burned that she died the next day. This great sorrow bore rich fruit
for those who loved the poet. "Above the grave the strong man sowed
his thoughts, and they ripened like the corn in autumn," one of his
biographers has said.
The house was named for Andrew Craigie, who became the owner of the
property in 1793. He had given valuable service during the
Revolutionary War, acting as an "apothecary-general" in the
Continental Army. He was a man of wealth, and his home was the popular
resort for people of note from all parts of the country. During his
later years he lost all his money, and his widow was compelled to rent
rooms to Harvard students. In this way Edward Everett became a
resident of the house.
The builder of the mansion was John Vassall. In 1760, when he occupied
the house, it was surrounded by a park of one hundred and fifty acres.
Soon after the beginning of the war he went to Boston, and later he
removed to England, for his sympathies were with the Crown.
Accordingly, in 1778, the property was declared forfeited to the
State.
But the estate really became public property three years before this,
when a regiment, under the command of Colonel Glover, pitched its
tents in the park. In July, 1775, Washington made the house his
headquarters, remaining until April 4, 1776.
During these months the house was a busy place. Officers gathered here
both for business and for pleasure. Military conferences and
court-martials were held in the large room in the second story which
was later used by Longfellow as a study. Dinners and entertainments
were frequent; these provided a needed safety valve during the weeks
of anxious waiting near the British line. Mrs. Washington was a
visitor here, thus giving to her husband the taste of home life which
he was unwilling to take during the Revolution by making a visit to
his estate at Mt. Vernon.
On one of the early days of the Commander-in-Chief's occupancy of the
house, he wrote this entry in his carefully-kept account book:
"July 15, 1775, Paid for cleaning the House which was
provided for my Quarters, and which had been occupied by the
Marblehead regiment, L2 10s. 9d."
The day before this entry was made General Green wrote to Samuel Ward:
"His Excellency, General Washington, has arrived amongst us,
universally admired. Joy was visible in every countenance,
and it seemed as if the spirit of conquest breathed through
the whole army. I hope I shall be taught, to copy his
example, and to prefer the love of liberty, in this time of
public danger to all the soft pleasures of domestic life, and
support ourselves with manly fortitude amidst all the dangers
and hardships that attend a state of war. And I doubt not,
under the General's wise direction, we shall establish such
excellent order and strictness of discipline as to invite
victory to attend him wherever he goes."
A council of war was held in the upstairs room on August 3, 1775.
After this council General Sullivan wrote to the New Hampshire
Committee of Safety:
"To our great surprise, discovered that we had not powder
enough to furnish half a pound a man, exclusive of what the
people have in their homes and cartridge boxes. The General
was so struck that he did not utter a word for half an hour."
Further hints of the serious straits caused by the lack of ammunition
were contained in a letter of Elias Boudinot. He said that at the time
there were fourteen miles of line to guard, so that Washington did not
dare fire an Evening or Morning Gun. "In this situation one of the
Committee of Safety for Massachusetts ... deserted and went over to
General Gage, and discovered our poverty to him. The fact was so
incredible, that General Gage treated it as a stratagem of war, and
the informant as a Spy, or coming with the express purpose of
deceiving him & drawing his Army into a Snare, by which means we were
saved from having our Quarters beaten up...."
The strange inactivity of the British in the face of the
unpreparedness of the Continental troops was remarked in a letter
written to Congress on January 4, from Headquarters:
"It is not in the pages of history, perhaps, to furnish a
case like ours. To maintain a post within musket shot of the
enemy, for six months together, without [powder], and at the
same time to disband one army, and recruit another, within
that distance of twenty odd British regiments, is more,
probably, than was ever attempted."
To-day visitors are free to roam through the rooms that echoed to the
tread of Washington and his generals, in which the children played in
Longfellow's day, and where the poet wrote so many of his messages
that have gone straight to the hearts of millions.
