intending to embark from Salem for Antigua, but having gone into Boston
the Sunday previous to the battle of Lexington, and remained there until
that affair occurred, he was by the course of events shut up in the
town. He sailed for Halifax very soon, still intending, as he says, to
go to Antigua, but on the arrival of his son-in-law, George Erving, and
his daughter, with the troops from Boston, he was by them persuaded to
sail for England, whither his other son-in-law, Sir William Pepperell
(grandson of the hero of Louisburg), had preceded him. It is with this
young Sir William Pepperell that our story particularly deals.
The first Sir William had been what is called a "self-made man," and had
raised himself from the ranks of the soldiery through native genius
backed by strength of will. His father is first noticed in the annals of
the Isles of Shoals. The mansion now seen in Kittery Point was built,
indeed, partly by this oldest Pepperell known to us, and partly by his
more eminent son. The building was once much more extensive than it now
appears, having been some years ago shortened at either end. Until the
death of the elder Pepperell, in 1734, the house was occupied by his own
and his son's families. The lawn in front reached to the sea, and an
avenue a quarter of a mile in length, bordered by fine old trees, led to
the neighbouring house of Colonel Sparhawk, east of the village church.
The first Sir William, by his will, made the son of his daughter
Elizabeth and of Colonel Sparhawk, his residuary legatee, requiring
him at the same time to relinquish the name of Sparhawk for that of
Peperell. Thus it was that the baronetcy, extinct with the death of the
hero of Louisburg, was revived by the king, in 1774, for the benefit of
this grandson.
[Illustration: ROYALL HOUSE, MEDFORD, MASS.]
[Illustration: PEPPERELL HOUSE, KITTERY, MAINE.]
In the Essex Institute at Salem, is preserved a two-thirds length
picture of the first Sir William Pepperell, painted in 1751 by Smibert,
when the baronet was in London. Of this picture, Hawthorne once wrote
the humourous description which follows: "Sir William Pepperell, in
coat, waistcoat and breeches, all of scarlet broadcloth, is in the
cabinet of the Society; he holds a general's truncheon in his right
hand, and points his left toward the army of New Englanders before the
walls of Louisburg. A bomb is represented as falling through the
air--it has certainly been a long time in its descent."
The young William Pepperell was graduated from Cambridge in 1766, and
the next year married the beautiful Elizabeth Royall. In 1774 he was
chosen a member of the governor's council. But when this council was
reorganised under the act of Parliament, he fell into disgrace because
of his loyalty to the king. On November 16, 1774, the people of his own
county (York), passed at Wells a resolution in which he was declared to
have "forfeited the confidence and friendship of all true friends of
American liberty, and ought to be detested by all good men."
Thus denounced, the baronet retired to Boston, and sailed, shortly
before his father-in-law's departure, for England. His beautiful lady,
one is saddened to learn, died of smallpox ere the vessel had been many
days out, and was buried at Halifax. In England, Sir William was allowed
£500 per annum by the British government, and was treated with much
deference. He was the good friend of all refugees from America, and
entertained hospitably at his pleasant home. His private life was
irreproachable, and he died in Portman Square, London, in December,
1816, at the age of seventy. His vast possessions and landed estate in
Maine were confiscated, except for the widow's dower enjoyed by Lady
Mary, relict of the hero of Louisburg, and her daughter, Mrs. Sparhawk.
Colonel Royall, though he acted not unlike his son-in-law, Sir William,
has, because of his vacillation, far less of our respect than the
younger man in the matter of his refusal to cast in his lot with that of
the Revolution. In 1778 he was publicly proscribed and formally
banished from Massachusetts. He thereupon took up his abode in
Kensington, Middlesex, and from this place, in 1789, he begged earnestly
to be allowed to return "home" to Medford, declaring he was "ever a good
friend of the Province," and expressing the wish to marry again in his
own country, "where, having already had one good wife, he was in hopes
to get another, and in some degree repair his loss." His prayer was,
however, refused, and he died of smallpox in England, October, 1781. By
his will, Harvard College was given a tract of land in Worcester County,
for the foundation of a professorship, which still bears his name.
