Folded in, facing p. 162 of Caleb H. Snow’s Geography of Boston, Boston, 1830, is “A Map of Boston, County of Suffolk, and the Adjacent Towns, A. Bowen Sc.” The original engraving is 12" x 12" and as reproduced here has been cropped at the sides. Excepting only Weston, a few miles beyond the map’s western edge, the map encompasses the entire sphere of Charles Francis Adams’ activities, 1829–1832. That the map was drawn or redrawn only a short time before publication is clear from its inclusion of such recent constructions as Western Avenue over the Mill Dam in the Back Bay to Brook-line, 1821; the Granite Railway in Quincy, 1826; and the Warren Bridge and Mill Pond triangle, 1828 (see below, p. 305–309). The map records other features of special relevance to Charles Francis Adams’ activities and those of his family at this period: the route of the Middlesex Canal through Charlestown and Medford (see below, p. 153), “Prest. Adam’s Seat” and “Payne’s i.e. Penn’s Hill” in Quincy, &c.

Abel Bowen (1790–1850), born in New York State, came to Boston as an apprentice to his uncle Daniel Bowen, a printer. By 1812 he opened his own shop as an engraver on copper and wood, pioneering in introducing the craft of wood-engraving in Boston. Many of the next generation of Boston artists and engravers were trained by him. After lithography was brought to Boston by John Pendleton, Bowen made use of that technique as well. Bowen was responsible for the preparation of the illustrations in a number of books relating to Boston, its history and appearance, and for the publication of some of them himself. The most important of these were Caleb H. Snow’s History of Boston, issued in parts in 1825, in which were seventeen full-page copperplates and woodcuts; Bowen’s Picture of Boston, 1829; and Snow’s Geography of Boston, 1830. He was the principal figure in the “Boston Bewick Company,” which began in 1834 to bring out The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, publication of which continued through three volumes to 1837, all heavily illustrated, mostly with woodcuts. The illustrations of buildings in Boston and vicinity which follow are, with one exception, selected from Bowen’s work. See the article “Abel Bowen” by William Henry Whitmore in Bostonian Society, Publications, 1 (1886–1888):29–56, with illustrations following.

Bulfinch’s State House, built along Beacon Street at the head of the graceful curve of Park Street and dominating the Common from its eminence, was for many years a favorite subject for the graphic artist. Numerous representations of the façade from the Common were done from a point that allowed the inclusion of the John Hancock residence on its Beacon Street site just to the west (left) of the State House. The draftsman, M. E. D. Brown, in shifting his angle of vision slightly to the east (right) and eliminating the Hancock house, provided us with a rare glimpse of the street, “under the shadow of Boston State House,” and of the tops of its row-houses, which Henry Adams described in the opening passage of The Education as “the little passage called Hancock Avenue” which ran “from Beacon Street, skirting the State House grounds, to Mount Vernon Street, on the summit of Beacon Hill.” There “in the third house below Mount Vernon Place” Charles Francis and Abigail Brooks Adams took up residence following their marriage on 3 Sept. 1829, to remain until 1842 (see below, p. 2).

Brown’s admirable view was chosen as the front cover of the “Grand Centennial March,” published in sheet-music form (Boston 1830), which Charles Zeuner had composed for the two-hundredth anniversary celebration in September 1830 of Boston’s settlement. The lithograph as well as the drawing may well have been Brown’s work. He is known primarily as a lithographer, and as an excellent one. This would have been a very early work, antedating by two years his appearance as an artist in Philadelphia and by five his reappearance in Boston (George C. Groce and David H. Wallace, The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of American Artists, 1564–1860, New Haven and London, 1957). He may have been one of the two Browns listed by Bowen among the distinguished artists who had been in his employ and received training from him (William Henry Whitmore, “Abel Bowen,” Bostonian Society, Publications, 1 [1886–1888]:35).

Fourteen miles to the north and east of Boston at the tip of a peninsula extending three or four miles into the sea is Nahant, which in the first half of the 19th century was Boston’s most fashionable resort during the summer season. The lively picture it presented is described in Margaret Morton Quincy’s evocative account of “a project of pleasure” with her mother and sister at Nahant in 1824 (The Articulate Sisters, ed. M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Cambridge, 1946, p. 50–61).

