THE HALLOWELL FAMILY OF BOSTON.
Robert Hallowell arrived in Boston from London, in 1764 and entered upon his duties as Comptroller of the Customs. He was Collector of the Customs at Portsmouth, New Hampshire before the age of twenty-five. In 1765, Sabine says, "A mob surrounded his elegant house in Hanover Street, tore down his fences, broke his windows, and forcing the doors at last destroyed furniture, stole money, scattered books and papers, and drank of the wines in the cellar to drunkenness."
In 1768 Hallowell ordered Hancock's vessel, the Liberty, seized for smuggling wine, to be removed from the wharf to a place covered by the guns of the Romney frigate; and in the affray which occurred, received wounds and bruises that at the time seemed fatal.
He removed his office to Plymouth, June 1, 1774, when the port of Boston was closed. In 1775, he was an Addresser of Gage; and the year following with his family of five persons, he accompanied the British Army to Halifax. In 1778 he was proscribed and banished. He went to England and resided at Bristol. Hallowell came to the United States in 1788 and in 1790—as the executor of his own father and of his wife's father. In 1792 he removed to Boston with his family, and lived in the homestead on Batterymarch Street, which because of his mother's life interest, had not been confiscated. He was kindly received and became intimate with some distinguished citizens.
In 1816, when failing in health, he went to Gardiner, Maine to reside with his son, and died there April, 1818, in his seventy-ninth year. His wife was Hannah, daughter of Doctor Sylvester Gardiner. His two daughters, Hannah and Anne, died unmarried. His son, the Hon. Robert Hallowell, became a gentleman of great wealth and a highly respected citizen. Two of Mr. Hallowell's sisters died in England; Sarah, wife of Samuel Vaughan, in 1809; and Anne, widow of General Gould, in 1812.
The towns of Hallowell and Gardiner on the Kennebec River are named after their families.
Benjamin Hallowell of Boston, brother of Robert Hallowell, was Commissioner of the Customs. In early life he commanded a small armed vessel, and during the war ending in the conquest of Canada, commanded the province twenty-gun ship, "King George," rendering essential service notably at the retaking of Newfoundland.
Captain Hallowell's acceptance of the office of Mandamus Councillor made him a special object of public detestation.
On September 2, 1774, while the mob were assembled on Cambridge Common to receive the resignations of Danforth, Lee, and Oliver as Mandamus Councillors, Hallowell passed on his way to Roxbury. About one hundred and sixty horsemen pursued him at full gallop. Some of the leaders however, prudently dissuaded them from proceeding and they returned and dismounted, except for one man who followed Hallowell to Roxbury and caused him much annoyance. Through the action of the mob he was obliged to seek protection in Boston and leave his mansion which was built in 1738. It was used afterwards by the disunion forces as a hospital for the camp at Roxbury and his pleasure grounds were converted into a place of burial for the soldiers who died there.
In March, 1776, Captain Hallowell accompanied the British army to Halifax with his family of six persons. In July, 1776, he sailed for England in the ship Aston Hall. While at Halifax he wrote: "If I can be of the least service to either army or navy I will stay in America until the Rebellion is subdued."
The British Government granted him lands in Manchester, and two other towns in Nova Scotia, and a township in Upper Canada, which bears his name. He was a large proprietor of lands on the Kennebec, Maine, prior to the Revolution, but in 1778, he was proscribed and banished and included in the Conspiracy Act a year later, and his entire estate confiscated. His mansion house in Roxbury was seized and sold by the State, but as the fee was in Mrs. Hallowell, her heirs sued to recover of the person who held under the deed of the Commission of Confiscation and obtained judgement in 1803 in the United States Circuit Court, by which she recovered the property.
In 1784, when Mrs. Adams, the wife of the first minister from the United States was in England, she relates that both Mr. Hallowell and his wife treated her with respect and kindness. They also urged her to take lodgings with them, but this she declined. She records, too, that they lived in handsome style but not as splendidly as when in Boston. She accepted an invitation to "an unceremonious family dinner" as Mrs. Hallowell called it and met the Rev. Dr. Walter, Rector of Trinity Church, and two other gentlemen who belonged to Massachusetts.
On visiting Boston in 1796, Captain Hallowell was accompanied by his daughter, Mrs. Emsley, whose husband had just been appointed Chief Justice of Upper Canada. During his stay the odium which attached to his official relations to the Crown seemed to have been forgotten, since he was received by his former associates with the greatest kindness and hospitality. He died at York (Toronto) Upper Canada, in 1799, aged seventy-five, and was the last survivor of the Board of Commissioners.
Captain Hallowell had two sons, both of whom changed their names. Ward Nicholas Hallowell's name was changed to Boylston. He was born in Boston in 1749. Sabine says: "I have before me the original license bearing the signature of George III by which he was authorized to change his name;" it recites—"That Nicholas Boylston, his uncle by his mother's side has conceived a very great affection for him, the petitioner, and has promised to leave him at his death, certain estates which are very considerable, etc." In early life he made a tour of Europe, visiting Italy, Turkey, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and along the coast of Barbary; and arrived in England in 1775 through France, and Flanders. He dined at Governor Hutchinson's, London, with some fellow Loyalists, July 29, 1775, and entertained the company with an account of his travels, and, at subsequent periods, exhibited the curiosities which he brought from the Holy Land, Egypt, and other countries to the unhappy exiles from his native state.
