The Loyalists of Massachusetts Part 43

Mr. Howe commenced the publication of a newspaper for the British at Newport; it was called The Newport Gazette, and the first paper was issued January 16, 1777.

The last number of a bound volume of this paper in possession of the Redwood Library at Newport, is dated January 15, 1778, but the publication of the paper probably continued till the evacuation of Newport by the British, October 25, 1779.

The paper was published in a house on the opposite side of the Parade, the Vaughn estate, now a market. A recent writer says:

"During the time the British were in possession of Newport, it was the office of the Newport 'Gazette,' the paper printed by the British on the press and type of the Newport 'Mercury.' Before that the 'Mercury' was printed by Solomon Southwick, in Queen Street, but when the island fell into the hands of the enemy, Southwick, as is well-known, buried his type in the rear of what was the old Kilburn House on Broad Street (now Broadway) and left the town. The loyalists recovered the type, and a printer named Howe began the printing of the 'Gazette.'"

A bound file of the newspaper published by Mr. Howe is in the possession of the Redwood Library. It runs, with a few numbers missing, from No. 1, to No. 52, January 15, 1778.

The first number was issued Jan. 16, 1777, with the following introduction.

"The Favours which the Subscriber has received from the Gentlemen of the _Army and Navy_, in Boston and elsewhere, joined with the Importunities of many of the Inhabitants of this Town, has induced him, as speedily as possible, to gratify them with a _Newspaper_.

He can only say, that his best endeavors shall not be wanting to render it as entertaining as possible: And he has nothing to wish for, but the Exercise of that Candour he hath so often before been indebted to. Its _size_ is at present contracted, owing to the Impossibility of procuring larger printing Paper; but if more Intelligence should at any Time arrive, than this can contain, the Deficiency will be supplied with a _Supplement_. No Subscriptions are received; but if any Gentlemen choose to have the Paper weekly the Boy shall leave it at their houses. Articles of intelligence will be thankfully received and every favor gratefully acknowledged, by their

Obedient humble servant, JOHN HOWE."

The British evacuated Newport, October 25, 1779, and Mr. and Mrs. Howe accompanied them to New York, and thence removed to Halifax and took up their permanent abode there, on the corner of Sackville and Barrington Streets. Here on Friday, January 5th, 1781, he published the first issue of the Halifax Journal, a paper that continued to be published regularly until 1870. It is said that Mr. Howe brought with him the printing press that had once belonged to Benjamin Franklin, and the first that the philosopher had ever possessed. It did the printing for the Howe family for years. Mr. Howe was for many years King's printer for the Province, which secured to him all the government printing, including the publishing of the official gazette. For some years previous to his death, he held the office of postmaster-general and justice of the peace, and was living at the time of his death, December 29, 1835, at his beautiful residence on the Northwestarm, in good circ.u.mstances, and had the respect of the whole community.

Mr. Howe was a Sandemanian, that is, a follower of Robert Sandeman, who came to Boston from Glasgow in 1764; they held their first meetings at the Green Dragon Tavern, and afterwards had a meeting-house in the rear of Middle or Hanover street. This society rejected the belief in the necessity of spiritual conversion, representing faith as an operation of the intellect, and speculative belief as quite sufficient to insure final justification. This sect continued till 1823, when the last light was extinguished in Boston. Many of the Sandemanians were Loyalists, and went to Halifax. They may have built on a sandy foundation, but judging from their fruits, we may charitably conclude that in the main they were correct. Probably they did not like a church and state religion; and that may have been all. The few who were in Halifax met every Lord's day in an upper room, in the building lately used by Baxter as a furniture warehouse on Prince Street. The members, male and female, sat together around a table and took the Lord's Supper. This was weekly. There was singing and prayers, and Mr. Howe would afterward stand up, read a chapter of the Bible, and give an address. No doubt it was very good and simple and delivered with a calm, quiet sort of eloquence. When the meeting was over the brothers and sisters in fellowship, (only the more elderly members) rose and kissed one another, and seemed to be remarkably happy. It is said that in the afternoon of every Sunday the old gentlemen members went down to the room below and dined together, and probably edified one another with religious conversation. Those now living who have ever been with these Sandemanians in that upper room will never forget the calm G.o.dly faces of such men as old Mr. Howe, Mr.

