which  I  am,  then  the  old 
dame  appears  sitting  in  front  of  the  fireplace,  her  head  turned 
toward  me ! 


30  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY         [Jltne 

Early  in  the  morning  the  horn  of  the  old  stage  was  heard,  and 
from  beyond  the  Baptist  Church  horses  and  stage  came  lurch- 
ing through  mud  and  snow,  stopping  only  to  take  passengers  for 
Boston.  Although  I  well  remember  the  fishman's  horn  which  we 
heard  twice  a  week,  I  cannot  remember  the  tone  of  the  coach 
horn. 

I  have  twice  mentioned  the  Baptist  Church.  It  stood  where 
the  Hemenway  G}Tnnasium  is  now,  at  the  corner  of  Kirkland 
Street  and  Holmes  Place,  and  was  an  imposing  New  England 
church  painted  white,  with  a  high  flight  of  steps,  portico,  and 
light,  graceful  spire,  and  faced  towards  Harvard  Square.  The 
church  was  moved  up  North  Avenue  about  1864,  and  is  now 
dismantled  of  its  former  beauty,  as  the  graceful  spire  was  struck 
by  lightning  many  years  ago. 

Our  adventurous  spirit  led  us  into  other  near-by  fields.  "We 
climbed  the  apple  trees  in  John  Holmes's  orchard  from  our  back 
fence,  and  found  a  talking  parrot  in  its  cage  on  the  little  eastern 
porch  of  the  Holmes's  house.  We  stood  outside  the  wicket  gate 
listening  to  the  parrot;  but  often  John  Holmes  kindly  let  us  in 
where  we  could  see  the  parrot  more  closely,  and  say  a  few  words 
to  his  mother,  then  a  very  old  lady,  who  frequently  was  sitting 
on  the  porch  in  the  sun. 

In  the  fifties  the  Fitchburg  Railroad  operated  a  short  branch 
to  Cambridge,  running  from  Somerville  back  of  Norton's  Woods 
between  the  Palfreys'  place  and  the  University  Museum  to 
Holmes  Place,  where  there  was  a  depot  in  which  the  platforms 
were  on  the  level  of  the  car  floors.  This  depot  afterwards  became 
the  Harvard  Commons.  Back  of  our  house  was  the  turntable  on 
which  the  locomotive  was  turned  after  each  trip,  twice  a  day. 
In  the  morning  we  watched  the  process  with  great  interest. 
On  either  side  of  the  roadbed  were  the  ditches  where  we  learned 
to  skate  in  winter,  and  in  siunmer  searched  for  tadpoles  and 
sticklebacks  and  algae  for  our  aquarium.  In  the  distance  be- 
yond was  the  brick  building  of  Tufts  College  —  a  few  houses  in 
Everett  Street  were  all  that  separated  us.  This  road  was  discon- 
tinued after  the  horse  cars  began  to  run  from  Cambridge  to 
Boston  in  1859. 

I  must  not  forget  to  mention  here  the  fine,  large,  old  willow 
trees  in  which  we  chmbed  and  played,  for  they  were  a  part  of  the 


'^^ 


1925.]      FARLOW:  QUINCY  STREET  IX  THE  FIFTIES  31 

old  stockade  against  the  Indians.  Some  were  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Langdell  Hall  and  the  Jefferson  Physical  Laboratory. 
Becky  Jar\'is's  willows,  we  called  them.  There  were  two  or 
three  in  ^Mr.  Batchelder's  and  ^Ir.  Lane's  borders.  There  were 
other  willow  trees  near  Norton's  Pond  where  the  Andover 
Chapel  now  stands,  and  I  think  one  or  two  are  still  standing 
near  the  Somerville  border  of  the  Shady  Hill  School.  A  few  of 
the  old  willows  forming  the  stockade  still  stand  by  the  Cam- 
bridge boathouse,  and  two  more  were  blown  douTi  about  six 
years  ago  in  Buckmgham  Place. 

We  hved  in  the  eastern  end  of  the  Lawrence  Scientific  School, 
with  the  apex  of  the  "Delta"  across  the  street;  and  there  in  the 
short  winter  afternoons  we  watched  to  see  the  lamp-hghter 
come  up  the  street,  put  his  ladder  against  the  post  and  run  up 
to  hght  the  lamp.  Then  the  curtains  were  drawn  and  night 
came  on  apace. 

There  were  a  few  days  in  October  when  students  played  foot- 
ball in  the  Delta  and  rent  the  air  with  cries  of  "Harvard!  Har- 
vard!" and  there  was  at  the  top  of  the  slope  now  under  the 
northern  entrance  to  ^Memorial  Hall  an  old  oak  tree  under  whose 
spreading  branches  was  a  wooden  bench.  Here  the  little  girls  of 
the  neighborhood  were  wont  to  gather  and  play  with  their  dolls 
in  the  afternoons.  Usually  the  Delta  was  a  fine  playground; 
for  we  also  improved  all  our  faculties  for  balancing  on  the  Delta 
fence,  which  was  high  with  a  sharp  top,  and  we  had  many  a  fall. 

On  certain  pleasant  days  a  club,  to  which  my  father  and 
mother  belonged,  gathered  to  promenade  around  the  Delta, 
some  going  in  one  direction,  some  in  another  so  they  might  meet 
and  converse.  WTien  those  happy  days  came  and  mamma  put 
on  her  black  lace  and  velvet  ribbon  irisite,  and  her  bonnet  with 
the  pretty  flowers  around  her  face,  and  long  strings  tying  it  in 
under  her  chin,  and  drew  on  her  black  lace  mitts,  my  sisters  and  I 
were  filled  with  joy  and  curiosity.  But,  as  they  never  tried  to 
balance  on  the  fence,  or  run  races,  we  soon  lost  interest,  tied  on 
our  own  Shaker  bonnets  and  went  out  to  our  museum  in  the 
back  yard. 

After  having  heard  this  graphic  account  of  myself,  you  will 
imderstand  that  my  description  of  Quincy  Street  is  truthful  and 
accurate,  even  if  childish. 


.■■a: 


32  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY         [June 

xMmost  every  house  in  Qiiincy  Street  has  been  moved  or  en- 
larged. Arria  Huntington  wrote  of  Cambridge  as  it  was  in  the 
tune  of  her  father's  professorship  —  "a  very  charming  place 
with  spacious  houses  standing  well  back  in  their  gardens  and 
orchards."  Illustrating  Arria 's  description  comes  the  first  house 
in  Quincy  Street  (from  the  Kirkland  Street  end),  that  in  which 
President  Sparks  lived,  overlooking  the  Delta.  In  fact  all  the 
presidents  since  Edward  Everett  have  lived  in  Quincy  Street; 
it  is  the  Presidential  Street ! 

President  Sparks  was  a  good,  quiet,  white-haired  old  man  — 
perhaps  we  thought  so  because  he  did  not  mind  if  we  made  a 
good  deal  of  noise  in  his  garden,  as  the  girls  played  there  every 
day.  Mrs.  Sparks  was  very  kind  to  us,  and  although  she  had 
what  might  be  called  her  pecuHarities,  and  all  Cambridge  rang 
with  stories  of  her  humor  and  witticisms,  of  that  we  recognized 
nothing.  To  be  sure,  we  thought  it  was  hard  for  the  three  Sparks 
daughters  to  wear  Shaker  sunbonnets  covered  with  white  satin 
to  church  all  winter,  as  well  as  straw  Shaker  bonnets  in  summer. 
But  in  those  days  neither  Chandler  nor  Jordan  &.  Marsh  pointed 
the  proper  way,  and  each  mother  dressed  her  children  as  she 
saw'  fit. 

One  other  thing  I  must  not  omit:  several  times  a  year 
Beatrice  stood  at  the  gate  and  greeted  her  friends  with  the  news, 
"Our  cat's  got  kittens!"  And  really,  there  were  always  kittens 
to  show  in  this  hospitable  home. 

The  grounds  were  neat,  well  kept,  and  well  laid  out.  We  were 
not  allowed  to  step  into  the  flowerbeds  or  pick  flowers.  These 
were  the  only  restrictions;  but  there  was  a  large  barn  and  shed, 
a  pump  with  a  large  trough  in  front  of  it,  a  back  piazza,  and  a 
grove  of  trees.  To  all  these  places  we  were  welcome,  and  Lizzie 
Sparks,  or  ''Spizzie  Larks,"  was  one  of  our  leaders.  Lizzie  loved 
to  tell  us  she  was  born  into  Harvard  College  when  her  father  was 
its  president.  On  Class  Day  the  students  in  their  exercises 
around  the  tree,  after  cheering  for  her  father,  followed  the 
marshal  in  his  request,  "Now  fellows,  three  times  three  for  the 
Baby!"  which  were  given  with  a  will;  and  so  Lizzie  came  into 
the  heart  of  the  college. 

After  many  j'ears  this  estate  was  purchased  and  the  house 
moved  to  its  present  site,  while  the  stone  chapel  of  the  New 


\  ■ '^ 


m' 


1925.]      F.\RLOW:  QUINT Y  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES  33 

Jerusalem  Church  was  placed  somewhat  to  the  north  of  the 
former  site. 

About  this  time  a  new,  beautiful,  and  artistic  influence  was 
felt  in  Cambridge,  for  the  Greenoughs  returned  from  their 
sojourn  in  Florence  to  live  here.  Art,  both  sculpture  and  paint- 
ing, was  placed  on  a  definite  plane;  and  the  beautiful  houses, 
the  appreciation  of  noble  sculpture,  the  intimacy  with  painting 
and  engraving,  as  well  as  the  series  of  house-to-house  concerts 
by  the  Mendelssohn  Quintette  Club,  undoubtedly  made  a  deep 
impression.  We  were  taught  to  look  for  beautj^^  in  the  earlier 
colored  wmdows  of  Appleton  Chapel  and  in  the  marble  figures 
which  dignified  the  cold  chapel  at  Alt.  Auburn.  It  seems  suit- 
able therefore  that  the  new  Fogg  Art  ^Museum  should  be 
erected  in  Quincy  Street. 

Mr.  Henry  Greenough  was  an  architect,  our  first  architect, 
and  many  houses  were  built  by  him  which  may  be  recognized 
today  by  their  prominent  features.  These  houses  were  generally 
handsome,  the  steps  to  the  entrances  imposing.  In  the  interior 
they  were  spacious,  the  rooms  lofty,  the  halls  a  featiire  of  the 
house  with  theu-  hospitable  effect,  as  the  staircases  were  often 
placed  at  right  angles  to,  and  unseen  from,  the  front  doors. 
The  mouldings  were  tasteful,  the  doorways  broad  and  deco- 
rated. You  will  readily  call  to  mind  these  houses;  Mr.  Fowler's 
in  Kirkland  Place,  now  overshadowed  by  an  apartment  house, 
is  one  of  them.  Those  of  Langdon  Warner  in  Garden  Street, 
and  of  Miss  Horsford  in  Craigie  Street,  are  others. 

The  next  house  to  President  Sparks's  was  built  by  ]\Ir.  Henry 
Greenough  for  his  sister-in-law,  Mrs.  Horatio  Greenough.  It 
was  a  beautiful  house  with  a  broad  hall,  and  parlors  well  suited 
to  the  fine  copies  of  large  Itahan  pictures  which  hung  on  the 
walls.  At  the  back  was  a  loggia  which  we  thought  a  covered 
piazza,  but  no  matter  who  Uved  there  it  was  always  a  shelter 
for  discarded  furniture.  In  this  house  I  encountered  my  first 
dread  lessons  in  French,  given  in  the  dining  room  at  four  o'clock, 
once  or  t\\ice  a  week.  Here  Choquet  taught  us  that  "chat" 
was  cat,  and  other  similar  words  and  terms.  We  five  or  six 
children  sat  around  a  table  which  was  covered  with  a  red  and 
blue  checkered  cloth.  Mrs.  Greenough  returned  to  Florence 
after  a  few  years,  and  then  the  Huntingtons  came  over  with 


r'-ii^^^   h;,  ■•' 


7 


34  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [June 

their  children  from  IMilton  to  Uve  in  the  house.  Laura  was 
always  a  welcome  pla^Tnate,  but  Henry,  who  promised  to  show 
us  "Blue  Hill  spmik,"  was  a  terror! 

The  house  now  occupied  by  Professor  Lake  has  skipped  to  its 
present  site  (40  Quincy  Street)  from  that  on  which  the  School  of 
Architecture  now  stands.  (In  the  East  it  is  not  necessary  to 
have  cyclones  to  move  houses;  we  do  it  m  a  more  orderly  man- 
ner.) This  house  was  occupied  by  Professor  and  Mrs.  Felton 
with  their  interesting  family,  of  whom  I  shall  speak  farther  on. 
Still  later  the  house  was  occupied  by  Jeffries  Wyman,  then 
Professor  James  B.  Thayer,  and  Professor  Langdell.  The  latter 
continued  to  hve  in  the  house  during  its  passage  from  one  side 
of  Quincy  Street  to  the  other.  IMrs.  Langdell  and  her  mother, 
Mrs.  Huson,  could  often  be  seen  tending  flowers  and  plants 
about  the  house,  as  it  now  stands. 

A  word  about  the  wild  flowers,which  we  found  very  abundant 
and  gathered  by  the  handful.  In  the  swamp  near  Broadway,  at 
the  foot  of  the  hill  on  which  Appleton  Chapel  was  built,  used  to 
grow  the  rhodora  —  "a  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  forever"—  but 
now,  alas,  it  is  only  found  in  country  swamps  and  generally 
seen  from  a  railway  train.  Where  Becker's  greenhouse  stands 
was  a  real  swamp  in  which  the  flags  grew  in  great  clumps,  and  a 
little  farther  on,  the  pasture  was  white  with  housatonia,  popu- 
larly called  innocents.  Near  a  small  oak  tree  still  standing  by 
the  Public  Library  we  found  an  army  of  dog-tooth  violets,  while 
everywhere  in  the  field  short-stemmed  blue  violets  blossomed 
in  the  spring. 

Opposite  what  is  now  the  college  carpenter's  shop  (formerly 
the  old  gj'mnasium)  Uved  Admii-al  C.  H.  Davis,  a  most  deUght- 
ful  and  handsome  man,  with  children  who  were  our  schoolmates 
and  friends  at  dancing  school.  To  this  house  was  added  a 
pleasant  dming  room  while  Professor  J.  Henry  Wright  Uved 
there.  The  DavLses  had  a  big  black  Newfoundland  dog,  Bruno, 
who  knew  us  all,  and  whose  affection  we  reciprocated.  He  was 
TWO.  over  and  killed  by  a  horse  and  wagon.  Sometime  afterward 
we  found  his  grave  in  a  dump  heap  in  "Pig  Lane,"  now  a  con- 
tinuation of  Prescott  Street.  Constant  and  Henry  and  Frank 
Davis  were  all  good  boys,  never  troublmg  the  little  girls,  while 
Benjy  Peirce,  a  terror,  used  to  stand  near  our  front  door  after 


>•"/■' -,.:ii: 


.>-    I 


:;   ■■■■>■:>   C^'-,  y 

''      ,  !  ;    ■" >      ,■''.'■■:. 


ifc38G83 

1925.]      FARI>OW:  QUINCY  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES  35 

dancing  school  and  mince  about,  holding  out  his  trousers  on 
each  side  as  a  girl  does  her  dress  at  dancing  school. 

Back  of  Admii-al  Da\'is  lived  Mme.  Greenough  and  her 
daughter,  Miss  Louisa  Greenough,  charming,  with  the  indefina- 
ble au-  of  grace  and  breeding  which  all  the  family  had  brought 
from  Italy.  This  house  has  just  been  torn  down  and  absorbed 
by  an  apartment  builder.  Broadway  was  originally  the  Con- 
cord Road  and  has  been  widened  by  the  width  of  its  southern 
sidewalk.  On  the  corner  was  a  house  built  by  Mr.  Henry 
Greenough  for  Mrs.  Agassiz,  when  she  decided  to  have  a  girls' 
school  taught  by  Harvard  professors  in  Cambridge.  It  had  a 
most  imposing  entrance  up  flights  of  steps  on  either  side  of  a 
huge  portico;  inside,  the  rooms  were  many  and  spacious.  Mrs. 
Agassiz  once  gave  a  Cliristmas  party  at  which  each  child  was 
presented  with  a  gift  from  the  beak  of  a  goose  whose  neck  and 
head  appeared  through  the  portieres  between  the  folding  doors. 
(We  afterward  found  out  it  was  Miss  Ida  Agassiz.)  The  third 
story  was  furnished  with  desks  and  chairs  for  the  schoolgirls, 
and  one  heavenly  afternoon  lingers  in  my  mind  when  Lisa 
Felton  and  I  skipped  from  desk  to  desk  without  permission. 

Professor  Agassiz,  who  always  knew  me  by  name,  had  a 
small  museum  with  classrooms  next  to  the  Lawrence  Scientific 
School,  where  the  addition  to  the  gymnasium  now  stands.  As 
it  was  in  such  close  proximity  to  our  house,  we  were  generally 
present  at  the  opening  of  boxes  and  unpacking  of  various  bottles 
and  chemicals.  We  were  not  always  welcome;  but  as  we  had  a 
museum  of  our  own  on  our  back  fence,  we  could  retire  to  that, 
and  add  a  fresh  supply  of  clinkers.  We  also  kept  our  living 
specimens  (which  were  toads)  in  the  area  windows  of  the 
Lawrence  Scientific  School. 

The  only  other  connection  I  have  with  the  Agassiz  School  is 
an  unusual  one:  I  saw  a  barge  filled  with  Harvard  students, 
drawn  by  ten  or  fifteen  students  each  holding  in  one  hand  a 
horseshoe,  in  the  other  the  rope  attached  to  the  barge,  as  was 
usual  on  the  fire  engines  at  that  time,  start  on  Broadway  and 
stop  in  front  of  the  Agassiz  School  where  the  fellows  sang  songs 
of  farewell.  I  learned  later  the  students  in  the  barge  had  just 
been  expelled  from  the  college. 

After  Professor  Agassiz's  death,  Mr.  Alexander  Agassiz  made 


*«J.i 


j 


36  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [June 

over  the  house  for  his  mother's  use.  Mter  her  death  the  college 
loaned  it  to  the  Cambridge  School  Committee,  to^Yhose  careless 
management  was  due  the  fact  that  it  was  burned. 

In  the  next  house  (32  Quincy  Street)  lived  the  only  mysteri- 
ous person  in  the  street.  His  name  was  Parker;  he  had  a  wife 
and  two  small  boys  ^  who  were  always  decorous  in  their  be- 
haviour; but  we  had  been  told  that  the  father  was  a  '^blue" 
man,  so  called  because  he  had  swallowed  a  penny  in  his  youth 
and  it  had  turned  him  blue.  I  never  saw  him  to  my  knowledge, 
but  we  went  past  the  house  peering  with  the  greatest  curiosity. 
Later  ISIrs.  Fisk  lived  in  the  house  with  her  three  sons.  During 
her  Ufetune  the  house  was  much  enlarged,  and  a  third  story 
.added,  which  darkened  the  Agassiz  house  and  was  the  occasion 
of  Mr.  Alexander  Agassiz  taking  away  the  imposing  porch  and 
adding  a  suite  of  rooms  in  its  place,  into  which  the  sun  shone. 

For  nearly  twenty  years  we  have  had  a  professor  of  EngUsh, 
sometime  a  dean  of  students,  live  in  this  house  with  his  de- 
hghtful  family.  A  real  Cambridge  garden  has  blossomed  here, 
and  large  trees  have  greatly  added  to  the  beauty  of  the  estate. 
Mr.  Hurlbut  is  the  genial  secretary  of  the  Cambridge  Book 
Club,  an  old  and  well-established  association  including  twenty- 
one  of  the  "intelligentsia''  of  Cambridge,  and  now  in  its  ninety- 
fourth  year. 

The  next  house  (28  Quincy  Street)  was  built  by  Mr.  Joseph 
T.  Buckingham,  editor  of  the  Boston  Courier,  who  was  very 
fond  of  flowers  and  fruit  trees.  It  was  built  earUer  than  the 
other  houses  and  was  gracious  and  symmetrical  inside  as  well 
as  out.2  In  the  fifties  ex-Governor  Emory  Washburn,  after  his 

1  Charles  Poineroy  Parker,  B.A.  (Oxford)  1876,  Harvard  Professor  of  Greek  and 
Latin,  and  Edward  Melville  Parker,  Bishop  of  New  Hampshire. 

