Historic Shrines of America Part 2

Many ma.s.s meetings to protest against the acts of Great Britain were held in this church. The corporation used it for a time as a fire house and a public a.r.s.enal, and when signals were given by the direction of Paul Revere on the night of his famous ride the lanterns were hung in the steeple of Old North.

The original building of 1652 was burned in 1673. The second building was also burned, but by the British, who tore it down and used it for firewood during the cold winter of the occupation of the city.

After the destruction of the building the members of New Brick Church, an offshoot of Old North, invited the congregation to wors.h.i.+p with them. The invitation was accepted, and soon the congregations came together, under the name Old North. The building occupied ever since by the reunited congregation was erected in 1723. Ralph Waldo Emerson served as pastor and conducted services in this structure.

In 1669 there were many earnest people who felt that the teachings of the older church were not liberal enough for them, and they decided to have a church after their own heart. They felt that all who had been baptized might be citizens of the town; they were unwilling to be a.s.sociated longer with those who insisted, as the General Synod of Ma.s.sachusetts recommended, that all citizens must be church members, as formerly. So permission to organize was asked of the other churches. On their refusal appeal was taken to the Governor. The next appeal, to the selectmen of Boston, was successful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON _Photo by Halliday Historic Photograph Company_ See page 34]

The new church, which was called the South Meeting House, was built on the site of Governor Winthrop's house. In 1717 the people began to call the church "The Old South," to distinguish it from another church which was still further south.

In 1685 Governor Andros insisted that the Old South building should be used for the Church of England service, as well as for the services of the owners of the building. For two years Churchmen and Congregationalists occupied it harmoniously at different hours on Sunday.

On a Fast Day in 1696 Judge Sewall stood up before the congregation while they heard him read his prayer for the forgiveness of G.o.d and his fellow-citizens for any possible guilt he had incurred in the witchcraft trials.

Ten years later, on the day he was born, January 17, 1706, Benjamin Franklin was baptized in the church, though not in the present building.

The building made famous by the series of town meetings before and during the Revolution was erected in 1730. When Faneuil Hall was too small to hold the crowds that clamored for entrance, Old South was pressed into use. On June 14, 1768, at one of these meetings, a pet.i.tion was sent to the Governor asking that the British frigate be removed from the harbor. John Hanc.o.c.k was chairman of this committee.

The Boston Tea Party followed a ma.s.s meeting held here.

Burgoyne's cavalry used Old South Church as a riding school. Pigs were kept in one of the pews, while many of the furnis.h.i.+ngs were burned.

Since March, 1776, when the church was repaired, it has been little changed. Services were discontinued in 1872. After the great fire the building was used as a post-office.

Five years later there was talk of destroying the historic structure that the valuable lot might be used for business purposes, but the efforts of patriotic women were successful in preserving the relic.

Since that time it has been kept open as a museum.

While Old North and Old South were organizations expressing the will of the people, the third of the famous churches of Boston was the expression of the will of King James II of England. During more than sixty years of the city's history there had been no congregation of the Church of England; members of that body were required to attend service in the existing parishes. A minister and a commission sent from England to arrange for the new church were received with scant courtesy by the churches when request was made that opportunity be given to hold Church of England services in the building of one of them.

Not satisfied with the offer of a room in the Town House, Governor Andros demanded that Old South make arrangements to accommodate the new body. On the refusal of the trustees to do as the Governor wished, the s.e.xton of the church was one day ordered to ring the bell and open the doors for the Governor and his staff, and those who might wish to attend with them. Then the trustees submitted to the inevitable.

This was in 1687. The first chapel was built for the new congregation in 1689, on land appropriated for the purpose, since no one would convey a site willingly. This building was enlarged in 1710. The present striking structure dates from 1749-53. Peter Faneuil was treasurer of the committee that raised the necessary funds. The expense was but 2,500, though granite from the new Quincy quarry was used. The colonnade surrounding the tower was not built until 1790.

King's Chapel, as the new church building came to be called, was known as the abode of loyalists, just as Old North and Old South were famous as the haunts of patriotic wors.h.i.+ppers. The presence on the walls of the insignia of royalty and varied heraldic devices seriously disturbed the minds of those who felt that a house of wors.h.i.+p should have no such furnis.h.i.+ngs.

During the Revolution the building was respected by the British as well as by the citizens of the town. When the war was over, the congregation of Old South was invited to use the chapel because their own church needed extensive repairs in consequence of the use the British had made of it.

Since 1787 King's Chapel has been a Unitarian church. The change was made under the leaders.h.i.+p of Rev. James Freeman.

V

ELMWOOD, CAMBRIDGE, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS

WHERE JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL WAS BORN, AND WHERE HE DIED

When Thomas Oliver, Lieutenant Governor and president of George III's provincial council, built his house in Cambridge about 1767, he did not dream that within nine years he would have to abandon it because of his allegiance to the same George III. But so it proved. He was a Tory, and his neighbors would not suffer him to remain among them. On September 2, 1774, he wrote his resignation of the offices he held, adding the statement, "My house at Cambridge being surrounded by five thousand people, in compliance with their command, I sign my name." At his request, made to General Gage and the admiral of the English fleet, troops were not sent to Cambridge, according to plan. "But for Thomas Oliver's intercession," Edward Everett Hale says, "Elmwood would have been the battle-ground of the First Encounters."

