The Romance Of Old New England Rooftrees - free ebook by Mary Caroline Crawford

Illustrated

Boston L. C. Page &amp; Company Mdcccciii Copyright, 1902 by L. C. Page &amp; Company ( Incorporated ) All rights reserved Published, September, 1902 Colonial Press Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds &amp; Co. Boston, Mass., U.S.A....

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FOREWORD

These little sketches have been written to supply what seemed to the author a real need,—a volume which should give clearly, compactly, and with a fair degree of readableness, the stories connected with the surviving old houses of New England. That delightful writer, Mr. Samuel Adams Drake, has in his many works on the historic mansions of colonial times, provided all necessary data for the serious student, and to him the deep indebtedness of this work is fully and frankly acknowledged. Yet ther

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THE HEIR OF SWIFT'S VANESSA

Nowhere in the annals of our history is recorded an odder phase of curious fortune than that by which Bishop Berkeley, of Cloyne, was enabled early in the eighteenth century to sail o'erseas to Newport, Rhode Island, there to build (in 1729) the beautiful old place, Whitehall, which is still standing. Hundreds of interested visitors drive every summer to the old house, to take a cup of tea, to muse on the strange story with which the ancient dwelling is connected, and to pay the meed of respectf

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THE MAID OF MARBLEHEAD

Of all the romantic narratives which enliven the pages of early colonial history, none appeals more directly to the interest and imagination of the lover of what is picturesque than the story of Agnes Surriage, the Maid of Marblehead. The tale is so improbable, according to every-day standards, so in form with the truest sentiment, and so calculated to satisfy every exaction of literary art, that even the most credulous might be forgiven for ascribing it to the fancy of the romancer rather than

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AN AMERICAN-BORN BARONET

One of the most picturesque houses in all Middlesex County is the Royall house at Medford, a place to which Sir Harry Frankland and his lady used often to resort. Few of the great names in colonial history are lacking, indeed, in the list of guests who were here entertained in the brave days of old. The house stands on the left-hand side of the old Boston Road as you approach Medford, and to-day attracts the admiration of electric car travellers just as a century and a half ago it was the focus

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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 k

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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 Ticond

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THE SIGNAL LANTERNS OF PAUL REVERE DISPLAYED IN THE STEEPLE OF THIS CHURCH, APRIL 18, 1775, WARNED THE COUNTRY OF THE MARCH OF THE BRITISH TROOPS TO LEXINGTON AND CONCORD.

If the pilgrim wishes to get into the very spirit of old Christ Church and its historical associations, he can even climb the tower—— to look down as sexton Robert Newman did that eventful night on—— The first time I ever climbed the tower I confess that I was seized with an overpowering sense of the weirdness and mystery of those same spectral graves, seen thus from above. It was dark and gloomy going up the stairs, and if Robert Newman had thought of the prospect, rather than of his errand, I

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HANCOCK'S DOROTHY Q.

The Dorothy Q. of our present interest is not the little maiden of Holmes's charming poem— but her niece, the Dorothy Q. whom John Hancock loved, and was visiting at Lexington, when Paul Revere warned him of the redcoats' approach. This Dorothy hap pened to be staying just then with the Reverend Jonas Clark, under the protection of Madam Lydia Hancock, the governor's aunt. And it was to meet her, his fiancée, that Hancock went, on the eve of the 19th of April, to the house made famous by his vis

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BARONESS RIEDESEL AND HER TORY FRIENDS

The most beautiful example of wifely devotion to be found in the annals connected with the war of the Revolution is that afforded by the story of the lovely Baroness Riedesel, whose husband was deputed to serve at the head of the German mercenaries allied to the king's troops, and who was herself, with the baron and her children, made prisoner of war after the battle of Saratoga. Riedesel was a gallant soldier, and his wife a fair and fascinating young woman at this time. They had not been long

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"B Church, jr."

There the marks still remain, their significance having after a half century been interpreted by a lady of the house to whom they had long been familiar, but who had lacked any clue to their origin until, in the course of a private investigation, she determined beyond a doubt their relation to Church. The chamber has two windows in the north front, and two overlooking the area on the south. Church's fall was the more terrible because from a height. He was a member of a very distinguished family,

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A VICTIM OF TWO REVOLUTIONS

In the life of Colonel James Swan, as in that of Doctor Benjamin Church, money was the root of all evil. Swan was almost a fool because of his pig-headedness in financial adversity, and Church was ever a knave, plausible even when proved guilty. Yet both fell from the same cause, utter inability to keep money and avoid debt. Colonel Swan's history reads very like a romance. He was born in Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1754, and came to America in 1765. He found employment in Boston, and devoted all hi

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THE WOMAN VETERAN OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY

Deborah Sampson Gannett, of Sharon, has the unique distinction of presenting the only authenticated case of a woman's enlistment and service as a regular soldier in the Revolutionary army. The proof of her claim's validity can be found in the resolutions of the General Court of Massachusetts, where, under date of January 20, 1792, those who take the trouble may find this entry: "On the petition of Deborah Gannett, praying compensation for services performed in the late army of the United States.