VII
THE ADAMS HOUSES, QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS
WHERE TWO PRESIDENTS WERE BORN
John Adams was born and spent his boyhood in a simple farmhouse near
Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. It has been described as a
"plain, square, honest block of a house, widened by a lean-to, and
scarcely two stories high." This house, built in 1681, Daniel Munro
Wilson says was "the veritable roof-tree, under which was ushered into
being the earliest and strongest advocate of independence, the leader
whose clear intelligence was paramount in shaping our free
institutions, the founder of a line of statesmen, legislators,
diplomats, historians, whose patriotism is a passion, and whose
integrity is like the granite of their native hills."
It is a remarkable fact that John Adams and John Hancock, who stood
shoulder to shoulder in the fight for American independence, were born
within a mile of each other, on days only a little more than a year
apart. The baptismal records show that October 19, 1735, was the
birthday of John Adams, while John Hancock was born on January 12,
1737.
From the modest home in Braintree John Adams went to college. Later he
taught school and studied law. Soon after he returned home in 1758 he
wrote in his diary:
"Rose at sunrise, unpitched a load of hay, and translated two
more leaves of Justinian."
After the death of his father, in 1761, the burden of the home fell on
his shoulders, and in the same year he was called to serve the
country. His diary tells of the call:
"In March, when I had no suspicion, I heard my name
pronounced (at town meeting) in a nomination of surveyor of
highways. I was very wroth, because I knew better, but said
nothing. My friend, Dr. Savil, came to me and told me that he
had nominated me to prevent me from being nominated as a
constable. 'For,' said the doctor, 'they make it a rule to
compel every man to serve either as constable or surveyor, or
to pay a fine.' Accordingly, I went to ploughing and
ditching."
Thus John Adams showed the spirit of service that later animated his
son, John Quincy Adams, who, after he had been President, became a
representative in Congress, and made answer to those who thought such
an office beneath his dignity, "An ex-President would not be degraded
by serving as a selectman in his town if elected thereto by the
people."
During those early years the young lawyer had other occupations than
ditch-digging. The records of the family show that he was assiduously
courting Abigail Smith, daughter of Rev. William Smith, minister in
Weymouth, near by. Probably he first met her in the historic house,
for she was a frequent visitor there.
The marriage of the young people on October 25, 1764, excited much
comment. In Puritan New England the profession of the law was not a
popular calling, and many of the people thought Abigail Smith was
"throwing herself away." Parson Smith was equal to the occasion; as he
had helped his eldest daughter out of a similar difficulty by
preaching on the text, "And Mary hath chosen that good part, which
shall not be taken away from her," so, on the Sunday after Abigail's
marriage, he announced the text, "For John ... came neither eating
bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil."
The year of the marriage witnessed the beginning of John Adams' fight
for independence. For it was the year of the iniquitous Stamp Act. In
his diary he wrote:
"I drew up a petition to the selectmen of Braintree, and
procured it to be signed by a number of the respectable
inhabitants, to call a meeting of the town to instruct their
representatives in relation to the stamps."
The following year, when a meeting was held in Braintree to take
action in consequence of the failure of Great Britain to heed the
protest against the Stamp Act, he wrote:
"I prepared a draught of instruction at home, and carried
them with me. The cause of the meeting was explained at some
length, and the state and danger of the country pointed out.
A committee was appointed to prepare instructions, of which I
was nominated as one. My draught was unanimously adopted
without amendment, reported to the town, and accepted without
a dissenting voice.... They rang through the state and were
adopted in so many words ... by forty towns, as instructions
to their representatives."
Less than two years later, on July 11, 1767, in the town close by his
own birthplace, to which John Adams had taken his bride, John Quincy
Adams was born. The delights of the new home have been pictured in a
pleasing manner by Daniel Munro Wilson:
"Elevated was life in this 'little hut,' but it was real,
genuine, beautifully domestic. The scene of it, visible there
now to any pious pilgrim, and reverently preserved in many of
its antique appointments by the Quincy Historical Society,
assists the imagination to realize its noble simplicity. The
dining-room or general living room, with its wide open
fireplace, is where the young couple would most often pass
their evenings, and in winter would very likely occupy in
measureless content a single settle, roasting on one side and
freezing on the other. The kitchen, full of cheerful bustle,
and fragrant as the spice isles, how it would draw the
children as they grew up, the little John Quincy among them!
