TOWN HOUSE AND SQUARE.
When the Revolutionary junto wished to organize its artillery, William Raymond Lee was summoned to Cambridge to command one of the companies. He was nephew to the old colonel, valiantly taking up the cause where his uncle had laid it down. Afterward he served in Glover's regiment, passing through all the grades from captain to colonel. Another nephew was that John Lee who, while in command of a privateer belonging to the Tracys, with a battery, part of iron and partly of wooden guns, captured a rich vessel of superior force in the bay. Both the colonel's fighting nephews were of Manchester, on Cape Ann.
Threading my way onward, I came upon the old Town-house, the Faneuil Hall of Marblehead, in which much treason was hatched when George III. was king. The Whigs of Old Essex have often been heard there when grave questions were to be discussed, and the jarring atoms of society have oft been summoned greeting,
"To grand parading of town-meeting."
In the old Town-house Judge Story went to school and was fitted for college; the substantial dwelling in which he was born being nearly opposite, with its best parlor become an apothecary's, under the sign of Goodwin. This house was the dwelling of Dr. Elisha Story, of Revolutionary memory, and the birthplace of his son, the eminent jurist. The physicians of Dr. Story's time usually furnished their own medicines. In cocked hat and suit of rusty black, with saddle-bags and countenance severe, they were marked men in town or village. Since my visit to Marblehead the last of Dr. Story's eighteen children, Miss Caroline Story, died at the age of eighty-five. The chief-justice, her brother, was one of the most lovable of men, and was never, I believe, ashamed of the slight savor of the dialect that betrayed him native and to the manner born.
The Episcopal church in Marblehead is one of its old landmarks, concurring fully, so far as outward appearance goes, in the prevailing mouldiness. It is not remarkable in any way except as an oddity in wood, with a square tower of very modest height surmounting a broad and sloping roof. At a distance it is scarcely to be distinguished in the wooden chaos rising on all sides; its front was masked by buildings, so that the entrance-door could only be reached by a winding path. The parish has at length cleared its ancient glebe of intruders, and the old church is no longer jostled by its dissenting neighbors. Immediately adjoining is a little church-yard, in which repose the ashes of former worshipers who loved these old walls, and would lie in their shadow.