Roxbury, Massachusetts

“ But little progress had been made at this time, by the Americans, in erecting fortifications. Some breast-works had been thrown up at Cambridge, near the foot of Prospect Hill, and a small redoubt had been formed at Roxbury. The right wing of the besieging army, under General Thomas, was at Roxbury, consisting of four thousand Massachusetts troops, including four artillery companies, with field-pieces and a few heavy cannon. The Rhode Island forces, under Greene, were at Jamaica Plains, and near there was a greater part of General Spencer's Connecticut regiment. ”

“ Until the middle of the Nineteenth Century the population was still largely confined to the peninsula. After that period the population began to spread out into Charlestown, East Boston, South Boston, and of late years has turned to Roxbury, West Roxbury, Dorchester, and Brighton. Boston proper contains now less than a third of the total population, business buildings crowding out dwellings. What was once the most fashionable quarter—the North End—has become the business section of the city, and is partly taken up with the dwellings of the poorer, largely immigrant people. ”

“ Farmers on the banks of the Mystic could not dig potatoes from their fields and transport them down the river on the ebbing tide to the town dock. The people of Charlestown could not gather cabbages from their gardens, take them [Pg 222] across the ferry, and peddle them in Boston. Only by the road leading to Roxbury could the suffering people be supplied with food. Besides closing the port, Parliament had abolished the charter of Massachusetts. The people no longer could elect thirty-six councilors ”

“ They did not go upon the land, but met at the house of Dudley, in Roxbury, in midwinter, fifteen miles from the localities referred to in the map. If they had been upon the premises, there must have been a surveyor appointed, and the report would have mentioned his name. This map states that the station was three miles from Charles River, according to charter, whereas it is three miles from the head of Jack's Pasture Brook, that brook being called on the map Charles River. ”

“ In 1630 the “Colony of Massachusetts Bay” was augmented by the arrival of a large number of settlers, many of them being people of education and refinement. The towns of Boston, Watertown, Roxbury, and Dorchester were founded. In August the first Court of Assistants met since the arrival of the colonists, and voted to build houses and to raise salaries for ministers. This year was made a bold step toward the establishment of civil liberty in the removing of the governing council from England to Massachusetts. In 1633 the settlement of Connecticut was begun. ”

“ The same sentiments that prompted the whipping and hanging and persecuting incidents of Puritan history were entertained by the orthodox elect of Roxbury and were manifested Brook Farmward sometimes with sullen hostility. The young folk of the neighborhood came to our entertainments gladly enough, but some of the harsh-visaged elders would have found greater satisfaction in administering stern old-fashioned discipline if their power to deal with malignants had only been what it was in the days when their kind ruled Massachusetts Bay Colony with a rod of iron. ”

“ The city owns and operates the waterworks.
Springfield was founded in 1636 by a company of settlers from Roxbury led by William Pynchon (1590-1662) . Pynchon, who had been one of the original patentees of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was dissatisfied with the government of Roxbury, of which he had been a founder. On a trip to the Connecticut Valley he selected a spot for a new colony which should have a limited membership and in which his ideas as to government might be put into execution. ”

“ Roxbury and Company B were the entertainers in 1894 and Co. H of Dorchester received at the U. S. Hotel, Boston, Sept. 25, 1895; for 1896, no record is found, but Sept. 6, 1897, Co. E and Somerville appear again; it is Medford and Co. C in 1898; Woburn and her K Company in 1899. The old century ends, as far as our Regiment is concerned, October 10, 1900, with I Company and Natick, while the new one begins Sept. 7, 1901, on the old campground at Lynnfield; Sept. 22, 1902, finds the veterans again in Quincy; Sept. 24, 1903, in Roxbury; August 19, 1904, with Co. H. at Nantasket. ”