Opinion was that Nahant’s location “for picturesque beauty and sublimity of scenery ... is not surpassed by any on the American coast.” Its hotel was well known for the excellence of its table and for the variety of the entertainment. “Large and commodious stables are appended to the hotel, and a bathing house for warm and cold baths, and floating baths for those who may prefer the bracing xiaction of sea water.... Nahant has many amusements—angling with the rod may be enjoyed as a pleasant recreation, standing on the rocks.... Game too is abundant in the vicinity; but there are few amusements or pleasures superior to that of riding, at suitable hours of the day, on the beach. A beautiful building in imitation of a Grecian temple, stands on an eminence near the hotel, in which are two elegant billiard rooms. There are also convenient covered bowling alleys.” (Bowen’s Picture of Boston, 2d edn., Boston, 1833, p. 300–303; see also, below, p. 305.)

The engraving, in which many of these attractions are shown, is the work of Ammin & Smith from the drawing by J. Rp. . Penniman. It was among the plates Bowen used when publishing Caleb H. Snow, History of Boston ... with Some Account of the Environs (2d edn., Boston, 1828, following p. 427).

Chauncy Place, just off Summer Street, so-called because it had been the site of an orchard and garden cultivated by the Reverend Charles Chauncy when he was the minister of the First Church, had been the property of the Church since 1680. The decision to build a meetinghouse on the site was taken in 1807 at the same time that it was decided to sell the “Old Brick,” located on Cornhill Square, which had served the First Church for almost a century. The new edifice, actually the fourth since the founding of the Church in 1632, was apparently constructed to the plans of Benjamin Joy by Asher Benjamin, who was appointed inspector and superintendent of the operation. The building, 70" x 75", was constructed of brick and was in use from 1808 to 1868, at which time it was sold, the congregation moving into its new building at Marlborough and Berkeley streets. Perhaps the decision to abandon the old structure, with which Adamses and Brookses had long been identified (see below, p. 14), contributed to Charles Francis Adams’ decision on his return from England to Boston in 1868 to seek a different congregational affiliation. Actually the Chauncy Place building had never met with the congregation’s approval, the principal complaint being the lack of light. During the years of its use it was several times remodeled, principally in 1842, but never satisfactorily. (Arthur B. Ellis, History of the First Church in Boston, 1630–1880, Boston, 1881, p. 235, 270–271, 306–312; Caleb H. Snow, Geography of Boston, Boston, 1830, p. 98.) Bowen’s engraving was used first in his Picture of Boston, 2d edn., Boston, 1833, facing p. 128.

Charles Francis Adams and George Washington Adams represented their father at the dedicatory service of the Adams Temple on 12 November 1828 (see volume 2:307). Six years had passed since John Adams had conveyed to the town of Quincy, by deed dated 29 June 1822, tracts of land owned by him, on some of which were granite quarries, and had created the Adams Temple and School xiiFund to administer the property and to carry out the purposes for which he had made the gift. The first of these purposes was “the completing and furnishing of a Temple to be built of Stone, to be taken from the premises, for the Public Worship of God, and the public instruction in religion and morality, for the use of the Congregational Society in said town.” To that end the Supervisors of the Fund were charged to devote all the income derived from the property to the building of the Temple until it was completed. By 1826 the Society’s funds and the accumulated income in the Adams Fund were held sufficient for work on the Temple to be begun.

Alexander Parris of Boston (1780–1852), on recommendation of Solomon Willard, was selected as the architect. Parris, whose work in Boston since 1816 had already established him as one of the leading exponents of the Greek Revival style, was the architect for St. Paul’s Church on Tremont Street (1819) and for the Quincy Market (1824–1826), both of which he designed with the pedimented porticos and monolithic columns of granite that he was to use for the Adams Temple (Walter H. Kilham, Boston after Bulfinch, Cambridge, 1946, p. 21-24; Dictionary of American Biography, New York, 1928–1936, under Parris). John Adams’ use of the word “temple” for the church he wished built, his specification of granite for its construction, and his coupling to the building of a temple the building of a classical academy all suggest that Parris’ design was in full compliance with the donor’s intent for the church.