It is not, however, to be supposed that in war time so fine a place as
the Royall mansion should have been left unoccupied. When the yeomen
began pouring into the environs of Boston, encircling it with a belt of
steel, the New Hampshire levies pitched their tents in Medford. They
found the Royall mansion in the occupancy of Madam Royall and her
accomplished daughters, who willingly received Colonel John Stark into
the house as a safeguard against insult, or any invasion of the estate
the soldiers might attempt. A few rooms were accordingly set apart for
the use of the bluff old ranger, and he, on his part, treated the family
of the deserter with considerable respect and courtesy. It is odd to
think that while the stately Royalls were living in one part of this
house, General Stark and his plucky wife, Molly, occupied quarters under
the same roof.
The second American general to be attracted by the luxury of the Royall
mansion was that General Lee whose history furnishes material for a
separate chapter. General Lee it was to whom the house's echoing
corridors suggested the name, Hobgoblin Hall. So far as known, however,
no inhabitant of the Royall house has ever been disturbed by strange
visions or frightful dreams. After Lee, by order of Washington, removed
to a house situated nearer his command, General Sullivan, attracted, no
doubt, by the superior comfort of the old country-seat, laid himself
open to similar correction by his chief. In these two cases it will be
seen Washington enforced his own maxim that a general should sleep among
his troops.
In 1810, the Royall mansion came into the possession of Jacob Tidd, in
whose family it remained half a century, until it had almost lost its
identity with the timid old colonel and his kin. As "Mrs. Tidd's house"
it was long known in Medford. The place was subsequently owned by George
L. Barr, and by George C. Nichols, from whose hands it passed to that
of Mr. Geer, the present owner. To be sure, it has sadly fallen from its
high estate, but it still remains one of the most interesting and
romantic houses in all New England, and when, as happens once or twice a
year, the charming ladies of the local patriotic society powder their
hair, don their great-grandmother's wedding gowns and entertain in the
fine old rooms, it requires only a slight gift of fancy to see Sir
William Pepperell's lovely bride one among the gay throng of fair
women.
MOLLY STARK'S GENTLEMAN-SON
Of the quaint ancestral homes still standing in the old Granite State,
none is more picturesque or more interesting from the historical
view-point than the Stark house in the little town of Dunbarton, a place
about five miles' drive out from Concord, over one of those charming
country roads, which properly make New Hampshire the summer and autumn
Mecca of those who have been "long in populous city pent." Rather oddly,
this house has, for all its great wealth of historical interest, been
little known to the general public. The Starks are a conservative, as
well as an old family, and they have never seen fit to make of their
home a public show-house. Yet those who are privileged to visit
Dunbarton and its chief boast, this famous house, always remember the
experience as a particularly interesting one. Seldom, indeed, can one
find in these days a house like this, which, for more than one hundred
years, has been occupied by the family for whom it was built, and
through all the changes and chances of temporal affairs has preserved
the characteristics of revolutionary times.
Originally Dunbarton was Starkstown. An ancestor of this family,
Archibald Stark, was one of the original proprietors, owning many
hundred acres, not a few of which are still in the Starks' possession.
Just when and by whom the place received the name of the old Scottish
town and royal castle on the Clyde, no historian seems able to state
with definiteness, but that the present Dunbarton represents only a
small part of the original triangular township, all are agreed. Of the
big landowner, Archibald Stark, the General John Stark of our Revolution
was a son.
Another of the original proprietors of Dunbarton was a certain Captain
Caleb Page, whose name still clings to a rural neighbourhood of the
township, a crossroads section pointed out to visitors as Page's Corner.
And it was to Elizabeth Page, the bright and capable daughter of his
father's old friend and neighbour, that the doughty John Stark was
married in August, 1758, while at home on a furlough. The son of this
marriage was called Caleb, after his maternal grandfather, and he it was
who built the imposing old mansion of our story.