Greenwood and Mr. Mansfield. Strange to say, none of the Howes, and very few, if any, of the other families have followed in the track of these good men and women as to creed. It is to be hoped that many have been influenced for good by what they may have recalled of such worthy ancestors. Old Mr. Greenwood fell dead in the room while reading, and Mr. Mansfield died the same day from some accidental cause.

In a speech delivered by his son JOSEPH HOWE, in Boston July 4, 1858, he spoke of his father as follows: "The loyalists who left these States were not, it must be confessed, as good republicans as you are, but they loved liberty under their old forms, and their descendants love it too.

My father, though a true Briton to the day of his death, loved New England, and old Boston especially, with filial regard. He never lost an opportunity of serving a Boston man, if in his power. At the close of your railway banquet, one gentleman told me that my father had, during the last war, taken his father from the military prison at Melville Island, and sent him back to Boston. Another, on the same evening, showed me a gold watch, sent by an uncle, who died in the West Indies, to his family. It was p.a.w.ned by a sailor in Halifax, but redeemed by my father, and sent to the dead man's relatives. And so it was all his life. He loved his sovereign, but he loved Boston too, and whenever he got sick in his latter days, we used to send him up here to recruit. A sight of the old scenes and a walk on Boston Common were sure to do him good, and he generally came back uncommonly well." Elsewhere the same son remarked: "For thirty years he was my instructor, my playfellow, almost my daily companion. To him I owe my fondness for reading, my familiarity with the Bible, my knowledge of old colonial and American incidents and characteristics. He left me nothing but his example, and the memory of his many virtues, for all that he ever earned was given to the poor. He was too good for this world. But the remembrance of his high principle, his cheerfulness, his childlike simplicity, and truly Christian character, is never absent from my mind."

Mrs. Martha Howe died Nov. 25, 1790, aged 30 years, and was buried in St. Paul's churchyard, Halifax.

A few years after the death of his first wife, Mr. Howe married Mrs.

Austin, a widow with several children, wife of Captain Austin. By her he had two children, Sarah and Joseph. Mrs. Howe died in 1837. He had eight children, and at the present time there are eighty-five of his descendants, out of all these the survivors who bear the name of Howe only number sixteen. Many of his descendants were men of great prominence. His son William Howe, a.s.sistant Commissary-General, who died at Halifax, January, 1843, aged fifty-seven. John Howe, Queen's Printer, and Deputy Postmaster-General, who died at the same place the same year, and David Howe, who published a paper at St. Andrew, N. B., Joseph, born December 13, 1804, became Hon. Joseph Howe, Governor of Nova Scotia in May, 1873.

SAMUEL QUINCY.

SOLICITOR-GENERAL.

Edmund Quincy, the first of the name in New England, landed at Boston on the 4th of September, 1633. He came from Achurch in Northamptonshire, where he owned some landed estate. That he was a man of substance may be inferred from his bringing six servants with him, and that he was a man of weight among the founders of the new commonwealth appears from his election as a representative of the town of Boston in the first General Court ever held in Ma.s.sachusetts Bay. He was also the first named on the committee appointed by the town to a.s.sess and raise the sum necessary to extinguish the t.i.tle of Mr. Blackstone to the peninsula on which the city stands. He bought of Chickatabut, Sachem of the Ma.s.sachusetts tribe of Indians, a tract of land at Mount Wollaston, confirmed to him by the Town of Boston, 1636, a portion of which is yet in the family.

Edmund Quincy died the year after making this purchase, in 1637, at the age of 33. He left a son Edmund and a daughter Judith. The son lived, in the main, a private life on the estate in Braintree. He was a magistrate and a representative of his town in the General Court, and Lieutenant-Colonel of the Suffolk Regiment.

Point Judith was named after his daughter. She married John Hull, who, when Ma.s.sachusetts Bay a.s.sumed the prerogative of coining money, was her mint-master, and made a large fortune in the office, before Charles II.

put a stop to that infringement of the charter. There is a tradition that, when he married his daughter to Samuel Sewall, afterwards Chief Justice, he gave her for her dowry, her weight in pine-tree shillings.

From this marriage has sprung the eminent family of the Sewalls, which has given three Chief Justices to Ma.s.sachusetts and one to Canada, and has been distinguished in every generation by the talents and virtues of its members.

Lieutenant-Colonel Quincy, who was a child when brought to New England, died in 1698, aged seventy years, having had two sons, Daniel and Edmund.

