Document · book

Old Boston Days & Ways

Mary Caroline Crawford, 1909. Boston social history and legend from the Revolution to the passing of the Hancock house, rich in the names Bostonians used for their own streets and houses.

Document

Type

book

Author

Mary Caroline Crawford

Publisher

Boston : Little, Brown

Published, as stated

1909

Language

en

Media type

text/plain; charset=utf-8

Size

726882 bytes

Preservation

preserved

Digest (SHA-256)

c935f15ede49aa0361661e9dd03d407d1b895db9c84b0a2797e0d8499c76f63b

Text

Extracted text, as held. Quoted without alteration.

OLD BOSTON DAY5 AND WAY5 MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD OLD BOSTON DAYS & WAYS ( 1_ i_ . ' :.ijm Simmer Appletou MRS. UICIIAKI) DERUV AS ST. CECILIA. Frontispiece OLD BOSTON DAYS & WAYS FROM THE DAWN OF THE REVOLUTION UNTIL THE TOWN BECAME A CITY BY MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD AUTHOR OF " ST. BOTOLPH'S TOWN," " AMONG OLD NEW ENGLAND INNS," "old new ENGLAND CHURCHES," ETC. With Numerous Illustrations BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1909 Copyright, 1909, By Little, Brown, and Company. All rights reserved Published, October, 1909 Bleetrotyped and Printed by THE COLONIAL P li E S S C. II. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A. FOREWORD Almost of necessity a town is a different thing, and has a social Hfe quite distinct, from a city. On its political side it is endowed with color and individuality, from the very fact that its humblest inhabitant may, at town meet- ing, raise his voice to oppose the motion of the richest and most renowned man in the com- munity. And, on the social side, it possesses a simplicity of interests, a delightful neighborli- ness, and a quality of charming intimacy which may never be claimed by a city. So, in this book, — which takes up where my " St. Botolph's Town " dropped it, the story of Boston's share in the struggle for in- dependence, — I have stopped just short of the time when we blossomed into a munici- pality and indulged in a mayor and aldermen. The end of Boston's life as a town seemed to me really the end of an era and I thought I could paint a better picture of life and manners here, during the period which followed the Revolution, if I did not venture far into the history of the nineteenth century. vi FOREWORD Besides, the niche that I have endeavored to fill in this book has been curiously vacant heretofore. No single volume happens to have covered intensively, so to speak, that very in- teresting formative period when the peculiar genius of Boston was beginning to find itself in art, in politics, and in civic life. Character- istically, I have passed lightly over the politics and have dealt wdth the personal rather than with the technical side of the arts. I am so incorrigibly of the opinion that the people of a period are its history! My warm thanks are due to the Houghton Mifflin Company for their courtesy in permitting the quotations credited to Mr. James K. Hos- mer's " Life of Samuel Adams," and to Mr. Harold Murdock's " Earl Percy's Dinner Table "; thanks I give also to Mr. Howard W. Spurr for his kindness in allowing extracts from Goss's " Life of Paul Revere," to Mr. Charles Knowles Bolton, of the Boston Athen- aeum, for his personal helpfulness and for his generous permission to draw upon the rich illustrative material in the possession of the library, to Mr. Louis A. Holman, to Mrs. James A. Garland, who has helped me greatly in the Tudor data and pictures, to Mr. WiUiam Sumner Appleton, who has cooperated to the end that the lovely portrait of Mrs. Richard Derby might appear in the book, to Mr. William B. Clarke, FOREWORD vii for his service in connection with Revere's lantern-hanger, and to the New England Maga- zine, whose publishers have kindly placed at my disposal a wealth of rare information about old Boston. The works which have been consulted in the preparation of this volume are many more than could be named here, and credit to them

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Identity

Identifier

urn:lemay:boston:document:old-boston-days-ways

Canonical URL

https://boston.fyi/document/old-boston-days-ways

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https://boston.fyi/document/old-boston-days-ways.json

Version

1 · last changed 5 September 2026