Here they could be near mother, and watch her with absorbing
attention as she superintended the cooking, now hanging pots
of savory meats on the crane, and now drawing from the
cavernous depths of the brick oven the pies and baked beans
and Indian puddings and other delicacies of those days. We
can more easily imagine the home scene when we read these
words written by Mrs. Adams to her husband: 'Our son is much
better than when you left home, and our daughter rocks him to
sleep with the song of "Come papa, come home to brother
Johnnie."' 'Johnnie' is the dignified President and 'old man
eloquent' that is to be."
When it became evident that there must be Revolution, the patriot
Adams was compelled to leave his family and go into the thick of the
fight. He did not want to go. "I should have thought myself the
happiest man in the world if I could have returned to my little hut
and forty acres, which my father left me in Braintree, and lived on
potatoes and sea-weed the rest of my life. But I had taken a part, I
had adopted a system, I had encouraged my fellow citizens, and I could
not abandon them in conscience and in honor."
From the old home Abigail Adams wrote him letters that moved him to
renewed efforts for his struggling countrymen. In one of them she
said, "You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive
spectator; but if the sword be drawn, I bid adieu to all domestic
felicity, and look forward to that country where there are neither
wars nor rumors of war, in a firm belief, that through the mercy of
its King we shall both rejoice there together."
The wife rejoiced when her husband's ringing words helped to carry the
Declaration of Independence; she urged him to make the trips to France
which Congress asked him to undertake; she encouraged him when he was
Vice-President and, later, President, and she made home more than ever
an abode of peace when, in 1801, he returned to Braintree, to a house
of Leonard Vassall, built in 1731, which he bought in 1785.
In this house husband and wife celebrated their golden wedding, as
John Quincy Adams was to celebrate his golden wedding many years
later. Here, for many years, the son enjoyed being with the mother of
whom he once wrote:
"My mother was an angel upon earth. She was a minister of
blessings to all human beings within her sphere of action....
She has been to me more than a mother. She has been a spirit
from above watching over me for good, and contributing by my
mere consciousness of her existence to the comfort of my
life.... There is not a virtue that can abide in the female
heart but it was the ornament of hers."
And in this house the mother died, on October 28, 1818. John Quincy
Adams lived there until his death, on July 4, 1826.
VIII
THE QUINCY MANSION, QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS
THE HOME OF THREE DOROTHY QUINCYS
Among the settlers to whom Boston granted large allotments of outlying
lands were William Coddington and Edmund Quincy. In 1635 they went, in
company with their associate settlers, to "the mount," which became
Braintree, now Quincy.
By the side of a pleasant brook, under the shade of spreading trees,
Coddington built in 1636 his house of four rooms. Downstairs was the
kitchen and the living room, while upstairs were two bedrooms. The
upper story overhung the lower in the old manner, and a generous
chimney, which afforded room for a large open fireplace, dominated the
whole.
This house became the meeting place for a group of seekers after
religious liberty who were looked upon with suspicion in Boston--Rev.
John Wheelwright, Sir Harry Vane, Atherton Hough, Ann Hutchinson, and
others. In consequence of their views the company was soon broken up.
Ann Hutchinson and Wheelwright were banished, while Coddington would
have been banished if he had not gone hastily to Rhode Island.
Edmund Quincy, who succeeded to Coddington's house, probably would
have been banished if he had not died before the decree could be
pronounced. For a season his widow, Judith, lived in the house, which,
from that time, became known as the Quincy Mansion. With her were the
children, Edmund and Judith. Judith, who married at twenty, and became
the mother of Hannah (Betsy) Hull, whose dowry, when she became the
bride of Judge Samuel Sewell, was her weight in pine-tree shillings,
the gift of her father, the master of the colony's mint. Florence
Royce Davis has written of the wedding:
"Then the great scales were brought, amid laughter and jest,
And Betsy was called to step in and be weighed;
But a silence fell over each wondering guest
When the mint-master opened a ponderous chest
And a fortune of shillings displayed.