*  Miss  Mary  H.  Buckingham,  granddaughter  of  Joseph,  vouches  for  the  state- 
ment that  he  built  this  house  and  moved  out  from  Boston  in  18^33.  At  that  time 
it  was  the  only  residence  on  the  street  except  the  R.  H.  Dana  house,  and  is  so 
shown  on  a  map  of  1838.  As  first  constructed,  its  exterior  was  of  the  simple  four- 
square block  type:  the  mansard  roof,  the  graceful  little  portico  with  its  beautifully 
carved  Corinthian  columns,  the  ornamental  balconies  at  the  front  windows,  etc. 
were  not  added  till  many  years  later.  The  upper  floors  were  originally  subdivided 
into  numerous  small  chambers  to  accommodate  the  family  of  thirteen  children. 
The  extensive  and  varied  gardens  are  said  to  have  run  down  to  a  small  pond  near 
Broadway.   The  locahty  seems  to  have  been  known  as  "Walnut  Grove." 

After  selling  the  place  to  Professor  Washburn  in  1850,  Buckingham  again 
became  a  Cambridge  pioneer  and  built  one  of  the  first  houses  on  Buckingham 
Street,  which  was  named  for  him.  He  was  a  power  in  the  newspaper  world  of  his 
day,  and  has  been  immortalized  by  Lowell  in  The  Biglow  Papers.  (See  TJie  Cam- 
bridge of  189G,  219.)  The  old  house  was  taken  down  in  1924  to  make  way  for  the 
new  building  of  the  Department  of  Fine  Arts. —  Ed. 


'\\r 


1925.]      FARLOW:  QUINCY  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES  37 

appointment  as  a  professor  in  the  I^w  School,  Hved  here  with 
his  wife,  daughter,  and  two  sons.  He  was  a  member  of  the  old 
Cambridge  Book  Club. 

In  this  period  Cambridge,  in  common  with  the  spirit  of  the 
time,  felt  the  great  interest  in  the  abohtion  of  slavery,  and 
Governor  Washburn  showed  his  sympathies  by  sending  an  old 
colored  man  named  Parker  Bassett,  who  had  worked  for  him 
for  many  years  tending  the  furnace  and  taking  great  pride  in 
keeping  the  basement  tidy,  to  the  free  negro  colony  at  Liberia, 
accompanied  by  his  extensive  family.  One  morning  some 
months  after,  at  breakfast  time,  Governor  Washburn,  looking 
out  of  the  window,  suddenly  turned  pale  and  put  his  hand  to 
his  head,  exclaiming,  "I  must  be  working  too  hard,  for  I  seem 
to  be  getting  hallucinations.  It  looks  to  me  exactly  as  if  I  saw 
Parker  Bassett  out  there!"  Raising  the  window,  he  enquired 
in  a  weak  voice,  "Parker  Bassett,  is  that  you?"  "Yas,  Gov- 
ernor," came  the  mgratiating  reply,  "Y^'assir,  dat's  me."  "But 
what  are  you  doing  here?  Didn't  I  send  you  to  Liberia?" 
"Yassir,  you  done  send  me  shore  'nuf,"  admitted  the  ex-guar- 
dian of  the  lower  regions,  "but  I  jes'  thought  I'd  come  back  and 
see  if  your  cellar's  looking  all  right!" 

ISirs.  Washburn  lived  to  a  good  old  age,  and  later  her  daugh- 
ter, IMrs.  Batchelder,  with  her  son  and  daughter,  lived  here. 
The  house  was  the  centre  for  many  years  of  a  gracious  hospi- 
tality, and  also  the  home  of  manj"  inspiring  influences  in  re- 
ligious and  charitable  work.  It  had  a  prettily  laid  out  garden, 
with  peonies,  Jacob's  ladder,  dialetra,  and  a  large  classical  vase 
in  the  centre  —  the  remains  of  the  old  Buckingham  parterres. 
There  were  many  old  trees  in  the  yard,  especially  pear  trees, 
which  have  always  flourished  in  Cambridge  to  an  extent  quite 
embarrassing,  so  that  in  the  autumn  the  old  residents  were  kept 
busy  sending  baskets  of  pears  to  their  neighbors  —  and  receiv- 
ing other  baskets  of  pears  in  return! 

In  the  rear  of  the  Washburn  house  stands  a  house  built  about 
1900  for  Mrs.  Charles  Ehot  and  her  children,  a  very  pleasant 
house  with  entrance  only  on  Quincy  Street  —  soon  probably  to 
share  the  fate  of  its  neighbors.^  One  of  our  former  residents  on 
moving  here  remarked  it  was  a  very  lonely  street  with  no  young 

»  This  house  stands  about  on  the  location  of  Mr.  Buckinghantt's  stable,  where  he 
kept  the  "rig"  in  which  he  u=ed  to  drive  in  and  out  from  Boston  every  day. 
Such  an  appurtenance  was  rare  in  those  times.     See  post,  p.  41. —  Ed. 


...   ■{..■,(.., 


38 V  THE  CA^IBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [June 

people.  But  into  this  gracious  house  have  come  brides  and 
young  people  and  little  children's  sweet  voices  to  make  us  young 
and  gay.  Also  Dean  and  Mrs.  Chester  N.  Greenough  spent 
several  happy  years  in  this  charming  house. 

Then  came  my  house,  24  Quincy  Street,  built  by  a  IMr. 
"VMiitncy  in  the  forties.  .\s  he  did  not  approve  of  closets  there 
were  none  built  in  the  house.  Early  in  the  fifties,  IMr.  and  Mrs. 
Charles  Russell  Lowell  came  here  to  hve,  while  their  two  sons, 
Charles  and  James,  were  in  college.  At  that  time  the  house  was 
of  the  cottage  type,  and  small.  Mrs.  Lowell  with  her  attractive 
sons  and  daughters  was  generous  in  her  hospitality,  and  dancing 
and  charades  were  the  order  of  the  day.  I  remember  her  chiefly 
in  the  streets  walking  with  her  two  brown  terriers.  During  the 
Dickens  period  when  everyone  was  famihar  with  his  writings, 
Mrs.  Lowell  gave  a  large  Dickens  party  in  which  my  father 
appeared  as  Pickwick,  and  Mr.  Solomon  Lincoln  as  Sam  Weller. 
It  was  a  great  success  and  talked  of  for  a  long  time. 

Since  I  came  here  I  have  called  this  house  the  home  of  heroes, 
as  both  Charles  and  James  Lowell  fell  in  the  Civil  War;  and  I 
have  displayed  the  country's  flag  on  all  of  the  national  hoh- 
days,  as  well  as  during  the  World  War,  in  their  memory.  I 
remember  CharUe  Lowell's  funeral,  his  riderless  horse  leading 
the  procession  with  his  boots  over  the  saddle,  and  the  band 
playing  the  ''  Dead  March  "  from  Saul.  Mrs.  Lowell  had  two 
daughters,  both  of  whom  served  as  nurses  in  the  Sanitary  Com- 
mission in  the  Civil  War. 

Miss  Hattie  Lowell  married  George  W.  Putnam  and  lived 
here  with  her  mother,  while  Aliss  Anna  Lowell  lived  in  Wash- 
ington after  her  marriage.  The  Putnams  had  a  large  family  and 
found  the  house  inconveniently  small,  so  that  in  1878  after  the 
Centennial  Exhibition  in  Philadelphia,  with  its  examples  of 
beautiful  English  houses,  they  decided  to  enlarge  it.  The  stair- 
case and  the  dining  room  were  added,  and  (I  think)  the  third 
story;  so  that  when  Dr.  Farlow  bought  the  house  about  1894  it 
was  a  large  house  with  plenty  of  closets  and  rooms,  to  which  he 
invited  three  or  four  bachelor  friends  to  live  with  him,  all  taking 
their  meals  at  the  Colonial  Club.  He  was  married  in  January, 
1900,  and  thereafter  the  house  has  remained  stationary. 

I  mentioned  Mrs.  Lowell's  two  httle  brown  dogs  which  were 


^i.;;:,.    y;.;- 


-^'r. 


1925.]      FARLOW:  QUINCi^  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES  39 

her  constant  companions  in  her  walks,  and  I  think  perhaps  this 
is  the  place  to  speak  of  our  four-footed  friends  who  have  given 
us  so  much  pleasure. 

Cato,  our  first  dog,  died  young,  and  we  were  inconsolable 
until  it  was  suggested  that  we  have  a  funeral  for  him  by  the 
back  fence  and  invite  all  the  children  of  the  neighborhood.  My 
Uncle  George,  Latin  professor,  said  that  a  dog's  name  should 
end  in  "o,"  and  his  advice  was  generally  taken.  Then  Clio,  a 
little  black-and-tan,  was  in  turn  succeeded  by  a  little  white  dog 
with  bro^^•n  spots  named  Iddity.  He  had  been  brought  up  by 
Marshall,  who  was  the  caretaker  at  "The  Den"  in  Follen 
Street,  and  in  giving  him  to  ]Mr.  Lane  he  said,  ''He's  a  perfect 
little  iddity."  Uncle  George  thought  the  name  too  good  to  be 
lost.  Our  next  dog  was  Fido,  a  small,  white  poodle.  The  next 
was  Saugus,  a  yellow  mongrel,  who  followed  my  father  and 
uncle  home  from  a  long  walk  in  Saugus.  We  children  claimed 
him  for  ours.  He  was  friendly  in  his  disposition,  but  one  morn- 
mg  we  found  a  hole  under  the  front  doorsteps  from  which  Saugus 
emerged  with  puppies,  and  mamma  decided  that  dear  old  Saugy 
must  go.  A  setter  named  Frank  completes  the  tale  of  our 
personal  dogs,  but  Uncle  George  had  a  dog  who  lived  in  "The 
Den,"  on  whose  account  the  rug  before  the  door  was  marked 
Cave  canem.  He  was  given  to  us  and  Uved  later  in  the  country. 
He  was  named  after  a  professor  in  Goettingen,  whom  he  was 
supposed  to  resemble.  Dr.  Heck,  but  commonly  called  "The 
Fool."  He  was  supposed  to  understand  only  Latin,  but  I  am 
afraid  that  our  Latin  was  doggerel  to  all  but  him. 

Miss  Upham  kept  a  large  and  acceptable  boarding  house  in 
what  is  now  "The  Foxcroft,"  then  facmg  on  Kirkland  Street. 
Her  nephew,  Mr.  Wood,  always  took  the  little  fat  black-and- 
tan  terrier  to  walk  up  and  down  the  broad  path  in  front  of  the 
house  and  in  Khkland  Street.  Good  little  Gyp  — none  knew 
him  but  to  love  him,  and  say,  "He  was  too  fat!" 

Quincy  Street  is  now  the  home  of  many  distinguished  dogs. 
There  is  Phantom,  who  walks  with  ^Ir.  and  Mrs.  Lowell  in  the 
Yard,  and  there  is  the  Hurlbuts'  Andrew,  who  used  to  bark  at 
automobiles.  Poor  thing,  he  had  a  lesson !  .And  Geordie,  who  is 
as  black  as  my  Jock  is  white. 

The  next  house,  now  the  Colonial  Club,  was  occupied  by  Pro- 


;:       [r:li' 


40  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [June 

fessor  Louis  Thies,  Curator  of  the  Gray  Engravings  in  Harvard 
College  Library  from  1862  to  1S70.  It  was  a  good,  square  house 
of  simple  proportions,  with  the  best  fence  in  Cambridge  for 
children  to  walk  on,  so  low,  and  smooth,  and  broad  on  top.  Dr. 
Thies  must  have  been  one  of  the  educated  Germans  who  came 
here  as  a  result  of  pohtical  troubles  about  1820.  I  think  that 
Dr.  Charles  Beck  and  Professor  Follen  belonged  to  the  same 
group.  Clara  Thies  was  a  gay  and  pretty  girl  who  belonged  to 
the  ''Bee."  Henry  James,  Sr.,  lived  in  the  house  for  many  years 
with  his  delightful  family. 

The  next  house  was  built  by  Professor  E,  T.  Channing,  who 
died  in  1856.  I  never  remember  seeing  Professor  Channing,  but 
Mrs.  Channing  m  her  widow's  dress  with  her  rosy  cheeks  and 
bright  eyes  was  a  familiar  figure  in  Cambridge  for  many  years. 
Later,  Professor  and  Mrs.  de  Sumichrast  lived  there,  and  now 
Professor  and  INIrs.  Hocking,  who  have  enlarged  the  house  and 
added  interest  to  the  street  by  the  life  and  gayety  of  their 
children.^ 

Beyond,  at  the  corner  of  Harvard  Street,  stood  in  its  beauti- 
ful garden  the  stately  house  of  Dr.  Beck,  Professor  of  Latin. 
His  daughter,  INIrs.  Moering,  and  her  son  lived  with  him.  He 
was  a  stately,  handsome  man  and  could  be  seen  any  day  riding 
horseback  through  the  elm-shaded,  historic  streets  of  Cam- 
bridge. The  garden  was  continued  on  the  opposite  side  of 
Harvard  Street  to  jMassachusetts  Avenue.  After  Dr.  Beck's 
death  this  part  of  the  land  was  given  to  a  hospital  in  Boston, 
and  Beck  Hall  was  built  by  the  new  owners. ^  There  was  a 
pretty  little  Delta  with  elm  trees  in  it  in  front  of  Beck  Hall,  the 
apex  towards  Harvard  Square.  This  has  since  become  the 
property  of  the  City  of  Cambridge,  and  disappeared.  Dr.  Beck 
had  a  pretty  box-edged  garden  near  Quincy  Street,  so  that  all 

^  This  house  has  the  peculiarity  of  standing  end-on  (and  very  close)  to  the  street, 
with  both  its  sides  exactly  alike  —  a  piazza  with  a  broad  flight  of  stone  steps  lead- 
ing up  to  a  central  door  flanked  by  two  "swell-front "  bay  windows  —  so  that  until 
recently  for  a  stranger  it  was  impossible  to  tell  which  was  front  and  which  was 
back.  One  was  quite  as  hkely  to  ring  the  kitchen  bell  as  the  visitors'  bell. —  Ed. 

*  This  plot  was  known  for  a  generation  or  more  as  "Beck's  Park."  Sloping  to  the 
south,  it  had  been  a  part  of  the  extensive  gardens  and  orchards  of  Edmund  Dana, 
who.se  house  in  the  eighteenth  century  stood  near  the  present  Quincy  Hall  facing 
on  Arrow  Street,  the  ancient  highway  into  the  centre  of  the  village.  The  section 
of  Massachusetts  Avenue  from  Quincy  Square  to  Putnam  Square  was  cut  through 
his  estate  in  1793,  and  the  head  of  Harvard  Street  in  1808.—  Ed. 


mc 


>Vi'^"-i 


t  (  t 


/T 


1925.]      FARLOW:  QUINCY  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES  41 

could  enjoy  it  who  passed  by.  His  house  was  bought  by  Mr. 
Warren,  an  instructor  in  Sanskrit,  who  made  many  changes  in 
the  interior;  and  later  it  was  moved  close  to  Prescott  Street, 
and  is  now  lost  to  view.  A  post  of  the  Grand  x^rmy  of  the 
Republic  called  the  "Charles  Beck  Post"  is  established  in 
Cambridge. 

"Oh,  Lillie,  you  don't  know  what's  going  to  happen  next 
week,"  said  Clara  Howe  to  me  one  day.  I  said,  "No,  what  is 
it?"  full  of  curiosity.  "I'm  not  going  to  tell  you."  "Please!" 
*'Well,  I'll  tell  you.  The  Huntingtons'  barn  is  coming  down 
Quincy  Street  and  up  Kii'kland  and  into  our  yard."  "I  don't 
beUeve  it,"  said  I,  "how  can  a  barn  go  through  the  street?" 
Well,  the  barn  did  go  through  the  street,  and  at  the  end  of  the 
summer,  there  it  stood  in  Oxford  Street,  by  the  Howes'  house, 
and  the  Howes  kept  a  horse  and  a  two-seated  open  wagon  — 
which  reminds  me  of  the  fact  that  in  the  fifties  there  was  only 
one  horse  and  carriage  owned  in  Cambridge,  belonging  to 
Gardiner  Hubbard  on  Brattle  Street.  Mentioning  this  one  day 
to  Mrs.  Agassiz,  she  and  ]\Iiss  Sallie  Gary  were  interested  to 
count  up  the  number  of  people  who  owned  carriages  in  Boston 
when  they,  Mrs.  Agassiz  and  Miss  Gary,  were  young.  They 
could  name  but  sLx  private  carriages ! 

So  far,  we  have  been  passing  down  the  easterly  side  of  Quincy 
Street.  Returning  on  the  other  side,  the  house  in  which  Pro- 
fessor Palmer  Uves  was  occupied  by  Dr.  Huntington  in  a  most 
dramatic  period  of  the  history  of  Cambridge  and  Harvard  Col- 
lege. Dr.  Huntington  preached  in  Appleton  Chapel.  He  had 
two  daughters,  Arria,  who  was  my  age,  and  Ruth,  and  two  sons, 
one  in  our  estimation  very  cross,  the  other,  a  perfect  angel.  He 
had  a  Sunday  School  for  the  children  of  the  professors  who  went 
to  Appleton  Chapel,  to  which  my  sister  and  I  went.  It  was 
always  a  pleasure  to  go  into  those  two  sunny  rooms  overlooking 
Quincy  Square.  I  remember  in  1861  that  a  Mr.  Abbot  who 
taught  in  the  Sunday  School  went  to  the  war.  I  did  not  know 
why,  but  I  remember  we  all  wept.  This  was  Mr.  Stanley  Abbot, 
a  brother  of  ]\lr.  Edwin  H.  Abbot.  He  fell  at  Gettysburg. 

The  dramatic  period  occurred  at  this  time  when  Dr.  Hunting- 
ton, who  was  a  Unitarian  minister,  became  a  convert  to  the 
Episcopal  Church  and  was  confirmed  in  Christ  Church.  Fami- 


.■'  :  *}\,':,1J:l       [a 


iMii^.Xy-iv-.:^ 


42  THE  CA:MBRIDGE  HIST0RIC.\L  society  [June 

lies  in  his  congregation  were  di\aded,  some  following  Dr. 
Huntington,  others  remaining  where  they  were.  Large  classes 
joined  in  the  confu-mation  and  many  of  our  friends  at  that  time 
became  Episcopalians. 

From  xVpril,  1S61,  to  Commencement  Day,  Dr.  Huntington 
held  a  service  in  the  .\rsenal  grounds,  corner  of  Follen  and 
Garden  Streets,  for  the  seniors  who  were  ready  to  enlist  for  the 
war.  It  was  a  strange  sight,  the  students  guarding  the  Arsenal 
in  their  plain  clothes,  behind  the  high  picket  fence,with  mounted 
cannon  in  the  rear  and  stacks  of  cannon  balls.  This  was  the 
Sunday  service  we  preferred  to  share. 

Dr.  Andrew  V.  Peabody  succeeded  Dr.  Huntington  in  his 
professorship  and  hved  in  the  house,  11  Quincy  Street,  for  many 
years.  Dr.  Peabody  was  preeminently  the  friend  of  the 
students,  whom  he  loved,  and  for  many  years  held  a  similar 
place  in  then-  hearts  to  that  now  held  by  Professor  Briggs  among 
the  later  classes.  Others  who  have  lived  in  this  house  within  my 
recollection  are  Dr.  and  Mrs.  William  James,  Professor  and 
Mrs.  George  H.  Palmer,  and  now  with  him,  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Frederick  Palmer.^ 

Next  to  this  house  was  for  a  long  time  an  empty  space  where 
we  used  to  coast  downhill  in  winter,  but  about  1860  a  house  was 
built  for  President  Felton.  The  architect  wished  to  build  a  large 
and  rather  imposing  house,  but  Mrs.  Gary,  who  had  lately 

» This  was  the  first  house  buQt  on  Quincy  Street,  erected  by  Richard  Henry 
Dana  in  1823.  The  curious  one-story  projection  on  its  west  side  is  all  that  now 
remains  to  show  its  connection  with  one  of  the  notable  events  m  astronomical 
liigt,or>' —  the  foundinsi  of  the  Harvard  Observatory.  Such  a  department  of  the 
university  had  been  talked  of  for  many  years,  but  was  not  put  through  till  the 
energetic  President  Quincy  bought  the  house,  and  in  1839  invited  WilUam  Cranch 
Bond,  the  famous  observer,  to  bring  his  instruments  to  Cambridge  and  occupv  it. 
A  cupola  (removed  some  twenty  years  cince)  with  a  revolving  dome  was  then  built 
on  the  roof,  and  the  west  wing  added  for  an  instrument  room.  The  necessary 
"mark"  for  a  meridian  line  on  which  to  adjust  the  telescope  was  erected  on  the  top 
of  a  tower  specially  constructed  on  Blue  Hill,  eleven  miles  due  south. 