Caleb Stark was a very remarkable man. Born at Dunbarton, December 3,
1759, he was present while only a lad at the battle of Bunker Hill,
standing side by side with some of the veteran rangers of the French
war, near the rail fence, which extended from the redoubt to the beach
of the Mystic River. In order to be at this scene of conflict, the boy
had left home secretly some days before, mounted on his own horse, and
armed only with a musket. After a long, hard journey, he managed to
reach the Royall house in Medford, which was his father's headquarters
at the time, the very night before the great battle. And the general,
though annoyed at his son's manner of coming, recognised that the lad
had done only what a Stark must do at such a time, and permitted him to
take part in the next day's fight.
After that, there followed for Caleb a time of great social
opportunity, which transformed the clever, but unpolished New Hampshire
boy into as fine a young gentleman as was to be found in the whole
country. The Royall house, it will be remembered, was presided over in
the troublous war times by the beautiful ladies of the family, than whom
no more cultured and distinguished women were anywhere to be met. And
these, though Tory to the backbone, were disposed to be very kind and
gracious to the brave boy whom the accident of war had made their guest.
So it came about that even before he reached manhood's estate, Caleb
Stark had acquired the grace and polish of Europe. Nor was the lad
merely a carpet knight. So ably did he serve his father that he was made
the elder soldier's aid-de-camp, when the father was made a
brigadier-general, and by the time the war closed, was himself Major
Stark, though scarcely twenty-four years old.
[Illustration: STARK HOUSE, DUNBARTON, N. H.]
Soon after peace was declared, the young major came into his Dunbarton
patrimony, and in 1784, in a very pleasant spot in the midst of his
estate, and facing the broad highway leading from Dunbarton to Weare, he
began to build his now famous house. It was finished the next year, and
in 1787, the young man, having been elected town treasurer of Dunbarton,
resolved to settle down in his new home, and brought there as his wife,
Miss Sarah McKinstrey, a daughter of Doctor William McKinstrey, formerly
of Taunton, Massachusetts, a beautiful and cultivated girl, just twenty
years old.
It is interesting in this connection to note that all the women of the
Stark family have been beauties, and that they have, too, been sweet
and charming in disposition, as well as in face. The old mansion on the
Weare road has been the home during its one hundred and ten years of
life of several women who would have adorned, both by reason of their
personal and intellectual charms, any position in our land. This being
true, it is not odd that the country folk speak of the Stark family with
deepest reverence.
Beside building the family homestead, Caleb Stark did two other things
which serve to make him distinguished even in a family where all were
great. He entertained Lafayette, and he accumulated the family fortune.
Both these things were accomplished at Pembroke, where the major early
established some successful cotton mills. The date of his entertainment
of Lafayette was, of course, 1825, the year when the marquis, after
laying the corner-stone of our monument on Bunker Hill, made his
triumphal tour through New Hampshire.
The bed upon which the great Frenchman slept during his visit to the
Starks is still carefully preserved, and those guests who have had the
privilege of being entertained by the present owners of the house can
bear testimony to the fact that the couch is an extremely comfortable
one. The room in which this bed is the most prominent article of
furniture bears the name of the Lafayette room, and is in every
particular furnished after the manner of a sleeping apartment of one
hundred years ago. The curtains of the high bedstead, the quaint
toilet-table, the bedside table with its brass candlestick, and the
pictures and the ornaments are all in harmony. Nowhere has a discordant
modern note been struck. The same thing is true of all the other
apartments in the house. The Starks have one and all displayed great
taste and decided skill in preserving the long-ago tone that makes the
place what it is. The second Caleb, who inherited the estate in 1838,
when his father, the brilliant major, died, was a Harvard graduate, and
writer of repute, being the author of a valuable memoir of his father
and grandfather. He collected, even more than they had done, family
relics of interest. When he died in 1865, his two sisters, Harriett and
Charlotte, succeeded him in the possession of the estate.
Only comparatively recently has this latter sister died, and the place
come into the hands of its present owner, Mr. Charles F. Morris Stark,
an heir who has the traditions of the Morris family to add to those of
the Starks, being on his mother's side a lineal descendant of Robert
Morris, the great financier of the Revolution. The present Mrs. Stark
is the representative of still another noted New Hampshire family, being
the granddaughter of General John McNeil, a famous soldier of the
Granite State.