Daniel died during his father's lifetime, leaving an only son John, who graduated at Cambridge in 1708, and was a prominent public man in the Colony for nearly half a century. He was a Councillor, and for many years Speaker of the Lower House.

He died in 1767, at the time of the birth of his great-grandson, John Quincy Adams, who therefore received the name which he has made ill.u.s.trious. Edmund, the second son, graduated in 1690, and was also in the public service almost all his life, as a magistrate, a Councillor, and one of the Justices of the Supreme Court. He was also colonel of the Suffolk Regiment, at that time a very important command, since the county of Suffolk then, and long after, included what is now County of Norfolk, as well as the town of Boston. In 1737, the General Court selected him as their agent to lay the claims of the Colony before the home government, in the matter of the disputed boundary between Ma.s.sachusetts Bay and New Hampshire.

He died, however, very soon after his arrival in London, February 23, 1737, of the smallpox, which he had taken by inoculation. He was buried in Bunhill Fields, where a monument was erected to him by the General Court, which also made a grant of land of a thousand acres in the town of Lennox to his family, in further recognition of his public services.

Judge Edmund Quincy had two sons, Edmund and Josiah.

The first named, who graduated at Cambridge in 1722, lived a private life at Braintree and in Boston.

One of his daughters married John Hanc.o.c.k, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts.

Josiah was born in 1709, and took his first degree in 1728. He accompanied his father to London in 1737, and afterwards visited England and the Continent more than once.

For some years he was engaged in commerce and ship-building in Boston, and when about forty years of age he retired from business and removed to Braintree, where he lived for thirty years the life of a country gentleman, occupying himself with the duties of a county magistrate, and amusing himself with field sports. Game of all sorts abounded in those days in the woods and along the sh.o.r.e, and marvellous stories have come down, by tradition, of his feats with gun and rod. He was Colonel of the Suffolk Regiment, as his father had been before him; he was also Commissioner to Pennsylvania during the old French war to ask the help of that Colony in an attack which Ma.s.sachusetts Bay had planned upon Crown Point. He succeeded in his mission by the help of Doctor Franklin.

Colonel Josiah Quincy, by his first marriage, had three sons, Edmund, Samuel, Josiah, and one daughter, Hannah. His first wife was Hannah Sturgis, daughter of John Sturgis, one of his Majesty's Council, of Yarmouth. His eldest son, Edmund, graduated in 1752, after which he became a merchant in Boston. He was in England in 1760 for the purpose of establishing mercantile correspondences. He died at sea in 1768, on his return from a voyage for his health to the West Indies.

The youngest son of Colonel Josiah Quincy bore his name, and was therefore known to his contemporaries, and takes his place in history, as Josiah Quincy, Junior, he having died before his father, he was born February 23, 1744, and graduated at Harvard College, 1763. He studied law with Oxenbridge Thacher, one of the princ.i.p.al lawyers of that day, and succeeded to his practice at his death, which took place about the time he himself was called to the bar. He took a high rank at once in his profession, although his attention to its demands was continually interrupted by the stormy agitation in men's minds and pa.s.sions, which preceded and announced the Revolution, and which he actively promoted by his writings and public speeches. On the 5th of March, the day of the so called "Boston Ma.s.sacre" he was selected, together with John Adams, by Captain Preston, who was accused of having given the word of command to the soldiers that fired on the mob, to conduct his defence and that of his men, they having been committed for trial for murder. At that moment of fierce excitement, it demanded personal and moral courage to perform this duty. His own father wrote him a letter of stern and strong remonstrance against his undertaking the defence of "those criminals charged with the murder of their fellow citizens," exclaiming, with pa.s.sionate emphasis, "Good G.o.d! Is it possible? I will not believe it!"

Mr. Quincy in his reply, reminded his father of the obligations his professional oath laid him under, to give legal counsel and a.s.sistance to those accused of a crime, but not proved to be guilty of it; adding: "I dare affirm that you and this whole people will one day rejoice that I became an advocate for the aforesaid criminals, _charged_ with the murder of our fellow citizens. _To inquire my duty and to do it, is my aim._" He did his duty and his prophecy soon came to pa.s.s.