In the Autumn of the next year, he was in lodgings at Shepton Mallet. He became a member of the Loyalist Association, formed in London in 1799. In 1800 he returned to Boston and laid claim to his father's estate that had been confiscated and sold, as being the property of his mother in her own right. Having assumed her name of Boylston, he obtained the estate by due process of law, as previously stated. In 1810 he presented Harvard College with a valuable collection of medical and anatomical works and engravings. He took his mother's name of Boylston, and thus claimed the family estate. He died at his seat in Roxbury, January 7, 1828.
He was a gentleman of education and took an active interest in the Roxbury schools. His liberality is commemorated by a school, and a street named after him, Boylston street being one of the principal streets in Boston.
Sir Benjamin Hallowell (Carew), another son of Captain Hallowell, who, succeeding to the estates of the Carews of Beddington, assumed the name and arms of that family. He was one of the eight Boston boys who subsequently attained high rank in the British service. Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, Sir Benjamin Hallowell (Carew), John Singleton Copley, the younger, who became Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Chancellor of England, General Sir John Coffin, Hugh Mackay Gordon, Sir David Ochterlony, Sir Roger Hale Sheaff, Sir Aston Coffin.
Entering the royal navy during the American war he was at the time of his death in 1834, an admiral of the Blue in the British Navy, G. C. B., K. St. F. M. His commission as Lieutenant, bears date August, 1781; as Captain, in 1793; as Rear-Admiral, in 1811; as Vice-Admiral, in 1819. He was made a Knight Commander of the Bath in 1819, and was promoted to the rank of Grand Cross in 1831.
His employments at sea were various and arduous. He was with Rodney in the memorable battle with De Grasse; also at the siege of Bastia; and in command of a ship-of-the-line under Hotham, in the encounter with the French off the Hieres Islands. He served as a volunteer on board the Victory, in the battle of Cape St. Vincent. In the battle, Admiral Jarvis took his official post on the quarter deck of the Victory. Calder, the captain of the fleet kept bringing reports of the increasing numbers, observed till he reached twenty-seven, and said something of the disparity. Enough of that, said Jarvis, the die is cast and if there are fifty sail, I will go through them. Hallowell could not contain himself. He slapped the great admiral on the back, crying "That's right, Sir John, and by God, we'll give them a damned good licking." He was in command of the Swiftsure of seventy-four guns, and contributed essentially to Nelson's victory in the battle of the Nile. From a part of the mainmast of L'Orient, which was picked up by the Swiftsure, Hallowell directed his carpenter to make a coffin, which was sent to Nelson with the following letter:
"Sir, I have taken the liberty of presenting you a coffin made from the mainmast of L'Orient, that when you have finished your military career in this world, you may be buried in one of your trophies. But that that period may be far distant is the earnest wish of your sincere friend,
"Benjamin Hallowell."
Southey, in his "Life of Nelson," remarks: "An offering so strange and yet so suited to the occasion, was received in the spirit in which it was sent. And, as if he felt it good for him, now that he was at the summit of his wishes, to have death before his eyes, he ordered the coffin to be placed upright in his cabin. An old favorite servant entreated him so earnestly to let it be removed, that at length he consented to have the coffin carried below; but he gave strict orders that it should be safely stowed, and reserved for the purpose for which its brave and worthy donor had designed it."
In 1799, Sir Benjamin was engaged in the attacks on the castles of St. Elmo and Capua, and was honored with the Neapolitan Order of St. Ferdinand and Merit. Two years later he fell in with the French squadron, and surrendered his ship—the Swiftsure—after a sharp contest. During the peace of Amiens, he was stationed on the coast of Africa. He was with Hood in the reduction of St. Lucia and Tobago; with Nelson in the West Indies; in command of the convoy of the second expedition to Egypt; with Martin, off the mouth of the Rhone, where he assisted in driving on shore several French ships-of-war; and in the Mediterranean. His last duty seems to have been performed on the Irish station. He died at Beddington Park, in 1834, at the age of seventy-three. His wife was a daughter of Commissioner Inglefield, of Gibraltar Dock-yard. His son and heir, Charles Hallowell Carew who at the time of his decease, had attained the rank of Captain in the Royal Navy, and who married Mary, the daughter of Sir Murray Maxwell, C. B., died at the Park, in 1848. In 1851 his fifth son, Robert Hallowell Carew, late captain in the 36th Regiment, married Ann Roycroft, widow of Walter Tyson Smythes.
LIST OF CONFISCATED ESTATES BELONGING TO BENJAMIN HALLOWELL IN SUFFOLK COUNTY, AND TO WHOM SOLD.
To Samuel Gardner Jarvis, July 24, 1780: Lib. 131, fol. 230 Farm, 7 1-2 A., and dwelling-house in Roxbury, Jamaica Plain N.W.; road by widow Parker's N.E.; Joseph Williams S.E.; heirs of Capt. Newell, deceased, S.W.
To John Coffin Jones, Mar. 15, 1782; Lib. 134, fol. 60; Land and brick dwelling-house in Boston, Hanover St. N.; heirs of Alexander Chamberlain, deceased, and heirs of Miles Whitworth, deceased, W.; land in occupation of Samuel Sumner S. and W.; said Sumner and Joseph Scott, an absentee, S.; said Scott and heirs of Benjamin Andrews, deceased, E.
To John Coffin Jones, Mar. 15, 1782; Lib. 134, fol. 62; Land and dwelling-house in Boston, land purchased by said Jones N.; Joseph Scott E.; S. and E.; said Scott and Sampson Mason S. and E.; Masons Court S.; heirs of Miles Whitworth, deceased, W.
THE OLD VASSALL HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE.
Occupied during the siege of Boston by Dr. Benjamin Church, Surgeon-General, who was arrested and confined here until his trial.