The Temple was completed at a cost of $30,488.56, of which $2,402.63 was derived from the accumulation in the Adams Temple and School Fund. The granite from the quarries given by John Adams used for the entire building except the four columns and capitals, is presumably not included in these figures. John Quincy Adams’ subsequent accomplishment in 1829 of his long-held plan to complete the granite chamber beneath the portico in which he had had the remains of his parents reburied and to install behind the pulpit in the meetinghouse a memorial tablet and bust was at his own charge. (William S. Pattee, A History of Old Braintree and Quincy, with a Sketch of Randolph and Holbrook, Quincy, 1878, p. 242–244; William Churchill Edwards, Historic Quincy, Massachusetts, Quincy, 1954, p. 136–141; and below, p. 55–56.)

Bowen’s engraving of the Adams Temple reproduced here was apparently made by 1829 (see below, p. 24–25) and seems to have been intended for use in his Picture of Boston, first published in that year. However, the plate was not included in that work until its third edition was reached in 1837. In March 1835 the drawing was used to make a larger engraving for Bowen’s American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, 1:289. There the drawing is signed J. Kidder. James Kidder of Boston was a painter of landscapes as well as a draftsman; he was working for Bowen as early as 1823 (George C. Groce and David H. Wallace, The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564–1860, New Haven and London, 1957).

This drawing of Tremont Street, used by Abel Bowen as the frontispiece for both his Picture of Boston and Snow’s Geography of Boston, is of the prospect toward the Park Street Church at the corner of Park and Tremont streets as observed from where Beacon Street enters Tremont from the right. The large structure which faced both on Tremont and Beacon streets, on the site of the present Tremont Building, is the Tremont House, opened in 1829. Immediately beyond it is the Granary Burial Ground. Directly opposite the Tremont House is the Tremont Theatre, built in 1827.

The competition between the new Tremont Theatre and the older Boston Theatre on Federal Street proved so ruinous to both in 1828 that the lessees of the Tremont Theatre took over the Boston Theatre for four years with the intent to keep the house dark. Hence it was that until the end of 1832 there was but one theater in Boston in which regular dramatic performances were given. The Tremont Theatre, which had been established by “persons who believed the time had arrived when something should be done to raise the character of the Boston stage,” soon became sufficiently successful so that it “receives patronage from the most wealthy and fashionable” (Bowen’s Picture of Boston, 2d edn., Boston, 1833, p. 204–206). The building was planned to be worthy of the patronage it sought. The architect clearly derived the façade of Quincy granite, with its four Ionic pilasters and Tuscan Doric antae supporting an entablature and pediment, from the west wall of the Erechtheum in Athens. He joined to this an Italianate podium containing three identical segmental-arched openings symmetrically placed within the rusticated central section and gave to the whole wide and ample proportions. An architectural rendering reflecting its quality appears on the jacket of Walter H. Kilham, Boston after Bulfinch, Cambridge, 1946. Within the arched doors was a wide hall from which a stairway ascended to the boxes, “the lobbies for the promenade, and separate drawing rooms, communicating with an elegant saloon in the centre” (Bowen’s Picture of Boston, 2d edn., p. 207). The building was sold to a Baptist Society in 1842, became known as the Tremont Temple, and burned in 1852.

The Tremont House, architecturally “an epoch-making work, original (almost revolutionary) in plan and with an exterior so simple as to be almost austere,” was at the same time perhaps the first hotel in America of the modern type (Talbot Hamlin, Greek Revival Architecture in America, New York, 1944, p. 112). When the New York Commercial Advertiser noted that “The Bostonians have boasted much of their great hotel, the Tremont House. But they have not boasted too much. It is indeed a noble edifice, and as a hotel ... above all praise,” the Boston Patriot proudly reprinted the tribute (3 August 1831, p. 2, col. 3). Within a year of its construction its importance was recognized by the publication of a handsome volume on the hotel, consisting largely of architectural drawings: William Havard Eliot, A Description of the Tremont House, Boston, 1830. The building of Quincy granite fronted 160 feet on Tremont Street xivand 104 feet on Beacon Street. Within were elegant public rooms, derived from Greek prototypes, and 170 rooms for guests. The portico at the principal entrance was 37 feet 6 inches long and its four Doric columns twenty feet high. The cost of the Tremont House when opened was $300,000; it remained in use until 1894 (same, p. 4–15; Bowen’s Picture of Boston, 2d edn., p. 215–218; Kilham, Boston after Bulfinch, p. 32–34).

