New York City, November, 1909.
MARION HARLAND’S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
I
FOREBEARS AND PATRON SAINT
My father, Samuel Pierce Hawes, was born in the town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, July 30, 1799.
The homestead, still standing and reckoned among the notable sites of the region, was built in 1640, by Robert Pierce, who emigrated to the New World in 1630, having sailed from Plymouth, England, in the Mary and John, in company with others of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On the voyage, he married Ann Greenaway—registered as “Daughter of Goodman Greenaway,” a fellow-passenger.
The family trace their descent, by old domestic and town records, from the Northumberland Percies. Traditions, cherished by the race, affirm that Godfrey of Bouillon was a remote ancestor. It is unquestionably true that “Robert of Dorchester,” as he is put down in the genealogy of the Percies, was a blood relative of Master George Percy, John Smith’s friend, and his successor in the presidency of the Jamestown colony.
The emigrants had a temporary home in Neponset Village, prospering so far in worldly substance as to justify the erection of the substantial house upon the hill overlooking the “village,” ten years after the landing. So substantial was it, and so honest were the builders, that it has come down in a direct line from father to son, and been inhabited by ten generations of thrifty folk who have left it stanch and weatherproof to this day.
My father’s mother, a handsome, wilful girl of seventeen, ran away to be married to one whom her father—“Squire Pierce”—considered a presumptuous adventurer. He was from Maine, a stranger in the neighborhood, and reputed (justly) to be wild and unsteady. When he asked for the girl’s hand he was summarily commanded to hold no further communication with her. He had served as a private in the Revolutionary War; he had winning ways and a good-looking face, and Ann had a liberal spice of her sire’s unbending will. She would have him, and no other of the youths who sued for her favor.