The  house  had  been  selected  for  its  proximitv  to  the  college  and  for  its  elevated 
position  on  the  little  knoU  alreadv  described;  but  alas!  the  elevation  proved  m- 
*^  sufficient.  An  old  bam  was  moved  to  a  new  location  on  the  opposite  side  of  Massa- 
chusetts Avenue  and  completelv  shut  off  the  view  of  Blue  Hill!  In  this  dilemma 
the  ingenious  expedient  was  adopted  of  purchasmg  a  right  of  way  through  the 
roof  of  the  bam,  and  cutting  a  tunnel  therein,  through  which  the  mark  could  again 
be  observed.  On  account  of  this  and  other  unsuitable  conditions  the  instruments 
were  removed  in  1S44  to  the  present  obser^-atorv-,  specially  constructed  on  the  old 
"Summer  House  Hill"  of  the  former  Vassall-Craigie  estate.  (See  the  article  on 
"The  Dana  House,"  by  Professor  Joseph  Lovering,  in  The  Hanard  Book,  i, 
143.)  —  Ed. 


V-r       "^      ...-f.-   ,-, 


1925.]      FARLOW:  QUINCY  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES  43 

moved  to  Cambridge,  told  him  that  the  proper  thing  for  Cam- 
bridge was  a  cottage  mansion,  so  the  cottage  mansion  was  built. 
It  was  small  and  inadequate,  and  Professor  Goodwin  used  to 
tell  a  story  about  going  there  with  ^Ir.  Felton  before  the  com- 
pletion of  the  house.  Mt.  Felton  said,  ''This  is  my  study.  Do 
you  think  it  is  large  enough?"  '"No,"  said  ^Mr.  Goodwin,  look- 
ing around  the  room,  "You  couldn't  even  swing  a  cat  here!" 
Mr.  Felton  lived  but  a  short  time  after  moving  into  this  house. 
We  heard  that  he  wore  a  wig,  but  did  not  know  whether  it  was 
true  or  not.  He  was  a  jolly  and  very  fat  man,  however,  and  his 
cheery  laugh  resounded  when  he  talked. 

No  account  of  Quincy  Street  without  a  word  of  ]MoUy  Felton, 
his  eldest  daughter,  would  be  worth  hstening  to.  She  was  the 
embodiment  of  Hght,  laughter,  friendship,  and  love  of  outdoor 
life,  a  true  and  delightful  friend  to  all  Cambridge  of  that  day, 
and  beloved  by  all  during  her  lifetime.  I  remember  at  school 
hearing  her  say  to  her  friend  Hattie  Loring,  "If  there  is  ice  to- 
morrow, I  should  be  perfectly  willing  to  skate  to  church." 
This  poor  little  worm  wondered  whether  or  not  she  was  a 
Christian. 

The  vacancy  in  the  president's  office  became  a  matter  of  more 
than  usual  moment  at  this  time,  as  the  scientific  men  led  by 
Professors  Peirce  and  Agassiz  wished  to  break  away  from  the 
immemorial  custom  of  having  a  minister  for  president.  The 
outcome  was  the  election  of  the  Rev.  Thomas  HUl,  a  minister 
and  well-known  mathematician  from  Antioch,  a  college  in  Ohio. 
Dr.  Hill  occupied  the  president's  house  for  five  or  six  3'ears, 
and  then  resigned.  His  son  was  for  many  years  one  of  the  dis- 
tinguished professors  of  chemistry,  whose  ingenuity  in  adapt- 
ing Boylston  Hall  for  the  greatly  enlarged  classes  enabled  the 
college  to  continue  to  carry  on  its  courses  and  research  in  that 
building. 

Then  after  an  interregnum  when  Dr.  Peabody  held  the  reins, 
Mr.  Charles  W.  Eliot  became  president  of  the  college  and  Uved 
in  this  house.  He  took  down  walls  and  made  a  dehghtful  living 
room  of  the  inadequate  study.  Y'ou  will  all  remember  how  some 
ten  or  twelve  years  ago  this  house  was  torn  down  and  the  noble 
mansion  was  built,  a  fitting  president's  house,  now  occupied  by 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lowell. 


n-i 


iJiA  r       (.r/^1.i 


44  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY         [June 

Beyond  that  was  the  house  occupied  by  President  Walker  and 
his  wife.  Dr.  AYalker  was  an  old  man,  as  I  remember  him.  Once 
or  twice  a  year  he  preached  in  Appleton  Chapel.  Members  of 
the  Board  of  Overseers  who  were  clergjTnen  often  performed  a 
similar  duty. 

Professor  and  Mrs.  J.  P.  Cooke  moved  into  this  house  when 
Dr.  Walker  resigned,  and  enlarged  it  with  the  addition  of  a 
library.  Later,  Professor  and  ]Mrs.  Shaler  dwelt  here,  and  during 
their  stay  the  house  was  moved  about  a  hundred  feet  to  the 
south  to  make  way  for  Emerson  Hall,  at  which  time  Professor 
Shaler  enlarged  it  and  made  it  more  comfortable.  The  house 
was  the  scene  of  many  hospitable  gatherings,  for  they  enter- 
tained generously  both  strangers  and  students. 

After  Professor  Shaler's  death,  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Fenn  lived  here 
for  several  3'ears  while  their  children  were  in  school.  The  boys 
were  interested  in  nature  study,  and  frequented  the  College 
Library  in  search  of  books  on  moths  and  butterflies.  One  of  the 
twins,  after  searching  among  the  books,  was  asked  by  his 
mother  if  he  had  been  successful.  He  said,  "No,  not  very. 
I  only  found  one  book,  Aduic-e  to  Young  Mothers^ 

This  house  has  been  removed  to  Di\'inity  Avenue.  As  it  was 
too  large  to  go  through  the  street  it  was  sawn  into  several  pieces, 
and  Dr.  F.  G.  Peabody  said  to  Dr.  Fenn,  ''I  suppose  you  will 
take  up  your  quarters  again  in  Divinity  Avenue!" 

Under  the  large,  spreading  trees  in  front  of  Sever  Hall  stood 
the  house  occupied  by  Professor  Benjamin  Peirce,  who  with  his 
family  lived  there  for  many  years.  At  that  time  Professor  Peirce 
was  generally  considered  the  most  distinguished  man  in  Har- 
vard College.  His  long,  gray  hair  flowing  on  either  side  of  his 
face  added  distinction  and  affability  to  a  somewhat  severe 
countenance.  His  daughter,  Helen  Peirce,  was  acknowledged  to 
be  the  most  graceful  dancer  m  Cambridge.  Professor  Peirce  was 
a  distinguished  mathematician  and  astronomer,  and  was  later 
called  to  Washington  to  be  Superintendent  of  the  Coast  Survey. 
WTien  he  and  ^Irs.  Peirce  returned  to  Cambridge  they  lived  for 
several  years  in  the  stately  house  on  the  corner  of  Kirkland 
Place,  where  they  often  entertained  Edwin  Booth  and  other 
artists  of  distinction. 

Professor  G.  M.  Lane  Uved  in  the  first  Peirce  house  for  several 


1925.]      FARLOW:  QUINT Y  STREET  IN  THE  FIFTIES  45 

years;  and  then  this  large  and  comfortable  house  was  moved  to 
Frisbie  Place,  where  Professor  and  IMrs.  James  B.  Ames  occu- 
pied it. 

Already  Sever  Hall,  Emerson  Hall,  and  Robinson  Hall  have 
arisen  on  the  sites  of  the  old  familiar  houses,  and  in  a  few  months 
tliree  houses  on  the  east  side  of  Quincj'  Street  will  be  destroyed 
in  order  that  the  College  may  raise  in  their  places  a  more  worthy 
and  larger  Fogg  jNIuseum  of  .Art  with  surrounding  gardens. 


.?'    .'   i:  -i'  '■  \  Yf.i- 


46  THE  CAISIBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 


THE  WASHINGTON  ELM  TRADITION 

•  ^  By  S-\muel  F.  Batchelder 

Read  27  October,  1925 

The  famous  Washington  Elm,  standing  in  the  middle  of 
Garden  Street  at  its  junction  with  Mason  Street,  was  the  first  of 
a  hne  of  six  magnificent  elms  planted  along  Garden  Street,  the 
westerly  border  of  the  "Cow  Commons,"  about  1700.  The 
second  stood  at  the  corner  of  the  present  Waterhouse  Street, 
and  was  early  noted  as  the  ''Whitefield  Elm,"  from  the  fact 
that  the  great  revivaUst  preached  some  of  his  soul-shaking 
sermons  beneath  its  shade  in  1740.  It  obstructed  the  way  and 
was  cut  down  in  1871. ^  The  third  stood  at  the  corner  of  the 
present  Concord  Avenue,  and  the  fourth  opposite  the  present 
Walker  Street.  The  fifth,  just  inside  the  fence  between  the 
present  Houghton  and  Parsons  estates,  was  long  known  as  the 
"Stone  Elm,"  from  Cxregory  Stone,  the  early  owner  of  the 
property;  its  maimed  stump  has  survived  all  its  fellows.  The 
sixth  stood  opposite  the  present  Linnaean  Street,  on  which  the 
line,  turning  at  right  angles,  seems  to  have  continued  along  the 
northern  border  of  the  "Commons,"  as  indicated  by  several 
other  massive  trunks. 

For  many  years  the  Washington  Elm  had  been  slowly  dying, 
deprived  of  almost  all  moisture  by  the  water-tight  paving  of  the 
street  around  it  and  by  the  lowering  of  the  subterranean  "water 
table"  through  the  construction  of  sewers,  etc.,  which  also  cut 
seriously  into  its  roots.  As  early  as  1874,  S.  A.  Drake  alludes  to 
"its  crippled  branches  swathed  in  bandages;  its  scars  where, 
after  holding  aloft  for  a  century  their  outstretched  arms,  limb 
after  hmb  has  fallen  nerveless  and  decayed."  ^  Like  an  ancient 
martyr,  the  more  it  suffered  the  more  famous  it  became. 
Desperate  if  somewhat  unintelligent  efforts  were  made  to  pre- 
serve it  by  the  city  authorities.  More  and  more  dead  branches 

»  1855,  the  date  given  on  page  48  of  Tlie  Cambridge  of  1896,  seems  to  be  an  error 
—  perhaps  refers  to  some  other  tree  in  the  Une. 
*  Historic  Fields  and  Mansions  of  Middlesex,  267. 


C- : 


1^ 


^'> — J 


I 


lUuS.g'^^     ^ 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  47 

were  cut  off,  the  wounds  smeared  with  tar,  the  hollows  filled 
with  cement,  the  remauiing  limbs  braced  with  iron  bands  and 
rods,  until  it  became  a  truly  pitiable  object. 

Finally,  on  October  26,  1923,  the  whole  wretched  ruin  was 
accident ly  pulled  over  by  workmen  trymg  to  remove  another 
dead  branch,  and  crashed  against  the  hon  railing  surrounding 
it.  Examination  showed  that  the  trunk  was  hopelessly  rotted 
below  the  ground,  a  mere  mass  of  punk :  the  wonder  was  that  it 
had  stood  so  long.  Experts  from  the  Bussey  Institution  counted 
two  hundi'ed  and  two  annual  rings  in  a  section  of  its  trunk;  so 
that  allowing  for  the  last  few  years  when  growth  had  evidently 
ceased  entirely  it  must  have  been  at  least  two  hundred  and  ten 
years  old. 

The  remains  of  the  famous  rehc  were  rescued  with  some  diffi- 
cultj'  from  a  horde  of  souvenir  hunters  and  taken  in  charge  by 
the  city  government.  It  was  determined  to  make  of  them  "an 
object  lesson  in  patriotism  for  the  whole  country."  To  this  end 
they  were  sawn  into  numerous  fragments.  A  large  piece  of  the 
main  trunk  was  sent  to  the  governor  of  each  of  the  forty-eight 
states,  and  the  section  from  which  the  rings  were  counted  was 
polished  and  presented  to  the  museum  at  Mt.  Vernon.  From 
the  smaller  branches  were  made  a  quantity  of  gavels,  two  of 
which  were  presented  to  the  legislative  bodies  of  each  state  and 
many  to  fraternal  organizations,  etc.  One  hundred  and  fifty 
small  blocks  of  the  wood  were  given  to  local  applicants,  thirty- 
two  to  various  counties,  and  two  hundred  and  fifty  were  sent 
out  over  the  country.  In  all  about  one  thousand  pieces  were 
distributed,  each  suitably  labeled  with  a  metal  plaque. 

The  granite  tablet  that  had  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  elm  bore 
the  inscription  —  said  to  be  from  the  pen  of  Henry  W.  Long- 
fellow : 

UNDER  THIS  TREE 

WASHINGTON 

FIRST  TOOK  COMMAND 

OF  THE 

AMERICAN  ARMY 

JULY  3d,  1775. 


'liniT-l 


.li'^Ai.  :-  ,.; 


■(  v1  i^L:>i:.- 


1 


48  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

This  tablet  was  perforce  removed;  but  on  the  same  spot  a 
bronze  inscription  was  set  in  a  circular  panel  of  cement,  flush 
ydth  the  street  surface : 

HERE  STOOD 
THE  WASHINGTON  ELM 

UNDER  WHICH 
GEORGE  WASHINGTON 

TOOK  com:mand  OF 

THE  AMERICAN  .ARMY 

JULY  3  1775  ■ 

On  July  3,  1925,  a  grand  civic  celebration  preceded  by  a  long 
parade  was  held  on  the  Common  close  by  the  site  of  the  Elm  to 
commemorate  the  one  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the 
above  momentous  event.  The  exercises  included  a  speech  by 
the  President  of  the  United  States,^  and  a  ''pageant"  repre- 
senting the  original  ceremony  as  popularly  imderstood. 

After  all  these  tokens  of  veneration,  extending  over  so  many 
years,  it  may  be  presumptuous  —  even  profane  —  to  question 
the  tradition  on  which  they  have  been  based;  yet  if  we  lay  aside 
the  trusting  spirit  in  which  we  have  always  accepted  it,  and 
consider  it  in  the  light  of  common  sense  and  everyday  experi- 
ence, it  appears  so  odd  and  unHkely  that  we  are  tempted  to  ask: 
Is  it  true? 

It  is  only  the  restless  iconoclasts,  to  be  sure,  that  dare  to  pro- 
pound such  a  question.  iMost  of  us  have  no  wish  to  examine  the 
tradition  critically.  ^Mental  inertia  (as  in  so  many  other  cases) 
is  prhnarily  to  blame.  Every  old  Cantabrigian  has  been  brought 
up  on  the  story,  and  that  is  enough.  The  more  often  it  Ls  re- 
peated the  more  frrmly  it  is  believed.  To  upset  it  would  be  as 
painful  a  shock  to  our  historic  equilibrium  as  to  declare  the 
truth  that  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  not  signed  on 
the  Fourth  of  July.  Besides,  the  fame  of  the  Elm  has  spread 
over  the  whole  country,  so  that  it  formed  the  best  "sure-fire" 
attraction  in  town  for  every  visitor.  To  discredit  it  would  in  a 

1  It  was  remarked  that  the  President  in  his  address  made  no  reference  to  the 
Elm. 


HT  8i. 


'■■ft(ii< 


/t    ^.,i 


].-  Si  .^j.lt) 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  49 

manner  impugn  the  good  faith  of  the  city.  Lastly,  some  of  us 
devoutly  believe  the  tradition  has  been  handed  down  in  an  un- 
broken chain  from  heroic  Revolutionary  sires.  To  disbelieve  it 
would  somehow  be  not  only  unpatriotic  but  unfilial.  Washing- 
ton's Elm  in  short  is  as  much  an  accepted  part  of  American 
history  as  his  cherry  tree,  or  the  dollar  that  he  tlirew  across  the 
Potomac,  or  his  wonderful  twenty-two-foot  jump. 

But  when  we  find,  for  instance,  that  such  a  painstaking  and 
judicious  local  historian  as  Paige,  who  had  unrivalled  opportuni- 
ties for  collecting  and  sifting  evidence,  and  the  greatest  regard 
for  all  authentic  relics  of  the  past,  makes  no  reference  to  the 
Elm  in  his  account  of  Washington's  arrival  in  Cambridge,^  we 
are  justified  at  least  in  assimaing  an  attitude  of  open-mindedness, 
and  in  making  some  investigation  of  the  subject  along  simple 
and  obvious  lines. 


First  of  all,  then,  what  do  the  upholders  of  the  tradition 
claim? 

Nothing  at  all,  as  I  understand,  concerning  Washington's 
arrival  in  Cambridge  on  Sunday,  July  2  —  but  everything  con- 
cerning his  "taking  command"  on  Monday,  July  3,  1775.  This 
simplifies  matters  at  once ;  for  the  events  of  those  two  days  were 
very  different,  and  must  be  kept  sharply  separated  in  all  that 
follows. 

The  text,  so  to  speak,  of  the  traditionists,  seems  to  be  taken 
from  the  letter  which  John  Adams  had  written  a  fortnight  before 
from  Philadelphia:  "I  hope  the  utmost  politeness  will  be  shown 
to  these  officers  [W^ashington  and  Lee]  on  their  arrival.  The 
whole  army,  I  think,  should  be  drawn  up  upon  the  occasion, 
and  all  the  pride,  pomp  and  circumstance  of  glorious  war  dis- 
played; —  no  powder  burned,  however." 

This  passage  is  not  only  sufficiently  blatant  in  itself,  but 
(since  the  wTiter  of  course  knew  the  utter  impossibility  of  pomp 
and  circumstance  in  the  American  forces)  it  is  positively  silly. 
Nevertheless  the  traditionists  have  seized  upon  his  sentiments 
and,  ignoring  the  fact  that  he  referred  to  the  reception  of  both 
the  generals,  have  applied  them  to  a  perfectly  distinct  function 

»  History  of  Cambridge  (1877),  421. 


50  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

which  apparently  never  entered  his  head.  From  the  picture 
which  he  suggests  they  have  ideaUzed  the  ^-ision  of  a  really 
soul-stirring  ceremony,  and  then,  as  an  additional  touch  of 
romance,  have  located  it  "under  this  tree." 

A  tj-pical  account  of  the  fully  developed  vision  is  in  the 
"Diary  of  Dorothy  Dudley,"  under  date  of  July  3,  1775: 

"Today  he  [W'ashington]  formally  took  command  under  one 
of  the  grand  old  ehns  on  the  Coimnon.  It  was  a  magnificent 
sight.  The  majestic  figure  of  the  General  mounted  upon  his 
horse,  beneath  the  wide-spreading  branches  of  the  patriarch 
tree;  the  multitude  thronging  the  plain  around,  and  the  houses 
filled  with  interested  spectators  of  the  scene,  while  the  air  rung 
with  shouts  of  enthusiastic  welcome  as  he  drew  his  sword  and 
thus  [sic]  declared  himself  the  Conunander-in-Chief  of  the  Con- 
tmental  Army." 

Let  us  simply  remark  in  passing  that  John  Adams'  letter  was 
not  a  statement  of  fact  but  merely  the  expression  of  a  wish  — 
not  in  the  past  tense  but  in  the  future.  And  very  curiously  we 
shall  find  as  we  proceed  that  every  other  contemporary  refer- 
ence to  the  great  event  was  also  in  the  future  tense.  As  for 
Dorothy  Dudley's  diary,  almost  everyone  knows  by  this  time 
that  it  is  a  Hterary  forgery  —  and  not  a  very  clever  forgery  at 
that  —  written  for  the  centennial  anniversary  volume  entitled 
The  Cambridge  of  1776.  Its  whole  phraseology  is  obviously 
modern,  and  it  is  full  of  small  inaccuracies.  In  this  passage,  for 
example,  the  only  house  near  by  was  the  ]Moore  house,  built 
about  1750,  where  the  Shepard  Church  now  stands:  as  Cam- 
bridge had  been  virtually  deserted  by  its  inhabitants  there  could 
have  been  no  thronging  multitude  of  spectators:  and  the  army 
was  not  then  the  Continental  Army  but  the  Army  of  the  United 
Colonies.  All  the  same,  the  passage  is  worth  repeating  to  show 
the  traditionists'  state  of  mind.  It  is  just  the  sort  of  thing  which 
our  school  children  have  been  fed  up  with  for  generations.  And 
on  the  scene  which  it  describes,  the  traditionists  are  ready  to 
stake  "their  lives,  their  fortunes  and  their  sacred  honor."  ^ 

*The  incident  Ls  pictured  in  substantially  similar  terms  by  sundr>'  "popular" 
historiaiLs,  from  Wa-siiington  Irving  (who  seems  to  have  started  the  whole  thing) 
to  Henr>'  Cabot  Lodge.  These  gentlemen  allow  their  enthusiasm  for  the  mam 
event  —  the  first  entry  of  Washington  upon  the  military'  scene  which  he  was  to 
dominate  for  so  many  eventful  years  —  to  run  away  with  their  fidelity  to  detail. 


rvn    .-...:"'.^ 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  51 

Moreover,  to  clinch  the  effect  of  the  printed  word,  the  most 
outrageous  pictiucs  have  been  pubUshed  in  the  history  books, 
especially  the  school  histories  issued  during  the  middle  of  the 
last  century.  In  these  pictures  the  artists  have  allowed  their 
"historical  imagination"  to  run  amuck.  Prancing  steeds,  dip- 
ping colors,  dear  httle  drmnmer  boys,  long  rows  of  troops 
ahgned  to  a  hair's  breadth,  gorgeously  uniformed,  and  present- 
ing ghttering  arms  with  fixed  bayonets,  thrill  every  youthful 
heart,  whUe  smack  in  the  middle  of  the  front  rank  stands  the 
Elm,  with  just  room  for  Washington,  flourishing  his  sword,  to 
ride  between  it  and  his  immaculate  warriors,^  What  child  after 
devouring  such  a  scene  could  doubt  the  tradition  for  the  rest  of 
his  life? 