"By handfuls the silver was poured in one side
Till it weighed from the floor blushing Betsy, the bride;
And the mint-master called: 'Prithee, Sewell, my son,
The horses are saddled, the wedding is done;
Behold the bride's portion; and know all your days
Your wife is well worth every shilling she weighs.'"
Edmund Quincy married at twenty-one, and became the next occupant of
the mansion. During his long life there were welcomed to the
hospitable roof many of those whose words and deeds prepared the way
for the liberty that was to come to the country within a century.
The second of the Quincy line was a leader in the town. At one time he
was its representative in the General Court, and as colonel of the
Suffolk Regiment, he was the first of a long list of colonels in the
family. But the day came when it was written of him, "Unkel Quincy
grows exceeding crazy," and in 1698 the second Edmund yielded the
house to Edmund the third.
This Edmund also became a colonel and a representative and, later, a
judge of the Supreme Court. His pastor said of him, "This great man
was of a manly Stature and Aspect, of a Strong Constitution and of
Good Courage, fitted for any Business of Life, to serve God, his King
and Country." Not only did he enlarge the glory of the family, but, in
1706, he enlarged the house, yet in such a way that the original
Coddington house could be clearly traced after the improvements were
finished. Judge Sewell, the cousin of the builder, was one of the
welcome occupants of the improved house. On his way to Plymouth he
stopped at "Braintry." "I turned in to Cousin Quinsey," he said,
"where I had the pleasure to see God in his Providence shining again
upon the Persons and Affairs of the Family after long distressing
Sickness and Losses. Lodged in the chamber next the Brooke." Later on
another chamber near the brook was provided for Mrs. Quincy's brother,
Tutor Flynt of Harvard, when he came that way for rest and change.
The oldest child of this generation was Edmund, whose daughter,
Dorothy Quincy, married John Hancock, while the fourth child was
Dorothy Quincy, the great-grandmother of Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The continuity of life at the mansion was sadly broken when, within a
year, the grandmother, the mother, and the father died. The death of
the latter occurred in England, where he had gone on business for the
colony. When news came of the ending of his life, the General Court of
Massachusetts declared that "he departed the delight of his own
people, but of none more than the Senate, who, as a testimony of their
love and gratitude, have ordered this epitaph to be inscribed on his
tomb in Bunhill Fields, London."
For a year Dorothy Quincy remained in the house; but on her marriage
the place ceased for a time to be the chief residence of a Quincy.
Edmund was in business in Boston. He resorted to the house for a
season now and then, but his Boston home remained his permanent
abiding place until after the birth of his daughter Dorothy. Then
failing fortune sent him back to the ancestral home.
During the next few years John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John
Hancock were favored visitors at the mansion. John Hancock won Dorothy
Quincy for his bride, and family tradition says that preparations were
made for the wedding in the old home. "The large north parlor was
adorned with a new wall paper, express from Paris, and appropriately
figured with the forms of Venus and Cupid in blue, and pendant wreaths
of flowers in red," writes the author of "Where American Independence
Began." But the approaching Revolution interfered. The bridegroom
hurried away to Boston and then to Lexington. Dorothy, under the care
of Mrs. Hancock, the mother of John Hancock, also went to Lexington on
April 18, 1775, the very day when Paul Revere aroused the patriots,
and Hancock was once more compelled to flee for his life. Four months
later, at Fairfield, Connecticut, the lovers were married.
The old mansion was never again the home of the Quincys. Josiah,
brother of Edmund the fourth, built for himself in 1770 a beautiful
home not far from the family headquarters. Here he lived through the
war. Visitors to the house are shown on one of the windows the record
he made of the departure of the British from Boston Harbor, scratched
there when he saw the welcome sight, on October 17, 1775.
For much more than a century the house was in the hands of other
families, but, fortunately, it has come under the control of the
Colonial Dames of Massachusetts. They have made it the historic
monument it deserves to be. The visitors who are privileged to wander
through the rooms hallowed by the presence of men and women who helped
to pave the way for American independence read with hearty
appreciation the lines which Holmes addressed to the portrait of his
ancestress, "My Dorothy Q," as he called her:
"Grandmother's mother: her age, I guess
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead, with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed,
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid."