“ Aug. 1, '63; recruit to Twelfth Infty.; trans. to Thirty-ninth, thence to Thirty-second and M. O.
Gordon, Horace, F., 36, M.; shoemaker, Roxbury, Aug. 20, '62; M. O. June 2, '65.
Green, John W., 25, M.; teamster, Roxbury; Aug. 20, '62; missing, May 8, '64, Spottsylvania.
Gunning, John, 25, M.; laborer, Roxbury; Aug. 20, '62; Pris. Aug. 19, '64; d. prison hospital, Dec. 10, '64, Salisbury, N. C.
Ham, Henry A., 28, S.; clerk, Boston; July 27, '63; recruit to Thirteenth Infty.; trans. to Thirty-ninth, thence to Thirty-second and M. O.
Henry, Daniel, 33, M.; piano maker; Roxbury; Aug. 20, '62; k. ”

“ For the information of foreigners and uneducated people in general, we must mention that there is a thriving village on the Boston and Providence railroad, about ten miles from Roxbury, which rejoices in the name of Canton. ”

“ In 1842 he became a member of the Brook Farm association for agriculture and education, being associated with George and Sophia Ripley, George William Curtis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Theodore Parker, William Henry Channing, John Sullivan Dwight, Margaret Fuller, and other philosophers more or less directly concerned in the remarkable attempt to realize at Roxbury a high ideal of social and intellectual life. ”

“ John Williams and —— Swan S.; John Humphrey E. John Williams N.E.——Salt marsh and upland, 20 A., in Roxbury, heirs of Benjamin Williams S.W.; town creek between Roxbury and Dorchester S.E.; Joseph Curtis N.
To John Lucas, Edward Tuckerman. Oct. 4. 1782; Lib. 136, fol. 22; Land in Boston, on Dock Square and Cooper's Alley, bounded by lands of Thomas Green, Joshua Blanchard, widow Apthorp, John Newell, William Greenleaf, Jonathan Simpson and heirs of Thomas Young.
To Nathan Spear, March 1. 1783; Lib. 137, fol. 131; Land in Boston, passageway from the Town Dock to Green's wharf W. ”

“ Surely there is no lack of power. In 1832, the government of Boston said to the town of Roxbury, not in the language of David to Moab—thou shalt be “my wash pot”—but thou shalt be the receptacle of our offal—of all, that is filthy, and corruptible, within our borders. The City Government of Boston went extensively then into the carrion and garbage business, and furnished the provant for a legion of hogs, the property of an influential citizen of Roxbury. ”

“ The government of Roxbury, like the other plantations, was founded on a theocratic basis. Church and state were inseparable. No one could be admitted as a citizen unless he was a member of the church. Many of the first settlers came from Nazing, a small village in England, about twenty miles from London, on the river Lee. Morris, Ruggles, Payson, and Peacock, names read in the earliest records of Woodstock, were old family names in Nazing. Other first inhabitants of Roxbury came from Wales and the west of England, or London and its vicinity. ”

“ XII In a blind alley leading out of Hammond Street, Roxbury—which section shelters most of Boston's negro population of close to twenty thousand—some dozen or fifteen dusky folk, that night, were gathered together in a house that reeked of fetid air, gaslight, sweat, tobacco smoke, and the peculiar aroma of the African. ”

“ Marblehead affirmed that the proceedings of the brave citizens of Boston, and of other towns, in opposition to the landing of the tea, were rational, generous and just; that they were highly honored for their noble firmness in support of American liberty, and that the men of the town were ready with their lives to assist their brethren in opposing all measures tending to enslave the country." Under date of December 3, the people of Roxbury voted that they were in duty bound to join with Boston, and other sister towns, to preserve inviolate the liberties handed down by their ancestors. ”

“ This illustrious champion of liberty was born in Roxbury, near Boston, in the year 1741. His father was a respectable farmer, and employed much of his time in raising fruit. He was the person that produced that species of apple called the Warren Russet. ”

“ Born a royalist, he cherished the principles of republicanism. Surrounded with affluence and comfort, he left all to share the destiny of the Pilgrims. Calm, prudent, and peaceful, he joined the zeal of an enthusiast with the faith of a martyr. A part of the new immigrants settled at Salem; others at Cambridge and Watertown, on Charles River; while others founded Roxbury and Dorchester. The governor resided for a while at Charlestown, but soon crossed over to the peninsula of Shawmut and founded Boston, which became henceforth the capital of the colony. ”