The architect of both the Tremont House and the Tremont Theatre was Isaiah Rogers (1800–1869), who, after four years with Solomon Willard, had opened his own office in 1826; he remained in Boston until 1834, when he left to continue a notable career in New York and Cincinnati. “He was undoubtedly the greatest architect of the Boston group ... one of the most remarkable designers of the entire Greek Revival movement.” (Hamlin, Greek Revival Architecture in America, p. in, 114–117; Dictionary of American Biography, New York, 1928–1936.)

The horse- or ox-drawn cars devised by the inventor-engineer Gridley Bryant to convey the massive granite blocks from the “Railway Quarry” and the “Bunker Hill Quarry” in Quincy to the navigable waters of the Neponset River for transshipment to the Bunker Hill monument site in Charlestown have their place in the history of American railroads (see below, p. 307). The cars or carriages had wheels six feet in diameter, the wheels shod with iron half an inch thick and flanged on the inner side of the rim. Suspended by chains from the axles was the load-carrying platform which could be raised or lowered by machinery on the top of the car. Two or three cars could be coupled for conveying blocks twenty feet or more in length. A sixteen-ton load could be carried on a three-car train which moved at a speed of three miles an hour on tracks that descended eighty-three feet in the nearly four miles from quarry to wharf. The tracks were of wood faced with iron and were laid on a bed of broken stone with a gravel surface. See Bowen’s Picture of Boston, 2d edn., p. 286–288; William Churchill Edwards, Historic Quincy, Massachusetts, Quincy, 1954, p. 105–108. Bowen’s representation of a train on the Granite Railway is from Caleb H. Snow, Geography of Boston, Boston, 1830, p. 159.

The Boston Athenaeum, founded in 1807, had moved its location twice when James Perkins give to it his house at 13 Pearl Street, on the west side near High Street. After the house and that next to it had been converted and remodeled into a single structure under the direction of Solomon Willard, the third of Boston’s triumvirs of the Greek Revival, the Athenaeum occupied the building in 1822 (Mabel M. Swan, The Athenaeum Gallery, 1827–1873, Boston, 1940, p. 3). Here the Athenaeum remained until 1849, when it built its present quarters on Beacon Street. The interior of the Pearl Street xvbuilding was described in 1829: “On entering, the visitor finds himself surrounded with the busts and statues of heroes and learned men of antiquity. At his left ... is the Reading Room, in which are found the newspapers and journals of the present day, with complete files of periodical publications for many years back. In this room it is contrary to etiquette, to hold any conversation whatever. On the right is a large and convenient room where the proprietors hold their meetings, and the trustees transact their business. This room is tastefully decorated with statuary and paintings. The Librarian’s room and a conversation room, complete the apartments on the lower story. The second and third story contain the library” (Bowen’s Picture of Boston, Boston, 1829, p. 38–39).

In 1826 it became possible to proceed with plans to construct a separate building on the Pearl Street property in the rear of the library to house a gallery of paintings and a lecture hall (see below, p. 124–125, 235). Plans for the building were made by Willard, and the Athenaeum. Gallery held its first public exhibition of paintings in May 1827.

Visible to the right in Bowen’s engraving is the windowless third story “lighted only from the top, in a manner peculiarly adapted for the exhibition of Paintings” (Bowen’s Picture of Boston, p. 39–40, facing p. 204; Caleb H. Snow, Geography of Boston, Boston, 1830, p. 105–106).

“In large cities, it is necessary to have bathing-houses; in places of a scattered population, they may be dispensed with; and yet warm baths will require a house anywhere. Several have been erected in Boston within the last twenty years—of which we believe Mr. Braman’s, below Charles Street and net far from Beacon street ... on the margin of Charles river or bay, is the largest and most convenient. The building is two stories, eighty feet in length, and fifty in breadth—and it has fifty bathing rooms. The water is salt, both the warm and cold. Connected with the building ... is a large apparatus for a swimming school.... This, we understand, is the only school for teaching the art of swimming in the United States.” American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, 1:512 (August 1835). Charles Francis Adams’ quotation above is from page 304, below.