II 

Before  we  proceed,  let  us  emphasize  that  it  is  agreed  on  all 
hands  we  are  dealing  with  a  tradition.  Now  the  value  of  a  tradi- 
tion varies  inversely  with  the  civiHzation  of  the  community  in 
which  it  is  found.  Among  savage  tribes,  where  traditions  are 
handed  down  from  father  to  son  with  solenm  ritual,  they  are 
as  authentic  as  written  records.  But  the  invention  of  printing 
may  be  said  to  have  killed  the  rehability  of  tradition.  As  we  all 
know,  any  sort  of  statement  now  has  only  to  be  made  in  type  to 
be  beheved.  Have  we  not  "seen  it  in  the  papers"?  This  bit  of 
psychology  is  the  basis  of  all  modern  advertising. 

A  modern  tradition  is  thus  at  the  mercy  of  every  unscrupu- 
lous meddler  who  can  rub  one  idea  against  another.  x\s  Carlyle 
says  in  his  Essays  on  History,  "  Our  Letter  of  Instructions  comes 
to  us  in  the  saddest  state;  falsified,  blotted  out,  torn,  lost,  and 
but  a  shred  of  it  in  existence."  In  a  modern  community  a  tradi- 
tion grows  Uke  Jack's  Beanstalk,  and  sends  out  the  most  amaz- 

All  are  carefully  discussed  (and  discredited)  by  Charles  Martyn  on  page  153  of 
his  recent  scholarly  and  minute  Life  of  Ariemas  Ward.  This  writer  devotes  nriore 
space  and  critical  study  to  the  events  of  early  July,  1775,  than  any  other  whom 
I  have  found. 

1  Perhaps  the  most  amazing  of  these  pictures  was  published  as  the  "front  page 
feature"  of  Ballou's  Pictorial  for  July  7,  1855.  It  is  credited  to  "Mr.  Warren,  the 
artist."  Washington,  mounted  apparently  on  a  Shetland  pony,  is  backed  up  tight 
against  the  Elm,  and  gazes  calmly  off  into  space,  surrounded  by  an  indescribable 
confusion  of  staff  officers,  orderlies,  infantry  in  heavy  marching  order,  cavalry, 
cannon,  and  enthusiastic  ladies  standing  up  in  barouches  to  point  out  the  hero 
to  their  children. 


;.cs:(n 


52  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

ing  ramifications.  Witness  the  preposterous  embellishment  of 
the  Elm  tradition  —  that  Washington  built  a  platform  in  its 
branches  where  he  was  accustomed  to  sit  and  ''survey  the 
camps."  ^  Considering  that  his  view  would  have  been  limited 
to  a  few  hundred  yards  in  any  direction,  this  would  indeed  have 
been  a  pleasant  and  restful  method  of  spending  time  for  a  com- 
mander almost  driven  to  death  by  his  manifold  cares  and  re- 
sponsibilities! 

WTien  we  admit,  then,  that  we  are  discussing  a  tradition,  and 
a  tradition  of  modern  times  in  a  highly  civilized  community,  it 
is  tantamount  to  saying  that  we  are  leaning  upon  a  very  feeble 
reed.  A  tradition,  for  instance,  connected  with  the  founding  of 
Harvard  College  would  be  entitled  to  much  more  weight,  be- 
cause arising  much  earlier  and  in  a  much  more  primitive  society. 
But  at  the  risk  of  breaking  a  butterfly  on  the  wheel,  let  us  try 
to  trace  this  tradition  as  far  back  as  we  can. 

The  first  appearance  in  black  and  white  that  its  champions 
claim  for  it  seems  to  be  a  short  article  by  John  Langdon  Sibley 
in  his  American  Magazine  of  Useful  Knowledge  for  1837.  The 
crucial  passage  is  this: 

"WTiitfield  stood  in  its  shade  and  moved  a  vast  multitude 
by  his  eloquence.  .  •  .  The  Revolutionary  soldiers,  who  stood 
shoulder  to  shoulder, —  blessings  be  on  their  heads, —  tell  us 
that  when  Washington  arrived  at  Cambridge,  he  drew  his 
sword  as  commander-in-chief  of  the  American  army,  for  the 
first  time,  beneath  its  boughs,  and  resolved  within  himself  that 
it  should  never  be  sheathed  till  the  Hberties  of  his  country  were 
established.  Glorious  old  tree,  that  hast  stood  in  sight  of  the 
smoke  of  Lexington  and  Bunker's  Hill  battles,  and  weathered 
the  storms  of  many  generations, —  worthy  of  reverence." 

Enthusiasm  rather  than  accuracy  marks  this  passage.  The 
author  is  flatly  in  error  as  to  the  Whitefield  Elm,  draws  the  long 
bow  as  to  the  battle  smoke,  and  docs  not  explain  how  the 
Revolutionary  soldiers  could  divine  what  Washington  resolved 
within  himself!  Such  accessories  appreciably  weaken  the  main 
statement.  The  article  is  chiefly  interesting  as  containing  the 
first  known  picture  of  the  Elm,  with  a  signboard  nailed  to  its 
trunk  for  the  direction  of  travellers. 

»  Cf.  S.  A.  Drake,  Historic  Fields  and  Mansions  of  Middlesex  (1874),  268. 


><-;',7.D  a^r 


'-^>  ^  rtil 


'  '''«■^.^ 


)  1^ 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  53 

In  1S44  another  picture  of  the  Ekn  was  made  —  a  pencil 
sketch  by  Miss  Quincy,  daughter  of  the  president  of  Harvard. 
According  to  a  memorandum  in  the  corner  of  this  sketch,  in 
1830,  or  fourteen  years  earUer,  ''an  old  resident"  remembered 
that  Washington  "stood"  (not  rode)  at  "about  the  place" 
when  he  took  command.    Like  Sibley,  she  gives  no  names  or 


&":   .    ...  "  :  m...       ■■   &::,# 


•<. 


Earliest  Know^  Picture  of  the  Washington  Elm,  1837 

direct  statements  —  all  is  vague  and  at  second  hand.  This 
seems  to  indicate  that  the  tradition  was  then,  so  to  speak,  still 
in  its  fluid  or  formative  state.  But  old  residents  will  remember 
anything.  The  older  they  are  the  more  they  will  remember. 
We  all  know  the  story  of  the  convivial  octogenarian  who  before 
dinner  could  remember  George  Washington,  and  after  dinner 
could  remember  Christopher  Columbus. 

Anyhow,  it  was  evidently  in  the  1830's  that  the  tradition 
began  to  appear  in  recorded  form.  In  all  that  long  interval  from 
1775  there  had  been  innumerable  Fourth  of  July  orations,  politi- 
cal sermons,  and  other  patriotic  harangues,  many  of  them 


'■>'  I, 


54  THE  CAIVIBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

printed  and  preserved,  which  might  easily  have  referred  to  such 
a  striking  event.  But  nothing  of  the  sort  has  been  brought  for- 
ward by  the  traditionists.  The  tale  apparently  had  no  recorded 
existence  for  over  fiftj^  years ! 

In  1851,  Benson  J.  Lossing,  after  a  visit  to  Cambridge,  printed 
the  story  (with  another  sketch,  showing  the  Moore  house  also) 
in  his  Pictorial  Ficld-Book  of  the  Revolution.  Here  the  embellish- 
ments begin.  Washington  "walked"  —  he  was  then  still  on 
foot  —  from  his  quarters  to  the  tree,  "stepped  a  few  paces  in 
front,  made  some  remarks,  drew  his  sword,  and  formally  took 
command  of  the  Continental  Army."  This  is  quite  mild  and  un- 
assuming—  almost  tentative.  But  unfortunately  Lossing  lo- 
cates the  Elm  "on  Washington  Street"^  and  "at  the  north 
end  of  the  Common";  and  also  locates  Washington  as  then  in 
the  Vassall-Longfellow  house,  "in  which  mansion,  and  at  Winter 
Hill,  he  passed  most  of  his  time."  Further,  in  his  Seventeen 
Seventy-Six,  published  in  1847  without  the  tradition  (i.e.  before 
he  had  seen  Miss  Quincy?),  Lossing  makes  Washington  arrive 
in  Cambridge  on  July  12.  Thinking  that  such  a  frame  for  the 
picture  was  rather  shaky,  the  late  Horace  E.  Scudder,  in  the 
interests  of  local  antiquaries,  wrote  to  Lossing  to  ask  where  he 
got  his  authority  for  the  story.  But  no  satisfactory  answer  was 
ever  received. ^ 

In  1S64  the  thing  became  an  accepted  part  of  history  by  a 
very  simple  device.  The  City  of  Cambridge,  during  the  height 
of  the  Civil  War  "patriotism, "  did  a  good  bit  of  propaganda  by 
erecting  the  granite  tablet  "to  commemorate,"  as  the  vote  of 
the  Aldermen  vaguely  read,  "the  Revolutionary  event  and 
date  that  rendered  said  Tree  historical."  Of  course  after  such 
an  indorsement  from  such  an  authority,  no  "100  per  cent 
American"  could  do  otherwise  than  accept  the  "fact." 

It  was  not  till  this  period,  by  the  way,  that  the  Elm  attracted 
sufficient  notice  to  be  marked  on  the  maps  of  Cambridge  as  one 

^A  retraction  is  necessary  here.  I  find  this  portion  of  the  way  was  knowTi  as 
Washington  Street  tiJl  1S48.  It  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  early  indifference  to 
(or  doubt  of)  the  tradition  that  the  title  was  then  deliberately  dropped,  and  the 
name  Garden  Street  extended  to  the  whole  length  of  the  thoroughfare.  The  public 
interest  of  those  days  was  plainly  much  greater  in  the  Botanic  Garden  than  in  the 
Elm  —  a  condition  long  since  reversed! 

*  For  the  above  data  I  am  mainly  indebted  to  Professor  Albert  Bushnell  Hart. 


Vf> 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  55 

of  the  local  points  of  interest.  From  that  time  its  fame  steadily 
increased,  fostered  by  scores  of  writers  and  hundreds  of  speakers, 
until  as  has  been  said  it  became  the  Mecca  of  uncounted  thou- 
sands of  tourists,  sight-seers,  and  ''souvenir  hounds" — the 
city's  chief  "exliibition  piece." 

Thus  snowball-like  grew  the  tradition,  from  vague  and  feeble 
beginnings  ever  gainmg,  as  it  rolled  along,  in  weight  and  im- 
portance, till  it  represented  the  greatest  Revolutionary  event  in 
town.  Nevertheless,  ahiiost  apocryphal  as  it  seems  in  its  present 
form,  we  must  not  forget  one  point  in  its  favor.  A  tradition  may 
grow  and  flower  siu-prisingly ;  but  it  doesn't  grow  like  a  kind  of 
historical  orchid.  It  must  have  its  root  in  something  defmite. 
Very  few  traditions  associated  with  a  given  location  spring  from 
nothing  at  all.  If  I  point  out  to  my  little  boy  the  crack  in  the 
parlor  floor  where  I  once  lost  a  quarter,  my  descendants  will 
doubtless  in  time  show  each  other  the  very  room  where  great- 
grandfather was  declared  a  bankrupt  —  but  it  will  be  the  same 
parlor. 

Now  it  is  a  notable  example  of  the  survival  of  our  ancestral 
"tree  worship"  to  consider  what  a  number  of  famous  trees 
there  are  (or  were)  in  Cambridge.  There  was  the  "\\Tiitefield 
Elm"  already  noted.  There  was  the  "Election  Oak"  across  the 
Common,  on  the  spot  now  marked  by  another  tablet.  There 
was  the  "Spreading  Chestnut  Tree"  beside  which  stood  the 
"village  smithy,"  at  the  corner  of  Brattle  and  Story  Streets. 
There  were  the  "Rebellion  Tree"  and  the  "Class  Tree"  in  the 
College  Yard.  There  were  the  "PaUsade  Willows"  on  Mount 
Auburn  Street,  made  famous  by  Lowell's  poem.  We  confidently 
challenge  any  other  community  to  exhibit  such  an  historical 
and  poetical  arboretum. 

Yet  none  of  these  trees  have  ever  been  associated  with  the 
name  of  Washington.  He  has  a  tree  all  to  himself .  We  will  allow 
the  "unpatriotic"  and  the  "un-American"  and  other  e^nl- 
minded  persons  to  insinuate  that  as  this  particular  tree  was  not 
already  "tagged"  it  was  conveniently  open  to  be  assigned  to 
the  Father  of  His  Country.  Let  such  cavillers  go.  We  are  quite 
ready  to  admit  that  from  the  considerations  above  set  forth 
Washington  probably  did  do  something,  active  or  passive,  be- 
neath his  Ehn.  The  only  question  is  —  what? 


[i-  ■.:■:/} 


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■  ■■>   •.:;:. 

uU»M:.:i. 

■'■  ;    !•:   *    ,'.. 

::^i\y..V,M 

1  ■)[■  J  i-.V   J,- 

I.,,tlV./'iJ' 

■'  ■■■'■'"  '; 

^-  '  ■ 

V    ,.U.,j 

-  .'V'r:i;:tcr 


66  THE  C.\]MBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 


Ill 

In  trj'ing  to  answer  the  question  we  may  first  apply  the 
"process  of  exclusion,"  and  consider  (even,  it  is  to  be  feared,  at 
tedious  length)  what  he  almost  certainly  did  not  do.  Let  us 
begin  with  the  ''antecedent  probabihties."  What  was  natural 
and  likely  under  the  cii'cmnstances?  \Vhat  were  the  known 
conditions  under  which  Washington  "took  command"?  And 
what  logically  follows  from  them? 

We  may  first  discuss  the  topogi-aphy.  The  road  from  Water- 
town  (the  most  ancient  travelled  way  in  town)  came  down  by 
what  is  now  Brattle  Street,  passing  the  scattered  country  seats 
of  the  rich  Tories,  and  tiu-ned  into  the  present  Mason  Street. 
Its  lower  end  debouched  upon  the  Common,  then  a  perfectly 
open  plain.  Aroimd  the  edge  of  the  Common  were  several 
dwellings,  the  schoolliouse,  the  Episcopal  church,  the  grave- 
yard, and  the  buildings  of  Harvard  College.  At  this  point, 
therefore,  the  real  village  might  be  said  to  begin;  and  here  stood 
a  big  elm,  either  at  the  side  of  the  road  or  just  within  the  door- 
yard  of  the  Moore  hoase  already  mentioned. 

Now  important  military  ceremonies  do  not  normally  take 
place  under  roadside  trees,  especially  with  an  excellent  parade 
ground  only  a  few  yards  away.  (If  the  Elm  had  stood  in  the 
center  of  the  Conmion  instead  of  cramped  against  the  edge  and 
almost  in  one  corner,  the  probabilities  would  be  much  more  in 
its  favor.)  And  in  such  an  important  affair  as  taking  command 
of  an  army,  the  leading  figure  of  all  would  not  naturally  "take 
cover"  whether  under  a  tree  or  any  other  shelter.  The  cere- 
mony (if  any)  emphatically  calls  for  him  to  seek  an  open  space. 
Or  are  we  to  assume  that  the  immortal  George,  like  the  im- 
mortal Robin  Hood,  sate  himself  down  'neath  greenwood  tree 
and  called  on  his  merry  men  to  gather  round  his  leafy  retreat? 
No  manual  of  tactics  covers  such  an  emergency.  Perhaps  an 
exhibition  drill  by  the  Shriners  —  but  why  pursue  the  inquiry? 

The  supposition,  by  the  way,  that  Washington  "sheltered 
himself  from  the  heat  beneath  its  branches"  is  too  ridiculous  to 
be  taken  seriouslj^  Would  a  man  in  the  prime  of  vigor,  inured 
to  all  weathers,  act  like  a  schoolgirl  preserving  her  complexion? 
Would  a  commander  on  his  first  appearance  before  his  men  give 


)■;■:,;/•."■»  i-rr  'K 


i    •.   rrii   p. 


1   >    +•; 


-'.  'lo 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  57 

such  an  example  of  trivial  self-indulgence?  Would  Washington 
confess  himself  inferior  in  stamina  to  sturdy  farmers  from  the 
haj-fields  who  two  weeks  before  had  sweated  and  blistered 
through  that  infernal  Seventeenth  of  June?  Assuredly  not  — 
but  we  are  digressing. 

Secondly,  what  inferences  can  be  drawn  from  the  date?  It 
was  only  a  fortnight  after  Bunker  Hill.  Everybody  expected  — 
and  expected  very  naturally  —  that  the  British  would  follow 
up  their  victory  by  another  attack.  This  second  attack  did  in 
fact  very  nearly  come  off  —  though  the  historians  have  gener- 
ally failed  to  notice  the  circumstance.  A  letter  from  Cambridge 
(to  which  we  shall  have  occasion  to  refer  again)  dated  Monday, 
July  3,  states: 

"Wlien  the  Generals  were  within  twenty  miles  of  the  camp, 
they  received  an  express  that  the  Parliamentary  troops  had, 
on  Saturday  morning,  about  6  o'clock,  begun  a  very  heavy 
caimonading  on  the  town  of  Roxbury,  which  continued  better 
than  two  hours,  without  intermission,  tho'  with  httle  or  no  loss 
on  the  side  of  the  Provincials,  and  that  they  expected  a  general 
attack  on  Sunday,  about  two  o'clock,  at  the  time  of  high  water; 
that  we  had  confirmed,  and  this  I  beheve  was  prevented  by  a 
heavy  rain,  which  began  at  half-past  twelve,  and  continued  till 
late  at  night."  ^ 

Even  on  the  very  day  of  the  alleged  ''taking  command" 
Glover's  regiment  (stationed  just  behind  Harvard  College)  was 
ordered  to  be  ready  to  march  at  a  minute's  warning,  to  support 
General  Folsom  ''in  case  his  hue  should  be  attacked." 

Pretty  plainly,  then,  the  camp  during  those  days  was  in  a 
state  of  considerable  trepidation.  The  paramount  need  was  to 
strengthen  the  defences,  and  the  army  was  strung  out  all  the 
way  from  Maiden  to  Roxbury,  digging  like  beavers.  In  Cam- 
bridge village  there  were  not  more  than  three  or  four  regiments, 
and  even  these  were  heavily  depleted  by  drafts  for  the  en- 
trenching parties.  To  have  assembled  the  army,  or  even  a 
respectable  portion  of  it,  for  a  grand  parade  on  Cambridge 
Common  at  that  time  would  have  been  a  risky  business  — 
rather  hke  calling  off  the  ditchers  at  a  forest  fire  to  attend  a 
political  rally.    And  thus  to  assemble  them,  to  bully  or  coax 

1  Pennsylvania  Gazette,  July  12,  1775. 


I.   .-•r;l 


58  THE  CA]VIBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Ocrr. 

them  into  any  sort  of  mass  formation  (for  according  to  Von 
Steuben  the  men  had  an  invincible  habit  of  marching  in  single 
file  like  the  Indians),  to  go  through  any  sort  of  ceremony,  and 
to  disentangle  them  again  would  have  taken  up  the  best  part  of 
a  day.  It  is  not  likely  that  Washington  would  have  sanctioned 
any  loss  of  time  like  that.  Besides,  he  hunself  was  too  desper- 
atel}'  anxious  (as  we  shall  see)  to  get  a  look  at  the  enemj'  and 
the  location  of  his  own  forces  to  wait  for  an\i;hing  of  the  kind. 

In  the  third  place,  what  can  we  learn  from  those  same  sturdy 
farmers?  There  probably  never  was  an  army  —  except  perhaps 
the  late  lamented  Boers  —  so  little  fitted  by  inclination  or  by 
training  for  ''fuss  and  feathers."  The  men,  officers  and  all, 
could  shovel  and  shoot.  At  that  point  their  military  notions 
stopped.  Their  drill  was  a  farce.  Timothy  Pickering  asserted 
that  not  one  officer  out  of  five  knew  even  the  commands  for  the 
simplest  evolutions,  much  less  how  to  execute  them.  Most  of 
the  camps,  according  to  Wilham  Gordon,  were  in  a  condition  of 
most  immiUtary  nastiness.  Nobody  cared  a  fig  for  uniforms. 
Washington  had  to  order  the  officers  to  wear  colored  ribbons,  at 
least,  so  as  to  be  distinguished  in  any  way  from  the  privates. 
Even  in  the  matter  of  an  official  flag  there  was  so  little  interest 
that  the  whole  thing  was  left  in  abeyance  until  the  war  was 
almost  half  done.  Esprit  de  corps  was  entirely  lacking.  The 
troops  of  each  colony  were  under  control  of  their  own  com- 
manders only,  and  frequently  not  on  good  terms  with  their 
neighbors.  Up  to  that  time,  there  is  record  of  only  one  occasion 
on  which  the  bulk  of  the  army  had  been  assembled  for  concerted 
manoeu\Tes  —  a  practice  march  to  Charlestown  and  back  on 
May  13  —  a  feat  which  seems  to  have  astonished  everybody 
concerned,  including  the  enemy.  On  one  point  indeed  the  army 
seems  to  have  been  well  supplied.  There  was,  if  countless  family 
traditions  are  to  be  beheved,  a  superabundance  of  drummer 
boys.  But  as  in  the  Civil  War,  this  merely  allowed  the  young- 
sters to  enlist  and  see  the  fun,  and  probably  gave  a  painfully 
uncertain  quality  of  field  music. 

