HISTORIC Hastings FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX. BY SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE. Ellustrated. "We take no note of time But from its loss. To give it then a tongue BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 1874. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. THIS INVITATION TO THE READER. HIS is neither a county history nor a relation of consecutive events, but a series of historie-colloquial rambles among the memorable places of Old Middlesex. Arm in arm we thread the Colonial highways, reading history, recounting traditions, and discussing men and events with much freedom, challenging as we go the dwellings of former generations to yield up their secrets, not indeed to reproduce spectres, but living objects, rehabilitating the Old and arraying it beside the New. At parting I shall hope you will have no cause to regret our companionship. Our saunterings are chiefly in those ways made famous by the earliest warlike events of the Revolution, pausing, incidentally, to trace the almost obliterated vestiges of the siege, with pictures of the camps and portraits of the characters, civil and military, of the time, considered as men and not as gods. History of battles or campaigns should, as I think, enable the student to go upon the ground, and with book in hand follow the movements of contending armies as they actually occurred. As much as has been written of the eleven months' campaign for the possession of Boston, I have not found any modern author who has brought his narrative of the military operations and topography into correspondence, and in so far as this may be accounted a deficiency, have endeavored to supply it. Foremost, also, among my motives is the knowledge that the exigencies of commerce or of overflowing population are changing the face of Nature beyond all power of recognition. With pen and pencil I seek to establish some slight memorials on which the future explorer may lean a little as he takes up and brings forward the chain. At this day the ancient shire, our subject, exerts a weighty influence in the nation. She contributes a VicePresident, Cabinet Minister, Senator, and three of the eleven Representatives to which the State is entitled in its councils. Who have been her children in the past will appear as we proceed. The map which is joined to this volume is of great rarity, and is now, by the kindness of Dr. Wheatland of Salem, for the first time reproduced in exact fac-simile. With its help we discover the appearance of Colonial Boston and its environs of a century ago. It may be consulted with confidence. The view from the Navy-Yard, showing Bunker Hill previous to the erection of the monument, is from a painting by Mrs. Hannah Armstrong, née Crowninshield. Cradock's Plantation House is from a photograph by Wilkinson of Medford, taken before important alterations had impaired much of its antique character. Inman House is from a negative by Warren of Cambridge. I trust these pages may bear to the many friends to whom I am under obligations the evidence of the faithfulness of my endeavors to portray what has seemed most worthy in Old New England Life. "Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield; MELROSE, October 29, 1873. |