Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs

by Samuel Adams Drake

THE BUNCH OF GRAPES

This house goes back to the year 1712, when Francis Holmes kept it, and perhaps further still, though we do not meet with it under this title before Holmes’s time. From that time, until after the Revolution, it appears to have always been open as a public inn, and, as such, is feelingly referred to by one old traveller as the best punch-house to be found in all Boston.

When the line came to be drawn between conditional loyalty, and loyalty at any rate, the Bunch of Grapes became the resort of the High Whigs, who made it a sort of political headquarters, in which patriotism only passed current, and it was known as the Whig tavern. With military occupation and bayonet rule, still further intensifying public feeling, the line between Whig and Tory houses was drawn at the threshold. It was then kept by Marston. Cold welcome awaited the appearance of scarlet regimentals or a Tory phiz there; so gentlemen of that side of politics also formed cliques of their own at other houses, in which the talk and the toasts were more to their liking, and where they could abuse the Yankee rebels over their port to their heart’s content.

But, apart from political considerations, one or two incidents have given the Bunch of Grapes a kind of pre-eminence over all its contemporaries, and, therefore, ought not to be passed over when the house is mentioned.

On Monday, July 30, 1733, the first grand lodge of Masons in America was organized here by Henry Price, a Boston tailor, who had received authority from Lord Montague, Grand Master of England, for the purpose.

Again, upon the evacuation of Boston by the royal troops, this house became the centre for popular demonstrations. First, His Excellency, General Washington, was handsomely entertained there. Some months later, after hearing the Declaration read from the balcony of the Town-house, the populace, having thus made their appeal to the King of kings, proceeded to pull down from the public buildings the royal arms which had distinguished them, and, gathering them in a heap in front of the tavern, made a bonfire of them, little imagining, we think, that the time would ever come when the act would be looked upon as vandalism on their part.

General Stark’s timely victory at Bennington was celebrated with all the more heartiness of enthusiasm in Boston because the people had been quaking with fear ever since the fall of Ticonderoga sent dismay throughout New England. The affair is accurately described in the following letter, written by a prominent actor, and going to show how such things were done in the times that not only tried men’s souls, but would seem also to have put their stomachs to a pretty severe test. The writer says:—

“In consequence of this news we kept it up in high taste. At sundown about one hundred of the first gentlemen of the town, with all the strangers then in Boston, met at the Bunch of Grapes, where good liquors and a side-table were provided. In the street were two brass field-pieces with a detachment of Colonel Craft’s regiment. In the balcony of the Town-house all the fifes and drums of my regiment were stationed. The ball opened with a discharge of thirteen cannon, and at every toast given three rounds were fired and a flight of rockets sent up. About nine o’clock two barrels of grog were brought out into the street for the people that had collected there. It was all conducted with the greatest propriety, and by ten o’clock every man was at his home.”

Shortly after this General Stark himself arrived in town and was right royally entertained here, at that time presenting the trophies now adorning the Senate Chamber. On his return from France in 1780 Lafayette was also received at this house with all the honors, on account of having brought the news that France had at last cast her puissant sword into the trembling balance of our Revolutionary contest.

But the important event with which the Bunch of Grapes is associated is, not the reception of a long line of illustrious guests, but the organization, by a number of continental officers, of the Ohio Company, under which the settlement of that great State began in earnest, at Marietta. The leading spirit in this first concerted movement of New England toward the Great West was General Rufus Putnam, a cousin of the more distinguished officer of Revolutionary fame.