Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1830-08-21
Morning very clear and pleasant. Robert Buchanan went with me to town as he wished to see a few things of note before he went away. After performing several little jobs as usual, I accompanied him to the State House to see Chantry’s Statue of Washington and the view from the top. It is ten or eleven years since I was in that spot before, and during the period how Boston has changed. Wealth has literally been poured upon it’s Streets until the sources from which it came have felt the drain. Houses and public buildings are now crowded upon places which formerly were dreary heaps of barren mud.1 We left that place and I then notified Hollis again to quit. He is a dog in the Manger. Will not work himself nor let others work for him.
At twelve o’clock we left town in the Steam Boat for Nahant.2 Found on board Edmund Quincy and Mr. G. Meredith whom I knew formerly3 and was glad to see them. We arrived barely in time for dinner and to get seats, the house being very much crowded. The Company was excellent, and our entertainment good. Arnold Welles and Charles C.
The prospect from the dome of the State House, especially to the north and east did indeed present striking changes from that visible a decade earlier. Extensive new building on reclaimed land had taken place or was in process in the area known as the Mill Pond and along the waterfront from the old Town Dock at Dock Square to the Long Wharf at the foot of State Street. Moreover, close 306by the State House itself there had been much construction on the new streets and building sites available in the wake of the leveling of the summit of Beacon Hill. This earth moving project which began in 1810 and ended only in 1824 provided the fill for the Mill Pond’s fifty acres of marsh and flats. The full development of the new area was not complete by 1830 but much building was already evident, stimulated perhaps by the opening in 1828 of the new Warren Bridge to Charlestown which had its Boston terminus at the center of the Mill Pond triangle. Southeastward from the Mill Pond the second large tract of made land had been created by 1826. There, over what had formerly been wharves, six new streets were laid out, and between Faneuil Hall and the new water’s edge the three large and handsome granite structures that comprised the Quincy Market development were in use. (Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History
, p. 78–84, 96–98.)
During the summer months the steamers Ousatonic and Rush Light plied between Boston and Nahant five times daily. Departure was from Tileston’s Wharf, Purchase Street near Summer Street, and the fare was 25 cents (Boston Patriot, 24 June, p. 2, col. 6).
On George Augustus Meredith, Harvard 1827, see vol. 2:277.
Welles was also of Meredith’s class. On Charles Russell Lowell, Harvard 1826, see vol. 1:265.
Derby lived in Boston at 27 Chesnut Street (
Boston Directory, 1830–1831).
An engraving of Nahant and its hotel is reproduced in the present volume; see above, p. x–xi.
1830-08-22
The morning was cloudy and damp as if it had been raining during the night. I walked into the Orchard with my Father and in discussing the subject of Trees I thought he seemed eager to close with my proposal of making a Nursery at Mount Wollaston. I think I will interest myself in this. But there are so many discouragements operating upon me in this regard that I do not know what to think of it.
We afterwards attended divine service and heard Mr. Whitney preach one Sermon upon controverted doctrinal texts and another upon the subject of a general judgment. In the evening, Abby and my father went down to pay a short visit to Mrs. Quincy. Saw her infant which is always brought in upon such occasions. A Thunder Storm in the Night.
1830-08-23
Morning cloudy. Rode to town as usual. At the Office where I performed my usual duties. Offered my bond for approval by the Judge of Probate but found it had no Seals and therefore would not answer, so that I was to carry it out to Quincy again. From thence I went down to see Mr. New’s Estates which I propose to sell. Found them both tolerably good houses and situated well to rent. Indeed it seemed to me there was no reason why they should not sell for a great deal more than the Mortgage. However all these things are matter of chance. 307Returned to the Office and after a short visit to Mr. Brooks went out to Quincy.
The afternoon was spent in strolling with my father to the Ledges at the Railway.1 My purpose was to inquire of the conductors there the price of good stone, in case I should decide upon having the Store in Court Street done. He whom I saw referred me to Mr. Caleb Pratt in Boston.2 My father’s object was to examine his woodland for a spot fit to cut for consumption. We went to the top of the Tower and were pleased with the fine view which we had from there.3 This Railway has been a great work, and the undertakers of it have certainly been entitled to considerable credit in carrying it on. It has moreover reduced the price of Stone very much, and thus brought it into much more extensive use, besides increasing the value of the Quarries.
We returned in time for the Ladies to take a ride, and I worked a little upon my Catalogue which I am now working off entire. Called with Robert Buchanan upon our Neighbour George Beale who seemed in no very good humour, which I attributed to his failure at Squantum.
The Ledges was the local name for the stone escarpment in Quincy which Gridley Bryant purchased in 1825 with funds supplied by Dr. John C. Warren as a quarry for the granite to be used for the Bunker Hill monument. Faced with the problem of transporting the blocks the four miles from the Quarry to water-carriage on the Neponset River, Bryant conceived the idea of a railroad, obtained a charter from the legislature, and began construction. The first train of cars, horse-drawn, passing over the whole length of tracks of the Granite Railway in Quincy on 7 Oct. 1826, was the effective beginning of railroad enterprise in the United States (C. F. Adams Jr., “The Canal and Railroad Enterprise of Boston,” in Winsor, Memorial History of Boston
, 4:116–121). The route taken by the railway is marked on the “map of Boston and the adjacent towns” in the present volume. On the railway’s cars, see above, p. xiv.
Caleb Pratt, agent in Boston for the Railway Quarry (subsequently the Bunker-Hill Quarry), was a housewright on Sea Street (
Boston Directory, 1830–1831, and entry for 31 Aug., below).
Fifty-eight steps led to the top of the tower. The structure was built by Col. Thomas Handasyd Perkins, into whose hands the whole stock of the railway and quarry fell (JQA, Diary, 23 Aug., and Winsor, Memorial History of Boston
, 4:118).