There is no more honorable pa.s.sage in the history of New England than the one which records the trial and acquittal of Captain Preston and his men, in the midst of the pa.s.sionate excitements of that time, by a jury of the town maddened to a rage but a few months before by the blood of her citizens shed in her streets.

In 1774 he went to England, partly for his health, which had suffered much from his intense professional and political activities, and also as a confidential agent of the Revolutionary party to consult and advise with the friends of America there. His presence in London coming as he did at a most critical moment excited the notice of the ministerial party, as well as of the opposition. The Earl of Hillsborough denounced him, together with Dr. Franklin, in the House of Lords, "as men walking the streets of London who ought to be in Newgate or Tyburn." The precise results of his communications with the English Whigs can never be known.

They were important enough, however, to make his English friends urgent for his immediate return to America, because he could give information which could not safely be committed to writing. His health had failed seriously during the latter months of his residence in England, and his physicians strongly advised against his taking a winter voyage.

His sense of public duty, however, overbore all personal considerations, and he set sail on the 16th of March, 1775, and died off Gloucester, Ma.s.sachusetts, on the 26th of April.

The citizens of Gloucester buried him with all honor in their graveyard; after the siege of Boston, he was removed and placed in a vault in the burying ground in Braintree. Josiah Quincy was barely thirty-one years of age when he thus died.

His father, Colonel Quincy lived on at Braintree during the whole of the war. He died on March 3rd, 1784.

His pa.s.sion for field sports remained in full force till the end, for his death was occasioned by exposure to the winter's cold, sitting upon a cake of ice, watching for wild ducks, when he was in his seventy-fifth year.

SAMUEL QUINCY, the subject of this memoir, was the second son of Colonel Josiah Quincy, and the brother of Josiah, Junior, and Edmund. He was born in that part of Braintree now Quincy, April 23, 1735. He graduated at Harvard College in 1754, and studied law with Benjamin Pratt.

Endowed with fine talents, Mr. Quincy became eminent in the profession of the law, and succeeded Jonathan Sewall as Solicitor-General of Ma.s.sachusetts. He was the intimate friend of many of the most distinguished men of that period, among whom was John Adams. They were admitted to the bar on the same day, Nov. 6, 1758.

As Solicitor for the Crown, he was engaged with Robert Treat Paine in the memorable trial of Capt. Preston, and the soldiers in 1770; his brother was opposed to him on that occasion, and both reversed their party sympathies in their professional position. It was plain to all sagacious observers of the signs of the times, that the storm of civil war was gathering fast; and it was sure first to burst over Boston. It was a time of stern agitation, and profound anxieties. In their emotion Mr. Quincy and his wife shared deeply, and pa.s.sionately. The shadows of public and private calamity were already beginning to steal over that once happy home. The evils of the present and the uncertainties of the future bore heavily on their prosperity. The fierce pa.s.sions which were soon to break out into revolutionary violence and mob rule, had already begun to separate families, to divide friends, and to break up society.

Samuel Quincy was a Loyalist and remained true to his oath of office, wherein he swore to support the government. His father and brother were revolutionists; as previously stated his brother died on shipboard off Gloucester, seven days after the hostilities had commenced at Lexington, and when his father saw from his house on Quincy Bay, the fleet drop down the harbor, after the evacuation of Boston on March 17, 1776, it must have been with feelings of sorrow that the stout-hearted old man saw the vessels bear away his only surviving son, never to return again.

Such partings were common griefs then, as ever in civil wars, the bitterest perhaps that wait upon that cruelest of calamities.

Samuel Quincy was an addressor of Governor Hutchinson, and a staunch Loyalist. His wife, the sister of Henry Hill, Esq., of Boston, was not pleased with her husband's course in the politics of the times, and he became a Loyalist against her advice, and when he left Boston, a refugee, she preferred to remain with her brother, and never met her husband again. The following letter written to his brother by Mr.

Quincy, during the siege of Boston, will explain his position at that time.[230]

[230] This letter and the following ones are extracts from original papers, copies of which were communicated by Miss Eliza S. Quincy, and published In Curwen's Journal and Letters.

To Henry Hill, Esq., Cambridge. Boston, May 13, 1775.

Dear Brother:

There never was a time when sincerity and affectionate unity of heart could be more necessary than at present. But in the midst of the confusions that darken our native land, we may still, by a rect.i.tude of conduct, entertain a rational hope that the Almighty Governor of the universe will in his own time remember mercy.