How  are  we  going  to  construct  a  soul-stirring  military  func- 
tion out  of  elements  like  these?  WTiere  do  the  illustrators  get 
the  material  for  their  elaborate  uniforms,  glittering  arms,  and 
serried  ranks  of  the  army  beneath  the  Elm?  Is  it  probable  that 


^  7   ^  :tHT 


.o>iii.  j. 


.A^:- 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  59 

the  ofBcers  would  have  attempted,  or  that  Washington  would 
have  encouraged,  a  spectacle  that  would  have  done  nothing 
but  reflect  discredit  and  ridicule  upon  his  motley,  fidgety,  and 
none-too-enthusiastic  forces?  Let  any  militia  oflicer  of  today 
reply. 

And  fourthly,  how  about  W^ashington  himself?  It  is  well 
known  that  he  was  extremely  unassuming  and  modest  —  so 
modest  that  when  he  was  nominated  for  the  high  command  by 
the  Continental  Congress  he  immediately  left  the  hall.  We  may 
be  sure  that  any  pompous  ceremony  would  not  have  been  at 
his  own  seeking.  Moreover,  none  realized  better  that  he  was  in 
a  very  delicate  position.  As  Charles  Martyn  points  out,  he  was 
not  yet  the  popular  idol  that  he  later  became.^  He  was  merely 
a  distinguished  stranger,  coming  with  nobody  knew  what 
theories  of  his  own,  to  oust  the  New  England  commander  of  a 
New  England  army,  a  well-known  and  trusted  veteran,  who 
had  just  received  the  highest  mark  of  confidence  from  the  other 
colonies.  For,  after  W^ard's  handling  of  the  affair  at  Bunker 
Hill,  both  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  had  voted  to  put  their 
forces  also  under  his  unreserved  control.  And  thus  not  only  in 
fact,  but  in  title,  he  had  become  "  Conunander-in-Chief  of  the 
AUied  American  Army."  ^  Washington  was  therefore  the 
second  and  not  the  first  commander-in-chief  —  a  point  not  gen- 
erally appreciated.  At  all  events,  it  was  certainly  natural  for 
him  to  walk  softly  and  sing  small  at  first  —  not  to  flourish  his 
sword  and  prance  up  and  down  the  camp. 

Further,  George  Washington  was  accompanied  by  Charles 
Lee.  Now  Lee  was  immensely  popular,  an  old  campaigner,  a 
bluff  hail-fellow  with  everyone,  and  enjoyed  a  mihtary  reputa- 
tion which  very  nearly  got  him  the  nomination  instead  of 
Washington  himself.  He  thus  filled  the  popular  eye  quite  as 
much  as  the  new  commander.  Every  "address  of  welcome" 
that  Washington  received  on  his  way  to  Cambridge  was  ac- 
companied by  another  to  Lee.  WTien  they  arrived  at  the  camp 
their  names  were  universally  coupled.  Most  contemporary  ac- 
counts speak  of  "the  Generals"  as  domg  this  or  that.  Lee, 
being  intensely  jealous  of  his  chief,  took  good  care  to  stick  to 

^  Life  of  Artemas  Ward,  151,  n. 

*  See  Rhode  Island  Records,  vii,  355. 


/  "    :;  ]•"  r^M  JT/U  \y/r:l 


a?. 


)  ^'■-,,.*     ;!.:• 


n^     :■ 


60  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

him  like  a  leech,  and  was  quite  capable  of  making  trouble  if 
Washington  got  too  much  attention. 

The  diplomatic  situation,  in  fact,  may  roughly  be  compared 
to  a  dignified  and  rather  inscrutable  Texan,  closely  accom- 
panied by  Theodore  Roosevelt,  reUeving  General  Edwards  in 
the  middle  of  liis  campaign  with  the  26th  Division  in  France. 
Under  such  circumstances  it  seems  likely  that  Washington 
would  have  considered  it  the  part  of  prudence  to  get  into  the 
saddle  as  quietly  and  unostentatiously  as  possible. 

For  every  reason,  then  —  personal,  practical,  poUtical,  and 
diplomatical  —  it  is  not  probable  that  Washington  'Hook  com- 
mand" in  any  such  flamboyant  style  as  old  Cantabrigians  so 
fondly  assert. 

IV 

Yes,  say  the  traditionists,  all  this  is  very  pretty,  but  it  is  mere 
theory.  Very  well,  let  us  leave  the  realm  of  antecedent  proba- 
bihty  and  proceed  to  the  records. 

Fortunately  we  have  plenty  of  records  —  legislative,  military 
and  civil  —  by  press  and  public,  by  men  and  women.  TVTiat  can 
we  fairly  infer  from  them? 

It  is  appropriate  to  start  with  those  of  the  Provincial  Con- 
gress of  IVIassachusetts,  the  ultimate  authority  in  the  military 
as  well  as  the  civil  affau's  of  the  pro\ince.  Apparently  a  good 
deal  worried  by  John  Adams'  letter  and  similar  suggestions, 
they  held  a  number  of  anxious  debates  on  the  subject  of  Wash- 
ington's reception.  A  conomittee  was  appointed,  their  report 
was  tabled,  taken  up  again,  amended,  and  finally,  on  June  26, 
a  formal  resolve  was  passed.  The  house  of  the  president  of 
Harvard  College  (Wadsworth  House),  as  the  most  dignified  in 
town,  was,  except  one  room  reserved  for  the  owner,  to  be 
"taken,  cleansed,  prepared  and  furnished  for  the  reception  of 
General  Washington  and  General  Lee."  General  Ward  was  to 
be  officially  notified  of  the  ''expected  early  arrival"  of  these 
dignitaries,  so  that  he  "may  give  such  orders  for  their  honorable 
reception  as  may  accord  with  the  rules  and  circumstances  of  the 
army,  and  the  respect  due  to  their  rank,  without,  however,  any 
expense  of  powder,  and  without  taking  the  troops  off  from  the 
necessary  attention  to  their  duty  at  this  crisis  of  our  affairs." 


'•'l/l':;''    :'!7T 


/  .'■  ayr  -'Ji 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  61 

Pretty  discouraging,  this!  The  "booming  of  cannon"  and 
the  ''joyful  salvos  of  musketry,"  which  the  "popular"  histo- 
rians dehght  to  describe,  were  taboo  right  away.  ^Any  general 
assemblage  of  troops  was  forbidden,  too. 

Let  us  see  how  Ward  interpreted  the  "respect  due  to  their 
rank,"  under  "the  circumstances  of  the  army."  Here  it  is  in 
his  general  orders  for  Saturday,  July  1  —  his  only  reference  to 
the  subject:  "That  the  drummers  in  this  encampment  [i.e., 
Cambridge]  attend  upon  IMr.  John  Bassett,  drum  major,  at  7 
o'clock  tomorrow  morning,  and  receive  orders  from  him."  No 
reference  to  a  parade  or  the  concentration  of  any  troops.  And 
the  orders  for  July  2,  W^ard's  last  day  of  command,  are  equally 
negative.  They  are  concerned  solely  with  the  much  neglected 
subject  of  sanitation  —  sick  inspection  and  cleaning  up  the 
camp.^  Apparently  W^ard,  like  a  sensible  man,  was  much  more 
anxious  to  present  Washington  with  a  healthy  and  tidy  army 
than  with  a  complimentar}-  review.  The  utmost  that  he  seems 
to  have  contemplated  was  to  have  the  new  generals  "drummed 
into  town,"  or  perhaps  to  have  additional  field  music  for  the 
first  day's  guard  mounting. 

W^e  may  here  add  that  those  drummers  duly  reported  to  T^Ir. 
Bassett  on  Sunday  morning  and  received  their  "orders." 
WTiich  orders  were  evidently  (on  account  of  the  weather)  to 
come  again  on  jNIonday  and  bring  the  fifers  too.  For  the  en- 
thusiastic Joseph  Hodgkins,  lieutenant  in  W^ade's  company  of 
Ipswich,  wrote  to  his  better  half:  "Cambridge,  July  3,  1775. 
Monday  morning  about  8  o'clock.  I  now  set  dow^n  to  write  a 
line  to  you  .  .  .  Geaneral  W^ashington  and  Lees  got  into  Cam- 
bridge yesterday,  and  to  Day  they  are  to  take  Vew  of  ye 
Armey,  &  that  will  be  attended  with  a  grate  Deal  of  grandor. 
There  is  at  this  time  one  &  twenty  Drummers  &  as  many 
feffers  a  Beting  and  Playing  Ptound  the  Prayde."  ^ 

Note  Mr.  Hodgkins'  future  tense  again.  If  he  was  prepared 
to  be  so  thrilled  with  a  "grate  Deal  of  grandor"  is  it  conceiv- 
able that  he  would  have  utterly  failed  to  mention  it  had  it 
materialized?   Note  also  that  taking  a  view  is  very  different 

^  See  Mass.  Historical  Society  Proceedings,  xv,  113. 

*  Ipswich  Antiquarian  Papers,  ii,  no.  xx.  Even  larger  "ma.ssed  bands"  are  re- 
corded. Thus  at  Roxbury,  EUhu  Clark  noted  on  June  9,  1775,  "I  see  36  Drum 
27  fifers  all  playing  [at]  once."  MS.  Journal,  Library  of  Congress. 


{^^-■V  :n3.fJ7IH:>'fA;: 


J\    Md-i 


62  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

from  taking  command.  We  shall  find  that  the  generals  did 
indeed  take  a  verj'  anxious  view  of  the  army,  but  without  any- 
recorded  grandeur.  Note  further  that  one  and  twenty  drum- 
mers, at  the  usual  allowance  of  one  to  a  company,  represent 
only  about  two  regiments  *'in  this  encampment." 

Such  were  the  official  preliminaries.  Not  much  ammunition 
for  traditionists  here.  Let  us  turn  to  the  newspaper  account  of 
the  actual  arrival.  Now  it  so  happened  that  the  brothers  Hall, 
proprietors  of  that  estimable  weekly,  the  Essex  Gazette  and  New 
England  Chronicle  of  Salem,  had  foreseen  a  good  deal  of  job 
printing  would  be  needed  at  Cambridge,  and  had  moved  their 
office,  by  permission,  into  one  of  the  rooms  in  Stoughton  Hall  — 
thus  continuing  the  printing  tradition  that  had  been  one  of 
Harvard's  first  ventures.  From  their  window,  therefore,  they 
could  look  out  on  the  Conunon  and  see  everything  that  passed. 
This  was  their  account,  appearing  in  the  issue  of  the  following 
Thursday. 

"Cambridge,  July  6.  Last  Sabbath  came  to  to\^Ti  from 
Philadelphia  His  Excellency  George  Washington  Esquire,  ap- 
pointed by  the  Continental  Congress  General  and  Conmiander- 
in-Chief  of  the  American  Forces,  and  was  received  with  every 
testimony  of  respect  due  to  a  gentleman  of  his  real  worth  and 
elevated  dignity.  His  Excellency  was  accompanied  by  the  Hon. 
Charles  Lee,  Esquire,  and  a  number  of  other  gentlemen." 

The  most  striking  thing  about  this  news  item  is  its  amazingly 
non-military  language.  Had  Washington  been  a  well-known 
scientist  or  a  famous  philosopher,  and  Lee  a  learned  judge,  the 
phraseology  could  not  have  been  more  civilian  in  tone.  In  fact, 
it  almost  suggests  that  the  editors  were  trying  to  make  the  best 
of  a  very  poor  business.  "\\T)ile  as  for  the  pomp  and  display,  if 
any,  on  the  Monday,  the  reporter  evidently  couldn't  make 
*'copy"  of  it  at  all;  for  he  says  nothing  whatever  about  it. 
This  again  is  pretty  fair  negative  evidence. 

CivUian  records  made  on  the  spot  are  scarce,  since  (as  al- 
ready stated)  most  of  the  non-combatants  had  left  town.  Mrs. 
Adams,  however,  wrote  to  her  husband  a  few  days  later: 

"The  appointment  of  the  Generals,  Washington  and  Lee, 
gives  universal  satisfaction.  ...  I  was  struck  with  General 
Washington.    You  had  prepared  me  to  entertain  a  favorable 


)  ..  rf 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  63 

opinion  of  him,  but  I  thought  the  half  was  not  told  me.  Dignity, 
with  ease  and  complacency,  the  gentleman  and  soldier,  looked 
agreeably  blended  in  him.  Modesty  marks  every  line  of  his 
face.  Those  lines  of  Dryden  instantly  occurred  to  me:"  —  and 
the  good  soul  wanders  off  into  poetry. 

Surely  a  lady  of  such  appreciative  and  emotional  tempera- 
ment would  have  been  the  first  to  clironicle  any  soul-stirring 
ceremony  such  as  the  traditionists  claim.  But  unfortunately 
she  doesn't;  and  there  seems  only  one  inference  to  draw  from 
her  silence. 

The  letter  from  Cambridge  dated  July  3,  aheady  quoted, 
after  describing  the  rain  goes  on  to  say,  "The  Generals  have 
spent  this  whole  day  in  reviewing  .the  troops,  lines,  fortifica- 
tions, etc.  They  find  the  troops  to  be  15,000  strong,  and  the 
works  to  be  in  as  good  order  as  could  be  expected."  Here  we 
have  the  facts  in  a  nutshell.  Washington's  ''whole  day"  is 
accounted  for,  in  precisely  the  way  any  sensible  man  would 
expect,  at  the  very  time  when  the  traditionists  solemnly  place 
him  beneath  the  Elm,  waving  his  sword  and  haranguing  his 
assembled  forces.  But  as  all  the  fortifications  and  nearly  all  the 
troops  were  miles  away  from  the  Common,  this  entry  gets  him 
farther  off  from  the  Elm  than  ever.  The  word  "review"  here  is 
applied  to  earthworks  as  well  as  troops,  and  hence  must  mean 
"inspect" — or  "visit"  as  Washmgton  himself,  and  various 
other  chroniclers,  say.  It  cannot  mean  "take  command,"  be- 
cause it  is  distinctly  appHed  to  both  W^ashington  and  Lee. 

Out  in  Stoughton,  Ezekiel  Price  was  keeping  a  diary.  He 
was  in  close  touch  with  what  was  going  on  in  Cambridge,  and 
recorded  all  items  of  news  that  were  interesting  enough  to 
filter  out  of  the  camp.  In  fact,  he  may  be  considered  as  repro- 
ducing faithfully  the  general  talk  of  the  day.  His  entries  are  as 
follows : 

"Monday,  July  3.  The  plentiful  rains  that  fell  yesterday 
made  it  exceeding  pleasant  this  morning.  Toward  noon,  very 
warm.  In  the  afternoon,  assisted  in  raking  hay.  Reports  of  the 
day  —  that  General  Washington  had  got  to  Cambridge  with 
General  Lee  and  others." 

There  is  no  entry  for  July  4. 

"Wednesday,  July  5.    Heard  . .  .  that  General  Washington 


>/  ■:-'  '/  ;. 


I    ;v;( 


''\ /i-'i'  ;n  5?nfr;:.  .Mil    .«''.)i 


•/  ■/■ 


64  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORIC.\L  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

had  visited  the  camps,  and  the  soldiers  were  much  pleased  with 
him;  aud,  by  the  motions  of  the  Contmental  Army,  it  is  ex- 
pected that  something  of  importance  will  soon  happen."  ^ 

We  may  add  that  the  civilian  chronicler,  ^Yilliam  Gordon, 
who  was  on  the  spot  and  very  thick  with  Washington,  recording 
his  movements  in  detail,  makes  no  mention  of  any  ceremony  of 
"taking  command"  in  his  account  of  Washington's  arrival  at 
Cambridge. 2 

Our  liveliest  and  most  suggestive  records  are  the  camp 
diaries,  kept  by  many  of  the  soldiers  themselves.  These  are 
surprisingly  numerous  —  and  surprisingly  silent  on  the  great 
event.  In  fact,  many  of  them  enter  specifically  on  July  3  — 
"Nothing  of  miportance  this  day,"— "Nothmg  remarkable," 
—  and  the  like.  One  of  the  best  for  our  inquiry  is  that  of  Noah 
Chapin,  Jr.,  of  Somers,  Comi.,  ensign  in  Willes's  company  of 
Spencer's  regiment,  stationed  at  Roxbm-y.  Noah  was  a  poor 
speller  but  a  conscientious  recorder.  Moreover,  he  was  a  hero 
worshipper,  and  took  a  sort  of  fascinated  interest  in  the  doings 
of  the  new  generals.  This  is  what  he  wrote : 

"1775.  July  2  this  Day  about  11  o'c  Genrel  Washington  & 
Genrel  Lee  with  several  other  Gentlemen  arrived  at  Cambridge 
and  in  the  afternoon  they  Road  out  to  the  line  of  forts  at  Pros- 
pect Hill  in  Charlestown. 

"3.  this  day  the  Gener  from  Camhrid  Came  to  Brookline  fort. 

"4.  this  Day  near  2000  Roxbury  Troops  musterd  toward 
Cambrid  to  waight  on  the  new  Generals  But  was  Rejected  By 
the  General  WTio  said  they  did  not  want  to  have  time  spent  m 
waiting  on  them.^ 

"5.  this  Day  the  Generals  from  Cambridge  Came  to  Rox- 
bury in  the  fore  noon  and  viev.ed  the  Lines  and  forts  and  about 
Noon  Returned  Back."-* 

Here  let  the  traditionists  answer  one  question :  If  the  soldiers 

«,      »  Mass.  Historical  Society  Proceedings,  vii,  185. 

'Seel^'iHi.'^torvof  the  American  Retvlution  (1788),  u,  p.  ,.,  , 
»  Compare  Clark's  entry  for  this  date,  at  Roxbury:  "the  rodeislanders  went  over 
to  Cambridge  to  wait  on  General  Washington."  (MS.  Journal,  Library  of  Con- 
gress )  This  must  be  the  same  occasion  noted  by  General  Greene,  m  command  of 
the  Rhode  Island  regiments  at  Jamaica  Plain,  who  on  July  4  "sent  a  detachment 
of  200  ...  to  welcome  his  E.xcellency  to  camp,"  and  considered  that  they  met 
with  a  very  gracious  reception." 

*  Manuscript  at  State  Library,  Hartford,  Conn. 


iHr 


.  J  .     '  •<  -    I  <  .  >  1 


".  '*':  .  .;Oli-^'Vi;   ^  'itt 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  65 

had  already  seen  (and  perhaps  heard)  the  general  in  a  grand 
parade  and  speech-making  on  July  3,  -svhy  were  they  so  anxious 
to  get  a  look  at  him  on  the  4th? 

Paul  Lunt  of  Newburyport,  first  lieutenant  in  Era  Lunt's 
company  of  Little's  regiment,  was  stationed  at  Prospect  Hill. 
On  July  3  he  noted:  ''Turned  out  early  m  the  morning,  got  into 
readiness  to  be  remewed  by  the  General."  ^ 

It  will  be  observed  that  this  entry,  as  well  as  Chapin's,  ex- 
actly' bears  out  the  letter  of  July  3  quoted  above.  It  evidently 
means  that  Washington  inspected  the  troops  at  Prospect  Hill 
on  Monday  just  as  he  mspected  those  at  Brookhne.  Such  a 
wide  ''swmg  around  the  circle"  certainly  leaves  little  time  for 
the  far-famed  function  on  the  Common.  Indeed,  all  the  positive 
documentary  evidence  that  we  can  collect  leads  away  from  the 
Elm  rather  than  towards  it;  while  the  negative  evidence  of 
course  omits  all  reference  to  it  in  a  manner  almost  equally 
significant. 

James  Stevens,  an  Andover  carpenter,  in  Poor's  company  of 
Frye's  regiment,  stationed  right  in  Cambridge,  has  perhaps  the 
most  illuminating  notes  of  all: 

"Saturday  July  the  1  .  . .  we  preaded  to  receive  the  new  jen- 
eral  Washington  but  he  did  not  com. 

"Sunday  ye  2  this  morning  we  preaded  to  receive  the  new 
jeneral  it  rained  &  we  wos  dismesd  the  jeneral  com  in  about  nunc 
there  was  no  meting  in  the  aftemune.  [Evidently  on  account  of 
the  weather.] 