Few, indeed, are the homes in America which contain so much which, while
of intimate interest to the family, is as well of wide historical
importance. Though a home, the house has the value of a museum. The
portrait of Major Stark, which hangs in the parlour at the right of the
square entrance-hall, was painted by Professor Samuel Finley Breese
Morse, the discoverer of the electric telegraph, a man who wished to
come down to posterity as an artist, but is now remembered by us only as
an inventor.
This picture is an admirable presentation of its original. The gallant
major looks down upon us with a person rather above the medium in
height, of a slight but muscular frame, with the short waistcoat, the
high collar, and the close, narrow shoulders of the gentleman's costume
of 1830. The carriage of the head is noble, and the strong features, the
deep-set, keen, blue eyes, and the prominent forehead, speak of courage,
intelligence, and cool self-possession.
Beside this noteworthy portrait hangs a beautiful picture of the first
mistress of this house, the Mrs. Stark who, as a girl, was Miss Sarah
McKinstrey. Her portrait shows her to have been a fine example of the
blonde type of beauty. The splendid coils of her hair are very lustrous,
and the dark hazel eyes look out from the frame with the charm and
dignity of a St. Cecilia. Her costume, too, is singularly appropriate
and becoming, azure silk with great puffs of lace around the white arms
and queenly throat. The waist, girdled under the armpits, and the
long-wristed mits stamp the date 1815-21.
The portrait of General Stark, which was painted by Miss Hannah
Crowninshield, is said not to look so much like the doughty soldier as
does the Morse picture of his son, but Gilbert Stuart's Miss Charlotte
Stark, recently deceased, shows the last daughter of the family to have
fairly sustained in her youth the reputation for beauty which goes with
the Stark women.
Beside the portraits, there are in the house many other choice and
valuable antiques. Among these the woman visitor notices with particular
interest the fan that was once the property of Lady Pepperell, who was a
daughter, it will be remembered, of the Royall family, who were so kind
to Major Caleb Stark in his youth. And to the man who loves historical
things, the cane presented to General Stark when he was a major, for
valiant conduct in defence of Fort William Henry, will be of especial
interest. This cane is made from the bone of a whale and is headed with
ivory. On the mantelpiece stands another very interesting souvenir, a
bronze statuette of Napoleon I., which Lafayette brought with him from
France and presented to Major Stark.
Apropos of this there is an amusing story. The major was a great admirer
of the distinguished Bonaparte, and made a collection of Napoleonic
busts and pictures, all of which, together with the numerous other
effects of the Stark place, had to be appraised at his death. As it
happened, the appraiser was a countryman of limited intelligence, and,
when he was told to put down "twelve Bonapartes," recorded "twelve pony
carts," and it was thus that the item appeared on the legal paper.
The house itself is a not unworthy imitation of an English manor-house,
with its aspect of old-time grandeur and picturesque repose. It is of
wood, two and a half stories high, with twelve dormer windows, a gambrel
roof, and a large two-story L. In front there are two rows of tall and
stately elms, and the trim little garden is enclosed by a painted iron
fence. On either side of the spacious hall, which extends through the
middle of the house, are to be found handsome trophies of the chase,
collected by the present master of the place, who is a keen sportsman.
A gorgeous carpet, which dates back fifty years, having been laid in the
days of the beautiful Sarah, supplies the one bit of colour in the
parlour, while in the dining-room the rich silver and handsome mahogany
testify to the old-time glories of the place. Of manuscripts which are
simply priceless, the house contains not a few; one, over the quaint
wine-cooler in the dining-room, acknowledging, in George Washington's
own hand, courtesies extended to him and to his lady by a member of the
Morris family, being especially interesting. Up-stairs, in the sunlit
hall, among other treasures, more elegant but not more interesting,
hangs a sunbonnet once worn by Molly Stark herself.
Not far off down the country road is perhaps the most beautiful and
attractive spot in the whole town, the old family burying-ground of the
Starks, in which are interred all the deceased members of this
remarkable family, from the Revolutionary Major Caleb and his wife down.