[Illustration: FERNSIDE FARM, HAVERHILL, MASS.
_Photo by Halliday Historic Photograph Company_
See page 54]
IX
FERNSIDE FARM, HAVERHILL, MASSACHUSETTS
THE BIRTHPLACE AND BOYHOOD HOME OF JOHN G. WHITTIER
The first house built by Thomas Whittier, the three-hundred-pound
ancestor of the poet Whittier, and first representative of the family
in America, was a little log cabin. There he took his wife, Ruth
Flint, and there ten children were born. Five of them were boys, and
each of them was more than six feet tall.
No wonder the log house grew too small for the family. So, probably in
1688, he built a house whose massive hewn beams were fifteen inches
square, whose kitchen was thirty feet long, with a fireplace eight
feet wide. The rooms clustered about a central chimney.
In this house the poet was born December 17, 1807, and here he spent
the formative years of his life. When he was twenty-seven years old he
wrote for _The Little Pilgrim_ of Philadelphia a paper on "The Fish I
Didn't Catch." In this he described the home of his boyhood:
"Our old homestead nestled under a long range of hills which
stretched off to the west. It was surrounded by woods in all
directions save to the southeast, where a break in the leafy
wall revealed a vista of low, green meadows, picturesque with
wooded islands and jutting capes of upland. Through these, a
small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled and laughed
down its rocky falls by our garden-side, wound, silently and
scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the
Country Brook. This brook in its time, after doing duty at
two or three saw and grist mills, the clack of which we
could hear across the intervening woodlands, found its way to
the great river, and the river took it up and bore it down to
the great sea."
Whittier's poems are full of references to the life on the farm; many
of his best verses had their inspiration in memories of the past. For
instance, the description of the building of the fire in "Snow-Bound,"
a poem which describes the life at the farm when he was twelve years
old, is a faithful picture of what took place in the old kitchen every
night of the long New England winter, when
"We piled, with care, our nightly stack
Of wood against the chimney back--
The oaken log, green, huge and thick,
And on its top the thick back-stick;
The knotty fore-stick laid apart,
And filled between with curious art.
The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old, rude-fashioned room
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom."
Young Whittier was a faithful worker on the farm. One day, when he was
nineteen years old, William Lloyd Garrison, the young editor of a
Newburyport newspaper, to which Whittier had contributed a poem, found
him assisting in repairing a stone wall. The visitor urged the father
of the young poet to send him to school. As a result of this visit
Whittier entered the Academy in Haverhill, with the understanding that
he was to earn his way.
At intervals during the succeeding ten years the poet returned to the
old farm, but when he was thirty years old the place was sold, the
family went to Amesbury, and he left soon afterward for Philadelphia,
where he was to edit an anti-slavery paper.
All through life Whittier dreamed of buying back the homestead. When
he received a check for $1,000 as the first proceeds from
"Snow-Bound," he set the sum aside as the beginning of a redemption
fund.
But the citizens of Haverhill, led by Alfred A. Ordway, asked the
privilege of buying the property themselves, and making it a memorial
to the poet. Whittier died before the purchase was completed, but soon
afterward Fernside Farm, as the poet called it, was taken over by Mr.
Ordway. It is now in the hands of an association that has restored it
and keeps it open to visitors whose hearts have been stirred by the
work of the Quaker poet.
[Illustration: DUSTON GARRISON HOUSE, HAVERHILL, MASS.
_Photo by W. R. Merryman, Haverhill_
See page 57]
X
THE DUSTON GARRISON HOUSE, HAVERHILL, MASSACHUSETTS
FROM WHICH HANNAH DUSTON WAS CARRIED AWAY BY THE INDIANS
The attention of visitors to Haverhill, Massachusetts, is attracted to
a great granite boulder set in a place of honor in the old town. When
they ask about it they are told the story of Hannah Duston, heroine.