"Munday  ye  3  nothing  happeng  extrorderly  we  preaded  three 
times  I  went  up  on  the  hil."  - 

Stout  old  WiUiam  Heath  was  in  command  of  the  whole  Rox- 
bury  division  of  the  army.  As  a  high  ranking  officer  he  would 
be  greatly  interested  in  all  the  doings  of  his  new  superior.  Yet 
after  duly  recording  in  his  diary  the  arrival  of  Washington  on 
the  2d,  he  makes  no  further  entry  at  all  until  the  5th,  when  he 
mentions,  like  Chapin,  the  visit  to  Roxbury.^ 

Thus,  in  climbing  the  ladder  of  rank,  we  come  finally  to 
Washington  himself,  the  main  figure  of  the  tradition.  Now  or 

>  Mass.  Historical  Society  Proceedings,  vii,  192. 

*  Essex  Institute  Collections,  xlviii,  49. 

»See  his  Memoirs  (N.  Y.  1901).  Origiiial  MS.  at  Mass.  Historical  Society. 


n  .:'  idi.Trji'/Ji 


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■V..ui    *:i-l;'WOI^. 


l66  THE  CAIMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

never  we  shall  have  the  truth.  Here  is  his  official  report  to  the 
President  of  the  Congress : 

''Camp  at  Cambridge,  July  10,  1775.  Sir:  I  arrived  safe  at 
this  place  .  .  .  after  a  journey  attended  with  a  good  deal  of 
fatigue,  and  retarded  by  necessary  attentions  to  the  successive 
civilities  which  accompanied  me  on  my  whole  route.  Upon  my 
arrival  I  immediately  visited  the  several  posts  occupied  by  our 
troops;  and  as  soon  as  the  weather  'permitted  reconnoitered  those 
of  the  enemy.  I  found  the  latter  strongly  entrenched  on 
Bunker's  Hill,  about  a  mile  from  Charlestown,  and  advanced 
about  half  a  mile  from  the  place  of  the  late  action,"  etc. 

This  is  perhaps  the  unkmdest  cut  of  all.  Washington  is  ready 
enough  to  mention  other  "civihties."  Why  not  the  greatest, 
crowning  civility  of  the  whole  series  —  if  it  occm-red?  No.  If 
there  was  a  tithe  of  the  sword  drawing  and  curvetting,  the 
drumming  and  fifing,  the  paradmg  and  saluting  that  Cambridge 
loves  to  dwell  upon  —  under  the  Elm  or  anywhere  else  —  it  must 
have  been  recorded  in  some  of  the  numerous  sources  we  have 
examined. 

How  much  interest,  by  the  way,  did  Washington  take  in  his 
Ehn  in  after  years?  Sidney  Willard,  in  his  Memories  of  Youth 
and  Manhood,  describing  Washington's  visit  to  Cambridge  in 
1789,  says:  "Then  nine  years  of  age,  I  distinctly  remember 
sitting  on  the  fence  before  the  old  house  which  still  [1855]  re- 
mains at  the  corner  near  the  tree,  and  seeing  the  majestic  war- 
rior, mounted  on  a  fitting  steed,  'with  all  his  trim  belonging,' 
pass  by,"  Here  he  ends.  Was  the  tree  decorated  for  the  occa- 
sion? Did  Washington  stop  and  point  it  out  to  his  escort  as  the 
scene  of  one  of  the  greatest  events  of  his  life?  Did  he,  in  the 
regulation  stj'le,  annex  a  souvenir  of  the  occasion?  Apparently 
not.  He  onl}^  ''passed  by."  Priest  and  Levite  in  the  parable 
were  not  more  unfeeling  to  the  wayfarer  than  Washington  to  the 
youthful  traditionist  perched  on  the  fence. 

WTiy  then,  we  ask,  this  astounding  universal  omission  to  re- 
cord by  so  many  diverse,  eager,  vigilant  recorders?  "VMiy  this 
^'conspiracy  of  silence"  by  all  concerned?  Plainl}^  the  tradi- 
tionist s  must  explain  this  away  in  some  reasonable  manner  or 
shut  up  shop. 


■/•^^;: ;:;:■/'' ".)  mv 


t    u.  J 


1.*  '    h    "•> 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  67 


But  though  nobody  on  the  spot  seems  to  have  been  suffi- 
ciently impressed  by  the  ceremony  (if  any)  of  ''taking  com- 
mand" to  set  down  the  shghtest  reference  to  it  when  it  was 
fresh  in  memory,  there  were  at  least  two  eyewitnesses  whose 
accounts  were  recorded  —  at  second  hand  —  long  afterwards. 
One  of  these  was  Andi-ew  Leavitt  of  Amlierst,  N.  H.,  a  soldier 
in  Crosby's  company  of  Reed's  regiment,  probably  stationed 
at  Medford.  About  1S40,  in  extreme  old  age,  he  is  said  to  have 
given  Mr.  Daniel  F.  Secomb  the  following  description  of  the 
scene : 

''The  officers  placed  their  men  m  as  good  shape  as  they  could, 
but  they  were  a  motley  looking  set,  no  two  dressed  alike.  Some 
were  armed  with  fowling  pieces,  some  with  rifles,  others  with 
muskets  without  bayonets.  "UTien  all  was  in  readiness,  Wash- 
ington and  his  staff  advanced  to  the  square  prepared  for  their 
reception.  He  was  a  large,  noble-looking  man,  in  the  prime  of 
life,  and  was  mounted  on  a  powerful  black  horse  over  which  he 
seemed  to  have  perfect  control.  After  a  short  address  to  the 
soldiers,  he  took  from  his  pocket  a  psalm  book,  from  which  he 
read  the  one  hundred  and  first  Psalm  (another  account  says  it 
was  then  sung  by  the  soldiers  to  the  tune  of  Old  Hundred)." 

WTiether  Secomb  wrote  this  down  at  the  time,  or  simply 
carried  it  in  his  head  for  some  forty  3-ears,  is  not  clear.  At  any 
rate,  he  did  not  publish  it  until  1883.^  It  certainly  makes  no 
mention  of  the  Elm,  but  of  a  hollow  square  formation  into  which 
W^ashington  rode ;  nor  of  the  drawing  of  any  sword,  but  instead 
—  a  psalm  book !  Indeed  the  whole  passage  is  so  odd  and  im- 
probable that  commentators  dismiss  it  as  the  maunderings  of 
an  nonagenarian.2 

1  Secomb,  History  of  Amherst,  N.H.  (1883),  371.  This  Psalm  contains  some 
verses  easily  applicable  to  the  opposing  parties:  "Whoso  hath  also  a  proud  look 
and  high  stomach,  1  yriVL  not  suffer  him.  .  .  .  Mine  eyes  look  upon  such  as  are  faith- 
ful in  the  land,  that  they  may  dwell  with  me.  ...  I  shall  soon  destroy  all  the  un- 
godly that  are  in  the  land,  that  I  may  root  out  all  wicked  doers  from  the  city  of 
the  Lord." 

*  "One  may  read  with  some  curious  interest  the  following  alleged  recollections 
given  to  the  author  [.Secomb]  forty  or  so  years  earlier  by  Andrew  Leavitt,  a  very 
old  soldier,  thenabout  ninety  years  of  age."  Martj-n,  Life  of  Artcmas  Ward,  153,  n. 
Leavitt  died  in  the  summer  of  1S46.  Mass.  lliitorical  Society  Proceedings,  '2d 
Series,  xvii,  129. 


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•[aKf,'iTf,>T/  ^  i.r<:V>i 


•  fit 


68  THE  CV^VIBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

The  other  account  is  by  the  Reverend  Hezekiah  Packard  of 
Bridgewater,  who  served  in  Captain  Cobb's  company  of  Tit- 
comb's  regiment.  His  story,  also  told  in  extreme  old  age,  was 
transmitted,  also  after  a  very  long  interval,  by  Judge  Samuel  P. 
Hadley  of  Chelmsford,  who  says  — 

''Our  tillage  pastor  was  a  Harvard  freshman  at  Cambridge 
when  the  war  broke  out;  and,  with  an  elder  brother,  he  joined 
the  army  as  a  fifer,  and  stood  at  attention  when  Washmgton 
took  command,  and  reviewed  his  army  of  farmers  on  Cambridge 
common.  I  sat  on  his  knee  while  he  described  to  me  the  scene. 
*  Washington,'  said  he,  'was  a  grand  looking  man;  and,  when 
he  walked  by  with  his  staff,  I  was  so  unpressed  that  I  forgot  to 
remove  my  hat.'"  ^ 

Here  again  is  no  mention  of  the  Elm  or  the  sword  drawing; 
and  Washington  "walks  by,"  saluted,  apparently,  by  the  ludi- 
crously civilian  removal  of  hats!  The  most  casual  reader  will 
notice  that  these  stories  are  not  only  sufficiently  surprising  in 
themselves  but  are  totally  unlike.  In  fact  they  probably  do  not 
refer  to  any  grand  ceremony  at  all,  but  to  two  separate  reviews 
or  inspections  which  Washington  made  of  difTerent  detachments 
on  that  busy  Monday.  At  the  best,  even  taking  them  at  their 
face  value,  they  not  only  fail  to  give  the  least  confirmation  of 
the  tradition,  but  suggest,  m  the  psalm  book  and  the  hat 
doffing,  a  most  unmilitary  ceremonial  which  must  somewhat 
stagger  the  behevers  in  an  imposing  and  properly  "patriotic" 
parade. 

Both  these  accounts  of  course  are  nothing  but  "hearsay  evi- 
dence." •  But  Hezekiah  Packard  is  said  to  have  made  a  direct 
written  statement  himself,  mentioning  the  Elm.  If  so,  it  is  the 
only  first-hand  material  we  have,  and  as  such  deserves  some 
further  examination.  The  facts  appear  to  be  these:  In  1837,  or 
62  years  after  the  event,  at  the  age  of  76,  Packard  set  down,  for 
the  benefit  of  his  children,  a  series  of  autobiographical  notes,  to 
be  opened  after  his  death.  He  died  in  1849,  and  the  manuscript 
was  promptly  used  by  his  son  Alpheus  in  writing  a  memoir  of 

»  This  is  the  version  quoted  in  Trevelyan's  George  III  and  Charles  Fox,  i,  291,  n. 
A  slightly  briefer  statement  occurs  in  Lowell  Historical  Society  Cordnbuiioris,  i, 
218  (1910).  Packard  died  in  1849,  aged  88.  Hadley  died  at  about  the  same  age  in 
1919.  If  in  his  childhood  he  sat  on  Packard's  knee,  the  latter  must  already  have 
been  a  very  old  man.  See  Kingman,  North  Bridgewater,  146. 


rr 


;,n.;xv 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  69 

his  father.  He  naturally  paid  great  attention  to  it,  and  quotes 
the  Revolutionary  portion,  apparently  verbatim,  in  much  detail 
—  how  Hezekiah  at  the  age  of  thirteen  and  a  half  enhsted  as  a 
fifer,  "dwelt  in  tents  near  Carabridgeport "  during  the  summer 
of  1775,  ''drew  our  provisions  from  College  Hall  [Harvard  HallJ 
where  beef,  pork,  etc.  were  kept  for  our  army;"  and  how  he 
again  saw  service  at  Rhode  Island  in  1777  —  but  not  a  word 
anywhere  about  the  Elm  or  the  events  of  July  3. 

Unfortunately  this  manuscript  has  long  been  lost.  But 
Hezekiah's  other  son  Joseph  also  quotes,  or  assumes  to  quote, 
from  it  in  his  book  Recollections  of  a  Long  Life,  published  in  1902. 
His  quotations  of  the  same  Revolutionary  portion  however  are 
surprisingly  different  from  those  made  more  than  fifty  years 
before,  and  almost  seem  as  if  he  were  quoting  from  memory, 
after  the  loss  of  the  manuscript.  He  did  not  even  take  the 
trouble  to  compare  the  quotations  given  by  Alpheus.  W'liole 
sentences  are  altered  until  nothmg  but  their  general  sense  re- 
mains, there  are  omissions  in  the  middle  of  important  passages, 
and  after  the  Rhode  Island  episode  (far  out  of  its  chronological 
order)  occurs  this  addition:  "I  saw  Gen.  Washington  take  com- 
mand of  the  army  under  the  Elm  tree  in  Cambridge."  ^ 

Considering  the  above  circumstances  this  is  not  as  strong  evi- 
dence as  we  should  hke ;  but  until  the  original  manuscript  can 
be  found  and  the  entry  substantiated,  it  may  be  allowed  to 
stand  for  what  it  is  worth. 

VI 

The  real  trouble  with  the  traditionists  is  twofold.  They  have 
mixed  their  dates  and  they  are  obsessed  by  a  fallacy.  They  have 
confused  the  events  of  Sunday  and  Monday.  They  have  failed 
to  notice  that  almost  all  the  e\idence  of  preparations  for  a  cere- 
mony refers  to  Washington's  reception  on  Sunday.  That  cere- 
mony, whatever  it  was  intended  to  amount  to  (and  it  cannot 
have  been  much),  was  completely  spoiled  by  the  rain.  For  rain 
was  in  those  days  a  far  more  serious  military  matter  than  it  is 
now.  Aside  from  the  lack  of  waterproof  clothing,  no  body  of 
men  could  be  turned  out  under  arms  during  a  storm,  for  the 

^  For  much  help  in  tracing  this  singular  sequence  my  thanks  are  due  to  Professor 
William  Romaine  Newbold  of  the  University  of  Peonsyivania. 


f.r.: 


n<      J 


'      .      J 


iO 


70  THE  CA]MBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

simple  reason  that  a  wet  flintlock  converted  a  soldier  into  a 
nonentity  at  a  stroke.  Up  to  the  tinie  of  the  invention  of  the 
percussion  cap,  no  battle  could  be  fought  in  the  rain.  Sagely 
enough  did  the  old  saw  adjure  us  to  "Put  your  trust  in  Provi- 
dence but  keep  your  powder  dry."  Neither  could  there  be  any 
martial  music.  There  was  as  yet  no  "sounding  brass  and  tink- 
Img  cymbal,"  and  in  the  rain  the  drummers  couldn't  drum. 

To  be  sure  there  is  some  evidence  of  an  expected  function  of 
some  sort  in  Cambridge  early  jMonday  morning,  but  it  was 
small,  local,  and  probably  simmered  down  to  a  brief  inspection 
only.  For  an^ihing  more  elaborate,  Washington  was  too  busy 
galloping  from  fort  to  fort  examining  his  own  lines  and  those  of 
the  enemy.  He  had  neither  time  nor  inclination  for  receiving 
any  half-baked  and  mipolitic  honors. 

Thus,  though  there  might  have  been,  had  all  gone  well,  some- 
thing in  the  way  of  a  military  reception  on  the  second,  there  was 
nothing  in  the  way  of  a  dramatic  "taking  conamand"  on  the 
third.  But  the  traditionists  jumble  up  the  two.  In  order  to 
support  their  story,  they  must  not  only  assume  that  a  grand 
parade  actually  did  take  place,  but  to  connect  it  with  "taking 
command"  they  must  fmiher  assume  that  it  took  place  on 
Monday  —  that  is,  that  Washing-ton  stole  into  Cambridge  on 
Sunday,  virtually  unnoticed,  and  burst  into  full  bloom,  so  to 
speak,  the  next  day.  That  is  not  the  way  in  which  military 
honors  are  rendered,  however. 

The  fallacy  under  which  the  traditionists  labor  regards  the 
essential  nature  of  "taking  command."  Does  this  consist  of 
drawing  a  sword  and  riding  up  and  down  a  line  of  troops?  Of 
course  not.  The  idea  seems  to  have  been  derived  from  the  sight 
of  a  regimental  parade.  There  the  adjutant,  having  formed  the 
line,  turns  it  over  to  the  colonel.  The  latter  thereupon  draws 
his  sword  to  show  that  he  has  taken  charge  and  that  all  subse- 
quent orders  will  proceed  from  him.  But  that  is  a  mere  gesture. 
It  invests  an  officer  with  no  new  power.  And  that  every  Ameri- 
can schoolboy  should  be  taught  the  contrary,  is  a  pathetic 
commentary  on  our  national  ignorance  of  military  affairs.  No 
British  or  continental  schoolboy  would  accept  it  for  a  moment. 
Our  Civil  War  veterans  at  least  should  know  better.  For  during 
that  conflict  the  command  of  armies  was  frequently  taken, 


f.  f       M 


?-yv 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  EKM  71 

without  as  much  as  the  tap  of  a  di-um,  by  newly  arrived  generals 
whose  swords  were  still  packed  in  their  baggage. 

The  fact  of  the  matter  is,  we  have  all  been  so  long  bedazzled 
and  befuddled  with  this  traditional  sword-di'awing  gasconade 
that  we  cannot  seem  to  realize  that  taking  command  of  an 
army  in  the  field,  with  all  it  implies,  is  a  mighty  serious  business. 
Like  most  other  important  administrative  events,  military  and 
ci\'il,  its  essentials  are  of  a  quasi-legal  and  extremely  prosy  de- 
scription. They  consist  mainly  in  the  new  commander's  pre- 
senting his  credentials,  otherwise  reading  his  commission,  in 
taking  over  the  headquarters  order  book  and  other  documen- 
tary evidence  of  his  authority,  and  especially  in  publishing 
official  notice  of  the  fact  in  general  orders. 

These  uninterestnig  and  untheatrical  formalities  seem  to 
have  been  duly  observed  in  the  case  before  us.  Ward's  order 
book,  as  the  original  shows,  was  turned  over  to  W^ashington 
and  continued  without  a  break.  But  the  general  orders  for 
Tvlonday  mornmg  are  headed  for  the  first  time,  "By  His  Ex- 
cellency George  Washington,  Esquire,  Commander-m-Chief  of 
the  Forces  of  the  United  Colonies  of  North  America."  (These 
orders,  by  the  way,  consist  of  nothing  but  a  call  for  every 
colonel  to  make  a  return  of  his  regiment  and  his  ammunition 
in  detail.)  This  of  course  is  a  perfectly  sufficient  basis  for  the 
usual  statement  that  Washington  'Hook  command  of  the 
army"  on  July  3,  1775.  That  is,  he  began  to  give  his  commands 
on  that  date.  However,  as  general  orders  were  issued  early  in 
the  morning,  it  was  necessary  to  prepare  them  the  night  before. 
The  order  book,  therefore,  must  have  been  turned  over  to 
Washington  on  Sunday.  Indeed,  some  contemporary  writers 
assert  that  W^ashington  "took  command"  on  the  second.  At 
all  events,  considering  that  Ward's  headquarters  were  just 
across  the  Common,  nobody  but  a  lunatic  would  maintain  that 
the  above  technicalities  took  place  imder  the  Elm. 

Let  us  recollect  again  —  all  popular  ideals  to  the  contrary  — 
that  W^ashington  was  performing  no  original  or  creative  act, 
that  he  did  not  wave  his  sword  and  by  a  sort  of  military  magic 
cause  his  famous  army  to  spring  into  being.  He  was  simply 
taking  over  the  control  of  a  distinctly  "going  concern,"  a  force 
that  had  akeady  fought  a  highly  creditable  pitched  battle  under 


'1  yyHrx:::::^;::!    <:  ^'i\:-\\'>^Ln  (X'^nr 


uT.i  J-         ,i   '.  '   \>'-'-\ 


72  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

a  totally  different  commander.  Nobody,  either  then  or  now,  at 
all  conversant  with  military  etiquette  would  expect  (or  appar- 
ently did  expect)  that  the  actual  transfer  of  command  could  be 
turned  into  a  grand  ceremonial;  though  there  do  seem  to  have 
been  some  anticipations  of  a  special  review  afterwards. 

Spealdng  of  fallacies,  we  may  in  conclusion  glance  at  one 
other  —  the  "unbroken  chain."  Suppose  A  makes  an  oral 
statement  to  his  son  B  concerning  what  he  remembers  of  an 
event  which  happened  perhaps  forty  j^ears  before.  B,  after 
perhaps  forty  years  more,  relates  what  he  remembers  of  the 
statement  to  his  son  C,  and  C  in  turn  to  D.  Now  D,  having  a 
justifiable  amount  of  family  pride,  naturally  beUeves  he  is  in 
possession  of  the  identical  original  statement.  To  prove  it,  he 
recites  his  descent  from  A!  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out 
that  this  does  not  prove  that  A  had  a  trustworthy  and  scrupu- 
lous memory,  or  that  his  meaning  was  correctly  understood  by 
B  —  and  so  on  down  the  ''chain."  Indeed  an  accurate  ''long 
range"  memory  is  the  rarest  of  modern  gifts;  for  documents,  as 
already  suggested,  have  superseded  and  almost  atrophied 
memory.  (D  himself  will  be  glad  enough  to  use  them  in  proving 
his  descent.)  In  place  of  the  old  primitive  fidelity  in  trans- 
mitting a  story,  there  has  sprung  up  an  irresistible  tendency 
to  "embroider"  it.  One  has  only  to  cite  the  familiar  example  of 
the  growth  of  a  bit  of  gossip.  And  what  after  all  is  tradition 
but  liistorical  gossip  —  a  long-extended  series  of  "they  say's"? 