That these two portraits, never alienated from the family, are of Charles Francis Adams’ older brothers seems certain. The earliest unmistakable reference to these likenesses occurs in an article, “The Household of John Quincy Adams,” by Harriet Taylor Upton in Wide Awake, 27 (1888):363–377. The paintings are there reproduced, the subject of each identified, and the ownership of both fixed in xviWilliam Clarkson Johnson, then of Newburyport. Johnson (1823–1893) had been the husband of Mary Louisa Adams Johnson (1828–1859), who was the only child of John Adams 2d to live to maturity (see Adams Genealogy). The present owner, Mrs. Waldo C. M. Johnston, is the great-granddaughter of that marriage. Neither on the paintings themselves nor in Mrs. Upton’s article is there indication of artist or date.

However, in that article the reproductions of these paintings appear on the same page with the portrait of Charles Francis Adams painted by Charles Bird King in 1827 (see volume 2:vii, and facing p. 144). With the age of one of the sitters known, then the portraits of the three brothers, each of a sitter of nearly the same age, support a view that each was painted within a year or two of the sitter’s reaching the age of twenty-one. A date of 1820–1825 can thus be assigned to the portraits of George Washington Adams (1801–1829) and John Adams 2d (1803–1834) with some confidence.

Other affinities among the paintings suggest that all were the work of a single artist. Charles Bird King (1785–1862), an American artist who was one of the best known portraitists resident in Washington during the years that John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State and President (1817–1828), had his studio (see volume 1:48) quite close to the Adams residence, 1820–1825, at 1333 F Street, exchanged visits frequently with the Adamses (John Quincy Adams, Diary, passim), and is known to have painted in the years 1819–1827, likenesses of John Quincy Adams, Louisa Catherine Adams, her sister Mrs. Nathaniel Frye Jr., and Charles Francis Adams all from life, as well as two portraits of John Adams after earlier Stuarts (Andrew Oliver, Portraits of John and Abigail Adams, Cambridge, 1967, p. 192–195, 221–222). King would have been the likely artist of portraits of others of John Quincy Adams’ family commissioned within those years. This presumption is not weakened by a comparison of the George Washington Adams and John Adams 2d portraits with two Adams portraits known to have been done by King, that of Charles Francis Adams and the one of John Quincy Adams now in the Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, Rhode Island. The sitter’s pose; the placement of the figure and the space it occupies on the canvas; the disposition and treatment of hands; the representation and style of collar, stock, and waistcoat; and the rendering of eyes and mouth—all are strikingly similar in the four paintings.

If the likenesses of George Washington Adams and John Adams 2d are by King, then questions may be raised about the usual identification of George Washington Adams as the subject of the painting reproduced on the left-hand side of the page, and John Adams 2d, book in hands, as the subject of the other. The sole authority for the identification of the separate likenesses is the article in Wide Awake and current family tradition, apparently based on that ascription. Even assuming that the identifications in Wide Awake do in fact accord with the opinion of William Clarkson Johnson, the then owner, the acceptance of Johnson’s verdict, unless he had written records available to him, would be subject to xviilimitations: at John Adams 2d’s death fifty-four years before, his daughter Mary Louisa Adams, subsequently Johnson’s wife, was six years of age and Johnson was eleven; John Adams 2d’s widow, Mary Catherine, had died in 1870; Mary Louisa Adams Johnson in 1859. The only other portraits known that may be likenesses of George Washington Adams and John Adams 2d, two which hang in the Old House at Quincy, provide no help in identification since their association with either brother rests entirely on perceived resemblances to the portraits reproduced here. If the likenesses of the brothers are examined with the assumption that they are by King but without prior identification of the individual subjects, the possibility that the painting said to be of George Washington Adams may be of John Adams 2d and vice versa, becomes more distinct. The four portraits by King of Adams men rather easily fall into two pairs, each pair distinguished by the coats in which the artist has clothed his sitters. The sitters in the John Quincy Adams portrait in the Redwood Library and in the portrait hitherto called John Adams 2d both wear coats of the same type with three brass buttons identically placed. Charles Francis Adams and the sitter for that hitherto called George Washington Adams wear robes or gowns with velvet collars and flowing sleeves. That the two paintings in each pair were done within a fairly short span of time seems evident. The dates 1819–1822 for the John Quincy Adams and 1827 for the Charles Francis Adams portrait are known. The other “brass button” painting would then have been done several years earlier than that of the other gowned figure. Such a conclusion would, in accordance with their ages, point to the identification of the person in the coat with brass buttons as George Washington Adams, the gowned figure as John Adams 2d. Again, the known dates of residence in Washington of each brother would be consistent with the view taken that George Washington Adams’ portrait was painted before that of John Adams 2d. George Washington Adams was in Washington after his graduation from Harvard from 1 October 1821 to 14 August 1823; thereafter only for a month or less in 1825 and in 1828 (Adams Papers files). John Adams 2d, however, was at Harvard until 1823, after which he was in Washington for most of each year until 1827 (volumes 1–2, passim). A reversal of the identifications is supported further to some degree by the “prop” which the artist has placed in the hands of one of the brothers. A book would have been highly appropriate for George Washington Adams, not so for John Adams 2d. See the references to each below, passim.

