Document · book

State Street; a brief account of a Boston way

State Street Trust Company (Boston, Mass.), 1906. A public-domain text about Boston, accessioned whole so the archive can quote it.

Document

Type

book

Author

State Street Trust Company (Boston, Mass.)

Publisher

Boston : Printed for the State Street Trust Co.

Published, as stated

1906

Language

en

Media type

text/plain; charset=utf-8

Size

42492 bytes

Preservation

preserved

Digest (SHA-256)

f7c9f82b769d4778a132a19df0a3b31641aaa04311695b708f2cb85b8bcfb9b7

Text

Extracted text, as held. Quoted without alteration.

73.67 S7S7s | State Street Trust Company, Boston State Street THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF COMMODORE BYRON MCCANDLESS A N ••«">«"*S UQNia JJIHdWVd % V STREET STATE STREET A BEIEF ACCOUNT OF A BOSTON WAY PRINTED FOR THE STATE STREET TRUST COMPANY BOSTON, MASS. COPYRIGHTED 1906 STATE STREET TRUST COMPANY THE ORNAMENTS ON PAGES ONE, THIRTY- NINE AND FORTY-TWO ARE REPRODUCED FROM THE STONES MARKING THE SPOT IN STATE STREET WHERE THE BOSTON MASSACRE OCCURRED. THE ORNAMENT ON PAGE THIRTY-SIX IS A COPY OF THE TABLET ON THE BUILDING OPPOSITE THE MASSACRE WALTON ADVERTISING AND PRINTING COMPANY BOSTON, MASS. F THE ORIGINALS OP THE CUTS USED IN THIS PAMPHLET AND MANY OTHER QUAINT AND IN- TERESTING PICTURES MAY BE SEEN ON THE WALLS OF THE MAIN OFFICE OF THE STATE STREET TRUST COMPANY AT 38 STATE STREET, BOSTON STATE STREET THE BEGINNING OF A WAY. THE street is old, — as old as Boston itself. If one would look for its ori- gin, he must go back to the days before the Puritans of St. Botolph's town set foot upon the hills that run up from Boston Har- bor. Even then he is forced to fall upon con- jecture, and surmise that it may have been the trail which the Indians followed from their camps on Shawmut Hills to their fisheries hi the bay. William Blackstone, the only white in- habitant on Tri-mountain previous to 1630, may have trod the self-same trail on his way along the ridge, which was the principal spur from Century Hill down to the water. State Street, despite the uncertainty of its origin, has been from the very day of Boston's settlement Bos- ton's most important thoroughfare. The street has written itself large and per- manently in the records of an ancient town and on the page of a nation's history. When Eng- STATE STREET lish ships brought English goods to Puritan homes in the days of the first settlers, it was the mart of trade and the seat of justice. Upon it lived the early settlers and the town's first mer- chants. Many scenes of Provincial interest and Colonial importance had here their setting, and on its frosty pavement was spilled the first blood of the Revolution. To-day about it throbs the financial interest of a great State, and to it are ever turning for help the industrial projects of a great nation. EARLY COLONIAL LANDMARKS. OUR Puritan forbears were men of order and system, — men who believed in metes and bounds to everything. So we find them early setting down their names and lands in the Book of Possessions, and back to this old record go many of the deeds of Boston. This book was a record of a survey, by order of the General Court, April 1, 1634, of the lands and houses of the first inhabitants. On the old map, five by nine feet, is the earliest record of State Street. It appears a short, nameless way from the water up to the hills, and is dotted on either side with the houses of the first settlers. 2 STATE STREET At its head, where now the Old State House stands, was the first market-place. And so it was that, as early as 1636, when the lines of cer- tain streets were fixed and had by popular con- sent been named, State Street was known as Market Street. THE FIRST CHURCH OF BOSTON. ACROSS the way from the market-place in 1632, on the site since occupied by Brazer's Building, stood the first meeting-house, later dignified as the First Church.

Questions this record answers

Each answer is composed only from fields this record carries, and names the attestation for what it says. A question the record cannot answer from its own attested content is not asked here. Where a boundary is described as official it was promulgated by an authority with the power to draw it and is not amended by anything on the vernacular layer; where it is described as vernacular it is held by attestation alone and amends no official boundary.

Identity

Identifier

urn:lemay:boston:document:state-street-a-brief-account-of-a-boston-way-3

Canonical URL

https://boston.fyi/document/state-street-a-brief-account-of-a-boston-way-3

As JSON

https://boston.fyi/document/state-street-a-brief-account-of-a-boston-way-3.json

Version

1 · last changed 5 September 2026