Here, with grim, towering Kearsarge standing ever like a sentinel,
rests under the yew-trees the dust of this great family's honoured
dead.
A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
"The only time I ever heard Washington swear," Lafayette once remarked,
"was when he called General Charles Lee a 'damned poltroon,' after the
arrest of that officer for treasonable conduct." Nor was Washington the
only person of self-restraint and good manners whose temper and angry
passions were roused by this same erratic General Lee.
Lee was an Englishman, born in Cheshire in 1731. He entered the British
army at the age of eleven years, was in Braddock's expedition, and was
wounded at Ticonderoga in 1758. He also served for a time in Portugal,
but certain infelicities of temper hindered his advancement, and he
never rose higher in the British service than a half-pay major. As a
"soldier of fortune" he was vastly more successful. In all the pages of
American history, indeed, it would be difficult to find anybody whose
career was more interestingly and picturesquely checkered than was his.
Lee's purpose in coming to America has never been fully explained. There
are concerning this, as every other step of his career, two
diametrically opposed opinions. The American historians have for the
most agreed in thinking him traitorous and self-seeking, but for my own
part I find little to justify this belief, for I have no difficulty
whatever in accounting for his soldierly vagaries on the score of his
temperament, and the peculiar conditions of his early life. A man who,
while still a youth, was adopted by the Mohawk Indians,--who who
bestowed upon him the significant name of Boiling Water,--who was at one
time aid-de-camp and intimate friend of the King of Poland, who rendered
good service in the Russian war against the Turks,--all before
interesting himself at all in the cause of American freedom,--could
scarcely be expected to be as simple in his us-ward emotions as an
Israel Putnam or a General John Stark might be.
General Lee arrived in New York from London, on November 10, 1773, his
avowed object in seeking the colonies at such a troublous time being to
investigate the justice of the American cause. He travelled all over the
country in pursuance of facts concerning the fermenting feeling against
England, but he was soon able to enroll himself unequivocally upon the
side of the colonies. In a letter written to Lord Percy, then stationed
at Boston, this eccentric new friend of the American cause--himself, it
must be remembered, still a half-pay officer in the English
army--expressed with great freedom his opinion of England's position:
"Were the principle of taxing America without her consent admitted,
Great Britain would that instant be ruined." And to General Gage, his
warm personal friend, Lee wrote: "I am convinced that the court of
Tiberius was not more treacherous to the rights of mankind than is the
present court of Great Britain."
It is rather odd to find that General Charles Lee, of whom we know so
little, and that little scarcely to his credit, occupied in the military
court of the American array a position second only to Washington; he was
appointed a major-general on June 17, 1775, a date marked for us by the
fact that Bunker Hill's battle was then fought. Not long after his
arrival at the camp, General Lee, with that tendency to independent
action which was afterward to work to his undoing, took up his quarters
in the Royall house. And Lee it was who gave to the fine old place the
name Hobgoblin Hall. From this mansion, emphatically remote from Lee's
command, the eccentric general was summarily recalled by his
commander-in-chief, then, as ever after, quick to administer to this
major-general what he conceived to be needed reproof.
The house in which General Lee next resided is still standing on
Sycamore Street, Somerville. When the place was occupied by Lee it had
one of those long pitched roofs, descending to a single story at the
back, which are still occasionally met with in our interior New
England towns. The house was, however, altered to its present appearance
by that John Tufts who occupied it during post-Revolutionary times. From
this lofty dwelling, Lee was able to overlook Boston, and to observe, by
the aid of a strong field-glass, all the activities of the enemy's camp.
[Illustration: GENERAL LEE'S HEADQUARTERS, SOMERVILLE, MASS.]
Lee himself was at this time an object of unfriendly espionage. In a
"separate and secret despatch," Lord Dartmouth instructed General Gage
to have a special eye on the ex-English officer. That Lee had resigned
his claim to emolument in the English army does not seem to have made
his countrymen as clear as it should have done concerning his relation
to their cause.