Addendum: Further information that sustains the conclusions conjectured above came to light only after the text for this volume had been set in pages. What has been said has therefore been allowed to stand without change. Confirmation comes from the discovery in the MS Diary of John Quincy Adams that he continued to sit to Charles Bird King for his portrait until 10 November 1823 and, what is of more significance here, that on 31 May 1823 George was also sitting to King. That King was indeed the painter of George’s likeness, and that the portrait was done in 1823 at the same time that his father’s was completed, makes virtually certain (a) that King xviiialso did the portrait of John, (b) that the sitter for the portrait reproduced on the right-hand side of the page, which is in a number of ways a companion to the John Quincy Adams portrait, was George. We may now reverse the traditionally given identification of the portraits of the two brothers. Fortunately it has been possible to incorporate this correction and new information in the caption under the portraits, facing p. 314 below.

Sparrell’s map (Massachusetts State Archives, Maps of 1830, volume 3, p. 10) shows the town of Medford contiguous to Charlestown on the south and east, its town square just over five miles northwest of the State House in Boston. Within the town, the most prominent of the topographical features was the Mystic or Medford River, a tidal stream, whose northward and westward course from the Charlestown line to the point on the western boundary of Medford where the river widened to become Mystic Pond was marked by numerous loops and bends. A second was the Middlesex Canal which entered the southern bounds of Medford close to the river and followed a course just to the west and south of it until a crossing was effected by means of a lock and aqueduct (see the following item in this Descriptive List of Illustrations), beyond which the canal continued just to the east of the river and Mystic Pond. This generally northward course has become the present Summer Street to Winthrop Street, West Street to Boston Avenue, Boston Avenue to High Street, and then Sagamore Avenue, which continues along the Mystic Lakes as Mystic Valley Parkway. See below, p. 236, 249; Lewis M. Lawrence, The Middlesex Canal, Boston, 1942 [processed], p. 110; “Plans of the Middlesex Canal with the Neighbouring Roads, Buildings, &c. Surveyed for Loammi Baldwin by George R. Baldwin. Sept. & Oct. 1829,” Office of the County Engineer, Middlesex County Court House, East Cambridge; and “Survey of Middlesex Canal” [1829], Baldwin Papers, volume 6, Field Book No. 5, Baker Library, Harvard University.

On the Sparrell map, just to the south of Mystic Pond is the Weir Bridge. The road from West Cambridge crosses this bridge and in Medford as High Street is a main artery into Medford Square. Shortly after High Street crosses the canal it is joined from the north by a road running parallel to the canal. This is Grove Street. The next road parallel and to the east of Grove is Woburn Street.

The estate of Peter Chardon Brooks in Medford by 1830 had been enlarged to more than three hundred acres and included the lands to the north of High Street, to the west of Woburn Street, and to the east of the river and the Mystic Pond northward to a point beyond “the Partings,” the Pond’s narrow waist as shown on the map (see also, below, p. 300). He also owned the tongue of land to the south of High Street, east and north of the river. The canal ran through the Brooks property for more than a mile. Brooks’ residence, Mystic Grove, stood on the west side of Grove Street not far north of xixHigh Street. See below, p. 10; volume 2:xi; The Medford Historical Register, 30:1–23 (March 1927).