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THE REDEEMED CAPTIVE

Of all the towns settled by Englishmen in the midst of Indians, none was more thoroughly peaceful in its aims and origin than Deerfield, in the old Pocumtuck Valley. Here under the giant trees of the primeval forest the whitehaired Eliot prayed, and beside the banks of the sluggish stream he gathered as nucleus for the town the roving savages upon whom his gospel message had made a deep impression. Quite naturally, therefore, the men of Pocumtuck were not disquieted by news of Indian troubles. W

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NEW ENGLAND'S FIRST "CLUB WOMAN"

Even to-day, in this emancipated twentieth century, women ministers and "female preachers" are not infrequently held up to derision by those who delight to sit in the seat of the scornful. Trials for heresy are likewise still common. It is not at all strange, therefore, that Mistress Ann Hutchinson should, in 1636, have been driven out of Boston as an enemy dangerous to public order, her specific offence being that she maintained in her own house that a mere profession of faith could not evidenc

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IN THE REIGN OF THE WITCHES

One of the most interesting of the phenomena to be noted by the student of historical houses is the tenacity of tradition. People may be told again and again that a story attributed to a certain site has been proven untrue, but they still look with veneration on a place which has been hallowed many years, and refuse to give up any alluring name by which they have known it. A notable example of this is offered by what is universally called the Old Witch House, situated at the corner of Essex and

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LADY WENTWORTH OF THE HALL

On one of those pleasant long evenings, when the group of friends that Longfellow represents in his "Tales of the Wayside Inn" had gathered in the twilight about the cheery open fire of the house at Sudbury to tell each other tales of long ago, we hear best the story of Martha Hilton. We seem to catch the poet's voice as he says after the legend from the Baltic has been alluringly related by the Musician: And then, as the others leaned back to listen, there followed the beautiful ballad which ce

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AN HISTORIC TRAGEDY

One hundred years ago there was committed in Dedham, Massachusetts, one of the most famous murders of this country, a crime, some description of which falls naturally enough into these chapters, inasmuch as the person punished as the criminal belonged to the illustrious Fairbanks family, whose picturesque homestead is widely known as one of the oldest houses in New England. In the Massachusetts Federalist of Saturday, September 12, 1801, we find an editorial paragraph which, apart from its intri

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INVENTOR MORSE'S UNFULFILLED AMBITION

The first house erected in Charlestown after the destruction of the village by fire in 1775 (the coup d'état which immediately followed the battle of Bunker Hill, it will be remembered), is that which is here given as the birthplace of Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph. The house is still standing at 203 Main Street, and in the front chamber of the second story, on the right of the front door of the entrance, visitors still pause to render tribute to the memory o

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WHERE THE "BROTHERS AND SISTERS" MET

No single house in all Massachusetts has survived so many of the vicissitudes of fickle fortune and carried the traditions of a glorious past up into the realities of a prosperous and useful present more successfully than has Fay House, the present home of Radcliffe College, Cambridge. The central portion of the Fay House of to-day dates back nearly a hundred years, and was built by Nathaniel Ireland, a prosperous merchant of Boston. It was indeed a mansion to make farmer-folk stare when, with i

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THE BROOK FARMERS

One of the weddings noted in our Fay House chapter was that of Sophia Dana to George Ripley, an event which was celebrated August 22, 1827, in the stately parlour of the Cambridge mansion, the ceremony being performed by the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The time between the date of their marriage and the year 1840, when Mr. and Mrs. Ripley "discovered" the milk-farm in West Roxbury, which was afterward to be developed through their efforts into the most remarkable socialistic experiment Amer

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MARGARET FULLER: MARCHESA D'OSSOLI

Any account of Brook Farm which should neglect to dwell upon the part played in the community life by Margaret Fuller, Marchesa d'Ossoli, would be almost like the play of "Hamlet" with the Prince of Denmark left out. For although Margaret Fuller never lived at Brook Farm—was, indeed, only an occasional visitor there—her influence pervaded the place, and, as we feel from reading the "Blithedale Romance," she was really, whether absent or present, the strongest personality connected with the exper

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THE OLD MANSE AND SOME OF ITS MOSSES

"The Old Manse," writes Hawthorne, in his charming introduction to the quaint stories, "Mosses from an Old Manse", "had never been profaned by a lay occupant until that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home. A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men from time to time had dwelt in it; and children born in its chambers had grown up to assume the priestly character. It is awful to reflect how many sermons must have been written here!... Here it was, t

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SALEM'S CHINESE GOD

Of the romantic figures which grace the history of New England in the nineteenth century, none is to be compared in dash and in all those other qualities that captivate the imagination with the figure of Frederick Townsend Ward, the Salem boy who won a generalship in the Chinese military service, suppressed the Tai-Ping rebellion, organised the "Ever-Victorious Army"—for whose exploits "Chinese" Gordon always gets credit in history—and died fighting at Ning Po for a nation of which he had become

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THE WELL-SWEEP OF A SONG

That the wise Shakespeare spoke the truth when he observed that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin" has never been better exemplified than in the affectionate tenderness with which all sorts and conditions of men join in singing a song like "The Old Oaken Bucket." As one hears this ballad in a crowded room, or even as so often given—in a New England play like "The Old Homestead," one does not stop to analyse one's sensations; one forgets the homely phrase; one simply feels and knows

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THE END.

[1] "Three Heroines of New England Romance." Little, Brown &amp; Co. [2] Drake's "Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex." Little, Brown &amp; Co., publishers. [3] Drake's "Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex." [4] Sparks's "Life of Charles Lee." Little, Brown &amp; Co. [5] Drake's "Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex." Little, Brown &amp; Co., publishers. [6] "Paul Revere's Ride:" Longfellow's Poems. Houghton, Mifflin &amp; Co., publishers. [7] Drake. [8] New

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Little Pilgrimages Series

L. C. PAGE &amp; COMPANY New England Building Boston, Mass....

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