In the manuscript collections of the Bostonian Society is a plan showing the earliest owners of the land bordering on the Corn Market. On the site now the south corner of Faneuil Hall Square and Merchants’ Row is noted the possession of Edward Tyng. Another manuscript of the Society, equally unique, is an apprentice indenture of Robert Orchard in 1662. In the account of Orchard, printed in the Publications of the Society, Vol. IV, is given the continued history of Tyng’s land after it came into the possession of Theodore Atkinson. In the history of the sign of the Golden Ball Tavern we continue the story of the same plot of land.
Originally owned by Edward Tyng, and later by Theodore Atkinson, and then by the purchase of the property by Henry Deering, who married the widow of Atkinson’s son Theodore. All this was told in the Orchard article.
It was about 1700 that Henry Deering erected on his land on the north side of a passage leading from Merchants’ Row, on its west side, a building which was soon occupied as a tavern. Samuel Tyley, who had kept the Star in 1699, the Green Dragon in 1701, and later the Salutation at the North End, left this last tavern in 1711 to take Mr. Deering’s house in Merchants’ Row, the Golden Ball.
SIGN OF THE BUNCH OF GRAPES
Now in the Masonic Temple
SIGN OF THE GOLDEN BALL
Now in the possession of the Bostonian Society
Henry Deering died in 1717, and was buried with his wife on the same day. He had been a man greatly interested in public affairs. In 1707 he had proposed the erection of a building for the custody of the town’s records; at the same time he proposed a wharf at the foot of the street, now State Street, then extending only as far as Merchants’ Row. This was soon built as “Boston Pier” or “Long Wharf.” He also presented a memorial for the “Preventing Disolation by Fire” in the town.
In the division of Deering’s estate in 1720 the dwelling house in the occupation of Samuel Tyley, known by the name of the Golden Ball, with privilege in the passage on the south and in the well, was given his daughter Mary, the wife of William Wilson. Mrs. Wilson, in her will drawn up in 1729, then a widow, devised the house to her namesake and niece, Mary, daughter of her brother, Capt. Henry Deering. At the time of Mrs. Wilson’s death in 1753 her niece was the wife of John Gooch, whom she married in 1736. Samuel Tyley died in 1722, while still the landlord of the Golden Ball.
The next landlord of whom we have knowledge was William Patten, who had taken the Green Dragon in 1714. In 1733 he was host at the Golden Ball, where he stayed till 1736, when he took the inn on West Street, opposite the schoolhouse, and next to the estate later known as the Washington Gardens.