Also in Medford was the farm of eighty acres which had been owned by John Adams, and afterward by Thomas Boylston Adams (see below, p. 236). Its location on the map is in the area south of the river and west from Medford Square, roughly halfway between the aqueduct and the first bridge to the eastward. It too lay on both sides of the canal. “A Plan of President Adams’ Land taken for the Middlesex Canal ... 1806,” Baldwin Papers, volume 6, Drawings 1803–1805, Baker Library, Harvard University.

The stone aqueduct, constructed by the Middlesex Canal Company in 1829 to replace an earlier wooden one, together with the lock at its western end were the means by which the canal crossed the Mystic River at the site of the present Boston Avenue bridge. The rebuilt aqueduct was 135 feet long with the stone abutments on each bank about a hundred feet apart. Supporting the aqueduct as it spanned the river were three massive stone piers. The aqueduct had an inside width of fourteen feet, with the surface of the water in it about ten feet above the water-level in the river at high tide; the trough was of timber and plank. The aqueduct remained in use until the canal was abandoned in 1852 after which it fell into decay until 1873 when the stonework served as the foundations for a highway bridge at Boston Avenue which was later superseded by the present bridge. (Christopher Roberts, The Middlesex Canal, 1793–1860, Cambridge, 1938, p. 195; Lewis M. Lawrence, The Middlesex Canal, Boston, 1942 [processed], p. 110.) The view illustrated is from a reproduction in The Medford Historical Register (volume 20, frontispiece [January] 1917) of an oil, unlocated, said to have been painted in 1865.

No other event of the year so held the public interest in Boston in 1830 as the murder of Captain Joseph White of Salem, the consequent apprehension of the suspected perpetrators, and their trials (see below, p. 207–208, 248–249, 303–304; quotation from p. 303). In satisfying the curiosity aroused first by the shocking manner and circumstances in which the deed was done and then by the prominence of the accused, the newspapers returned to the case again and again during the six months from the act to the convictions. The limitations imposed by the court upon the press in reporting the trials during their progress invited pamphlet publication of the testimony, &c., immediately upon the conclusion of the trial. Four xxsuch pamphlets are known, and others doubtless would be turned up in a bibliographical search. The Trial in the Case of the Commonwealth, versus John Francis Knapp, for the Murder of Joseph White, Esq. of Salem, Mass., is a report of the proceedings in Salem from the convening of a grand jury by the Supreme Judicial Court on 20 July to the conclusion of the first trial of Frank Knapp on 13 August. Its titlepage representation of the murder distinguished it from competing pamphlets. One of the pamphlets was in Charles Francis Adams’ hands on 18 August.

A ledger of 537 pages sturdily bound in sheep, reinforced with calf hinges and corners, and labeled on its spine “Entry of Books Borrowed: 1: 1827–1834” is one of the numerous items of considerable bibliographical interest in the archives of the Boston Athenaeum. The arrangement was intended to be alphabetical by shareholders with each proprietor assigned a page for the recording of his borrowings. However, changes in the membership during the years covered by the volume necessitated that an index of members’ pages be inserted at the beginning of the volume. Pages 20–21 are used to record the borrowings of Charles Francis Adams from the date of payment of his first annual subscription on 4 January 1830 to a borrowing on 11 July 1834, which utilized the last bit of space on the pages and required a transfer of his entry to a second volume. Each page has two columns of entries, each entry consisting of the date of the borrowing; the shelf number of the work borrowed; the author and/or title of the work in greatly abbreviated form; the volumes borrowed of a multivolume work, the format of a single-volume work; the date on which the work was returned. The entries are in several hands, being made apparently by whoever of the staff was in attendance. The illustration is of the topmost section of the left-hand column of page 20 and includes those borrowings made from 18 January to 4 August 1830.

This new method of entering borrowings was made possible by the compilation and publication early in 1827 of the first complete catalogue of the Athenaeum book holdings, recording for each title its shelf number in the Athenaeum and full bibliographical information. This catalogue was supplemented in 1830 by a second catalogue constructed on the same plan and listing those volumes which had been added since 1827 (see below, volume 3:120, 133–134).

From the cryptic entries of the titles borrowed by Charles Francis Adams, 1830–1832, and their identification by means of the two catalogues, an essentially complete record of the books borrowed by him in these years has been constructed. It is included in the present volumes as an appendix (volume 4:436–444; see the introductory note there).