Such  then,  in  sum  (errors,  omissions,  and  typographical  slips 
excepted),  is  the  present  state  of  the  argument  for  the  negative 
—  the  contention  of  the  much-abused  "detractors  of  the  Elm." 
If  the  traditionists  can  counter  with  anything  weightier  than 
more  flag  flapping  and  more  family  trees  (which  are  quite  a 
different  species  from  elms),  let  them  by  all  means  now  speak, 
or  adopt  the  alternative  presented  in  the  wedding  service. 


VII 

At  the  same  time  and  per  contra,  to  say  that  it  is  virtually 
certain  that  Washington  did  not,  in  any  such  heroic  style  as  is 
now  currently  believed,  "under  this  tree  first  take  command  of 
the  American  army"  (and  why  "first"?  How  many  times  must 


:i.'-r  S" 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  73 

command  be  taken?)  is  not  to  say,  by  any  means,  that  he  had 
nothing  to  do  with  it  whatever.  The  root  of  the  tradition,  al- 
ready alluded  to,  is  still  to  be  dug  for.  We  thus  get  back  to  our 
original  question:  Granting  the  likelihood  that  the  persistent 
association  of  the  two  had  ''something  in  it"  to  start  with, 
what  did  Washmgton  do  under  his  Elm? 

Perhaps  the  easiest  way  of  arriving  at  a  reasonable  answer 
will  be  to  make  use  of  the  probabilities  and  the  evidence  we 
have  accumulated  above,  in  an  attempt  to  visualize  the  occur- 
rences of  that  eventful  Sunday,  the  second  of  July,  1775,  in 
Cambridge. 

It  is  eleven  o'clock  in  the  morning  —  the  very  middle  of 
"meeting  time"  (all  the  troops  were  inveterate  church  goers) 
—  and  raining  hard.  With  this  double  reason  for  keeping 
within,  scarcely  a  soul  is  to  be  seen.  The  weather  has  put  a 
stopper  on  the  modest  arrangements  that  Ward  has  felt  justi- 
fied in  making  for  recei\'ing  the  new  generals  "with  the  respect 
due  to  their  rank."  It  has  done  the  same  for  the  more  or  less 
independent  preparations  made  by  a  few  exceptionally  zealous 
regimental  conmianders.  Down  at  the  main  guard  in  the  Court 
House  (on  the  present  site  of  the  cooperative  store)  they  are 
speculating  whether  it  will  even  be  a  case  of  "Turn  out  the 
guard!"  Anyway,  the  generals  are  far  behind  their  schedule, 
and  the  waiting,  like  the  rain,  has  cooled  enthusiasm. 

But  a  courier  comes  cantering  down  the  road  from  W^ater- 
tow^n.  ''They're  coming!"  and  Ward,  like  a  courteous  host, 
feels  he  must  at  least  go  out  and  greet  his  guests.  W'ith  two  or 
three  aides  he  splashes  across  the  Common.  But  he  is  old  and 
heavy  and  tortured  with  gallstones,  and  he  does  not  go  far. 
WTiere  the  road  enters  the  village,  he  halts  and  shelters  hinLself 
from  the  downpour  under  the  wide  branches  of  a  magnificent 
elm.  In  a  few  minutes  the  group  of  distinguished  strangers  is 
seen  approaching.  They  are  soaking  wet  and  dog-tired  — 
Washington  himself  is  half  sick.^  They  also  draw  rein  (or  rain) 
beneath  the  protecting  roof  of  fohage.  W^ard  greets  them 
pohtely,  and  the  old  and  the  new  generals  shake  hands.  And  in 
that  handclasp,  to  put  it  fancifully,  the  electric  thrill  of  com- 

»"In  poor  health."  Letter  of  Provincial  Congress  to  Trumbull,  July  4,  1775. 
"A  good  deal  fatigued."  Washington's  own  letter  quoted  on  p.  66  ante. 


olDTA'l  liyA 


•.;W^/:   V'J'^  ■;j3?;i<fi 


1.    ::^.!.' 


.^t    IwT 


74  THE  CA]VIBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Oct. 

mand  passes  from  Ward  to  Washington.  Thenceforth  the 
Massachusetts  man  defers  to  the  Virginian.  His  day  is  done. 
Everything  after  that  is  mere  confirmatory  ritual. 

Ward  conducts  his  new  chief  at  once  to  President  Langdon's. 
Here  the  most  distinguished  civilian  in  town,  and  bishop,  so  to 
speak,  of  all  the  clergy  in  New  England,  receives  him  from  the 
hands  of  the  most  distinguished  military  man.  Early  in  the 
afternoon,  Washington,  refreshed  by  a  good  dinner  and  dry 
clothes,  starts  off,  burning  with  impatience  "at  this  crisis  of 
our  affairs,"  to  get  a  first  look  at  the  situation.  At  the  end  of 
the  day  he  comes  to  Ward's  headquarters  in  the  Hastings  house 
(on  the  site  of  the  present  Hemenway  Gjmmasium).  Here  a 
little  knot  of  ranking  officers  has  gathered  to  meet  him.  He 
reads  his  commission,  receives  the  headquarters  documents  and 
any  flag  or  insignia  of  rank  possessed  by  Ward,  and  is  intro- 
duced to  his  brigadiers  —  perhaps  makes  a  brief  speech.  (If  he 
does,  Charles  Lee  makes  another!)  These  necessary  formalities 
concluded,  Ward  serves  an  excellent  supper  —  this  is  another 
delightful  and  most  reasonable  tradition  —  the  iMadeira  goes 
round,  the  proper  toasts  are  drunk,  songs  are  sung,  and  amidst 
old-time  conviviality  the  great  man  relaxes  at  length  from  the 
strain  of  one  of  the  most  memorable  days  of  his  life. 

Such  is  the  story  as  nearly  as  we  can  reconstruct  it.  Unfortu- 
nately there  is  nothing  dramatic  or  "patriotic"  in  it.  It  is 
merely  the  appHcation  of  ordinary  Yankee  common  sense  — 
an  article  in  which  the  traditionists  occasionally  seem  to  be 
lacking.  But  at  least  it  suggests  a  reasonable  connection  be- 
tween Washington  and  the  Elm.  Although  in  a  very  different 
form  from  what  the  traditionists  would  have  us  beheve,  such  a 
connection  is  quite  sufficient  to  found  the  tradition  upon. 

If  the  above  picture  be  thought  too  elaborate,  another  per- 
fectly simple  explanation  suggests  itself.  It  is  clear  that  Wash- 
ington spent  all  of  ]Monday,  July  3,  in  visiting  and  "sizing  up" 
as  many  detachments  of  his  scattered  forces  as  possible.  Among 
them  would  naturally  be  included  —  perhaps  first  of  all  —  the 
few  regiments  in  Cambridge.  They  would  no  doubt  be  drawn 
up  on  "the  parade,"  as  the  Common  was  then  called.  During 
the  inspection,  or  while  waiting  for  it  to  be  formed,  Washington 
very  probably  stood  beside  or  near  the  Elm,  as  that  was  close 


.i  '  '..l 


!>T^»\^/ 


[h    (lii 


1925.]  BATCHELDER:  WASHINGTON  ELM  75 

to  the  road  by  which  most  of  the  troops  would  reach  the  foi-ma- 
tion  point.  By  the  simple  citizen-soldiery  the  first  sight  of  their 
new  commander,  sword  in  hand  and  perhaps  himself  giving 
orders  or  making  a  short  address,  might  easily  be  construed  as 
his  "taking  command''  of  them.  So  at  least  they  might  have 
referred  to  it  in  after  years,  or  so  (more  hkely  yet)  it  might  have 
been  interpreted  by  their  youthful  listeners.  And  in  pointing 
out  the  location,  the  Elm,  as  the  most  prominent  landmark, 
would  naturally  be  indicated.  Thus  in  the  course  of  years  the 
tree  and  the  commander  would  become  linked  in  popular 
imagination,  and  the  basis  for  the  tradition  easily  laid. 

But,  from  what  has  been  adduced  in  the  course  of  this  study, 
that  anjihing  more  significant  or  impressive  occurred  "under 
this  tree"  it  will  take  more  than  mere  iteration  and  indignation 
to  convince  the  sceptic. 

It  is  a  matter  of  regi^et  that  Cambridge,  the  scene  of  so  many 
momentous  occmTences  in  the  opening  stages  of  the  Revolution, 
has  neglected  (with  the  same  unaccountable  lack  of  civic  pride 
which  has  allowed  her  unique  old  burying  ground  to  go  to  ruin) 
for  a  century  and  a  half  to  erect  any  adequate  monument  to 
commemorate  them.  The  Washington  Elm,  after  a  fashion,  did 
perform  that  function.  At  least  in  popular  estimation,  it 
formed  a  tangible  memento  of  the  most  stirring  da^'s  in  the 
history  of  Cambridge  —  the  only  local  and  visible  focus  for 
patriotic  enthusiasm.  It  was  more  than  the  reputed  witness  of 
a  great  event.  It  was  more  than  an  object  for  that  mysterious 
tree  worship  which,  inherited  from  our  remotest  ancestors,  still 
stirs  obscurely  within  us.  It  was  a  symbol  of  Our  Country. 
And  to  the  conscious  or  unconscious  recognition  of  this  fact  was 
doubtless  due  a  large  part  of  the  veneration  in  which  it  was  held. 
Now  nothing  remains. 


■i        Ki  f ; 


U  ^  -h 


76  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 


ANNUAL  REPORT  OF  SECRETARY  AND  COUNCIL 

In  the  past  year  of  1924  the  Society  has  lost  the  following 
members  by  death: 

William  Wilberforce  Dallinger 

Edward  Bangs  Drew 

Katherine  Dunbar 

Grace  Hopkinson  Eliot 

Ed^in  Atkins  Grozier 

Edward  Lothrop  Rand 

Dudley  Alien  Sargent 

Charles  Moreland  Carter  (Associate) 

And  by  resignation  or  removal  the  following : 

Henry  \Yilder  Foote 

Chester  Noyes  Greenough  _    . 

Lauretta  Hoague 

Theodore  Hoague 

Anne  Smoot  Jackson 

Patrick  Tracy  Jackson,  Jr. 

John  Livingston  Lowes 

Mary  Cornett  Lowes 

Anna  Atwood  Pickering 

William  Henry  Pickering 

Mary  Peyton  Winlock 

James  Haughton  Woods 

New  members  elected  have  been : 

John  Frank  deChant 

Theodora  Willard 

Lillian  Clark  Richardson  (Associate) 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  membership  roll,  which  is  limited  to 
200,  has  at  present  a  considerable  number  of  vacancies.  All 
members  are  urged  to  suggest  names  of  candidates.  Any  resi- 
dent of  Cambridge  who  sympathizes  with  the  objects  of  the 
Society  is  eligible,  and  to  make  the  Society  truly  a  Cambridge 
organization  all  sections,  interests,  and  occupations  of  the  city 
should  be  represented. 


}]'■■'  '.".'•  'y    XU  ' 


aT 


'"•  ^  V,  '.T'!/  /^ 


>(,  ■*;. 


1925.]  ANNITAL  REPORTS  77 

For  several  years  the  number  of  members  who  have  neglected 
to  sign  the  By-  Laws  has  been  mcreasing.  Dm-mg  the  past  autumn 
therefore  the  Secretary  mstituted  a  "di-ive"  to  secure  these 
missing  signatm'es,  and  by  aid  of  a  special  messenger  succeeded 
in  addmg  fom'teen  to  the  roll  within  a  few  weeks.  Several  other 
members  have  called  in  person  and  signed  the  book;  so  that 
only  about  half  a  dozen  names  now  remain  to  be  added  to  our 
valuable  collection  of  autogTaphs. 

The  annual  meeting  was  held  19  January,  1924,  at  the 
Widener  Memorial  Room  in  the  college  library.  The  officers 
w-ere  reelected  with  the  exception  of  George  Grier  Wright 
elected  Treasurer  vice  Francis  Webber  Sever,  Walter  Benjamin 
Briggs  as  Curator  vice  Edward  Locke  Gookin,  and  Robert 
Walcott  as  a  Councillor  vice  Richard  Henry  Dana.  The  usual 
reports  were  read  and  accepted.  It  was  voted  that  the  Secre- 
tary send  a  letter  to  Congressman  Dallinger  protesting  against 
the  proposal  to  remove  the  Harvard  Sc^uare  Post  OfTice  to 
Central  Square.  (This  protest  seems  to  have  been  effective, 
as  the  Llarvard  Square  Office  still  stands.)  On  the  proposal  to 
change  the  name  of  the  Cambridge  Bridge  to  the  ''Longfellow 
Bridge"  it  was  voted  that  the  President  appoint  a  committee, 
with  full  powers,  to  confer  with  the  authorities.  The  questions 
raised  concerning  the  final  disposition  of  the  property  of  the 
Society  in  case  it  should  ever  cease  to  exist,  concerning  possible 
aid  from  the  City  of  Cambridge  in  pubhshing  the  long-delayed 
Index  to  Paige's  History,  and  concerning  the  publication  of  the 
second  and  final  volume  of  the  Town  Records,  were  all  referred 
to  the  Council.  The  meeting  then  adjourned  to  the  Treasure 
Koom  where  a  general  exhibition  of  the  Society's  collections 
had  been  arranged,  and  for  the  first  time  in  several  years  the 
members  had  an  opportunity  to  examine  the  numerous  and 
interesting  objects  which  for  lack  of  better  accommodations 
spend  most  of  their  time  boxed  up  in  the  basement  of  the 
Widener  Library. 

The  spring  meeting  was  held  22  April,  1924,  at  the  residence 
of  Professor  Merriman,  175  Brattle  Street  —  the  historic  Fayer- 
weather  house.  The  President  read  a  paper  on  the  history  of  the 
house  prepared  by  Mrs.  Gozzaldi,  who  was  prevented  by  illness 
from  being  present.    The  Reverend  Glenn  Tilley  Morse  ex- 


?;i  J'-'y.:r 


\.CA:fii 


i-i  ?■■'  :  \\i  '.::'.  •■  ,v"?^y  :.'  '.:!.. 


i^   ^-J-vP4., 


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0    b')-;i£?l 


78  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 

hibited  and  described  samples  from  his  rich  collection  of  early 
silhouettes,  among  them  that  of  William  Wells,  one  of  the 
former  owners  of  the  Fa3'erweather  house. 

At  this  meetmg  ^^Ir.  Walcott  for  the  committee  on  the  name 
of  the  "Longfellow  Bridge  "  reported  that  the  ^Mayors  of  Boston 
and  Cambridge  were  both  in  favor  of  the  change,  but  that 
certain  legal  formaUties  would  make  an  act  of  the  Legislature 
necessary.  The  Secretary  is  glad  to  add  that  ]^Iayor  Curlcy  of 
Boston  has  accordingly  introduced  in  the  present  session  of  the 
Legislature,  House  Bill  No.  2SG,  providing  for  this  change  of 
name.  Since  Mayor  Curley's  action,  several  letters  in  the 
Boston  papers  have  shown  the  pubhc  interest  in  the  matter. 
Some  of  these  letters  have  raised  the  old  question  whether  this 
was  the  bridge  to  which  Longfellow  referred  in  his  famous  poem. 
Mr.  Charles  F.  Mason  has  called  the  Secretary's  attention  to  a 
letter  from  John  H,  Edwards  of  Lancaster,  which  appeared  in 
the  Boston  Herald  on  or  about  February  20,  1919.  In  this  letter 
Mr.  Edwards  says : 

''A  few  weeks  before  his  death  I  had  the  pleasure  of  calling  on 
Mr.  Longfellow,  and  I  asked  him  about  the  poem,  which  was  a 
favorite  of  mine,  and  its  location.  He  told  me  that  the  poem  re- 
ferred to  the  Cambridge  or  West  Boston  Bridge,  then  a  long, 
wooden  structure  standing  on  piles,  and  that  the  'flaming 
furnace'  was  located  near  Cottage  Farm." 
This  amply  justifies  the  Society's  action  in  the  case. 

On  the  afternoon  of  7  June,  1924,  Professor  and  IMrs.  Sachs 
entertained  the  members  and  their  friends  at  a  garden  party  at 
"Shady  Hill."  .Ifter  a  pleasant  hour  on  the  lawn,  all  adjourned 
to  the  library,  where  President  EUot  spoke  informally  on  the 
history  of  the  house  since  it  passed  into  the  hands  of  Professor 
Andrews  Norton  in  1821. 

The  regular  autumn  meeting  was  held  at  the  residence  of  Mr. 
James  Atkins  Noyes,  1  Highland  St.,  28  October,  1924.  Mrs. 
Palmer  read  extracts  from  her  book,  privately  printed,  on  the 
history  of  ''The  Bee,"  and  ^Irs.  James  Barr  .Ames  read  a  paper 
on  "The  Cambridge  Indian  Association." 

During  the  year  the  Societ}^  has  published  the  addresses  of 
President  EUot  and  Professor  Emerton  at  the  Centenary  of  the 
birth  of  Mrs.  Agassiz,  recently  held  under  the  joint  auspices 


Ci-v-^i.^;;!. , 


^'h  .--^^ ,-, ' 


Wil*Miiii  ulift  ilril»iy>f4» 


1925.]  ANNUAL  REPORTS  79 

of  Radcliffe  College  and  the  Historical  Society.  Work  on  the 
pubHcation  of  the  back  volumes  of  the  annual  Proceedings  is  still 
delayed  owing  to  the  extreme  difficulty  of  securing  and  editing 
the  manuscripts  of  papers  dchvered  so  long  ago.  One  vokmie 
ho\Yever  is  in  the  press  and  will  shortly  appear,  another  is  in  a 
good  state  of  forwardness,  and  it  is  hoped  that  the  abo\e  diffi- 
culties will  progressively  diminish  as  the  more  recent  volumes 
are  reached. 

From  the  difficulty  in  assembling  its  members  the  Council  has 
succeeded  in  holding  only  one  meeting  during  the  year,  but  a 
meeting  of  considerable  importance.  The  whole  matter  of  rais- 
ing funds  for  the  pubhcation  of  the  Index  to  Paige's  History  of 
Cambridge  was  carefully  discussed  and  a  committee  with  full 
powers  appointed  to  take  the  matter  m  charge  and  push  the 
work  to  completion.  On  the  question  whether  the  city  could  be 
prevailed  upon  to  publish  the  second  volume  of  the  Town 
Records,  the  President  appomted  a  committee  to  confer  with 
the  IMayor  and  to  ascertain  whether  it  is  true  that  a  transcript 
of  these  records  is  in  existence  ready  for  the  printer.  On  the  final 
disposition  of  the  Society's  hbrary  and  collections  m  case  of  its 
possible  dissolution,  the  President  appointed  a  committee  to 
consider  the  appropriate  changes  in  the  By-Laws,  etc.  This  com- 
mittee has  prepared  a  report  which  is  believed  to  cover  the 
situation  to  the  satisfaction  of  all  concerned. 

It  is  with  great  satisfaction  that  the  Committee  on  the  Old 
Burying  Ground  is  able  to  report  that  the  detailed  plot  of  the 
ground,  which  has  lain  half  finished  for  over  a  year,  has  at  last 
been  completed  by  the  City  Engineer  without  expense  to  the 
Society.  This  plot  shows  every  headstone,  footstone,  tomb, 
and  burial  mound  now-  standing;  even  the  mutilated  fragments 
that  are  still  visible  above  the  ground  are  faithfully  located. 
Every  stone  is  numbered,  the  total  being  over  1200,  and  is 
entered  in  a  key  list  showing  the  name  thereon,  if  any  name  can 
*iiow  be  deciphered.  With  the  possession  of  this  invaluable  data 
the  coEomittee  will  now  be  able  to  proceed  to  a  general  checking 
of  the  present  list  with  that  made  by  Harris  in  1845,  and  thus 
determine  the  extent  of  the  damage  and  losses  since  that  date. 
It  will  also  be  possible  to  make  studies  of  the  chronological 
grouping  of  interments,  the  grouping  by  families,  the  Harvard 


iSi..     .^1  ..,u.^  :i/J' 


80  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  [Jan. 

College  section,  the  probable  location  of  graves  now  unmarked, 
the  identification  of  mutilated  stones,  and  other  pressing  ques- 
tions connected  with  the  ground.  From  these  studies  interesting 
and  suggestive  results  are  expected,  leadmg  to  fiu-ther  steps  for 
the  investigation  and  preservation  of  what  is  by  far  the  most 
valuable  earlj^  relic  the  town  now  possesses. 