After his summary departure the house was used as a hospital by the Continental Army. When the government sold it at auction it became the property first of Arthur Cabot, then of Elbridge Gerry, a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts from 1810 to 1812, and Vice-President under Madison.

The next occupant was Rev. Charles Lowell, pastor of the West Church of Boston. He bought the property just in time to make it ready for his son, James Russell Lowell, who was born February 22, 1819.

As a boy James never wearied of rambling over the old house and the ten acres of ground, all that was left of the original ninety-five acres. Many of his poems contain references to the memories of these early years. "The First Snowfall," "Music," and "A Year's Life" are, in part, autobiographical. Lines on "The Power of Music" told of the days when he was his father's companion in the chaise, on the way to make a Sunday exchange of pulpits with a neighboring minister:

"When, with feuds like Ghibelline and Guelf, Each parish did its music for itself, A parson's son, through tree-arched country ways, I rode exchange oft in dear old days, Ere yet the boys forgot, with reverent eye, To doff their hats as the black coat went by, Ere skirts expanding in their apogee Turned girls to bells without the second e; Still in my teens, I felt the varied woes Of volunteers, each singing as he chose, Till much experience left me no desire To learn new species of the village choir."

Life at Elmwood was interrupted by college days, but he returned to the Cambridge house with his wife, Maria Lowell. The oldest children were born here. Here, too, came the first great sorrow of the parents, the death of their first born. At that time Mrs. Lowell found comfort in writing "The Alpine Sheep," a poem that has helped many parents in a like time of bereavement.

The next great sorrow came during the Civil War, when the death from wounds was announced first of General Charles Russell Lowell, then of James Jackson Lowell, and finally of William Lowell Putnam, all beloved nephews. In the Biglow Papers, Second Series, the poet referred to these three soldiers. Leslie Stephen called the lines "the most pathetic that he ever wrote" in which he spoke of the three likely lads,

"Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'."

During the closing year of the war, one of the students who attended his lectures on Dante at Harvard College wrote of a visit to his preceptor:

"I found the serene possessor of Elmwood in good spirits, ate a Graham biscuit and drank some delicious milk with him and his wife, then enjoyed a very pleasant conversation. He read some of Shakspeare's sonnets, to make me think better of them, and succeeded.... He gave me a very welcome copy of Macaulay's essays and poems, and the little visit was another oasis in school life's dearth of home sociability. Mabel, his only child, was not there at supper, but came home some time after: 'salute your progenitor!' and the answer was a daughter's kiss."

After spending years abroad, part of the time as Minister to Spain, then as Minister to England, Lowell returned to Elmwood. To a friend who congratulated him on being at home again, he said, "Yes, it is very nice here; but the old house is full of ghosts." His cousin, as quoted by Dr. Hale, says of these closing six years of the poet's life:

"The house was haunted by sad memories, but at least he was once more among his books. The library, which filled the two rooms on the ground floor to the left of the front door, had been constantly growing, and during his stay in Europe he had bought rare works with the intention of leaving them to Harvard College. Here he would sit when sad or unwell and read Calderon, the 'Nightingale in the Study,' whom he always found a solace. Except for occasional attacks of the gout, his life had been singularly free from sickness, but he had been at home only a few months when he was taken ill, and, after the struggle of a strong man to keep up as long as possible, he was forced to go to bed. In a few days his condition became so serious that the physician feared he would not live; but he rallied, and, although too weak to go to England, as he had planned, he appeared to be comparatively well. When taken sick, he had been preparing a new edition of his works, the only full collection that had ever been made, and he had the satisfaction of publis.h.i.+ng it soon after his recovery. This was the last literary work he was destined to do, and it rounded off fittingly his career as a man of letters."

He died in August, 1891, when he was seventy-two years old.

Elmwood remains in the possession of the Lowell heirs. The ten acres of the poet's boyhood days have been reduced to two or three, but the house is much the same as when the poet lived in it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CRAIGIE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, Ma.s.s.

_Photo by Ph. B. Wallace, Philadelphia_ See page 40]

VI

THE CRAIGIE HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, Ma.s.sACHUSETTS

MADE FAMOUS BY GEORGE WAs.h.i.+NGTON AND HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"_Somewhat back from the village street Stands the old-fas.h.i.+oned country seat.

Across its antique portico Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw; And from its station in the hall An ancient timepiece says to all,-- 'Forever, never!

Never--forever.'_"

The clock of which Longfellow wrote stood on the stair-landing of the old Craigie House, Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, which he bought in 1843, after having occupied it a number of years. Here he wrote the majority of his poems. Here, one June day, Nathaniel Hawthorne dined with the poet. In the course of conversation, the author of "The House of Seven Gables" told Longfellow the heart-moving story of the Acadian maiden who was separated from her lover by the cruel mandate of the conquerors of Acadia, and here the poem was written that told the story. Here were spent days of gladness with friends who delighted to enter the hospitable door. Here the poet rejoiced in his home with the children of whom he wrote in "The Children's Hour":

"Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour."

And here, one sad day in July, 1861, Mrs. Longfellow was so severely 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 Va.s.sall. 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.