“ Beyond this fashionable district, the "Back Bay Fens" have been skillfully laid out in a series of boulevards and parks, making a chain extending several miles south and southwest through the suburbs, Franklin Park, covering nearly a square mile, being the chief. Here, on grounds with great natural adornments, in Roxbury, Brookline, and Brighton, is a region of much beauty. The surface is undulating, finely wooded, dotted with lakes, and displaying many costly suburban houses, in full glory of garden and foliage. ”

“ Alcott and I returned last evening from a short visit to Boston to purchase a few articles, and while there we went out one evening to Roxbury [6] where there are 80 or 90 persons playing away their youth and daytime in a miserably joyous, frivolous manner. There are not above four or five who could be selected as really and truly progressing beings. Most of the adults are there to pass “a good time” ”

“ A descendant of John Rogers, of Smithfield farm, came to America in the early emigration. Can any one give any information as to the life and death of a son, John Rogers, Jr., of Roxbury?
Answer.—John Rogers, Jr., or second, was born at Duxbury, about February 28, 1641. He married Elisabeth Peabody, and, after King Philip's War, removed to Mount Hope Neck, Bristol, Rhode Island, about 1680. He again removed to Boston in 1697 ”

“ Wabbaquasset.25 Town meetings to arrange for a new settlement, were held in Roxbury in October of 1683.26 A petition was signed, by a number of representative citizens of the town, asking that the General Court might grant to them a tract seven miles square about Quinnatisset, in the Nipmuck country. All save six of the thirty-six who signed this petition, afterwards became settlers of the new town, and of the five selectmen of Roxbury who presented the petition to the General Court, three27 represented families prominent in the early history of Woodstock. ”

“ Each of these was connected with the mainland by a narrow neck of its own, and now all three, with the addition of Roxbury, West Roxbury, Brighton, and Noddle’s Island (East Boston) , are included in the present metropolis, while Muddy Brook (Brookline) and Winnisimmet (Chelsea) , which were originally attached to Boston, are not included within her present limits. The growth and expansion of the town, we judge, are unparalleled, in some respects, by any other city in the world, with a character of her own and a position in the history of the country of which she may well be proud. ”

“ I can see by the way you are looking that you're just crazy to. It's all Roxbury's fault, anyway. Why should he get up and make a speech in London without letting us know? Just see how it has placed us! I think Mr. Brock is an angel to do what he has done for you and Roxbury. Yes, my dear, you will have to confess that Roxbury is a brute—a perfect brute. I'm sure, if you have a spark of fairness in you, you must hate him. No, no! Don't say anything, Edith. ”

“ Roxbury fully equipped for three days' service. To these men was read his general order, preparing their minds for action. They were forbidden to play at cards or other games of chance, and advised to ponder the importance of the cause in which they were enlisted. "But it may not be amiss for the troops to know," he added, "that if any man in action shall presume to skulk, or hide himself, or retreat from the enemy without the orders of his commanding officer, he will be instantly shot down." And with this exhortation and warning Washington concluded his preparations. ”

“ For this purpose he was to have four thousand picked men in readiness, in two divisions, under Generals Sullivan and Greene. At a concerted signal from Roxbury, they were to embark in boats near the mouth of Charles River, cross under cover of the fire of three floating batteries, land in two places in Boston, secure its strong posts, force the gates and works at the Neck, and let in the Roxbury troops. ”

“ I was longing for the Plains again, for one more ride, reckless and free, across their broad stretches, for one more gorgeous sunset out on Red Range, one more soft, iridescent twilight purpling down to the evening darkness as I had seen it on "Rockport" all those years. How the real Rockport, the Massachusetts town, faded from me, and the sea, and the college halls, and city buildings. The steam and steel and brick and marble of an older civilization, all gave place to Nature's broad handiwork and the generous-hearted, capable, unprejudiced people of this new West. ”

“ The most ancient town in Massachusetts appears quite like an affair of yesterday, compared with Rochester. Its attributes of youth are the activity and eager life with which it is redundant. The whole street, sidewalks and centre, was crowded with pedestrians, horsemen, stage-coaches, gigs, light wagons, and heavy ox-teams, all hurrying, trotting, rattling, and rumbling, in a throng that passed continually, but never passed away. ”