Sajwuel  F.  Batchelder, 

Secretary 

Cambridge,  27  January,  1925 


.    1925.]  ANNUAL  REPORTS  81 


ANNUAL  REPORT  OF  THE  TREASURER 

1924 

Cash  Account 

RECEIPTS 

Balance  from  1923 $1,801.40 

Annual  assessments :  189  Regular  members $567.00 

5  Associate  members 14.00 

Initiation  fee:  1  Regular  member 2.00 

From  Radcliffe  College,  one  half  expense  Agassiz  Proceedings  23.75 

Interest  on  bank  deposit 37.88         644.63 

$2,446.03 
DISBURSEMENTS 

Printing  notices,  bills,  etc $33.25 

Postage 9.00 

Clerical  services 9.52 

Use  of  chairs  at  meetings 6.25 

Picture  moulding  and  mending  map 18.77 

Printing  Proceedings  Agassiz  Anniversary 47.50 

Bay  State  Historical  League,  annual  dues 2.00 

Aimual    Allowance    Secretary',    Treasurer,    and    Curator, 

$25.00  each 75.00         201.29 

Balance  carried  to  next  year's  account $2,244.74 

Deposit  in  Cambeidge  Savings  Bank 

Amount  January  10,  1924 $639.91 

Interest  July  10,  1924 15.98 

Interest  January  10,  1925 16.38 

Balance  January  10,  1925 $672.27 

George  G.  Wright, 

Cambridge,  January  8,  1925  Treasurer 


Audited  and  Approved. 

Warren  K.  Blodgett 


■rr  T.  T»   T-w  r  Auditors 

Harbt  F.  R.  Dolan      r 


Cambridge,  January  16,  1925 


.".  ■) 


':■■.   >'       '.}    .■'■■:!'^\^-J 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 


^       OFFICERS  OF  THE  SOCIETY 
1925 

President Ephraim  Emerton 

(  Mart  IsabelLu^.  Gozzaldi 

Vice-Presidents    ' ■<  William  Coolidge  Lane 

(^  Robert  Walcott 

Secretary Samuel  Francis  Batchelder 

Treasurer George  Grier  ^YRIGHT 

Curator Walter  Benjamin  Briggs 

Council 

SAiiUEL  Francis  Batchelder  Edward  Waldo  Forbes 

Joseph  Henry  Beale  Mart  Isabella  Gozzaldi 

Stoughton  Bell  William  Coolidge  Lane 

Walter  BENJAiON  Briggs  Clarence  Henrt  Poor,  Jr. 

Frank  Gatlord  Cook  Robert  Walcott 

Epheaim  Emerton  John  WiLUAai  Wood,  Jr. 
George  Grier  Wright 


-.^,. 


MEMBERSHIP 


83 


REGULAR  MEMBERS 
1925 


I^lvKioN  St.vnley  Abbot 
Ajstce  Euzabeth  Allen 
Mary  Ware  Allen 
Charles  Almt 
Albert  Franos  Aniee 
Sarah  Russell  Ames 
Albert  Stokes  Apsey 
§Christina  Hopkinson  Baker 
Agnes  Gordon  Balch 
^Iary  Emory  Batchelder 
S.oiuel  Fr-incis  Batchelder 
Elizabeth  Ch.\dwick  Beale 
Joseph  Henry  Beale 
IvIabel  Arr-^bella  Lewis  Bell 
Stoughton  Bell 
Edward  McElroy  Benson 
Alexander  Harvey  Bill 
Caroline  Eliza  Bill 
IvLsJiioN  Edgerly  Blll 
Clarence  Howard  Blackall 
Emma  Murray  Blackall 
Warren  Kendall  Blodgett 
Ella  Josephine  Boggs 
Annabel  Perry  Bonnet 
Walter  Benjamin  Briggs 
Ada  Leila  Cone  Brock 
Jessee  Waterman  Brooks 
Sumner  Albert  Brooks 
Charles  Jesse  Bullock 
Josephine  Freeil^n  Bl-tvistead 
Bertha  Close  Bunton 
George  Herbert  Bunton 


Raymond  Calkins 
Zecilvrlvh  Ch-vfee,  Jr. 
Leslie  Linwood  Cleveland 
Frank  Gaylord  Cook 
Ada  Louise  Comstock 
Louis  Craig  Cornish 
Samuel  McChord  Crothers 
§THOiL\s  Harrison  Cummings 
Henry  Orville  Cutter 
Elizabeth  Ellery  Dana 
Richard  Henry  Dana 
George  Clement  Deane 
Mary  Helen  De.^ne 
John  Fr.\nk  De  Chant 
Ernest  Joseph  Dennen 
Edward  Sherman  Dodge  (L) 
Harry  Francis  Roby  Dolan 
Adeline  Anna  Douglass 
Willi.vm  Harrison  Dl^nbar 
Charles  Willi.ui  Euot 
Samutel  Atkins  Eliot 
Emmons  Raymond  Elus 
Frances  White  Emerson 
Willl'lm  Emerson 
Ephraim  Emerton 
Sybil  Cl.\rk  Emerton 
Prescott  Evarts 
Lillian  Horsford  Farlow 
Eunice  Whitney  Farley  Felton 

WiLUAM  WaLL.\CE  FeNN 

Edward  Waldo  Forbes 

WORTHINGTON  ChAUNCEY  FoRD 


Deceased 


§  Resigned 


(I>)  Life  Member 


■T*..  V  ;f  t;^.vr;>   '.f{.;j^. 


'1.1 


84 


THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 


Frances  Fowler 
Esther  Stevens  Eraser 
Edith  Davenport  Fuller 
Edward  Locke  Gookin 
Mary  Isabell.^  Gozzaldi 
Edwix  Bl.visdell  H\le 
Albert  ILvrrisox  IL\ll 
Elizabeth  H.\rris 
Albert  Bushnell  Hart 
Frank  Watson  IL\stings 
Doris  ILvyes-Cavanaugh 

§Edward  Young  Hincks 
Stanley  Barbour  Hildreth 
Alison  Bixby  Hill 
Lesue  White  Hopkinson 
Cornelia  Conway  Felton 

Horsford 
Katherine  Horsford 
Alberta  Manneng  Houghton 
Arria  Sargent  Dixwell  Howe 
Lois  Lilley  Howe 
Bertha  Morton  Howland 
George  Harvey  Hull 
Byron  Satterlee  Hurlbut 
Eda  Woolson  Hurlbut 
James  Richard  Jewett 
^LyRGARET  Weyerhaeuser 

Jewett 
Ethel  Robinson  Jones 
Wallace  St.  Clair  Jones 
George  Frederick  Kendall 
Margaret  Cronvninshield  Kent 
Norton  Adams  Kent 

<^usTiNE  Houghton  Kershaw 
Ant^a  Read  Lambert 
WiLUAii  Coolidge  Lane 
Maud  Adela  Lawson 
Flora  Virginia  Livingston 


AucE  ^Iary  Longfellow 
Joseph  Lovejoy 
Natalie  Holden  Lovejoy 
Abbott  Lawrence  Lowell 
David  Thompson  Watson 
McCoRD 

EUZABETH  MacFaRLANE 

Charles  John  McIntire 
Herbert  Bruce  McIntire 
William  INLvckintosh  ]\L\.cnair 
Em»l\  Endicott  I\L\rean 
Georgie  jVLvria  I\L\rsters 
John  Douglas  Merrill 
Dorothea  Foote  ISIerriil^n 
Roger  Bigelow  Merriman 
JosiAH  Byram  Millett 
Emma  Maria  Cutter  ^'Iitchell 
Auce  Manton  Morgan 
*RoBERT  Swain  Morison 
Vel!vl\  !Maria  Morse 
Emma  Frances  Munroe 
Arthur  Boylston  Nichols 
Gertrude  Fuller  Nichols 
Henry  Atherton  Nichols 
John  Taylor  Gilm.vn  Nichols 
Albert  Ferley  Norris 
^'La.rgaret  Norton 
James  Atkins  Noyes 
Thomas  Francis  O'Malley 
James  Leonard  Paine 
Mary  Woolson  Paine 
Louisa  Phillips  Parker 
John  Simpson  Penm.vn 
Clarence  Henry  Poor,  Jr. 
Arthlti  Kingsley  Porter 
Johj^  L-i-MAN  Porter 
Lucy  Wallace  Porter 
Alfred  Claghorn  Potter 


Deceased 


S  Resigned 


(L)  Life  Member 


!     ,Y..,   •■.■:]'■] 


'    .     'I 
</ 


MEMBERSHIP 


85 


David  Thomas  Pottinger 
RoscoE  Pou^•D 
Harry  Se,vton  Rand 
Mabel  Rena  M\whinney  Rand 
Helen  Leah  Reed 
WiLLARD  Reed 
WiLLLA-M  Bernard  Reid 
Fred  Norris  Robinson 
Margaret  Brooks  Robinson 
James  H.^.rdy  Ropes 
Gertrltde  Swan  Runkle 
John  Corneuus  Rl-nkle 
Paul  Joseph  Sachs 
Mary  Ware  S.ajmpson 
Eleanor  Whitney  Davis 

Sanger  (L) 
CaeolT[-n  Huntington  Saltnders 
Gr.\ce  Owen  Scudder 

WiNTHROP  SaLTONSTALL  ScUDDER 

Francis  Webber  Sever 
Alice  Durant  Smith 
WiLLARD  Hatch  Sprague 
Genevie\'e  Stearns 

JOHX  HuBB.UiD  StURGIS 
WlLLL\M  DONNISON  SwAN 

John  Houghton  Taylor 
Joseph  Gilbert  Thorp 
Sarah  Moody  Toppan  (L) 


Alfred  ^Iarstox  Tozzer 
Eleanor  Gr.\y  Tudor  (L) 
Berth.\  Hallowell  Vaugh-vn 
Cel\rles  Peter  Vosburgh 
^L\UDE  Batch  elder  Vosbi-rgh 
Robert  Walcott 
Gr.vce  Reed  Waij)en 
Henry  Bradford  W.vshburn 
Frederica  Davis  Watson 
Edith  Forbes  Webster 
Kenneth  Grant  Tremayne 

Webster 
Sarah   Cordelia  Fisher  Wel- 
lington 
Auce  Merrill  White 
Fanny  Gott  White 
HoR-^Tio  Stevens  White 
Moses  Perkins  White 

WlLLL\M     RlCIL^RDSON     WhITTE- 

more 
Theodora  Will,a.rd 
Olive  Swan  Willi.^^s 
Samuel  Williston 
George  Grafton  Wilson 
John  William  Wood,  Jr. 
George  Grier  Wright 
§Stephen  Emerson  Young 
§Henrietta  Nesmith  Yolng 


Deceased 


§  Resigned 


(L)  Life  Member 


86 


THE  CA^IBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 


ASSOCIATE  MEMBERS 


Gardner  Weld  Allen 
Oscar  Fayette  Allen 
HoLus  Russell  Bailey 
Mary  Persis  Bailey 
Elizabeth  French  Bartlett 
Joseph  Gardner  Bartlett 
Elvira  Brewster  Collier 
Marion  Bro'vvtv  Fessenden 
Francis  Apthorp  Foster 


Anna  Li^man  Gr.vy 
Eliza  Mason  Hoppin 
Rose  Rysse  Houghton 
Ernest  Lovering 
Phillippe  Belknap  Marcou 
Bradford  Hendrick  Peirce 
Liluan  Clark  Richardson 
Philip  Leffingwell  Spalding 
Mary  Lee  Ware 


HONORAIIY  MEMBER 
James  Ford  Rhodes 


.    ••    J'  *    ' 


■'•^' 


BY-LAWS  87 


:  BY-LAWS 
I.  Corporate  Name 

THE  name  of  this  corporation  shall  be  "  The  Cambridge  Historical 
Society." 

11.  Object 

The  corporation  is  constituted  for  the  purpose  of  collecting  and  preserv- 
ing Books,  Manuscripts,  and  other  Memorials,  of  procuring  the  publica- 
tion and  distribution  of  the  same,  and  generally  of  promoting  interest  and 
research,  in  relation  to  the  history  of  Cambridge  in  said  Commonwealth. 

in.  Regular  Membership 

Any  resident  of,  or  person  having  a  usual  place  of  business  in,  the  City 
of  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  shall  be  eligible  for  regular  membership 
in  tliis  Society.  Nominations  for  such  membership  shall  be  made  in  writ- 
ing to  any  member  of  the  Council,  and  the  persons  so  nominated  may  be 
elected  at  any  meeting  of  the  Council  by  a  vote  of  two-thirds  of  the  mem- 
bers present  and  voting.  Persons  so  elected  shall  become  members  upon 
signing  the  By-Laws  and  paying  the  fees  therein  prescribed. 

IV.  Limit  of  Regular  Membership  ' ' 

The  regular  membership  of  this  Society  shall  be  limited  to  two  hundred. 

V.  Honorary  Membership 

Any  person,  nominated  by  the  Council,  may  be  elected  an  honorary 
member  at  any  meeting  of  the  Society  by  a  vote  of  two-thirds  of  the 
members  present  and  voting.  Honorary  members  shall  be  exempt  from 
jiajang  any  fees,  shall  not  be  eUgible  for  office,  and  shall  have  no  interest 
in  the  property  of  the  Society  and  no  right  to  vote. 

VI.  Associate  Membership  i 

Any  person  who  is  neither  a  resident  of,  nor  has  a  usual  place  of  busi-  | 

ness  in,  the  City  of  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  but  is  either  a  native,  or  \ 


:.)■ 


88  THE  CAMBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 

formerly  had  a  residence  or  a  usual  place  of  business  there  for  at  least  five 
years,  shall  be  eligible  to  associate  membership  in  the  Society.  Nomina- 
tions for  such  membership  shall  be  made  in  ^sTiting  to  any  member  of  the 
Council,  and  the  persons  so  nominated  may  be  elected  at  any  meeting  of 
the  Council  by  a  vote  of  two-thirds  of  the  members  present  and  voting. 
Associate  members  shall  be  liable  for  an  annual  assessment  of  two  dollars 
each,  payable  in  advance  at  the  Annual  fleeting,  but  shall  be  liable  for  no 
other  fees  or  assessments,  and  shall  not  be  eligible  for  office  and  shall 
have  no  interest  in  the  property  of  the  Society  and  no  right  to  vote. 

\TI.  Seal 

The  Seal  of  the  Society  shall  be:  Within  a  circle  bearing  the  name  of 
the  Society  and  the  date,  1905,  a  shield  bearing  a  representation  of  the 
Daye  Printing  Press  and  crest  of  two  books  surmounted  by  a  Greek 
lamp,  •v\nth  a  representation  of  Massachusetts  Hall  on  the  dexter  and  a 
representation  of  the  fourth  meeting-house  of  the  First  Church  in  Cam- 
bridge on  the  sinister,  and,  underneath,  a  scroll  bearing  the  words  Scripta 
Manent. 

VIII.  Officers 

The  officers  of  this  corporation  shall  be  a  Council  of  thirteen  members, 
having  the  powers  of  directors,  elected  by  the  Society,  and  a  President, 
three  Vice-Presidents,  a  Secretary  with  the  powers  of  Clerk,  a  Treasurer, 
and  a  Curator,  elected  out  of  the  Council  by  the  Society.  All  the  above 
officers  shall  be  chosen  by  ballot  at  the  Annual  Meeting,  and  shall  hold 
office  for  the  term  of  one  year  and  until  their  successors  shall  be  elected 
and  qualified.  The  Council  shall  have  power  to  fill  all  vacancies. 

•> 
IX.  President  and  Vice-Presidents 

The  President  shall  preside  at  all  meetings  of  the  Society  and  shall  be 
Chairman  of  the  Council.    In  case  of  the  death,  absence,  or  incapacity        ] 
of  the  President,  his  powers  shall  be  exercised  by  the  Vice-Presidents,        | 
respectively,  in  the  order  of  their  election. 

X.  Secretary  i 

The  Secretary  shall  keep  the  records  and  conduct  the  correspondence 
of  the  Society  and  of  the  Council.   He  shall  give  to  each  member  of  the 


1  jf.;:ii.:'ai ;/:..:>  nirr  88 


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BY-LAWS  89 

Society  WTitten  notice  of  its  meetings.    He  shall  also  present  a  written 
report  of  the  year  at  each  Annual  Meeting. 

XI.  Treasurer 

The  Treasurer  shall  have  charge  of  the  funds  and  securities,  and  shall 
keep  in  proper  books  the  accounts,  of  the  corporation.  He  shall  receive 
and  collect  all  fees  and  other  dues  owing  to  it,  and  all  donations  and 
testamentary  gifts  made  to  it.  He  shall  make  all  investments  and  dis- 
bursements of  its  funds,  but  only  with  the  approval  of  the  Council.  He 
shall  give  the  Society  a  bond,  in  amount  and  with  sureties  satisfactory  to 
the  Council,  conditioned  for  the  proper  performance  of  his  duties.  He 
shall  make  a  written  report  at  each  Annual  Meeting.  Such  report  shall 
be  audited  prior  to  the  Annual  Meeting  by  one  or  more  auditors  appointed 
by  the  Council. 

XII.  Curator 

The  Curator  shall  have  charge,  under  the  direction  of  the  Council,  of 
all  Books,  Manuscripts,  and  other  Memorials  of  the  Society,  except  the 
records  and  books  kept  by  the  Secretary  and  Treasurer.  He  shall  present 
a  written  report  at  each  Annual  Meeting. 

XIII.  Council 

The  Council  shall  have  the  general  management  of  the  property  and 
affairs  of  the  Society,  shall  arrange  for  its  meetings,  and  shall  present  for 
election  from  time  to  time  the  names  of  persons  deemed  qualified  for  honor- 
ary membership.  The  Council  shall  present  a  written  report  of  the  year 
at  each  Annual  Meeting. 

XIV.  Meetings 

The  Annual  Meeting  shall  be  held  on  the  fourth  Tuesday  in  January 
in  each  year.  Other  regular  meetings  shall  be  held  on  the  fourth  Tuesdays 
of  April  and  October  of  each  year,  unless  the  President  otherwise  directs. 
Special  meetings  may  be  called  by  the  President  or  by  the  Council. 

XV.  Quorum 

At  meetings  of  the  Society  ten  members,  and  at  meetings  of  the  Council 
four  members,  shall  constitute  a  quorum. 


90  THE  CAI^IBRIDGE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 

XVI.  Fees 

The  fee  of  initiation  shall  be  two  dollars.  There  shall  also  be  an  annual 
assessment  of  three  dollars,  payable  in  advance  at  the  Annual  Meeting; 
but  any  Regular  Member  shall  be  exempted  from  the  annual  payment  if 
at  any  time  after  his  admission  he  shall  pay  into  the  Treasury  Fifty 
Dollars  in  addition  to  his  previous  payments;  and  any  Associate  Member 
shall  be  similarly  exempted  on  payment  of  Twenty-five  Dollars.  All  com- 
mutations shall  be  and  remain  permenently  funded,  the  interest  only  to 
be  used  for  current  expenses. 


XVII.  Resignation  of  Membership 

All  resignations  of  membership  must  be  in  WTiting,  pro\'ided,  however, 
that  failure  to  pay  the  annual  assessment  within  six  months  after  the 
Annual  Meeting  may,  in  the  discretion  of  the  Council,  be  considered  a 
resignation  of  membership. 


XVIII.  Dissolution 

■  If  at  any  time  the  active  membership  falls  below  ten,  this  Society  may 
be  dissolved  at  the  -^Titten  request  of  three  members,  according  to  the 
laws  and  statutes  of  this  Commonwealth. 


XIX.   Disposition  of  Property  upon  Dissolution 

Upon  dissolution  of  the  Society,  all  its  collections  and  other  property 
shall  pass  to  the  President  and  Fellows  of  Harvard  College,  in  trust  for 
the  following  purposes,  to  wit : 

1.  To  place  all  the  books  and  manuscripts  of  the  Society  in  the  Uni- 
versity Library  so  that  they  shall  at  all  times  be  accessible  for  consulta- 
tion and  study. 

2.  To  place  the  other  collections  of  the  Society  in  some  building  where 
they  will  be  safe  and  accessible,  so  far  as  possible;  or  if  they  cannot  do  so, 
to  transfer  such  other  collections  to  the  Cambridge  Public  Library,  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  or  such  other  fit  educational  institu- 
tion as  will  hold  them  in  trust  for  the  citizens  of  Cambridge. 

If  the  President  and  Fellows  of  Harvard  College  shall  decline  this  trust, 


)A--v;- 


f  1 ',' : 


BY-LAWS  91 

then  the  property  of  the  Society  upon  its  dissolution  shall  pass  on  the 
same  terms  to  the  City  of  Cambridge,  to  be  administered  by  the  trustees 
of  the  Cambridge  Public  Library. 

XX.  Amendment  of  By-Laws 

These  By-Laws  may  be  amended  at  any  meeting  by  a  vote  of  two- 
thirds  of  the  members  present  and  voting,  provided  that  the  substance 
of  the  proposed  amendment  shall  have  been  inserted  in  the  call  for  such 
meeting. 


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