"he acquired by purchase. Now, therefore, came and acquainted the Governor of an excellent Spring there; withal inviting him and soliciting him thither. Whereupon after the death of Mr. Johnson and divers others, the Governor, with Mr. Wilson, and the greatest part of the church removed thither; whither also the frame of the Governor's house, in preparation at this town, was also (to the discontent of some) carried; where people began to build there houses against winter; and this place was called Boston." Thus does the record incorporated in Frothingham's "History of Charlestown" tell the tale of Boston's actual birth. There are those who maintain that the story of our city's growth could very effectively be told by a series of historical tableaux; for the initial number on the program they name with excellent judgment the picture of Blackstone, the gentle recluse, exhibiting to John Winthrop the "excellent spring" of his own domain. This act of Blackstone's was the more praiseworthy because he was a "solitary " by nature and frankly disliked men even remotely of Puritan stripe. He was at this time about thirty-five and had dwelt in his lonely hut on the west slope of what is now Beacon Hill, not far from Beacon and Spruce streets, for about five years, spending his quiet days in trade with the savages and in the cultivation of his garden. Just why he had left England is not more clear than just why he later left Boston. But when he died in Rhode Island (May 26, 1675) he left behind him" 10 paper books" in which it is believed he may have told the story of his mysterious life. These were unfortunately destroyed by the Indians when they burned his house, however, and all that we further know of him is that he returned to Boston, after he had ceased to be an inhabitant of the place, and married the widow of John Stephenson, who lived on Milk street, on the site of the building in which Franklin was born. In regard to a name for the new settlement there seems to have been absolute unanimity. By common consent it was called after the old-world city, St. Botolph's town, or Boston, of Lincolnshire, England, from which the Lady Arbella Johnson and her husband had come and in whose noble parish church John Cotton was still preaching. The order of the Court of Assistants, Governor Winthrop presiding, "That Trimontaine shall be called Boston" was passed on the 17th of September, 1630, thus giving the death blow to Carlyle's picturesque statement in his book on Cromwell concerning Cotton's share in the matter: "Rev. John Cotton is a man still held in some remembrance among our New England friends. He had been minister of Boston in Lincolnshire; carried the name across the ocean with him; fixed it upon a new small home he found there, which has become a large one since, -the big busy capital of Massachusetts, Boston so called. John Cotton, his mark, very curiously stamped on the face of this planet; likely to continue for some time." This is superb writing, of course, but exceedingly lame history. Cotton did not come to the new world until nearly four years after this settlement was named Boston. But, since it is a fact that the St. Botolph's town, in which Cotton was still living, exercised a profound influence upon that to which he presently came let us turn aside and make a little pilgrimage there. Hawthorne did this during one of his trips abroad and he printed the result in the Atlantic Monthly of January, 1862. We cannot do better, I think, than to follow as he leads: "In mid-afternoon we beheld the tall tower of Saint Botolph's Church (three hundred feet high, the same elevation as the tallest tower of Lincoln Cathedral) loom |